‘As if our own daughter were taken from us’: Matilda farewelled in funeral for ‘little ray of sunshine’

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Matilda the bumblebee. Matilda, who loved dancing. Matilda, whose last moments were filled with animals in a petting zoo.

Matilda, the 10-year-old who was shot dead on Bondi Beach by a man on a bridge, firing indiscriminately at Jews on a Sunday afternoon.

On Thursday, her parents, Michael and Valya, had to somehow make sense of the impossible: the murder of a little girl so beloved by her classmates at La Perouse Public School that they gave her an Indigenous nickname: “wuri wuri” – the little ray of sunshine.

They came in their droves, between police cordons and media scrums, to say farewell to Matilda at the Chevra Kadisha Memorial Hall. They wore purple, her favourite colour, and black, the colour of mourning that has engulfed this community.

It was as if all the salt in Bondi was spilled in tears down Oxford Street.

Inside the memorial hall, Valya was fanned by waves of grief, a visceral, haunting pain that swept all before it.

Now Matilda’s family is struggling to comprehend how Matilda could have been murdered on her way back from cuddling goats in a park perched above Bondi Beach.

“There is no because. We cannot answer,” said Rabbi Yehoram Ulman. “Everybody thinks it will never happen to me. It will happen to someone else. The tragic, cruel, unfathomable murder of young Matilda is as painful as if our own daughter were taken from us.”

Ulman buried his son-in-law, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, on Wednesday. The father of five was mowed down by Sajid and Naveed Akram metres from Matilda. On Thursday, Ulman gave his second eulogy in as many days for a family who had just lost their daughter.

In their unimaginable grief, Matilda’s parents did not hide away. They came to him to see if he was OK.

“They had enough in their heart to go and think about another person going through the same thing as them,” Ulman said. “You gave me strength at the time when you needed strength yourselves.”

Her classmates at La Perouse Public said Matilda was just like her parents. Kind, compassionate and caring. “Matilda has an incredible gift for bringing joy to those around her,” they said.

“We have to make sure that it doesn’t just remain in our hearts,” said Rabbi Ulman. “She has to remain alive in our deeds and in how we live our lives.”

As in life, her death was filled with bears, flowers and bumblebees. Matilda was not just Matilda; she was Matilda Bee.

Her image of innocence was printed on stickers worn by every mourner, now spreading throughout the world as an antidote to the darkness that had engulfed Bondi.

“Matilda was a bright and loving soul who taught us that true goodness is in the love and compassion we share,” her teacher, Irina Goodhew, said. “Her memory reminds us to carry kindness in our hearts and spread it to the world.”

In her arms, she held a menorah, a Jewish candle lit for every day of Hanukkah. Matilda saw only the first this year before she collapsed in her father’s arms, telling him she was struggling to breathe.

“They brought her to a safe place, a safe celebration. What could be safer than Bondi Beach?” said Rabbi Dr Dovid Slavin.

Matilda’s family travelled with her to Botany cemetery, her hearse followed by NSW Premier Chris Minns, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, state Liberal leader Kellie Sloane and Jewish leaders, as it made its way from Chevra Kadisha Memorial Hall down Oxford Street.

“We have failed this baby, and we have failed all children,” mother of five Chana Friedman whispered as the hearse drove away.

In Botany, more than 100 friends and family watched as the coffin of a child was lowered into the ground. Mourners took turns shovelling dirt over Matilda’s coffin, the sounds of heartbreak and keening at times temporarily replaced by a stunned silence.

Just two hours earlier, hundreds of mourners had piled out of the same hall to pay their respects to Alex Kleytman, who fled from the Nazis in the Soviet Union as a toddler, only to be gunned down more than eight decades later on Bondi Beach as he celebrated Hanukkah with his wife, Larisa.

The couple’s daughter, Sabina Kleytman, told The Washington Post that her father died doing what he loved most.

“Protecting my mother – he probably saved her life – and standing up and being a proud Jew,” she said.

On Thursday afternoon, 100 more gathered for Tibor Weitzen’s funeral at the Chabad of Bondi.

Weitzen, known as the “lolly man”, gave out sweets to children to keep them quiet during community events.

Friedman, a relative by marriage, said Weitzen died after throwing himself over his wife, a stranger and her child, as well as Edith Brutman, who also died in the terror attack.

Friedman said Weizman’s daughter, Hanna Abesidon, told mourners on Thursday the family would hold their heads up high and live in his honour.

“He was a selfless person,” Abesidon told Nine’s Today show on Wednesday. “Everybody came first. He was for us. It is just devastating.”

In Melbourne, thousands of mourners converged last night on Lyndhurst cemetery in the city’s south-east for the funeral of Reuven Morrison, a 62-year-old father and grandfather who died heroically at Bondi, charging at the shooters and hurling bricks at them.

Rabbi Gabi Kaltmann said Morrison was a modern-day “Judah Maccabee”. “He’s someone that single-handedly tried to take on the terrorists. He tried to stop him in his tracks, and if you watch the video like I sadly have, you’ll see he picks up anything that he can find around him, a stick, a brick,” Kaltmann said.

In a funeral hall that was full almost to overflowing, mourners heard an adoring tribute to a devoutly religious man who also had a keen sense of fun.

“The last few days have been like hell in Bondi,” Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, a close friend of Morrison’s, told the audience. “I know with all the seriousness here, Reuven would want to put a bit of an edge on the seriousness.”

Morrison was devoted to his wife, Leah, whom he met at Bondi when she was 17.

“Sometimes his stories would become a bit too colourful and Leah would have to control him. ‘Reuven, Reuven, Reuven’, she would say, and he would almost instantly comply.”

Faith was increasingly central to his life. “He wanted to do everything devoutly. He would not move left or right without asking the rabbi,” Gutnick said.

Funeral after funeral now proceeds along the streets of Sydney’s east. At least two more will be held tomorrow.

Up to a dozen will have made the journey to Rookwood, Botany, North Ryde cemetery by the time the Jewish community begins its next Sabbath on Friday, without the children, the mothers and fathers that filled their dining tables on the eve of Hanukkah only six days ago.

Each is marked by the same dark sorrow and anger. Anger at politicians for not doing enough, anger at police for not being prepared, and anger at the world, which cannot seem to find a safe place for Jews to mourn.

Instead, dozens of police searched under cars for bombs at a funeral for a 10-year-old in Sydney’s east on Thursday.

“It is a despicable way we are being forced to exist,” the co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Alex Ryvchin, told ABC Radio.

“That fact is, to bury our dead and mourn, we have to have upgraded levels of security. It just shows the appalling state we have allowed our country to get to.

“That is, leaving aside 15 people were murdered like livestock at a family event to mark a religious holiday at Bondi Beach.”

More coverage on the Bondi terrorist attack

• Three days after: What we know about the Bondi terrorist attack
• The victims: ‘Too big for this world’: The father who died a hero at Bondi and ‘went down fighting’ gunman
• Analysis: Police were young and outgunned: Where was the back-up at Bondi?
• Guns in Sydney: The Sydney suburbs with the most guns, as overall numbers rise