With heads bowed after the Bondi terror attack, now is the time to listen to the Jewish community

It's a delicate art, trying to bear witness to grief, horror, terror, without getting in the way.

Many have stumbled in the past few days, trying to find a take, to form the right words, post the right images — without realising sometimes the best thing to do is to let sound sink, to be quiet.

And it's not just politicians.

Many of the more prominent figures on social media seem to operate on the idea that noise is better than silence, that the best, sometimes only, metric of compassion, or humanity or care, is to write something, place it in a digital box and post it. It's not true.

The Betoota Advocate framed it in a satirical headline, "Normal Person Whose Brain Isn't F***ed from Social Media Grieves For the Jewish Community Without Seeing Tragedy As An Opportunity to Share an Irrelevant Opinion Online".

They continued: "While many heroes arose from the tragedy, the Jewish community will likely never again feel as safe celebrating their faith in public as they did at the start of that day. As community leaders call for calm, the future ripple effects that will permeate through Australian society as a result of this cowardly attack remain unknown. It is for this reason that maybe now isn't the best time for people who have never experienced this kind of marginalisation or collective grief to offer their two cents."

It's in light of this wisdom — of gently reminding people that main character energy is not the best to offer at a time of collective bowing of heads — that I'd like to devote this piece to the long-underestimated importance of listening.

Especially when you don't know what to say.

The first duty of love is to listen

Research backs common sense: if you listen, you're more likely to be able to solve problems, and to maintain trust. Fewer errors will be made.

It's OK, or probably crucial, to be quiet, to reflect on what you don't know, to open your ears to people who feel they have not been heard. Many listen with jiggling knees, readying to give a response. As Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said, "Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply."

In Australia, now is the time to listen to the Jewish community.

Theologian Paul Tillich says the first duty of love is to listen.

Benedictine nun Joan Chittister is wonderful on the idea of listening as a sacred practice, telling us to "listen … with the ear of your heart". In her book, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, she says: "It takes a lot of listening to hear the needs of those around us before they even speak them. But there is no good human community without it. Listening and love are clearly of a piece."

When we listen properly, we allow ourselves to examine our own positions, pick at any assumptions or lazy thoughts or shreds of ignorance — to allow for the possibility that we may have been wrong or mistaken, not through bad intent, but perhaps not listening enough.

It's a humble practice.

From what I understand, listening is also core to Judaism, a profoundly spiritual act and way of connecting with each other. The great teacher, the English Orthodox Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, put it this way: "Judaism is a religion of listening. This is one of its most original contributions to civilisation … listening lies at the very heart of relationship. It means that we are open to the other, that we respect them, that their perceptions and feelings matter to us. We give them permission to be honest, even if this means making ourselves vulnerable in so doing."

Maybe we failed to understand important things

In the furnace of the rightful fury about the loss of life in the Middle East, about the October 7 attacks and the pain and suffering of the people in Gaza, the horrific fatalities and incomprehensible starvation, many hateful things have been said, many ungenerous assumptions made.

One of them has been the insistence people post about events, constantly, in narrow, acceptable language. Even those who find social media unbearable and often counter-productive. I don't know a single person who doesn't want the war to end.

But maybe we failed to understand important things — the erosion of safety, the intensity of the threat of antisemitism. 

How sure are we, all of us, that we understand what Zionism is, what certain words and symbols mean to different people?

How many of us recognise how the fact the Australian Jewish community has a higher proportion of Holocaust survivors than any other country except Israel impacts the sense of threat and history here, of a need for constant vigilance?

As author Michal Visontay, the commissioning editor of the Jewish Independent, told the New Yorker in a particularly thoughtful interview this week, "In terms of criticising the Israeli government, there's still a place for it, and it needs to be done when it is appropriate, but it has become very difficult for people, certainly for Jewish people, to receive and digest legitimate criticism on its merit, because there's been so much toxic bile levelled at Jews and Israelis."

He went on: "It's become almost impossible to separate the arguments of legitimate criticism from the toxic messaging. And so many Jews have not seen the criticism as legitimate because they've got this view of, "Well, they just hate us, and this criticism is indistinguishable from hatred." That is really one of the biggest casualties of what's happened. The Israeli government needs to be called out for its bad behaviour and policy and the things it says and does, but that criticism needs to be expressed in very precise terms."

Did we all know this, know these terms, have the wisdom to try to find out?

Can we accept that realising how little we know is the first step to understanding?

At times of great cultural shocks, of barely fathomable events like the sunlit massacre of innocent, faithful people, many things are inevitable: weaponisation, politicisation, rage, blame, defensiveness, strategic positioning, fear, the crossing of arms, the jabbing of fingers. Some of this may be deserved. Some mistakes will be made, too, in haste and in pain.

But if we are to inch towards unity, the more we pause to listen, the more sure-footed our path forward will be.

Julia Baird is an author, broadcaster, journalist and co-host of the ABC podcast, Not Stupid.