Australia holds first funerals for Bondi Beach attack victims

SYDNEY — Australia will hold the first funerals Wednesday for victims of the Bondi Beach mass shooting, with huge crowds expected to grieve two rabbis slain in the attack. Sajid Akram and his son Naveed opened fire on a Jewish festival at the famed surf beach on Sunday evening, killing 15 people and wounding dozens more, according to authorities. Among the victims were a 10-year-old girl, two Holocaust survivors, and a married couple shot dead as they tried to thwart the attack. Father-of-five Eli Schlanger, known as the "Bondi rabbi," will be the first mourned in a service at Chabad of Bondi Synagogue. Schlanger was a chaplain who served in prisons and hospitals, according to a website of the Chabad movement, which represents a branch of Hasidic Jews and organised the Bondi event. "Anyone who knew him knew that he was the very best of us," said Alex Ryvchin from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. The Chabad of Bondi Synagogue will then hold a second funeral for 39-year-old rabbi Yaakov Levitan in the afternoon. Levitan was a father of four renowned for his charitable work, the Ch