[1] The Southern Sydney Synagogue has been the target of firebombing, vandalism, and arson incidents on multiple occasions between the 1990s[4][5][6] and the 2020s.

The synagogue's founder was Nathan Haneman, a Lithuanian Jew who migrated to Australia in 1928.

[9][1][10] Prior to the establishment of the congregation, Haneman sought to organise the local Jewish community and first founded the Illawarra Hebrew Association in the early 1930s.

[9][11] The congregation included Holocaust survivors who supplied ritual objects salvaged from synagogues destroyed by the Nazis.

[22] The Southern Sydney Synagogue has been the target of firebombing, vandalism, and arson incidents on at least nine separate occasions: