The past week in Sydney was extremely heavy and all over the place – a real emotional roller coaster, complete with stomach-wrenching drops and loops. There were moments of pure joy in hearing stories of bravery and survival, followed by immense sadness.
The Jewish community’s spirits weren’t the only thing in flux. The weather mimicked our mood. The heat was oppressive. The humidity clung to us as we moved from funeral to hospital, from living room to synagogue, bearing the weight of people’s stories so that the community could begin their recovery process. We were there to help others breathe again. And yet, by Friday, even breathing felt labored.
A cleansing storm
That evening, just half an hour after the Hanukkah candles were lit and the Shabbat candles were burning strong, something shifted. Across Sydney, synagogues filled with prayer and tears. Voices rose up in holy song and unity. Just then, almost as if on cue, the skies opened.
A sudden, heavy rain poured down on the city. It did not pass quickly. It washed over the area through the night and into the next day. It felt as though the heavens themselves were crying with us.
During the rainstorm, we sat around our hosts’ Shabbat table. The focus was the family and the warm light of the Hanukkah and Shabbat candles. And we cried together with the rain. This was not a quiet, private cry; it was loud and deeply felt. I imagine that this was the scene in so many Jewish homes across Sydney.
Our tears were for our own individual pain but also the anguish of those who, for first time, realized that there was no father to sing “Eshet Chayil” to his beloved wife. We wept for the tables where no parent’s hands would be lovingly placed on their children’s heads to offer the weekly blessing for sons and daughters, one by one. We cried for the empty chairs around the Shabbat table.
It was a moment that broke through every layer of professional composure we had built over the week. We had spent endless days holding space for others, containing grief, encouraging people to share feelings that could barely be spoken. But that night, there was no containing our emotions. It was not meteorological; it was mourning.
The reality of trauma
We are trained to recognize these critical moments. We know firsthand how trauma shifts from shock to reality. Shabbat was that moment where people began to realize that this was not some collective nightmare but a newfound reality. We felt the difference in the air.
It was unlike those uncertain moments in a hospital corridor awaiting a report on a loved one, or even the horrific grief experienced graveside. Around Shabbat tables, we were finally confronted by a new family structure. This emotion was felt across an entire community.
Once again, we needed to draw on the miracle of Hanukkah to give us meaning to the madness. The light of the candles, both Hanukkah and Shabbat, lit the way to clarity through the darkness. We realized that the light in the world had not disappeared, it just flickered for a moment.
We realized that this is the light that will help carry them on the road ahead. Sometimes, the most honest response to tragedy is not words or action. Sometimes it’s that cleansing moment where we can start to see things clearly. The rain came to provide that for the Sydney Jewish community.
The writer is the head of United Hatzalah’s delegation to Sydney in the aftermath of the terror attack in Bondi Beach.