Students at Bellevue Hill Public School are taking part in the Mitzvah Campaign, an initiative launched in response to last year’s Bondi antisemitic terrorist attack. The school is participating in a growing effort to honour the victims of the attack by encouraging young people to perform acts of service and kindness in their everyday lives.
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What is the Mitzvah Campaign?
Derived from the Hebrew word for a good deed or commandment, the Mitzvah Campaign asks participants to perform acts of service and kindness in honour of those who were killed. The campaign was launched in the aftermath of last year’s antisemitic terrorist attack and is being driven by the NSW Faith Affairs Council.
It encourages students and school communities to perform acts of service, whether that means helping someone else or performing an act of kindness, as NSW Faith Affairs Council education sub-committee co-chair Murray Norman described it.
The campaign is deliberately inclusive. As NSW Faith Affairs Council chair Bishop Michael Stead noted, it is something children can participate in regardless of whether they come from a faith background, because everyone believes in doing good.
“We think it’s a great idea to be able to honour those whose lives were taken at Bondi by putting good back into the world in place of evil,” Bishop Stead said. “I think it’s something that kids can do whether they are from a faith background or not. Everybody believes in doing good.”
Building safety and belonging at Bellevue Hill
For Bellevue Hill Public School, the campaign arrives as the community continues to process the impact of the Bondi attack. Principal Sue Bennett has been open about the toll the tragedy has taken, and about the ongoing work required to support students through it.
With 72 per cent of students from a non-English-speaking background, as Ms Bennett noted, the school community already reflects the kind of diversity and harmony the campaign seeks to nurture.
“It’s going to take a long time to recover but we can keep working on that in our schools and having different religious leaders to support that is very, very important,” she said.
“We were talking to the boys and girls about how harmonious it is at Bellevue Hill and whatever belief you have or whatever background you have it is harmonious.”
Ms Bennett noted that NSW public schools had a variety of supports in place to help school communities deal with the impact of the attack, and that the involvement of faith leaders in initiatives like the Mitzvah Campaign was an important part of that ongoing recovery.
Standing against hatred
The campaign also carries a broader message about standing against hatred. NSW Faith Affairs Council education sub-committee co-chair Murray Norman said the Council was encouraging school communities across NSW to get involved, describing the campaign as a direct stand against antisemitism and hatred in all its forms. Fellow co-chair Surinder Jain framed participation as an opportunity for children to discover how much they have in common with one another, even across different faiths and cultures.
Rabbinical Association of Australasia President Rabbi Nochum Schapiro said inspiring young people to live for a purpose beyond themselves was central to the campaign’s intent — and that those acts of goodness represented the most powerful counterbalance the community could offer in the face of hatred.
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The school captain at Bellevue Hill put it plainly: the campaign was already bringing people together and offering comfort to those affected by the attack. They wanted to help, they said. They wanted to make people feel safe at their school.
Published 21-February-2026
