I could list the reasons, beginning with the fact that I often fail to return phone calls while Eli always cheerily picked up ready to assist whoever needed him.

Earlier this year, during a punishing period of work, he insisted that we resume our studies. By this, he meant coming to my house once a week, sending me off to pour two glasses of whisky, which we would drain only after praising the Almighty for the fine tipple, before sitting down for an hour of dis­cus­sion of a portion of a religious text.

The busier I was and more I protested that I didn’t have time for learning, the more insistent he would become. He believed fervently in the res­tor­at­ive power of wisdom. And so, I submitted, as there was no point in arguing with him. When we got down to it, no matter how ancient or obscure the text seemed on the face of it, once we began to read the words out loud and discuss them, ideas would flow, worlds would be revealed, and my eyes were opened to clear answers for whatever problem plagued me at the time.

During our final such session, I was thinking about the small but deeply vexing number of Jews who joined the ranks of the anti-Israel movement. I raised this with him.

“Is there anything more despic­able than in a time of war and peril to not only turn on your own but to exploit your ancestry to support those who endanger our community?” I railed.

I fully expected him to issue some biblical edict for me to smite these people or excom­mu­nic­ate them, or at least punch out an acerbic tweet that put them in their place. But he surprised me, as he often did. He smiled, took a swig of the Japanese whisky and told me about the human side and the animal side.

Within each of us, there is the potential to pursue good or evil, he said. There is a kind, noble, generous and loving side. And then there is an anim­al­ist­ic side, like a wolf. Even the most upstand­ing person has an animal side and even the clearest scoundrel has a beautiful side. This wasn’t some quaint theory for him. He lived this idea, which is why he would travel hours to sit with hardened prisoners in remote jails. Everyone was worth the effort.

The animal side, he explained, cannot be destroyed, just as the human side can never fully be extin­guished. But through dis­cip­line, a com­mit­ment to study, and the observ­ance of the laws, we can tame the animal side enabling the good to flourish.

My task, he told me, was to appeal to the goodness in everyone, draw out their beauty, connect to them, human to human. Eli was so morally unam­bigu­ous that if I asked him if this applied to the father and son who murdered him and 14 others for being Jewish, and posed the question, “even them?” I can picture him smiling back at me, swigging the elixir and replying, “even them”.

But then, Eli was scholarly not sen­ti­ment­al, and he wasn’t prone to bouts of weakness. His deep study of our laws and com­ment­ar­ies gave him clarity, which included the ability to recognise the truly monstrous.

On the same question of whether to love or hate heretics who had defiled the name of God, something the killers epi­tom­ised, King David said, “I hate them with a con­sum­mate hatred”.

I think Eli would have seen it that way too. Then he would have told me to put on tefillin, the ancient Jewish prayer instru­ments bound to the arm and placed on the head, and helped me to recite the affirm­a­tion of faith to focus on the good in this world.

Our country has both a humane and anim­al­ist­ic side too. We saw it on full display on the day of our cata­strophe. The surf lifesavers, the volunteer medics, the passers-by. Those who could have fled, taken cover, saved them­selves. They didn’t see Jews or gentiles, believers or infidels, they saw human beings whose lives were in mortal danger and who needed immediate help.

Some of these people, such as Reuven Morrison, Dan Elkayam and Sofia and Boris Gurman, lost their lives while saving others. Others such as Gefen Bitton are still in intensive care.

There is a destruct­ive side to our society too. The killers are their vanguard, their most motivated and bold actors.

But it is a side that consists also of those who chanted for this very outcome, who warned at the Opera House steps “O, Jews, the Armies of Muhammad” are coming for us. It consists of the academics, who relished October 7 and then held micro­phones to the mouths of babes and smiled adoringly as they chanted for an “intifada”, the delib­er­ate targeting of Jewish civilians as “res­ist­ance”.

It consists of the malignant influ­en­cers, who became obsessed with bringing the Jews low and humi­li­at­ing them, and made this their quest, filling feeds and supple minds with relent­less garbage about Zionist “child-killers” who deserved to die in pain.

It consists of the “inde­pend­ent journ­al­ists”, with their deep dives into which Jewish-Aus­trali­an family donated to which art gallery or medical research institute, which rabbi posted what support for Israel, which synagogue hosted whom, pub­lish­ing their “research” to show the zealots where to look and the truly wicked where to aim.

It consists of the public officials who sit in our par­lia­ments, and make it their mission to quibble over defin­i­tions and stat­ist­ics to make us out to be liars or hysterics, instead of wrapping their heads around a crisis that has placed the Jewish community at the mercy of the Iranian regime, organised crime, and lone wolves.

A crisis that had, well before the massacre, made the incin­er­a­tion of Jewish targets an Aus­trali­an pastime. There was no anti-Semitism crisis they all main­tained. They claimed that public death chants and the debasing of Jews who support the existence of a Jewish state, as “ter­ror­ists”, “filth”, and “scum” were just robust criticism of Israeli policy that couldn’t possible incite violence.

Any claim to the contrary was just a Murdoch-Liberal Party plot to embarrass the gov­ern­ment or a Zionist con­spir­acy to shield Israel from criticism. Together, they provided the federal gov­ern­ment with time and space to do the bare minimum and to treat anti-Semitism as a burden with no political upside rather than a ticking bomb.

For a reason we haven’t powers to under­stand, Eli’s work in this world was deemed complete. It is now our task to nurture the good in this country through righteous and selfless acts. To strengthen the goodness that is all around us. But we mustn’t get confused or get carried away by a moment of national unity brought about by a slaughter at a holiday fair.

The anim­al­ist­ic side is there too, and it cannot be reasoned with. It can only be tamed or else it will continue to destroy innocent lives and take everything beautiful we have built in this country.