Little is enough...
21/01/21 13:32:25
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
Just last week, I was struck by the words of an American Rabbi being interviewed. They caught my attention because of their simplicity and profundity. They are the words of Rabbi Steve Leder of LA in which he summed up three primary lessons to be learned from the covid crisis. In my words and re-collection they are:
1. Okay is great
2. Little is enough
3. Love is limitless
If I had to choose one Jewish saying which...Read more...
A Chanukah Light
17/12/20 13:01:44
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
Hot off the Internet – some Chanukah sparklers entitled “Top Reasons to Like Chanukah”.
1. No roof damage from reindeer
Read more...
Orthodox Judaism Must Embrace Change - or Wither
10/12/20 09:18:00
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
I am on leave this week but sharing with you an article I wrote several months ago. I did provide an abbreviated version of it in a previous newsletter. It's a reflection on how the times are a changing and challenging Orthodoxy especially in an online and Covid (and post-Covid) era. It's particularly relevant at Chanukah time which is about how Judaism responded to a...Read more...
The Sound of Silence
02/12/20 09:24:29
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
We had a power outage at our house this morning and my PC, laptop, TV, DVD, iPad, and my new surround sound music system were all shut down. Then I discovered that my mobile phone battery was dead and to top it off it was raining outside, so I couldn’t play golf. I went into the kitchen to make coffee and then I remembered that this also needs power, so I sat and talked...Read more...
Yavis and Zavis
25/11/20 09:41:43
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
One of the cruellest elements of the Corona virus has been its effects on the most vulnerable. Like the ancient Amalekite enemy of the Jews, in the first instance, it attacks the elderly and the infirm. In Australia, the deaths of so many older people from the virus has left a trail of sorrow and sadness. It has also highlighted the...Read more...
Tribute to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks - Australia 11/11/20
19/11/20 13:50:44
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
‘When a righteous person, a good person, a צדיק departs from a place, the place is impoverished. It loses something of its spark, its grace.’ (Midrash)
And when Rabbi Jonathan left our world on...Read more...
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks - A Tribute
11/11/20 10:53:34
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
On Sunday morning, I woke to the news that Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has passed away. It was a new day, but the morning had lost its charm. The aching beauty of a perfect Melbourne morning competed with the painful ache of Judaism’s loss; to adapt King David’s evocative words, the beauty of Israel was diminished with the fall of this mighty...Read more...
The Cold Winds of Polarisation
05/11/20 14:29:45
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
In 1973 at the height of the Yom Kippur War, the celebrated singer Leonard Cohen, performed in Israel as an act of solidarity and support. One of the songs he presented was “There is a War”, an anthem for the perennial conflict that grips humanity, an elegy for the “real war” that takes place within us...Read more...
Living with the Enemy
29/10/20 14:46:39
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
Who would have thought that going out for coffee with a couple of friends could be so liberating and energising? Who would have imagined that being able to have Shabbat dinner with one of your kids or being able to daven / pray indoors with just a minyan could be so deeply...Read more...
The Journey Continues
22/10/20 16:57:12
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
This week’s Parasha may be Noach but I’m looking forward to Lech Lecha, next week’s Torah reading about the call to Abraham. I’m focusing on Lech Lecha because it’s particularly resonant for me as I announce my resignation from Caulfield Shule as its Senior Rabbi, a position I have held for...Read more...
Between Hope and Despair
15/10/20 14:31:04
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
Life under lockdown often feels like a struggle between hope and despair – the numbers go up and down; the promises of freedom and opening of boundaries and then there’s yet another cluster in one of our favourite Malvern Malls. A glimmer of hopefulness that we’ll have that family Shabbat meal (and who knows maybe even a hug?). A...Read more...
The Road Best Travelled
08/10/20 14:25:26
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
The celebrated American poet laureate, Robert Frost, wrote famously about “the road not taken”. Its central theme is about the two roads a hiker comes across in the forest:
“Two roads diverged in a...Read more...
The Real Festival of Words (why words matters now more than ever...)
01/10/20 12:10:18
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
We may think of Pesach as the festival of words; its very name suggestive of a speaking mouth -Peh (mouth) Sach (that speaks).We may think of it as the holiday about a story - the exodus - the night that tells of the great tale of liberation.
It’s however Sukkot that should claim the rights to the story, challenge the monopoly on words. Sukkot, after all, is about the story of not just a week of liberation, but a 40-year...Read more...
Teach me how to Fail - Yom Kippur Drasha 5781/2020
24/09/20 11:48:31
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
Rabbi Ralph Genende OAM
The people of Israel have messed up awfully. Not long after hearing the 10 Commandments, they have built an exotic golden calf, an alluring idol and are dancing around it with promiscuous abandon. Dismissed by God, Moshe is coming down the mountain with the Tablets bearing the Big Ten. When he sees the awful scene he drops and shatters them.
Now it’s 40 days...Read more...
It's One Strange Strange Rosh Hashana!
17/09/20 12:30:22
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
It’s got to be the strangest Rosh Hashana you will ever experience – locked out of shule, locked-down at home. No shofar to blast you out of your sleep, no chazan and choir to get you out of your seat, no rabbi to get you onto your feet and no crowds of family and friends to greet and meet...
Read more...
A Whiff of Memory
10/09/20 14:06:31
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
At the beginning of his classic novel, East of Eden, John Steinbeck writes of memory: "I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers... what trees and seasons smelled like, how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odours is very rich”.
Read more...
Words, Words, Words
03/09/20 09:55:02
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
Everyday we are assailed by words from the moment we wake till we lie down at night. We all use about 20,000 words a day (and despite the myth, women don’t actually use more words then men).
I love watching my...Read more...
The Case of the Stolen Shofar?
