Chabad rabbis, Holocaust survivor, 10-year-old among victims of Sydney Hanukkah attack
Two Chabad rabbis, a Holocaust survivor, a recent immigrant and a 10-year-old girl were among the 15 people confirmed to have been killed on Sunday when two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, in one of the deadliest terror attacks targeting Jews outside of Israel in decades.
The attackers targeted a “Chanukah by the Sea” event organized by the Chabad Hasidic movement to mark the first night of the eight-day Jewish festival of lights.
The attackers fired some 50 shots at the 1,000-strong crowd, and wounded an estimated 38 people, including two police officers.
It was the second-worst mass shooting in Australian history and the deadliest attack targeting Jews abroad since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel.
Australian officials declared the incident a terror attack, and the country’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed to “eradicate” antisemitism.
These are the stories of the victims who have been identified. This article will be updated as more information emerges.
Rabbi Eli Schlanger
Rabbi Eli Schlanger was the assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi in Sydney, Australia.
The 40-year-old rabbi was born in London and studied at Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim in Brunoy, France, Chabad said. He received his rabbinic ordination at the central Lubavitch yeshiva in Crown Heights, New York City.
His cousin, Rabbi Zalman Lewis, told the BBC that Schlanger and his family moved to New York when he was a child, and that he relocated again after marrying an Australian.
He is survived by his wife and five children, the youngest of whom, a boy, was born just two months ago.
Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was murdered in the terrorist attack in Sydney during Hanukkah, leaves behind a wife and four children. pic.twitter.com/4BKcs6xttT
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) December 14, 2025
Schlanger was outspoken in the face of rising antisemitism in Australia. In an interview on the Chabad website in March, he encouraged Jews to stand proudly in the face of hatred.
“My car — emblazoned with mitzvah symbols — is a living example of pride and resilience,” he said then.
He encouraged others to embrace their Jewish identities more strongly as a response to growing hate.
“Be more Jewish, act more Jewish and appear more Jewish,” he said at the time.
Lewis described Schlanger to BBC News as “vivacious, energetic, full of life and a very warm outgoing person who loved to help people.”
He told the news outlet that his cousin’s answer to the Bondi Beach massacre would have been to tell people to “keep spreading light” and to do acts of charity.
“The world is a positive place and we need to show that and I know Eli would be saying that,” he said.
Alex Kleytman
Alex Kleytman, a Ukrainian Holocaust survivor, was celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach with his wife of 57 years, Larisa Kleytman, also a Holocaust survivor, when the attack began.
He was killed while shielding Larisa from the bullets with his own body, his wife told the Daily Mail.
“I think he was shot because he raised himself up to protect me, in the back of the head,” she said in brief remarks outside of St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.
The husband of Larissa Kleytman, a grandmother who was celebrating Chanukah, was shot in the #bondibeach attack. She was very distraught coming out of St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney with friends & relatives saying he was killed next to her #Australia pic.twitter.com/ZdFactbO1d
— Farid Y. Farid (@FaridYFarid) December 14, 2025
She told The Australian news outlet that Alex, a retired civil engineer, was at the beach to celebrate Hanukkah, a holiday which she said “was always a very, very good celebration, for many, many years.”
“Today in the middle of the celebrations [there were] shots, and unfortunately my husband was killed,” she recounted. “We were standing and suddenly came the ‘boom boom,’ and everybody fell down. At this moment he was behind me, and at one moment, he decided to go close to me. He pushed his body up because he wanted to stay near me.”
“His body is still there and I am sitting there and don’t know what I have to do,” she said, surrounded by family. “I have no husband. I don’t know … nobody can give me any answers.”
In its 2022-2023 annual report, Australia’s Jewish Care charity published a feature on Alex and Larisa, in which it recounted the “unspeakable terror of the Holocaust” that Alex had endured as a child in Siberia.
“He, along with his mother and younger brother, struggled for survival,” read the report. “The scars of the past, however, did not deter [Alex and Larisa] from seeking a brighter future. They later made the move to Australia, immigrating from Ukraine.”
Dan Elkayam
Dan Elkayam, 27, immigrated to Sydney from France last year for work.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot confirmed that Elkayam was among those killed, writing on X that the country felt “immense sadness” at the news, and was mourning “with his family and loved ones, with the Jewish community and the bereaved Australian people.”
Elkayam, a Paris native, moved to Australia last December, according to the Le Parisien newspaper. His LinkedIn account showed that he had been working as an IT analyst at NBCUniversal.
He was a voracious traveler and had posted hundreds of images and videos on his social media accounts of his travels, including a multi-day hike through Indonesia’s Sumatra jungle, a visit to temples in Kyoto, Japan, and an encounter with elephants at a sanctuary in Thailand.
“Dan was out celebrating Chanukah with his fellow Jews in Sydney when his promising young life was snuffed out,” wrote Chabad on X.
Rabbi Yaakov Halevi Levitan
Rabbi Yaakov Halevi Levitan was a Chabad emissary and the secretary of the Sydney Beth Din. He worked at the BINA Center, a Jewish educational institution in Sydney.
According to a Jewish news site, Levitan distributed tefillin to those committed to performing the Jewish rite.
Reuven Morrison
Reuven Morrison, an immigrant to Australia from the former Soviet Union, “discovered his Jewish identity in Sydney,” Chabad said, and remained deeply connected to the Jewish community there even after moving to Melbourne.
Morrison’s family relocated to Melbourne for his daughter’s schooling, Chabad said, but he continued to split his time between the two cities and primarily worked in Sydney.
Morrison was a “successful businessman,” Chabad recounted, and he donated generously to charitable causes, including Chabad of Bondi.
Matilda, 10
The youngest victim of the attack was identified as a 10-year-old girl.
Local outlets identified the girl by her first name, Matilda. She was a student at the Harmony Russian School in Sydney, and was one of at least 15 people to be killed in the attack.
“Her memory will remain in our hearts, and we honor her life and the time she spent as part of our school family,” the school posted on Facebook, saying it will remember her “with love, grief, and deep sorrow, and we honor her memory by standing together in compassion.”
A GoFundMe page set up by one of Matilda’s teachers, Irina Goodhew, aims to raise money for her mother.
“I knew her as a bright, joyful, and spirited child who brought light to everyone around her,” Goodhew wrote. “Yesterday, while celebrating Hanukkah, her young life was tragically taken. Her memory will live on in our hearts.”
#BREAKING: The 10-year-old girl tragically killed in the horror attack at Bondi has been identified. Little Matilda tragically died last night, after she was shot while celebrating Hanukkah ????
???? LATEST: https://t.co/9lUW7va3Xp pic.twitter.com/35YMlr26BU— The Advertiser (@theTiser) December 15, 2025
