A commentary by an award-winning author, playwright and filmmaker who lives in Saanich.

Hours before sundown, on the first day of Chanukah in Australia, I was on WhatsApp catching up with an old friend who lives in Melbourne.

We’ve known each other since elementary school — Talmud Torah in Vancouver. I asked him what things were like for Jews in Australia — expecting the worst — since, unlike me, he has an unambiguously Jewish name.

He said, “not great” and told me about students attending classes virtually because they were afraid of what would happen if they showed up in person, protests at Jewish spaces and attacks on synagogues. He ended with, “about the same as Canada.”

A few hours later, two men opened fire at the menorah lighting celebration on Bondi Beach.

When I heard the news, I flashed back to when my friend and I were kids at Talmud Torah. A few years before Oct. 7, 2023, when “we were safe.”

We were on a field trip, taking a ferry from Vancouver to Victoria. There was a bomb scare, and everyone was sent back to their vehicles. And even as a Grade 6 student, it was clear that the adults wondered if we were the target and, if there was a bomb, was it on our bus?

This was the 1970s, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was occasionally sending letter bombs to prominent Jews. Because my grandfather qualified as prominent, I wasn’t allowed to touch........

© Times Colonist