The Australian Film About Jewish Fear and Unease Shot in Bondi Before the Massacre

SYDNEY - Writer-director Jacob Melamed never intended for his short film, “Mezuzah Man" to be prophetic.

When the film premiered at Sydney and Melbourne's Jewish International Film Festival in October 2025, it was only meant to be a personal exploration of fear and an attempt to process the unease that had settled over Australia's Jewish community after October 7.

Less than two months later, the Hanukkah massacre at Sydney's Bondi Beach that saw 15 people killed and dozens more wounded in Australia's deadliest terror attack, would transform the film from a work of anxious imagination into something closer to a premonition.

“That was my fear – that that's where it was going to head to," Melamed said. “I was being honest in my fears and what a lot of us were worried about. I just didn't think it would actually happen."

“Mezuzah Man" follows Yossi (Josh Merten), a young Jew living in Sydney's beachside Bondi neighborhood, who grows increasingly exasperated with what he perceives as his community's instinct to retreat in the face of rising antisemitism. Instead of removing signs of Jewish life, Yossi urges his neighbors to continue with their Jewish traditions and display their identities proudly. Sometimes his defiance is principled, sometimes it veers into the extreme and absurd.

The film's small details build an accurate portrayal of Sydney's Jewish community. Yossi speaks with a typical Sydney Jewish accent with a South African cadence carried by the large contingency that settled in the city decades ago. One of the character's cars sports a “survivor on board" bumper sticker that nods to the community's high proportion of Holocaust survivors. And the story circles around one of Sydney's most iconic Judaica stores, nestled among cafes and boutiques in Bondi's prime shopping district.

Yet what now makes the film difficult to watch is its ominously accurate depiction of what was to become one of Australia's most significant historical events.

Melamed filmed much of “Mezuzah Man"in Bondi, very close to where the Bondi attack later unfolded. Two of the film's actors, he said, are volunteers with Hatzolah, the Jewish emergency medical service, and were present and shot at during the Bondi attack. The film also features a series of incidents that mirror a spate of attacks that occurred in the lead up to its filming, including the vandalization of cars and homes in one of Sydney's most Jewish suburbs, and the firebombing of Melbourne's Adass synagogue.

The film stemmed from Melamed's personal experience of moving out of his family home and into his own place. For the first time in his life, he grappled with whether to put a mezuzah on his front door amongst rising antisemitism post-October 7.

“I just didn't feel comfortable with people knowing that I was Jewish," he said. “But I also felt guilty about it, because it's always been something I've been very proud of."

That tension became the film's central conflict. Yossi, the protagonist, embodies a kind of fearless Jewish pride that Melamed admits he both admires and questions. Opposite him is a neighbor who represents another familiar instinct – a survival strategy of retreating into anonymity. “I wrote the neighbor character as the version of 'me' that is afraid," he said. “The Jew who would rather be alive and hide than put themselves in danger."

Through their uneasy relationship, the film probes a set of questions that have become increasingly relevant across the diaspora since the global surge in antisemitism: What does Jewish identity look like in a moment of rising hostility? Does visibility strengthen a community or expose it?

“Do you need to be visibly Jewish?" Melamed asked. “What makes us who we are?"

For most of his life, those questions had felt largely theoretical to Melamed. Growing up in Sydney's eastern suburbs, home to one of Australia's largest Jewish communities, he never really felt the threat of antisemitism. But all of that changed after October 7 when antisemitism started to steadily rise in Australia. 

Melamed cites the demonstrations outside of the Sydney Opera House in the days following October 7 as a turning point. In videos circulated widely online, antisemitic chants could be heard among the crowds. “Seeing all that hatred was a shock," he said. “It was a shock to the senses."

In the years that followed, Jewish organizations recorded an explosion of antisemitism across Australia. For Melamed, filmmaking became a way to work through both his fear and confusion, but also to process the ways Jews themselves were responding to it.

“I make art as a way to express how I'm feeling and things that I care about," he said. “And I made this as an expression of where I am in the world and my thoughts on all the weird and wacky ways that I've seen Jewish people react to hatred."

Some people, he said, responded by becoming more openly and defiantly Jewish. Others withdrew. Some grew more suspicious of the outside world, even sliding into their own forms of prejudice.

“There's such a wide array of Jewish beliefs within our small Jewish community," he said. “I wanted to show my own, as well as maybe highlight some of the funnier aspects."

Humor is certainly interwoven in the film, despite its dark subject matter. In one chaotic scene, where a crowd of Jewish customers is trying to return their Jewish paraphernalia, a woman insists the store accept her Hanukkah menorah as she has a ‘right of return,' which is refused by Yossi. The scene touches on the inextricable ways Israeli politics is so bound up with diasporic Jewish safety.

After the Bondi massacre, the film has taken on a different meaning. While it may have initially been a poignant personal meditation, it now serves as a cultural time capsule of how Australia's Jews were feeling among the politicization of their safety and identity. 

Australia's Jewish community, as well as the country more broadly, is still reckoning with the events that took place, including through the ongoing Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, which will examine the Bondi attack and the events that led up to it.

“[Reality has] turned the whole film into this deeply uncomfortable premonition in a way," Melamed said. “But I guess it's just a genuine representation of a lot of Jewish people's, especially Sydney Jewish people's, fears at the time."

Despite this, the film was recently rejected by Australia's public broadcaster SBS on the grounds that it contains “content that could be received as inflammatory across some communities." According to The Australian, Jewish Australian Screen Fund chief Jamie Bialkower, who funded the film, was advised by the broadcaster that “there may be some sensitivities around how the subject matter could be received, particularly in the context of rising antisemitism and community concerns."

The experience of making “Mezuzah Man" has left Melamed wrestling with questions that feel larger than the film itself.

“I'm in a weird space with Judaism at the moment," he said. “What are we? Are we victims? Should we hide? Should we stand strong and be proud? Are we a minority? Are we white? Are we not?"

He doesn't claim to have answers. For now, he says, he will keep making films as a way to explore those uncertainties rather than resolve them – he just hopes fewer of them come true.

If the film provided catharsis, it came from writing his courage into existence, which ultimately empowered Melamed to express his Jewish identity proudly.

“By the end of the end of filming, I was finally able to put a mezuzah on my door. I was able to take that first step of being less afraid." he said. “And especially after the Bondi attack happened, I kept my mezuzah around, not shying away - for better or for worse. Because I am Jewish and I'm very proud of that."

In the days after the attack, Melamed said he also witnessed a dimension that wasn't featured in the film. Amid the fear and grief, there were gestures of support from the broader Australian public. Melamed heard that people had lined up outside the Bondi Judaica store featured in the film, many of whom were not Jewish, to buy mezuzahs and other Jewish items in an act of solidarity.

“That was beautiful to hear," he said. “The way non-Jewish people rallied behind the Jewish community after the attack was a reminder that there are a lot of people who genuinely care."

It was a scene that might belong in “Mezuzah Man" – a moment where anxiety and resilience sit uneasily alongside each other. And where even in fear, the mezuzah remains on the door.

Haaretz