Australia’s antisemitic arsonist and the choice the country faces

As I was making preparations on Friday night for Shabbat in Columbus, Ohio, my phone buzzed with some devastating news from Australia…writes Rabbi Areyah Kaltmann.

The East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, a historic synagogue in my hometown of Melbourne, had been set ablaze by an arsonist while 20 people shared a Shabbat meal inside.

The attacker, Angelo Loras, a 34-year-old man from Sydney, poured flammable liquid on the synagogue’s doors and ignited them. When he set that fire, he wasn’t just attacking a building but more than a century of Australian Jewish history, hope and refuge.

But he failed, like those who’ve attacked Jews in the past have. Because the doors that he tried to destroy represent something far more powerful than wooden frames and metal hinges, they represent the eternal Jewish commitment to opening pathways to opportunity for humanity.

The synagogue is the same one in which my grandparents, David and Rachel Miller, were married in 1927. For more than 150 years, those doors have welcomed refugees seeking safety, immigrants pursuing opportunity, and children receiving a loving Jewish education. They have been portals of transformation, turning the displaced into citizens, the powerless into contributors, the fearful into the hopeful.

My own grandparents walked through those doors as refugees from the pogroms of Russia and Lithuania. They entered as strangers fleeing violence and emerged as proud married Australians building new lives.

This is how Jews have managed to survive for centuries. When one country shuts its doors to us, we look for ways to bring positivity, joy, and contributions to the nation that opens its doors and welcomes us in as refugees. Not only do Jews have eons of experience as victims of persecution, which has heightened our sensitivities to the plights of other marginalised groups, but our very Torah traditions teach us to “love the stranger,” no matter where we go.

While this past weekend’s arsonist was Australian, he describes himself as “Iranian” on social media, carrying the ideological poison of a regime that has made hatred of Jews and Israel its defining characteristic. He represents the same antisemitic hate that characterizes the enemies of the Jewish people throughout history, from the Jew-haters of the Bible, to the Nazi Party in the 1930s to today’s hate-filled mullahs in Iran.

While these groups differ in historical context, they share a common antisemitic pathology. They are so consumed with destroying Jewish success that they neglect their own survival.

This week’s Torah portion, Balak, provides the timeless framework for understanding what happened in Melbourne. The Moabite King Balak, seeing the Israelites approaching his territory, hired the sorcerer Balaam to curse them. Commentaries have asked why the ancient monarch solicited a prophet to curse his enemy rather than bless and protect his own people. The answer is that he, like many others throughout history, was so blinded by hatred that he prioritised harming Jews over uplifting his own nation.

Holocaust historian Lucy Dawidowicz documented this same twisted logic in Nazi Germany. Even as the Third Reich was crumbling, Hitler chose to use precious railway resources to transport Jews to death camps rather than move soldiers to defend the Eastern Front. Similarly, the 1979 Iranian Revolution was a movement that promised progress but delivered regression, creating a regime that oppresses women and religious minorities, and opposes Israel at the cost of its own survival.

But Judaism represents the opposite revolution—a revolution of chesed, kindness, of repairing the world. We don’t seek to burn down doors; we seek to open them. We don’t curse our enemies; we pray for a world where all people can prosper and flourish.

This reveals a deeper truth: Antisemites don’t just hate Jews; they hate the morality and Divine connection that the Jewish people represent. They want to act with impunity without the burden of conscience, to destroy without the weight of ethical judgment.

According to Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, antisemitic activity in Australia has surged by more than 320% since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. From Sydney to Melbourne, from schools to restaurants, Australia’s Jews are under assault.

When someone sets fire to a synagogue, attacks Jews in the street or posts vile hatred on social media, they are not just attacking a person, building or community. They attack the very concept of moral responsibility—the idea that we are accountable to something higher than our basest impulses.

What the arsonists and terror sympathisers of the world don’t understand is that you cannot destroy hope with hatred. You cannot close the doors that exist within the human heart. Every Jewish child who walks through a synagogue’s doors to receive an education, every Jewish family that gathers for Shabbat dinner despite the threats, every Jewish doctor who saves lives regardless of their patients’ backgrounds—these are the doors that matter. These are the thresholds that no amount of hatred can destroy.

Australia, and the world at large, now faces a choice. It can allow the door-burners to triumph, permitting hatred to fester until it consumes the very values that make Australia a beacon of multicultural success. Or it can choose to be a nation of door-openers, standing with its Jewish community and all minorities against the forces of destruction.

The doors of the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation will open again. And when they do, they will welcome all who seek peace, understanding and the chance to build, rather than destroy.

JNS