My family have been in Australia for a considerable time. They were among the first Jews to arrive. My father’s family arrived in the colony of NSW in the very early part of the 19th century. My mother’s family arrived in the colony of Western Australia later in the 19th century. Growing up, unlike many other Jews I knew whose families had come from far less hospitable societies, I had no personal family narrative of antisemitism.

Antisemitic grafitti is cleaned from a car in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in February.Credit: Edwina Pickles

I should point out that I am instantly recognisable as a Jew. I wear a black skullcap and I have a beard. It has frankly never occurred to me that I might be well advised to conceal my identity in Australia.

I arrived in Sydney from Perth on a Friday afternoon in July to visit family, principally our young grandchildren. By Sunday afternoon, I was bewildered by what I experienced and wondered whether my forebears would have recognised the Australia that I encountered.

It began in menswear in Myer in Bondi Junction on Friday afternoon. A well-meaning woman with an Irish accent approached my wife as I was busy at the counter. She told my wife with a tone of outraged sadness that she was so pleased to see us out and about and not afraid to be seen in public. A short conversation ensued in which she said she was embarrassed by what she described as Ireland’s hostility towards the Jews and was horrified by what has happened in Australia. But she was buoyed by our courage in not being cowed into hiding and our preparedness to go........

© The Sydney Morning Herald