I keep returning to this one image. On 31st January 2025, Gina Ferrer brought her child back to Mount Sinai College in Sydney. Overnight, the walls had been sprayed with the words “Jews are real terrorists” and “Jew dogs”. Police and private security were outside. And through that cordon walked small children, backpacks bouncing against their narrow shoulders, returning to class as if the world had not just tried to tell them that they did not belong in their own school.

No student should need armed personnel to carry a pencil case through a gate. No parent should stand there wondering whether the simple act of sending their son or daughter to a Jewish school has painted a target on that small back. But Jewish children across the country are still strolling into classrooms, even as I write this, column. That is the story of the Jewish people since October 7 I want to tell.

Yes, the hatred exploded into lecture theatres, workplaces, streets and the glowing screens of our phones. Jewish creatives had their names, photographs and workplaces published online. Some reported death threats. Synagogues were attacked. Students were spat at, blocked from parts of their university campuses, surrounded and told that the price of belonging was to cut away the part of themselves that loves Israel and their heritage.

But this Rosh Hashanah, I will not write another catalogue of darkness. That is not the whole truth. The bigots wanted Jewish fear. What they got was Jewish organisation on a scale that has left me in awe. They demanded silence. We stood up and testified. They expected us to hide. We put the Magen David on our chests and wore it in public. They wanted Jewish life to shrink until it became a private memory, whispered behind locked doors. Instead, Australian Jews committed an act of communal refusal so stubborn and so alive that it deserves to be celebrated.

After October 7, we could not simply return to who we had been on October 6. That world, with its assumptions about acceptance, friendship and safety, could not be restored. So, we, the October 8 Jews, fought back. Big time. That is why teshuvah is the right word for this New Year. This Hebrew word is often translated as repentance, but its deeper meaning is a return to the deepest part of ourselves, with our eyes open. The Jewish return after October 7 is not a return to innocence. It is a return to responsibility. We know more now about the cost of being Jewish in public, and yet we are choosing Jewish life with greater consciousness.

“Antisemites may force us to defend who we are. They will never be allowed to decide who we are.Dvir Abramovich

I think of the hundreds of Jewish creatives and academics whose closed WhatsApp group was leaked in February 2024. A list identifying members, their professions, businesses, social-media accounts and images was published. Some reported death threats. Some businesses shut down, and some said career opportunities had dried up. They did not ask for pity. They documented the harm, organised support and demanded that the law change. In December 2024, federal offences targeting doxxing came into force.

Three months after Adass Israel was firebombed on 6th December 2024, board member Benjamin Klein stood inside the damaged synagogue. The congregation was praying elsewhere, raising money and preparing temporary premises. Then Klein delivered the only answer the arsonists deserved: “We’re going to build bigger and better.” Those evil individuals lit the fire, but they did not get to write the ending. They wanted fear to decide the size of Jewish life. Our answer was simple and final. Not this year. Not any year.

On 21st December 2025, up to 20,000 people returned to Bondi Beach. One week earlier, 15 people had been murdered at a Chanukah celebration there. The killers had tried to turn a Jewish festival into a date of terror. The community came back for the final night of Chanukah. The gunmen did not get to decide what the night meant. The Jewish calendar did.

After protesters stormed Miznon for the crime of serving Israeli food, supporters filled the restaurant the following evening. One line captured the answer: “We are still here.”

Then came the Year 12 students. Across our Jewish schools, they put their names to a statement ending with words that should make every Jewish parent stand taller: “Proud to be Jewish. Proud to be Zionist. Proud to be Australian. This is the generation the enemies of Jewish life never counted on. Prouder than we dared hope. Louder than we dared pray. We raised them to love being Jewish. They went one better. They declared it.

