This Monday, Jewish Australians will welcome the new year with broken hearts. What should be a season of joy has become a season of siege.

Rosh Hashanah is supposed to be sweet. A time of apples dipped in honey, of children's laughter around the table, of families whispering wishes for a better tomorrow. It is meant to be a moment of renewal, of hope.

But this year, tens of thousands of Jewish Australians will walk into their holiest day carrying a burden too heavy to name. Two synagogues set alight. An Israeli restaurant attacked. Mobs shouting "Death to the IDF".

This is not history repeating itself in some distant place. This is here. This is now. And it has left Jewish Australians asking a question no citizen should ever have to ask: does the country we love still love us back?

Sit with these families and you hear it over and over: betrayal, fear, exhaustion. A grandmother whispers to her children that maybe it is time to leave. A father reassures his daughter that she is safe at a public school, even as he wonders if it is true. A young professional deletes a photo from a Jewish event, afraid it could cost him his job.

“Lighting candles in the shadow of hate is powerful, but it should never be necessary in the country we call the "lucky one".

These are not headlines. These are wounds.

And yet, despite it all, Jewish communities will gather. They will pray. They will sing. They will bless their children. They will stand unbroken. Candles will be lit, songs will rise, the ancient words will be spoken again.

But resilience is not the same as security. Defiance is not the same as belonging.

Lighting candles in the shadow of hate is powerful, but it should never be necessary in the country we call the "lucky one".

Australians must understand that this anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem. This is an Australian problem. When hatred is unleashed, it does more than scar its immediate target. It seeps into the air we all breathe.

It makes neighbours suspicious of one another. It teaches children that difference is dangerous. It chips away at the simple comfort of walking through your city and knowing you belong.

History is unflinching in its lesson: prejudice never stops with the Jews. Once unleashed, it always seeks new victims. The slurs, the threats, the arson: they are a test. And if we shrug them off, the poison will seep deeper.

The flames that lit up those synagogues were aimed at Jews.

The test now is for Australia. Will we extinguish the fire together, or let it spread until it consumes us all?