Third Thoughts about Bondi Beach

Where was security?

It’s very difficult to protect a crowd. Public gatherings are typically ragged at the edges, with excited people coming and going. Hardly anyone (with the exception of me) watches for signs of something amiss. I am always looking for suspicious objects, but this dates back to my first trip to Israel where I was sternly lectured about picking anything up. It was in the wake of a notorious Bic pen incident. Someone had been badly injured by an explosive ballpoint left in the street. That’s what they told us and I’ve stuck with it since.

But paranoia is now the order of the day. Public events are always heavily policed, and that most certainly includes Jewish institutions, which spend a boatload of scarce philanthropic funds to keep their people safe from harm. Ambient violence is a real thing, especially in gun-rich American cities. You would think we would have cracked the code, but the slaughter continues like violent weather. Why do we accept it? Because we have been outflanked by a lobby of greedy, grasping manufacturers.

And so we install our cameras and hire our guards. I can’t say anything more detailed about the Synagogue, but there is someone always thinking about security. That applies to the High Holidays and large-scale events, and it applies to small gatherings after the workday ends. The idea here is to keep everybody safe, even if it’s impossible to meet the challenge. Bad things happen to the very best people.

But I confess to being confused about Australia. The gathering at Bondi was an annual event, familiar to any American Jew. The local Chabad House gathered its community for Chanukah music and jelly donuts. This happens every single December. Depending on the charisma of the Lubavitch rabbi in charge, it can be a joyful affair of great spirit and uplift. The rabbi goes up in the bucket of a crane and lights the appropriate number of torch heads. The reports say that there were a thousand people at Bondi, a very substantial turnout anywhere.

But I have scoured every single report about the event and I can’t find a word about precautions for security, either by the sponsors or city officials. Maybe that’s the house style in Sydney. Maybe people are more trusting in Australia, especially with gun laws that have been in place for decades. Or maybe the organizers fatally overlooked the basics. There were no police on the scene of the celebration and it took ten minutes for the first officials to arrive. To the extent that anyone responded to the emergency, it looks like it was a matter of citizen heroes. My reckoning is that it all took way too much time in a country that has been plagued with violence against Jews. Volunteer lifeguards are simply no match for gunmen animated by a deadly ideology.

I continue to rehearse the names of the victims and hope earnestly for the recovery of the injured. But in the meantime, I’ll be thinking about public safety. Without it, some of the great pleasures of our lives will disappear in a storm of fear and anxiety.