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From The President
David P Lewis
e: president@greatsynagogue.org.au
Dear Friends,
ANZAC Day Commemorative Service Shabbat 26 April
This Shabbat we mark ANZAC day with a commemorative service immediately after our Shul service in the War Memorial.
We will also have special memorial prayers for Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) which was marked from Wednesday evening, 23rd April to Thursday evening, 24th April.
Installation of Air Conditioning
I am delighted to announce that we will finally be in a position to commence the installation of air conditioning in our Sanctuary and prepare for an upgrade of all our cooling systems. This has been a long-awaited development and one that has taken considerable planning given our heritage building and the complexity of cooling such a large space.
Work will commence next month and we will complete all work and we plan to have the system operational before Rosh Hashanah.
Under the initial plan the doors on the North side of the Shul both upstairs and downstairs will be closed. All sanctuary access will be via the South side. Once work is completed on the North side we will similarly restrict access on the South side.
Part of the process requires an upgrade to our power supply and we will also be working on that during this work.
I would like to thank Zac Cardo in advance of his management of this work together with Board member Adam Pisk. Both have spent many days planning and preparing and we are most grateful for their dedication.
I will be happy to discuss this work in more detail should any member desire more information.
Israel Shabbat – 3 May
The following Shabbat we mark Yom Ha’Atzmaut and 77 years of the State of Israel. Join us for special prayers for Israel and the IDF. Once again, this will be a very special celebration for the State of Israel.
Sir Asher Joel Oration – Tuesday 13 May, 6.30pm
Wayne Horowitz, Professor of Assyriology from the Hebrew University, will give the Sir Asher Joel Oration on Tuesday 13 May in the shul. Wayne will discuss documents written on clay in the cuneiform script of Ancient Mesopotamia. RSVP’s are essential. Please see the flyer in the E-bulletin for the email address.
Return to the UK
Caroline and I will be returning to London for a few weeks on Monday 28 April. You will all recall that I am required to work from there and be in attendance for my UK and EU Board meetings.
MOST importantly, we are accompanying Caroline’s mum, Alice Hubbers back to London after 3 months in Sydney. We return to Sydney on 30 May.
I will continue to prepare newsletters during my absence.
Shabbat Shalom
From The Rabbi
Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton
e: admin@greatsynagogue.org.au
DVAR TORAH – shEmini 5785
We can look back on a really beautiful Pesach, from start to finish. After the highlights of the first two sedarim and a glorious first morning at the Shule, we could also enjoy the outstanding choral service on the seventh night. I was particularly impressed by the solid attendances on the second morning and the last morning, even on a Monday and then in a public holiday weekend, not to mention the impressive attendance at 7am on Shabbat Erev Pesach.
I want to thank Rabbi Feldman, the Choir and its conductors, Rabbi Richter and our Gabbaim for their outstanding contributions. Everything we enjoy on Yom Tov is built on weeks of work by Larry, Ilana, Olga, Louise and Amy behind the scenes. Warm thanks also to the Women’s Auxiliary for setting out the Kiddushim each morning.
The next two Shabbatot are also significant. This coming week is ANZAC Shabbat, when we will hold our customary memorial service on the Mezzanine before Kiddush, and we remember grateful those who served, and especially those who died for Australia and its allies in all the wars we have fought. You will see that the Roll of Honour has now been placed below the Memorial Lamp fashioned by Rabbi Falk which hangs in the Mezzanine.
Before the Memorial Service we will be addressed by our member Garry Browne AM, who is Chair of the Australian War Memorial ANZAC Foundation. The Shabbat after that is Israel Shabbat, when we will celebrate seventy-seven years of the State of Israel.
According to the Torah there are three animals that chew the cud but do not have a cloven hoof: the camel, the hare and the hyrax. (The hyrax is a mammal that lives in rocky areas in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East). Apparently there are more such animals, but they live in South America, so there was no purpose in the Torah mentioning them to the Israelites. In any case, when these animals are mentioned something strange happens grammatically. We are told the foot of the camel is not split, the hyrax will not divide its foot, and the hare did not divide its foot. For some reason, the Torah used the present tense, the future tense and the past tense.
Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the Mussar Movement in the nineteenth century which aimed to improve ethical conduct, suggested an explanation. These three animals are declared impure as a result of their uncloven feet. They are deemed problematic, they are stigmatised and excluded.
When we come to consider how we treat a person, and whether they deserve to be excluded from the community, we must be careful and circumspect. Have to examine not just what they are doing now, their present behaviour, but also what they have done in the past and what they could do, or are likely to do, in the future. A balanced analysis of those three elements will lead us to the correct decision.
As time goes on, the present and even the future become the past, and therefore there can be a continual reassessment, but any consideration has to include those three aspects of time: what was, what is, and what could be.
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