It was late at night when Yisroel Goldstein received a call from a relative informing him of the shooting incident at Bondi Beach.
Afterward, the rabbi and former San Diego State synagogue director was glued to his phone, sifting through calls and messages for updates on his brother-in-law, niece and other family members who participate and help organize Hanukkah celebrations on Sydney’s most popular beach each year.
Later, Goldstein learned that her niece’s husband, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who led services at the event, was among the more than 15 people who died.
The shooting was “déjà vu,” said Goldstein, who was also shot in a 2019 shooting at Chabad of Poway. “It was very heartbreaking.”
On that April day six years ago, a man armed with an automatic rifle entered the Goldstein synagogue and opened fire on the congregation, killing a woman and wounding three others, including Goldstein, in a hate-motivated attack.
About a hundred people were inside the synagogue as they celebrated the last day of Passover.
Goldstein lost his right index finger in the attack. And he’s had multiple surgeries and physical therapy over the years to correct pain and other problems in his left index finger, which was also injured, shattered by a bullet fragment.
He wants his family and the community, as he faces the massacre of people on the beach, knowing that “when events like this happen, they don’t hide or turn off our lights.”
Goldstein is close to his sisters, as they are among 10 siblings. Her sister married a close friend and classmate, and her family is based in Sydney.
Each year on the first night of Hanukkah, Goldstein waits for a phone call from her father-in-law when they wish each other well for the holiday and discuss their lighting ceremonies. Goldstein was waiting for that call when he heard about the shooting at the beach, he said.
Goldstein said his nephew suffered a gunshot wound to the back during the shooting, but is recovering. He said he planned to fly to Australia next week for Rabbi Schlanger’s memorial service.
“As a Jewish nation, we’ve been through a lot,” he said, “and the lesson of Hanukkah…is for the world to know and see that we must create light where there is darkness.”
Australian authorities identified the father and son gunmen as suspects and called the incident a terrorist attack. The old gunman was shot dead by the police. His son, 24, was injured and remains hospitalized, officials said.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the incident a “targeted attack on Australian Jews on the first day of Hanukkah” and “a heinous act of anti-Semitism.”
The 19-year-old man responsible for the 2019 Poway synagogue shooting had posted a manifesto online shortly before the attack that referenced white supremacy. In the missive, he made statements against Jews and Muslims, expressing a desire to kill people for their Jewish faith and regretting that he could not kill more. He praised the shooting incidents in March 2019 in two weeks in New Zealand that left 51 people dead.
The gunman also admitted that, last month before attacking the synagogue, he tried to set fire to the Dar-ul-Arqam mosque in Escondido.
In 2021, the gunman was sentenced to life in prison.
Goldstein was a founding member of the Poway Synagogue in Rancho Bernardo, which he founded in the 1980s. He became an international figure, speaking out against antisemitism, after the shooting.
Shortly after the shooting, he resigned from his position at the synagogue. One of his five sons, Rabbi Mendel Goldstein, took over the leadership of the synagogue and its school.
A year after the Poway attack, Goldstein made headlines again, as the perpetrator of a tax fraud scandal in his leadership role at Chabad of Poway. He pleaded guilty to federal charges for a multi-year, multimillion-dollar scheme in which he accepted fraudulent donations, taking part of the funds as commission and allowing donors to claim huge tax deductions but secretly get their money back.
In 2022, he was ordered to pay restitution, and has since served a prison sentence.
