Rosh Hashanah II: Tefilla in Sydney

 

Dedicated to Rabbi Eli Schlanger zt, the London born, assistant rabbi at Chabad-Lubavitch of Bondi and the other 14 kedoshim / holy souls, murdered in the terrorist attack in Sydney, Australia on 14^th December 2025, the 1^st Night of Chanukah 5786

On Rosh Hashanah, it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.  How many will pass away and how many will be born.  Who will live and who will die; who in his due time and who before…but Repentance (Teshuvah), Prayer (Tefillah) and Charity (Tzedakah) will enable us to pass over the evil of the decree.

My sermons over these Yamim Noraim, Days of Awe are focusing on the three ways in which a Jew is able to use these holy days (and the eight in-between, known as the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah or Ten Days of Penitence) to appeal to Gd to ask for, as Rabbi Sacks ztl puts it ‘a royal or presidential pardon.’

Today, Tefillah, prayer.

It is nearly 9 months or 39 weeks or 273 days since the terrorist attack on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia which left fourteen families’ lives shattered beyond belief.  The victims were Jewish and Gentile.

One of the most inspiring and moving books I’ve read this year is called ‘Conversations with My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World’ by Rabbi Eli Schlanger and Nikki Goldstein, HarperElement Spirit (an inaugural Imprint of HarperCollins, 26^th May 2026 Conversations with My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World: Amazon.co.uk: Goldstein, Nikki, Schlanger, Rabbi Eli: 9780008833367: Books

(Before I continue, I must give an honourable mention to the extraordinary memoir by Eli Sharabi – ‘Hostage’ of his experiences as a captive of Hamas in Gaza.  It is one of the books that deserves to be included in everyone’s library and was published in English on 21^st May

Hostage: OFFICIAL EDITION: The first memoir by an Israeli hostage: Amazon.co.uk: Sharabi, Eli: 9781800756557: Books )

In September 2022, Nikki Goldstein, an Australian journalist and writer, was admitted to St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney with what she thought was a ‘routine chest infection’.  On her website (https://nikkigoldsteinauthor.com/about-nikki), she writes:

“Within hours, the head of the ICU told me my heart would give out if they didn’t put me into an induced coma.  I had minutes.  I called my husband, told him I loved him, made him promise to keep my feet warm — I have always had cold feet, and the thought of lying intubated with no socks filled me with a specific, disproportionate anxiety that I have come to think of as entirely reasonable — and then everything went blank.”

The doctors told her husband Rowan and their teenage daughter, Liberty, to (as she puts it in the book), ‘prepare for the worst.’

Whilst they sat at my bedside – watching, waiting, holding my hand – Liberty nudged Rowan and whispered, “hey Dad…is that a rabbi over there?”

Rabbi Eli writes:

“It was the month of Ellul…a time of introspection, of returning, of soul-preparation before the High Holy Days.  I had been called to the ICU to visit a man from our community who’d taken a sudden, serious turn.  I arrived with my tefillin in one hand and a shofar in the other.  I stood quietly by the man’s bedside, whispered prayers into the space between us and sounded the shofar.  A cry.  A call.  A trembling, ancient sound that reached places words can’t…just as I stepped into the corridor, a man approached me.  He looked desperate and anxious.  “Rabbi,” he said, “can you please come say a prayer with my wife?  She’s Jewish.  I’ve had every religious minister in this hospital visit – but I haven’t seen a rabbi until now…”

Rabbi Eli followed Rowan back into the ICU where Nikki lay unconscious and saw Liberty sitting at her mother’s bedside with her head bowed and ‘tears streaming down her face.’ He explained the meaning of the shofar to Rowan (who isn’t Jewish) and Liberty and said that ‘it’s a wake-up call, a sound that pierces the heavens.  It’s not just heard, it’s felt’.  They ‘both nodded…and understood more than words can explain.’  ‘And so, I blew the shofar once more’ (following his previous visit).

He said a prayer and explained the mitzvah of giving charity, Tzedakah, which they said they would do.

And then he left.

He visited the hospital a week later and to his delight, she was now in the recovery ward on the 9^th level.

