This is Our Moment. How Will We Show Up? Shabbat Shalom!

For more than two years, our community has been jumping up and down about the rise of antisemitism. Our communal leaders have advocated tirelessly: engaging all levels of government, working with the media, pursuing difficult and costly legal action, and investing deeply in social cohesion and education.

There has been some movement. But not enough. Not until December 14. Not until now.

Only now are we front and centre at every news conference and political briefing. Only now are our voices being sought, our fears acknowledged, our feelings validated. As the world watches, we find ourselves standing at a critical juncture. This is our moment.

So, the question is not only what will happen next, but how are we going to show up?
A good place to start in answering this vital question is to look to our history.

We have begun reading the new book of Shemot, and the Torah introduces a moment that reshapes Jewish history:

“A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Yosef.” (Exodus 1:6)
This was not a failure of information. Yosef saved Egypt. He engineered its survival.

Of course, Pharaoh knew him.The Torah is describing something deeper. When a leadership arose that chose not to acknowledge Jewish contribution, Jewish memory, or Jewish gratitude, oppression followed. It was not ignorance. It was erasure.

In the aftermath of the Bondi massacre, many of us felt something shift. Beyond the grief and heartbreak came a sudden vulnerability. A sense that the ground beneath us is less steady than we once believed. That safety cannot always be assumed. The unthinkable happened in our backyard, on our beach, on our holiday, in broad daylight.

And for many Jews, it wasn’t only the violence itself – it was the question that followed: Will we be protected? Will our pain be understood?

So, what do the Israelites do at this moment? The answer is subtle and critical.

The Midrash teaches that even in Egypt, under crushing pressure, the Jewish people did not change their names, their language, or their way of life.

Not as a political statement. Not as defiance. But as identity.

That is where Jewish strength begins.

Only after inner clarity can redemption flow. Liberation became possible once we rediscovered the strength of who we are.

The Torah is teaching us that when the world “forgets Yosef,” the Jewish response is not panic. It is clarity.

Stronger Jewish homes. Stronger Jewish education. Stronger confidence in who we are and what we stand for – proudly and unapologetically.

Jewish history has taught us this again and again: our survival has never depended on who governs us.

It has always depended on whether we remember who we are.

This is our moment to rise to the occasion. To hold one another up, to stand with Jewish pride, to act with courage, and to respond to fear with purpose and light.

May we rise to it together.
Good Shabbos,
Rabbi Levi and Chanie

(Idea inspired by Rabbi Wildes)