The Jewish community in Melbourne, Australia, is united in grief following the death of 10-year-old Thalia Hakin, who was killed when a 26-year-old man plowed his car through a crowd of pedestrians at Bourke Street Mall on Friday afternoon.
Thalia was among five people killed, including a 3-month-old baby boy. She was with her 9-year-old sister, Maggie, and her mother, Nathalie, at the time of the incident; both remain hospitalized, along with more than two-dozen others who were injured at the attack scene.
“Thalia was such a sweet, happy, girl—always with a smile on her face. She loved everything she was learning about Judaism and was always so ready to share,” says Mushky Raskin, co-director of Chabad McKinnon in Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs with her husband, Rabbi Yisroel Raskin. “She was such an eager participant in Shabbat celebrations, holiday events and whatever else was going on.”
Raskin goes on to note that “Thalia and Maggie were inseparable, always together, and so very close. They’d be over at our house on a Friday night, and they’d be ‘fighting’ over who gets to hold the baby or help out in another way.”
Thalia had begun her Jewish education at the Chabad Bentleigh, Gan Gabi and Rivki Early Learning Center before continuing her studies at Beth Rivkah Ladies College, a Chabad day school in Melbourne.
“My daughter and her friends were inconsolable,” says one mother, whose daughter is in Thalia’s class. “It was such difficult news, coming just before Shabbat.”
Mushky Raskin reports that there has been a “very special” outpouring of care from across the community.
“It is really too early to know what can even be done,” says Raskin, whose husband has been in close contact with the family, “but there have been so many offers for meals, visits—any way to support the family. People just want to say, ‘We are here, and we care.’ ”
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