Nikki writes:

“What happened in that coma is the story I’ve been trying to understand ever since.  A rabbi appeared.  A shofar was blown.  Prayers were whispered into the space between my near-lifeless body and Heaven, and then, something shifted.  I woke up, and I was not the same person who had gone under.”

These most challenging of circumstances led to a loving, deep friendship between two Jews from opposite ends of the religious spectrum.  Their families connected and Nikki experienced a religious awakening that culminated in their deciding to write this book together.  One that, tragically, Nikki would complete on her own following Rabbi Eli’s murder on Bondi Beach.  The preface is dated December 17, 2025, three days after the massacre and the epilogue on January 22, 2026.  There is also an extremely moving afterword written by Rabbi Eli’s father-in-Law, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, dated February 24^th.

Rabbi Eli and Nikki were weeks away from completing the project together.

The book is structured as an exchange of ideas built around Rabbi Eli’s lifelong desire to teach the Seven Noahide Laws to both Jews and non-Jews alike.  To make this world in which we live more ethical, compassionate and spiritual.

That Rabbi Eli left us the way he did is the cruellest irony imaginable granted the background behind and subject matter of this remarkable book.

Bondi Beach lies approximately 12 miles away from the house in which my maternal grandfather, Philip Vecht, was born.  He was given the middle name ‘Sydney’ to honour the city of his birth.  When I heard about the attack, my thoughts immediately turned to how differently things might have been.  Had my great-grandfather remained in Australia rather than travelling to South Africa, it is entirely possible that I, or someone in my family, could have been the sixteenth victim.  That realisation brought the horror of what had happened painfully close to home.

UveShofar Gadol Yitakah, VeKol demama dakah yishama…

A great shofar sounds and a still small voice is heard, angels rush forward and are held by trembling, shaking.  They say, “Here is the Day of Judgement visiting all the heavenly hosts for judgement – for even they are not innocent in Your eyes in judgement, and all who have come into this world pass before You like sheep”.

Yesterday, as it was Shabbat, we were bathed in the sound of silence.  Today, the Shofar blasts its way into the very essence, the very depths, the deepest, most embedded spiritual atoms that constitute our souls.

We are blessed not to find ourselves at death’s door like Nikki was on the day she was visited by Rabbi Eli.  With his shofar and his tefillot, his prayers, he rekindled the flame that had nearly been extinguished.  The lifeforce, that was ebbing away from her breath by breath, was miraculously restored.  With the horn of a ram, a voice and a prayer book.

In the Torah, Rosh Hashanah is referred to as ‘Yom Teruah’ – the Day of Blasting or the Day of Sounding the Shofar – that’s how integral this is to the festival itself.  The Hebrew word for breath is Neshima which contains the same Shoresh, root, as Neshama, a soul.

Judaism believes that Adam (and subsequently, Eve) were created on the Sixth Day which was Rosh Hashanah.  Gd breathed life into Adam and we communicate with Gd through the breath that we use to sound the Shofar.  They are one and the same.

We therefore need the shofar to wake us from our spiritual coma, in tandem with our voices and the prayers they recite.  No-one can explain why Gd chose to take Rabbi Eli and the fourteen other holy souls on that blissful Antipodean summer night. 

We are here to celebrate our existence for another year and be handed the opportunity to use this auspicious time to pray that this year will be different, better, memorable for the right reasons.

I will conclude with a quote from Nikki who writes in the epilogue

This book is a dedication to Rabbi Eli’s light and wisdom.  It’s our combined offering to G-d and to humankind.  Forgive me if these words seem hubristic; I don’t mean them to sound grandiose, but that was our intention and shared mission when we began this project.  We wanted to create something timeless, meaningful and useful…what would Eli have said? Simply, “Baruch Hashem.”

Friends, with the sound of the Shofar ringing in our ears and the echo of our prayers pouring from our lips, let us, together, work to make this world a better place.  For us, for Nikki and in the memory of Rabbi Eli Schlanger, Zecher Tzaddik Livracha.

Shana Tova and Chag Sameach.