Rabbi Yaakov Levitan, 39, Father of 4, Murdered in Bondi Massacre

by Moshe New – chabad.org

Rabbi Yaakov Levitan was killed Sunday evening at Bondi Beach while helping organize the “Chanukah by the Sea” celebration. He was doing what he always did: making sure everything ran smoothly for Sydney’s Jewish community.

He was 39 years old.

As Chief Operating Officer of Chabad of Bondi, Levitan had been instrumental in planning the Chanukah event. When two gunmen opened fire on the crowd of 2,000 people, killing at least fifteen and wounding dozens more, Levitan was among those murdered.

He died alongside Rabbi Eli Schlanger, the assistant rabbi of Chabad of Bondi who was serving as emcee that night. The two men had worked together for years, their wives best friends since high school. They had stood side by side in service to the community, and on the first night of Chanukah, they were martyred together.

According to Rabbi Yakov Lieder, the director of the Jewish Family Centre in Bondi: “Yaakov and Eli had an incredible partnership: Eli had the visions and ideas and Yaakov figured out how to get it done.”

“He was the spine of all Jewish organizations in Sydney,” said Avremi Joseph, a Sydney community member and Schlanger’s brother-in-law.

The Man Who Made Everything Happen

If something needed to happen in Sydney’s Jewish community, Levitan made it happen. In fact, you’d have a hard time finding a Jewish institution in the city that wasn’t directly impacted by his work.

He was the secretary of the Sydney Beth Din (Jewish court), work that required absolute discretion and integrity. In his previous line of work, he was the administrator of the BINA Library and Educational Resource Centre, overseeing day-to-day operations, budgets, marketing, and educational programs. Under his leadership, BINA transformed from an idea into the thriving reality it is today—he put it online, launched its podcasts and videos, and when COVID shut everything down, he took organizing to the next level.

He served as the business liaison for the city’s sofer (scribe), coordinating Torah scrolls and mezuzahs between Sydney and Melbourne. When he first arrived in Sydney, Levitan came in and professionalized the scribe’s ‘living-room operation’ and as a result “tens of thousands of people have tefillin and mezuzahs because of him,” Joseph said.

He founded tapNgive, a company providing tap-and-pay donation kiosks to help nonprofits modernize charitable giving and used that expertise to install the credit-card technology to make access to the men’s mikvah—that he ran in a volunteer capacity—easier.

After Oct. 7, as the world saw a ‘spiritual awakening’, Levitan acted as the Sydney organizer for the tefillin drive, ensuring anyone who needed a pair got one. And when Chabad of Bondi completed their new $30 million building in late 2024, Rabbis Ulman and Schlanger approached Levitan to serve as Chief Operating Officer and oversee the operations of one of Australia’s most significant Jewish institutions.

Such was his dedication, that each Shabbos, he would make sure to pray at the early minyan at the nearby Mizarchi synagogue so he would come to supervise and make sure everything ran smoothly at Chabad of Bondi for their later services.

The role was massive. The responsibility, enormous. But Levitan downplayed it entirely.

“When he got the job, I told him, ‘Wow this is a massive job. You’re working for a massive institution’,” recalled Rabbi Mordechai Guth, Levitan’s brother-in-law. “He just played it down as if ‘I’m just an admin.’ He was so humble.”

That humility defined him. If there was a fundraising dinner, Levitan organized it. If there was a fundraising campaign, he made it happen. If documents needed to move through the Beth Din, he ensured they did. If someone needed a Torah scroll checked, he connected them with the sofer. When Rabbi Yehuda Straiton started the Sydney chapter of the Chidon Torah competition and wanted to send kids to New York, who organized it? Levitan. After Oct. 7, when the community wanted to organize a trip to Israel, who made it happen? Levitan, down to making sure the travel insurance was in order and that the trip took advantage of government grants.

“When something needed to get done, it was Yaakov,” Joseph said. “From the big-ticket items to simply taking out the trash—he did it all with his full heart and soul.”

When Chabad of Bondi needed a security company and government grant money became available, Levitan remembered that he heard a community member saying that he wanted to start a security business. The rabbi made sure Chabad of Bondi was his first client.

“He was a person who was motzei chein—found favor—with everyone,” Guth said. “From the administration of the local yeshivah, to the sofer from Melbourne, everyone.”

“It wasn’t all about him. It was all about everything else,” Joseph recalled. “The greatest reward for him was that something got done, not that he received recognition.”

Joseph, who counts Levitan and his wife, Adina as close family friends, recalled asking Levitan how he managed to do it all in just the 24 hours and 7 days, “I used to ask him, ‘What time do you come home for dinner?’ He said, ‘I come home at around 8:00 p.m. every night.’ He was completely given over to the community.”

The irony now circulating among grieving community members is that as various organizations scramble to coordinate funeral arrangements and logistics with the morgue for the 15 murdered, “Yaakov would have been the one to take care of that.”

He would have. Quietly, efficiently, and almost certainly without fanfare.

‘The Unglamorous Work He Excelled At’

Levitan’s path to becoming Sydney’s indispensable behind-the-scenes force began in Johannesburg, where he was born to Harris and Mireille Levitan, traditional Jews who attended the Orange Grove Shul directed by Rabbi Avraham Vigler. The young Levitan—known as Jeremy back then—was a student in King David school and would attend Shabbat services with his parents. It wasn’t long before the precocious child started to get more serious about his Jewish practice.

Adam Michels, a friend from South Africa, remembered how it was Rabbi Vigler who suggested he go learn at the Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

“He once told me that it started when Rabbi Vigler reeled him in at a farbrengen to ‘stick around and learn’ and soon after it became a weekly chavrusa [study session], and the rest is history,” Michels recalled.

