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‘He wouldn’t have hated the gunmen’: Victim Eli Schlanger’s mission was love and light
Nikki Goldstein and Rabbi Eli Schlanger were one chapter away from finishing their book chronicling their conversations of love and life when Schlanger was killed with 14 others by two gunmen at Bondi Beach on Sunday.
“Eli wouldn’t have hated them,” Goldstein said. “The gunmen. He would have seen that they’re coming from their own fears.”
“He understood that this [antisemitism] is about fear, so let’s counter fear with love. He must have said that to me a million times in the last 12 months,” she said of the assistant Rabbi at Chabad of Bondi.
The 41-year-old father was a key organiser of the Chanukah by the Sea event, where two gunmen opened fire on the crowd of hundreds of Jewish people who had gathered to celebrate the start of the annual festival of Hanukkah. One of the gunmen was shot dead and the other is in hospital with injuries.
Last year, Schlanger marked Hanukkah by dancing down the street and invited others to join him in a video posted to X. He told his followers that dancing was the best way to fight antisemitism.
“We have to counter hate with love,” Goldstein said. “That is all we can do, and that is all Eli would have done.”
Schlanger’s young wife, Chaya, and five children (the youngest an infant) have lost a father and husband. An enormous loss for any family, Goldstein said, “but in this particular family, they’d already been sharing him with the world, because his mission was to bring light and love and peace to the world”.
“There’s always that tendency when people have died, to turn them into saints. Eli would have been the first person to say he wasn’t a saint, but he gave with all his heart and and he brought mission to life every day,” she said.
“There was no artifice about the man. He was genuine and kind and funny and he was extraordinary in his belief and his mission.”
Goldstein first met Schlanger in St Vincent’s Hospital intensive care unit in September 2022. She was in an induced coma and in a critical condition with a life-threatening case of pneumonia.
Schlanger was wandering through the ICU on his usual rounds as an accredited chaplain, offering comfort to hospital patients.
“My husband, who isn’t Jewish, ran over and said, ‘My wife is in a coma. She is in extremis. The doctors don’t give her much chance of survival. She’s Jewish. Can you please say a prayer over her?’
“So Eli did with me what he had done many hundreds of times,” Goldstein said. “He came to the bedside of somebody in dire circumstances and said a prayer over my [then] lifeless body, and for whatever reason, I survived.
“Eli called it a miracle. The doctors called it a miracle.”
The pair have had an iron-clad bond ever since, she said.
Their book, Conversations with My Rabbi, documented the dialogue between Goldstein, a secular Jewish woman, and British-born Schlanger.
“When we started work on the book, Eli said to me, I don’t want this to be negative. I want this to be uplifting. I want it to be for everybody. I want to shine light on the beautiful aspects of Judaism, but also just life, because we were talking about everything from child-rearing to family life to relationship issues,” Goldstein said.
Last week, Schlanger called Goldstein from his car on his way back from visiting a prisoner at South Coast Correctional Centre in Nowra. It was their final conversation.
“We were nearly at the end, and I’m not sure how that is all going to come together, but I am going to honour his mission.”
NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane described Schlanger as “a beautiful man and a great leader”.
Schlanger’s father-in-law, Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, the head of Sydney Beth Din and Chabad Bondi, appeared in a moving video during morning prayers on Monday, reaching for tissues to dry his tears.
Ulman said many people wanted to “bring Jews down, destroy us, make us despondent, lose hope,
but that is not what those who died, like Schlanger, would’ve wanted.
“We have to step up now. They’re looking to us. Now is the time to unite, and forget petty things,” Ulman said.
Corrective Services NSW commissioner Gary McCahon said Schlanger had travelled across the state to minister to inmates, and devoted his time to supporting them with compassion.
“His loss will be felt by many [and] I extend my deepest condolences to his family, friends, colleagues, and the broader Jewish community during this immensely painful time,” McCahon said.
More coverage on the Bondi terror attack
- Updates: Sydney on high alert for further terrorist acts as multiple people killed
- Watch: Incredible footage shows the moment a hero bystander tackles one of the gunmen
- What we know so far: All the details of the mass shooting
- How the world reacted: Global leaders condemn ‘deeply distressing’ attack
With David Barwell.
Kate Aubusson is Health Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. Connect via X or email.