Toronto Rabbi Whose Relative Was Injured and Colleague Killed in Bondi Attack Warns of Internal Threats

Toronto Rabbi Levi Gansburg says the recent terrorist attack in Bondi Beach, Australia, has impacted his family and community, and warns that Canada needs to wake up to internal threats to ensure horrific anti-Semitic violence doesn’t also occur closer to home.

Gansburg’s brother-in-law’s 21-year-old nephew is fighting for his life in critical care following the Dec. 14 terrorist attack in Bondi Beach, while one of Gansburg’s rabbinical colleagues, a father of five children, was killed in the massacre.

The attack occurred the evening of Dec. 14, killing 15 and injuring dozens more, as community members gathered to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah. The suspected gunmen were identified by authorities as a 50-year-old man named Sajid Akram, killed by police, and his 24-year-old son Naveed Akram, who is in custody in hospital.

“What does it take for society to wake up to realize that there is a segment of society, without saying too much, that wants to do this?” Gansburg said in an interview with The Epoch Times.

“If we’re going to play the same game that the Australian government has done, I’m scared to think.”

Gansburg has served for several decades as director and spiritual leader of Chabad on Bayview in Toronto, and went to rabbinical school with one of the victims in the Bondi attack, 41-year-old father of five Rabbi Eli Schlanger. Schlanger was serving as assistant rabbi at Chabad Bondi, which hosted the event.

Gansburg said Schlanger’s Canadian relatives are devastated and overwhelmed by Sunday’s tragedy and the loss of Schlanger.

“He was just simply a remarkable, vivacious, young go-getter who wanted to just make a difference,” he said, adding that the Sydney area had absorbed many new Russian Jewish immigrants who Schlanger tried to give “better opportunity and more purposeful living.”

The worldwide Chabad organization follows the teachings of the late Rabbi Menachem Schneerson in fostering Jewish solidarity as well as help to Jewish and non-Jewish communities.

“[Schlanger’s] part of the Chabad movement, like myself. I mean, that’s why it hits home so deeply, not just because he’s part of the Chabad movement, but because he woke up and did the same thing I do every single day, and that’s to bring people together, teach people, uplift people, inspire people, unite people,” Gansburg said.

The attack has impacted Gansburg’s family as well, with his brother-in-law’s nephew currently in the intensive care unit.

“He’s a Texas boy, went out there to help for the year, the community there, and unfortunately, there’s still shrapnel [in him],” Gansburg said. “They had numerous surgeries and sedated him. He’s a young kid just really vivacious and musical and full of life, and just wanted a great experience and to help at the same time.”

Gansburg said the Jewish community is currently holding two candles: one for mourning “because we’re devastated and hurt and in pain and we’re upset that our government has been meek on the incitement of hate,” but also one for Hanukkah “knowing that light will overcome darkness, and we will have to overcome this.”

“We want to be the light. We want to be the people that say evil won’t dominate our world and terrorism won’t scare us, and we will overcome this through goodness and kindness,” he said.

Threats and Violence

Rabbi Yechiel Baitelman of Chabad Richmond in B.C. said that he also knows Schlanger’s family and is saddened by the events, but is determined that Jewish people won’t give in to fear and will advocate for a stronger law enforcement response to threats.

“I know his family and his brother,” Baitelman told The Epoch Times. “When someone’s saying words that imply, directly or indirectly, the death and the murder or the extermination of Jews, or anyone for that matter, people of good moral conscience have to speak up to take a stand, and particularly the political leadership and the law enforcement leadership.”

Baitelman said that a young couple from Australia joined to help at Chabad Richmond this past September, evidence of the global mission it has to step outside a comfortable life and go where they are needed to help.

“Thousands of families have heeded this call and are literally in over 110 countries around the world serving the needs of their communities and becoming members, participants, and leaders of their new communities,” he said.

“The best response to darkness and to hate is a redoubling of our efforts to be kind and strong and generous and more outgoing and [do] more outreach, to make people feel part of the community.”

In Canada, Ottawa police have said Jewish people were the demographic most targeted by hate crimes last year, while B’nai Brith Canada said last year’s 6,219 anti-Semitic incidents are the most it has recorded since starting to keep records in the 1980s.