‘She ran back into danger’: Chief Rabbi hails teenage girl’s courage during Bondi attack

The Chief Rabbi has hailed  the bravery of a 14-year-old girl who was shot while shielding two children during the Bondi Beach attacks. 

Speaking to Jewish News after returning to the UK from a solidarity visit to Sydney, Sir Ephraim Mirvis said the teenager’s actions came to symbolise the wider response of Australia’s Jewish community – one marked not by anger or retreat, but by faith, dignity and moral resolve.

“She had reached a position of safety,” he said. “But when she saw others injured and vulnerable, she ran back towards danger. People shouted for her to come back, but she felt compelled to help.”

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Sir Ephraim visited the girl, Chaya Dadon, in hospital shortly before leaving Australia. He said she saw a mother who had been injured and two children lying exposed on the ground and threw herself over them to protect them. She was shot while shielding the children and later underwent surgery.

“Thank God she will survive,” he said. “She spoke with faith and belief, and with a deep determination to redouble her efforts to serve God and to make this a better world.”

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For the Chief Rabbi, the teenager now embodies the message he is carrying back from Bondi Beach.

“If there is one person who captures what I saw in Australia, it is her,” he said.

Sir Ephraim also paid tribute to Ahmed al-Ahmed, who intervened during the attack and was seriously injured. Although the Chief Rabbi was unable to meet him due to further surgery, he said he had hoped to thank him in person.

“On behalf of the entire Jewish world, we cannot thank him enough,” he said. “He is a role model for all our societies.”

He said Ahmed’s actions reflected a wider truth that is often overlooked – that the “silent majority” stand with Jewish communities – adding that he wished more of that support was made visible.

Sir Ephraim said he felt compelled to travel from London in the immediate aftermath of the attack, explaining that messages of solidarity from afar were not enough.

“In my capacity as Chief Rabbi to the Commonwealth, I felt I needed to be present,” he said. “My message was that I was a symbol of the whole Jewish world – standing with Australian Jewry and standing tall at this time.”

Rather than finding a community overwhelmed by despair, he said he encountered extraordinary resilience. He described attending the relighting of the Chanukah menorah at Bondi – disrupted by the shooting a week earlier – at an event attended by an estimated 20,000 people and broadcast live across Australia.

Throughout the ceremony, he said, there was a striking absence of hostility.

“There wasn’t the tiniest hint of hatred,” he said. “No bitterness, no enmity, no calls for revenge. Quite the contrary – calls for peace, for strengthening social cohesion, and for protecting all communities.”

The Chief Rabbi said the first Shabbat after the attack was among the most powerful experiences of his visit. Choosing to attend services in Bondi – the community that had organised the original Chanukah event – he described synagogues so full that extra chairs had to be brought in.

Among those present were bereaved families, relatives of those who had been killed, and families of the injured. When Hagomel, the prayer recited by those who have survived danger, was said, more than 30 people came forward.

“I have never seen anything like it,” he said. “There were hundreds of people who had been running for their lives, fleeing, traumatised. And yet in that service, there were tears and there was joy.”

He recalled singing, a bar mitzvah taking place, and large crowds gathering afterwards for a communal Kiddush lunch.

“There was an absolute determination,” he said, “that this murderous attack would not push us into the shadows – but that we would emerge stronger than ever as a result of it.”

Asked about political leadership, Sir Ephraim said he had deliberately left comment on the Australian government to local Jewish leaders but spoke frankly about the UK, where he has previously criticised policy.

He warned that hate speech can quickly turn into hate crime, creating an atmosphere that fuels real-world violence, and while praising UK police and security services for protecting Jewish communities, said more must still be done, adding that since 7 October some governments have responded “magnificently” while others have caused deep disappointment.

Sir Ephraim also described nightly Chanukah vigils held at the site of the attack, with teenagers sitting in large circles around candles, singing spiritual songs late into the evening.

“It gave me enormous hope,” he said.

Beyond the Jewish community, he said he was deeply moved by acts of solidarity from non-Jewish Australians. He described strangers approaching him to offer condolences simply because he was visibly Jewish, and a non-Jewish family who deliberately chose to eat at a kosher bakery as an act of support.

“They said they woke up that morning and felt they couldn’t just mourn Jewish people – they had to do something for Jewish people,” he recalled.

As Bondi Beach begins to return to normal, however, the Chief Rabbi said he is carrying home not only inspiration but also concern.

“When I returned to the site early one morning, thousands of floral tributes were being cleared away,” he said. “Bondi Beach was going back to business as usual.”

While life will never be the same for those directly affected, he warned that the wider world must not move on too quickly.

“We cannot allow people to forget what happened,” he said. “And we cannot fail to do something real and effective to stop antisemitism from turning into violence.”