Faith Communities Council of Victoria's Sandy Kouroupidis gave evidence about work the group did to promote harmony between people of different faiths at a royal commission on anti-Semitism and social cohesion.
The December 14, 2025, Bondi massacre and the October 7, 2023, Nova music festival attack in Israel by Hamas, had a huge impact on Victoria's Jewish community and its relationships with other religious groups, he said.
Interaction between the Muslim and Jewish communities has stopped altogether, Mr Kouroupidis said.
"We have two vice chairs; one of them is the chair of the Islamic Council of Victoria and the other one is the chair of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria," he said.
"It has been very, very challenging to get those two communities in the same room."
Jewish people had stopped attending interfaith events, and schools stopped taking part in visits to Muslim and Christian institutes, Mr Kouroupidis said.
"A lot of the Jewish schools simply don't feel safe," he said.
Earlier, the royal commission heard evidence from First Nations advocate and senior academic Marcia Langton about racism that she had experienced in her personal and professional life.
The Yiman and Didjara woman and senior academic was a key contributor to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody from 1989 to 1992, with her team gathering evidence from people living in remote Aboriginal communities.
On Wednesday, Professor Langton told the hearing she was arrested by NT police who were unhappy with her work, alleging police were behind an incident where the door of her Darwin hotel room was kicked in during the night.
"The door was broken; it was off its hinges, so it sounded like an explosion, and the (hotel) manager was stumped and obviously frightened," she told the commission.
"The matter didn't go any further."
Segregation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people was normal during Prof Langton's childhood in south-west Queensland.
She was expelled from a Brisbane high school after objecting to her teacher reciting a "very racist" poem to the class.
That racism towards First Nations people remained part of Queensland's culture to this day, Prof Langton said.
Aboriginal and Jewish people have a long-standing alliance because both communities experienced genocide, she said, and that bigotry against both groups was informed by "myths and lies".
As part of a group of other leading social science experts, Ms Langton recommended the government implement a coordinated response to all forms of anti-Semitism, racism and social division.
"At the moment, the approach is split up with all these committees and working groups, and we need to bring it all together and tackle racism and xenophobia in a systematic way, in a coordinated way," she said.
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