Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff, 20, of College Station, Texas, is seen in a hospital room in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 18, 2025, where he was being treated for multiple gunshot wounds sustained during the terrorist attack targeting a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach four days earlier. Courtesy of the Lazaroff family

Hundreds of people gathered in Sydney on Thursday to mourn the youngest victim of the terrorist attack that targeted a Hanukkah celebration on Australia's Bondi Beach. The 10-year-old girl, who has been publicly identified only as Matilda, has become a symbol of the country's grief for the 15 people killed by two gunmen.

Dozens of others were wounded in the shooting, including American Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff, a 20-year-old who CBS News found holding a menorah in his hospital bed on Thursday as he was treated for gunshots to his stomach and thighs.

Leibel was volunteering at the event to mark the first day of Hanukkah, when shots rang out. His parents, meanwhile, were asleep at their home in Texas.

"In the middle of the night, we got, someone came to our door to tell us that there was a terrorist attack, and that Leibel was — people knew he was shot, but did not know what had happened to him," his mother Manya told CBS News on Thursday. "At that point, we did not if he was alive or what his status was."

It was a couple hours before they learned he was alive, but that he had been shot multiple times.

"We immediately tried to figure out a way how to get here," said his father, Rabbi Yossi Lazaroff.

After flying halfway around the world, they were at their son's bedside in a Sydney hospital, where he told them his story.

Leibel told his parents that after the gunfire began, he heard a police officer screaming that they had been shot, so he rushed over and took off his shirt to use as a tourniquet. Trained in how to use a gun, he told his father he asked the officer to handover their firearm so he could try to shoot back at the gunmen.

"As he was doing that, Leibel himself got shot," his father told CBS News.

"I actually wasn't surprised," his mother said. "He's a firecracker. He is a quick thinker. He is someone who is brave, strong, feisty, very feisty, and someone who's very quick thinking."

The young American rabbi, whose parents lead the Chabad Jewish Center at Texas A&M University, was in Sydney for an internship with Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who was laid to rest on Wednesday in the first of the funerals for the 15 victims of the attack.

"He saw Rabbi Eli get shot, and Rabbi Eli was his mentor," Leibel's father told CBS News. "He said, 'I wish there was more I could have done.'"

Four days after the attack, and after two surgeries, Lazaroff was fighting an infection on Thursday, and his parents know he's still facing a difficult recovery.

"He's still in a critical condition," his mother said. "He has a road ahead. There's still more surgeries."

His parents also wanted to deliver a message for leaders everywhere: that the attack on Bondi Beach "needs to be a wakeup call."

"Hate speech is not just free speech," Manya said. "It leads to terrible actions like this."


Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff is seen in an undated family photo with his father, Rabbi Yossi Lazaroff. Courtesy of the Lazaroff family

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