Bondi shooting live updates: Tears for ‘sweet, kind’ Matilda; PM says ‘hate preachers’ to be targeted in new reforms, defends action on antisemitism
Rabbi Dr Dovid Slavin said Matilda’s funeral would be confronting for any family.
“It was every parent’s, every sibling’s worst nightmare,” he said as he arrived for the service at Chevra Kadisha Memorial Hall in Woollahra today.
As a parent and grandparent, he said, “we are thinking of our own vulnerability”.
Rabbi Dr Dovid Slavin outside Matilda’s funeral today. Credit: James Brickwood
What was worse was how Matilda died, said Slavin, the founder of Our Big Kitchen, which includes a small synagogue.
“Matilda’s life was taken not because she went to do something very dangerous, not because, God forbid, parents left the pool door open, not because she was left in the car in a hot day with the windows closed. And those things happen, and they’re very, very tragic, and parents never live with themselves over [such incidents],” Slavin said.
“They brought her to a safe place, a safe celebration. What could be safer than Bondi Beach?” he said, adding that she wasn’t even near the water.
“Anybody who’s a parent, anybody who’s an older sibling, will know all too well that the parents’ very first responsibility to themselves is the welfare of their child. And you can imagine, when a child goes off to summer camp, goes off to school camp, there are tears, although you’ll be separated for a short amount of time. This that we’re experiencing is every single parent’s worst, worst, worst nightmare.”