Fresh out of high school, he came to Mayanot, where he spent two years learning from 2002-2004.

Rabbi Kasriel Shemtov, Executive Director at Mayanot, said Levitan exemplified what the yeshiva hoped to cultivate. “Yaakov was a very kind person,” he said. “Anything that had to happen in yeshiva, he took charge. Mivtzoim, farbrengens. Every event he took charge and was never waiting for the thank you.”

Despite his administrative responsibilities, Levitan was fully devoted to learning. “You’d think the sort of guy who so many little jobs in yeshiva wouldn’t have time to learn, but he was able to juggle it all,” Shemtov recalled. “He was in the study hall through the night, would never sleep through morning classes. He didn’t waste a minute. Everyone wanted him as a study partner.”

Understanding that for many of Mayanot’s new students, their first time through the doors was their first real exposure to authentic Jewish life and practice, the administration knew that they needed to find the right person to greet them—and Levitan became that person.

Rabbi Dovid Birk, now the junior rabbi at the Roitman Chabad Center at Cornell University, was a Mayanot student alongside Levitan and experienced that welcome firsthand. “When I first arrived in 2002, Jeremy [Yaakov] greeted me and showed me the ropes,” Birk recalled. “He made it as homey as possible. He took me to the linen cabinet and gave me my sheets and pillow. That was my first interaction with the guy. There was a sincerity to what he did. That was his nature.”

New students would arrive at all hours. “Guys would arrive at 2 a.m. and Yaakov was there to greet them,” Birk said. “Whatever it took to make you comfortable.”

Birk also remembered Levitan’s quiet way of keeping things running. “He was present at every farbrengen [chassidic gathering]. If we were low on snacks or drinks, he’d run to the local makolet to top everything up. He got things done.”

“Last night I went to various sororities and fraternities to light menorah on the second night, and they all said it’s for Yaakov. There’s something quintessentially ‘Yaakov’ that across the world, people were lighting a candle in his memory, by his behind-the-scenes hand.”

“He excelled at the unglamorous work,” Guth remembered.

Rabbi Shloime Gestetner, dean of Mayanot, remembered Levitan’s defining quality: “He had a lev tov—a good heart. He was so easygoing. Got along with everyone, cared for everyone. It made sense his jobs were organizing. He got along with everyone and he embodied the chassidic teaching that the maaseh—the action, the doing—that was the ikkar, the main thing.

After his time at Mayanot, he returned home to earn a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of South Africa.

The transformation was striking. “Back in those days, there weren’t many ‘chassidishe bochurim’ around,” recalled Reuven Centner, a friend of Levitan’s and member of the Johannesburg Jewish community. “When I met him when he came back from yeshiva at Mayanot, I thought he must have been a new guy from overseas. But I looked again and I saw that suddenly ‘Jeremy from King David’ was ‘Yaakov the chossid.’”

Levitan’s transformation had ripple effects. “He had an influence on his family becoming religious,” Michels said. “They were supportive of his journey.” His two sisters, Lara and Abigail, both became religious as well. Levitan recently told Michels that his father was getting more involved in Yiddishkeit in the last few years as well.

He then returned to Mayanot, even serving as an administrator for a period. While there, Levitan met Adina Mill from Sydney, at the Shabbat table of her sister and brother-in-law, Mordechai and Tanya Guth, in Jerusalem, the couple were married on Rosh Chodesh Elul, 2008.

The couple moved to Sydney after a half-year stint in Jerusalem, and their first child was born there, and Levitan began building—first at BINA—what would become an irreplaceable career in Jewish communal service.

Yiras Shamayim in Everything

Those who knew Rabbi Levitan describe him as a man of deep yiras shamayim—fear of Heaven—particularly regarding matters of halacha and kosher. His position gave him access to sensitive information, knowledge of things that others didn’t know, and he handled it all with scrupulous care. While he never formally received rabbinical ordination- “”he was too humble for that; he never wanted to be called a rabbi”, his family explains- everything Levitan did was in service of G‑d and his fellow man.

Levitan had his passions and quirks. He appreciated a good bottle of wine, he loved Chassidic stories, and he was an avid cyclist, always on his bike.

Levitan was also the consummate family man and would visit Johannesburg often to see his parents and sisters, of whom he was fiercely protective. When his sister Lara spent three years living in Sydney, Levitan and his wife Adina took her into their own, and made a lasting impression on her in many more ways than one. In fact, just weeks ago in November, Levitan, his wife and two younger sons had just visited his family in South Africa to celebrate his father’s 70th birthday. Michels recalls always seeing him at Moishe’s, the local Kosher butchery, filling up his cart to the brim while taking his mother shopping. “Just giving,” Michels said. “He never got involved in the politics of life. It was always: ‘how can I give’. He was such a kind person.”

One story captures his character perfectly: A non-Jewish neighbor of Rabbi Michoel Gourarie, director of BINA, needed help with internet wiring buried underground. Within minutes Levitan was covered in dirt, spending hours digging to help solve the problem. And he did, the internet was up and running not long after.

“The community may not even know how much he did and how much they are missing with him gone,” Guth said.

“Chabad of Bondi won’t be the same without Eli and Yaakov,” Joseph said.

Levitan is survived by his wife, Adina (née Mill), and their four children: Shlomo, Mina, Levi, and Calev. He is also survived by his parents Harris and Mireille and two sisters Abigail (Judd) Baum and Lara (Justin) Baskin, all living in Johannesburg.

Levitan will be laid to rest in Sydney on Wednesday afternoon.

May his memory be a blessing.

Many victims of the attack are currently in critical condition. Please add a mitzvah and say a Psalm in the merit of their speedy and complete recoveries.

To support the Levitan family, click here. A campaign has also been launched to support the victims of the attack. To donate, click here.