Running While Jewish in Sydney, Weeks Before Bondi

I ran the Sydney Marathon on August 31, 2025.

Before I landed, I knew Sydney was already in trouble. Weeks earlier, on August 3rd, there had been a massive pro-Palestine march on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, one that crossed well beyond political expression into open antisemitism. I knew the Jewish community there was uneasy. I also noticed that many people were keeping their heads down and avoiding anything that made them visibly Jewish in public.

Yet I’m a New Yorker. An American Jew. I’m not afraid of much.

When I landed at the airport, I changed my shirt. It had an Israeli flag and an American flag, with the text: Yes. I’m both. I wasn’t trying to provoke anyone. I was simply refusing to hide.

A few days before the race, around 6 or 7 in the morning, I took a bus to the On Cloud shakeout run. On the bus, I noticed a religious Jewish man quietly saying Tehillim (Psalms) under his breath. I said hello and introduced myself. We spoke for a few minutes. He was warm, grateful, almost relieved to be acknowledged.

Then he said something that stayed with me: he admitted he was afraid to be praying on the bus.

Not attacked. Not threatened. Just afraid.

The fact that quietly saying Psalms on public transport in Sydney in 2025 could feel like an act of bravery stopped me cold.

Later that weekend, on the way back from the Marathon Expo, I saw a young woman wearing a Star of David necklace. I commented on it and shared a compliment. She smiled but then said, almost apologetically, that wearing it felt brave right now.

Two separate Jews. Two separate moments. Same message.

In those moments, Sydney didn’t feel like Australia. It felt like something darker. Something older. Something I never thought I’d feel in the 2020s. It felt closer to stories that Jewish grandparents told about Europe in the 1930s than to a modern, multicultural city hosting a world-class marathon.

Personally, I wasn’t afraid. However, I understood why they were.

On race day, I ran exactly as I intended to. I wore a shirt with a large Star of David and the words Am Yisrael Chai. I wore my usual phrase: Every mile is a gift. And I carried a five-foot by three-foot Israeli and American flag for the entire race.

When I ran across the Sydney Harbour Bridge with a Star of David on my chest and an Israeli and American flag in my hand, I understood the significance of the moment.

This was not just another bridge in another race. It was the same bridge where, weeks earlier, thousands had marched in demonstrations that many Jews experienced not as political protest, but as open hostility toward them.

I knew I wasn’t running only for myself. I was being seen.

That became clear almost immediately. An acquaintance posted a photo of me crossing the bridge to a local Sydney Jewish Facebook group. The response was swift and overwhelming. Hundreds of people reacted to the image, and many others wrote messages of gratitude and pride. Some said it gave them strength. Others said it made them feel less alone.

That reaction confirmed what I had felt all weekend: that being visibly Jewish in Sydney had taken on a weight it should never have had, and a meaning it never used to need.

I continued running the marathon, head held high. Some spectators cheered. Some clapped. Some said thank you.

Others yelled at me.

“Free Palestine,” they shouted at a runner. At a marathon. At someone doing nothing more than running 26.2 miles through their city. Some were random spectators along the course. Others were not. At one point, an announcer on a stage shouted “Free Palestine” as I ran past. Around mile 20, another runner directed a similar, harsher remark at me.

I am one of 370 people in the world who have run the six world marathon majors twice, so I am no stranger to running marathons. Distance running has an unspoken code of respect, especially during a race. Political taunts are rare. Yet that code seemed to disappear when the runner was visibly Jewish.

They don’t yell at American runners. Or Chinese runners. Or Russian runners. Or Ukrainian runners. Or British runners. Only Jewish ones.

And screaming “Free Palestine” at a Jewish runner accomplishes nothing. It doesn’t free anyone. It doesn’t help anyone. It certainly has nothing to do with a road race on a Sunday morning. It’s not activism—it’s targeting.

When I saw the news from Bondi a week ago—a place I had visited during that same trip—I felt devastated. Heartbroken, and yet, if I’m being honest, not entirely shocked.

We all saw the footage from the Opera House on October 9, 2023. Crowds chanting “gas the Jews.” Week after week, antisemitic protests were allowed to continue. Occasional attacks were dismissed or minimized. And then the Australian government went so far as to recognize a “State of Palestine,” a move many Jews experienced not as diplomacy, but as a reward for terror.

When people say, “How could this happen?” I think back to those small moments—the fear of praying on a bus, the hesitation to wear a necklace, the shouting at a runner. Violence doesn’t come out of nowhere. It grows in an environment where hatred is tolerated, excused, or reframed.

When something feels like 1930s Europe, there’s usually a reason.

What breaks my heart most isn’t that I experienced antisemitism personally. It’s that I couldn’t openly share Jewish pride with other Jews who felt safe doing the same. They weren’t proud out loud; they were cautious and afraid.

Now that dark cloud has grown darker with the shooting in Bondi.

I hope, perhaps naively, that the senseless loss of life forces people to wake up. To see that the Jewish community wasn’t crying wolf. That the hate is real. That words matter. That silence matters. That what we normalize eventually becomes what we mourn.

I will keep running. I will keep showing up as a Jew. I will keep carrying the flag.

But we need to change course, before more Hanukkah celebrations or finish lines are crossed in blood and terror instead of joy and sweat.

A few weeks after the Sydney Marathon, and several weeks before the Bondi shooting, I spent Rosh Hashanah in California with the brother of Rabbi Eli Schlanger.

When news later broke that Eli had been tragically murdered at a Menorah lighting, it made everything feel painfully close.

There are roughly eight billion people in the world, and only about fifteen million Jews. That reality has a way of compressing space. What can seem like a tragedy “somewhere else” is never really elsewhere.

Hearing that news did not feel abstract. It felt personal. It made the darkness I had sensed in Sydney feel heavier and harder to ignore. As Elie Wiesel said, “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Hatred is never distant or separate from us. It demands recognition and a response from all of us. Let us not forget: silence is itself a response, and in this instance, one that led to senseless murder.