Celebrating a Chabad centenary

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A CELEBRATION of Australia’s first Chabad Chassids took place last weekend, with the occasion marked by the dedication of a new Torah.

The celebration marked the centenary since the first members of the Feiglin family arrived in Australia, settling in Shepparton.

Commissioned by Shmuel Feiglin, the youngest member of the family, his son Mordechai and their families, the day held much significance for the group.

“It’s not only a siyum for my family,” Mordechai told The AJN. “It also represents the commemoration of the 100th year since the first Chabad families arrived and settled in Australia. It should be noted that we are one of only a few countries or cities in the world that can trace our Chabad activities over a century,” he explained.

The 100 years do not mark the start of the official Chabad Lubavitch movement in Australia when the first shluchim were sent by the then Lubavitcher Rebbe Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson, but the arrival of the first Jews who followed the Chabad traditions.

With them came the first Chabad mikvah, shul, and later trained shochets (slaughterers), who also taught the local Jewish children. “I think Melbourne, together with Shepparton, could quite possibly, in the whole world, be the only community that has a straight line of continuity for 100 years,” Mordechai said.

Following the siyum and procession, a festive meal was held, with a screening of footage from Chabad’s early days in Australia.

Mordechai said much of the archival footage was recorded by his father, who bought his first video camera in the early 1950s and began documenting many of the activities taking place, including early Chabad camps in Shepparton, the original Feiglin homestead and shul, and the early days of the current Yeshivah Centre on Hotham Street.

“That footage is the only footage we are aware of that still exists today,” he said.

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DALIA SABLE