And something else happened that has moved me deeply. Many Jews grew more Jewish. In the United States, 57 per cent of Jewish respondents told the American Jewish Committee that they felt more connected to Israel or to their Jewishness after October 7. In Britain, about one in three Jews reported becoming more involved in Jewish life, while only nine per cent became less involved. The haters tried to make Judaism feel dangerous. Jews answered by making it feel precious again. Customs that had drifted into the margins became choices again.

In France, a grassroots organisation arose with a clear pledge: Jews would no longer remain silent and would no longer hide. In Adelaide, a student helped establish a dedicated Jewish room on campus that had not existed before. In Argentina, young Jews built a union after October 7.

Hamas terrorists turned the Nova festival into a killing ground. The Nova Exhibition, first shown in Tel Aviv and then taken to New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Berlin and beyond, carried the names, faces and stories of the murdered across the globe, under a promise that was also a defiant vow: We will dance again.

Antisemitism tries to take possession not only of Jewish space but of Jewish time. It wants every Friday night to become about security, every festival about danger, every gathering about whether we dare attend. Jewish ritual breaks that grip. A bar or bat mitzvah marks the next generation stepping forward. Rosh Hashanah comes because the Jewish year will not wait for the world to become kind. The antisemite says: today you will be afraid because I have chosen fear for you. The Jewish calendar answers: today we light the candles. Today we bless. Today we begin again. That is why Jewish joy in these years has carried such moral power. We decide what the day means.

Rosh Hashanah demands an honest accounting. The shofar is not a soundtrack. It is an alarm. A summons. A demand that we wake up and tell the truth. So let us tell it. Jewish courage has been magnificent.

The years since October 7 have exposed an ugly bargain many Jews never knew was being imposed on them. You may belong in Australia, but only if your Jewishness stays out of sight. You may enter the university, the arts and the workplace, but only if you pass an ideological test. Only if you separate yourself from other Jews, Israel and Zionism on command. That is not equality. It is conditional citizenship. And refusing it has cost Jews invitations, friendships and career opportunities. In short, social exile.

So be it. A place acquired through self-erasure is not home. There is heroism in rejecting those poisoned terms because the price is often not physical danger but being frozen out of relationships, jobs and cultural circles. It is the courage to lose an invitation, a friendship, a professional opportunity.

In this country, we are not guests on probation. Our belonging is not rented from a crowd or licensed by a government. It cannot be cancelled because we refuse to amputate part of ourselves.

I am filled with a pride so deep that language struggles to contain it. After everything that has been thrown at us, our people have refused to shrink. Artists keep working. Families keep lighting Shabbat candles. Jewish Australians gather, teach, sing and insist on living openly as Jews. This is the quiet, daily and unyielding courage of those who love Australia and will not be driven from it. Israel belongs in this story not as a defence of every government decision, but as the great modern proof that Jewish helplessness would not be permanent. Antisemitism wants Jewish life smaller. We made it larger. The answer to antisemitism is that we remain Jewish in what we learn, practise, teach and pass on: memory, language, ritual, argument, obligation, humour and belonging.

I do not want a generation that knows only how to defend Judaism. I want our children to inherit the faith, fire, wisdom, humour and joy that have made the Jewish people impossible to erase. Antisemites may force us to defend who we are. They will never be allowed to decide who we are. Living openly says: “We are here.” Jewish knowledge and practice say: “And we know exactly why!” This new year, I want us to honour those who reclaimed, rebuilt and refused to disappear. They are the guardians of Jewish continuity. The antisemite has always had a plan for us: disappear. We have one for ourselves: STAY. This Rosh Hashanah, I will hear the shofar as the sound of a people refusing to whisper. Jewish tradition does not silence the shofar’s broken cry. It commands us to hear it. This is the judgment of Rosh Hashanah I want to carry into the year ahead: we bore terrible pain, but it did not make our souls smaller.

Shana Tova to the bravest people I have ever known. They wanted you smaller. I have never seen you stand taller. You are the quiet army of Jewish continuity. May you be inscribed not only in the Book of Life but boldly, visibly and permanently in the story of the nation we call home.