27/08/20 12:03:25
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
For my piece this week, I’m reprinting the article I wrote a few years ago. Heard it before? Well, it’s like the shofar itself, hopefully worth hearing once more!
The Case of the...Read more...
Band of Brothers
20/08/20 15:50:14
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
It’s a stellar speech, a powerful presentation by an actor at the peak of his performance. The words are strong and inspiring, the sentiment is stirring and enduring. It may be jingoistic, but it’s also jarringly relevant, and carries a message for our time and from our Parasha or Torah reading...Read more...
The Waiting Game
13/08/20 14:25:38
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
One of the messages doing the rounds now is that it’s all a waiting game. Waiting for the lockdown to end, waiting for a vaccine, a treatment. Waiting for the shule to open, life to return to some semblance of normality... It’s like we’re all in a waiting room; as I’m reminded when I zoom into a session and am told...Read more...
Patience, plodding, perseverance...
06/08/20 17:19:28
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
There’s an eerie silence shrouding our cold Melbourne nights and early mornings. I never realized just how conscious I am of the constant buzz of traffic on my busy corner. Now I miss the sound of the fretful traffic, voices from the street. This lockdown is different from our first one. It’s more worrying; the number of Covid cases is...Read more...
"FROM SUPERVISION TO SUPER VISION"
30/07/20 12:13:13
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
It was a time of deep darkness and anxiety. Uncertainty and unpredictability stalked the future. It was, to adapt Dickens, the worst of times for the Jewish people. It was the year 70CE. The Temple was smouldering, Jerusalem was lost, Jewish sovereignty ravaged, Jewish survival in the balance.
Into this bleak landscape, steps Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, student of the great Hilel, brilliant scholar and leader in Jerusalem. He quits...Read more...
Endurance
23/07/20 14:18:43
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
There’s a different mood this time round. The first lockdown took us by surprise. It was a shockdown, filled with fear, uncertainty and deep apprehension. We couldn’t quite believe what had hit us; we struggled with it as one struggles with a sudden loss: a mixture of denial, defiance, sorrow, panic and pathos. This time, this lockdown, feels more...Read more...
If not now, when?
09/07/20 13:44:19
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
Carpe diem may be a Latin phrase but it has its Hebrew equivalent. It’s called ‘Im Lo Achshav Aymatai’; If not now, when? It comes from Hillel’s famous aphorism in Ethics of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot 14). It’s about seizing the moment, recognizing an opportunity when it comes your way. It has a sense of urgency in that this instance may never come your way again.
And it this sentiment that motivated Roy and Belinda Smith when...Read more...
How the Shule closed and I "discovered" Shabbat
25/06/20 16:45:00
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
Some three months ago, the Board of our Shule decided to close the Shule due to the onset of the Coronavirus. It felt like a body-blow. I was shattered; not only were the minyanim, the daily tefillot and especially the Shabbat services part of the very fabric of my being, but the services were what knitted us together as a community. How would the...Read more...
‘Why’ and ‘Why not’
18/06/20 13:26:51
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
George Bernard Shaw put it well: “Some people see things as they are and ask “Why”. Others dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’
These are telling words for a Corona age; they are also profound words...Read more...
Hope and Humility
11/06/20 12:41:09
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
Two words have echoed strongly in my mind during this strange season we’re living through. They’re both “h” words, the one is hope, the other is humility.
There are so many hurting in our own community from the loss of jobs, security...Read more...
I can breathe
04/06/20 18:48:06
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
USA’s Kareem Adbul-Jabbar is considered one of the greatest players ever to play in the NBA. In the wake of the protests and riots unfolding in the USA, he asked a cogent question: “What was your first reaction when you saw the video of the white cop kneeling on George Floyd’s neck while Floyd croaked, “I can’t breathe”?
If you’re white, you probably muttered a horrified,...Read more...
Take some nice Cheese Cake or ten of these tablets...
28/05/20 12:22:47
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
If you were offered a freshly baked, deliciously alluring slice of cheesecake or taking ten tablets which you are told will keep you in good health which would you choose?
I suspect that if we were asked the question in public, most of us would give the noble answer -the tablets of course. In reality I think most of us would go for the cheesecake. After all, it’s real, it’s here right now and it’s simply tantalising. We may well...Read more...
It’s a Strange, Strange World.....
21/05/20 08:33:44
Author | |
Date Added | |
Automatically create summary | |
Summary |
In 1968 the South African folk group, Four Jacks and a Jill, composed a hit song called Master Jack. The key lyrics of the song are “It's a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack. "You taught me all I know, and I'll never look back. It's a very strange world and I...Read more...
Thu, 21 January 2021
8 Shevat 5781
Due to COVID-19 rules, all service attendees must be registered. Weekday registrations on arrival. For Shabbat services, book online via the link on the left and in the weekly email updates. Number limits apply. Check emails for times.
Friday Night
Arcare : 3:30p |
Mincha & Kabbalat Shabbat : 6:30p |
Candle Lighting : 8:23p |
Shabbat Day
Shacharit : 9:15a |
Kids Club : 10:30a |
Mincha : 8:15p |
Shabbat Ends : 9:20p |
This week's Torah portion is Parshat Bo
Shabbat, Jan 23 |
Candle Lighting
Friday, Jan 22, 8:23p |
Regular Shacharit Services
Monday - Friday:
7.00am & 8.00am
Sunday & Public Holidays:
8.30am
Rosh Chodesh & Fast Days: 6.30am & 8.00am
Shabbat Main Shule:
see weekly email for times
Shabbat Or Chadash: see weekly email for times
Regular Mincha/Ma'ariv Services
Sunday - Thursday:
7.00pm
Shabbat:
see weekly email for times