Editorial
The shape of the day

In the Shemot Rabbah, a midrash of the Book of Exodus, it is Miriam who intercedes in her parents’ despair and encourages them to have another child. It is this child she will eventually watch over as he is hidden at the river, the child who will lead his people out of Egypt.

The morning after the attempted firebombing of the East Melbourne Synagogue, it is this story Rabbi Dovid Gutnick tells to congregants. With the doors of the shul still charred, the paint peeled back like skin, a couple had brought their son to be named.

“As the sun rose on this dark event, we were all gathered for the naming of a child. That juxtaposition gave us a lot of encouragement,” Gutnick says.

“It made us reflect on the message of Miriam, as don’t cede to the fear, don’t abandon our calling for life because there is a time of fear. On the contrary, embrace life. Life could bring the beginning of redemption, the beginning of freedom.

“When there is a turn to darkness or persecution, there is a desire to shrivel or lay low. We need hope. We need justness. We must live for hope.”

It was one of the rabbi’s children who discovered the fire the night before. There was banging and then smoke. Two dozen people were inside. Beyond the door, a man with a duffel bag was pouring accelerant on the shul. Police believe he had a petrol bomb. They are examining shards of glass from the scene.

According to reports, it is the 10th firebombing of a Jewish property in the past year. In December, the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea was burnt to the ground. No charges have been laid. In Sydney, a Jewish childcare centre was torched and cars have been set alight.

Four years earlier, the doors at the East Melbourne Synagogue were lined with heavy steel. A blast-proof antechamber was built behind them. These were precautions against an ancient hatred. They express an anxiety the Jewish community has long held, increasingly addressed in public.

Rabbi Gutnick is a patient man with a proud beard and an easy laugh. He says people often mistake the shape of the day. They think it is night that follows sunshine, that the progression is towards darkness. The opposite is true, he says: the day begins after the dark evening and together is the whole.

Since the firebombing, several people have called the synagogue and abused the rabbi with anti-Semitic slurs. This is not new. The calls have come for years, about one or two a day. The rabbi mostly ignores them. “There are many more good people.”

The name given to the child last Saturday, the child whose family gathered on the other side of a burnt door, who arrived as the air still stung with petrol and smoke, was Tuvia, the divine good one. When the rabbi says this he laughs a little. He believes in a world of redemption.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 12, 2025 as "The shape of the day".

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