Huge crowd honours shule’s history
On the Sunday morning of the event, more than 100 people gathered in the shule’s forecourt for the dedication ceremony of two memorial benches.
More than 60 people from across Australia travelled all the way to Broken Hill – located 1140km west of Sydney – to participate in a special event from August 11-13 at the outback mining town’s historic synagogue.
The shule was established in 1910, but closed as a synagogue in 1960 and has only hosted a handful of Shabbat services since, for special occasions.
It is now a museum and the office of the Broken Hill Historical Society.
So it was a sight to behold when the shule was packed on both Friday night and Saturday morning, for Shabbat services on that weekend, as part of a major event organised by Professor Leon Mann, who was born in Broken Hill.
He had long wanted to recognise the shule’s five religious leaders and key figures who worked to protect its heritage, in the form of memorial benches.
That idea was supported by the Australian Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) and came to fruition.
On the Sunday morning of the event, more than 100 people gathered in the shule’s forecourt for the dedication ceremony of two memorial benches.
One was installed to honour Reverend Abraham and Mrs Franceska Berman – the synagogue’s last full-time rabbi and rebbetzin – and the other to honour Alwyn Edelman, a former trustee of the synagogue and Harold Griff, a former Broken Hill Historical Society president.
Special guests included NSW Minister for Local Government Ron Hoenig, Professor Emerita Suzanne Rutland and the museum’s coordinator, Margaret Price.
Dr Danny Mann-Segal from Melbourne, whose father was born in Broken Hill, recited a prayer and his wife, Leeba, blew the shofar, before the Broken Hill Community Voices choir sang the Australian and Israeli national anthems.
Visiting volunteers from Chabad of Rural and Regional Australia (RARA), Rabbis Mendel Shmotkin and Mendel Lipskier, were thrilled to witness many people laying tefillin, including a 77-year-old Jewish man for the first time.
That afternoon, the festivities continued with a reception hosted by Broken Hill mayor Tom Kennedy and a moving consecration at Broken Hill Cemetery’s small Jewish section, of the headstone of Simcha Shnukal (1876-1931), in the presence of his granddaughter Anna.
Attendees Maurie and Vera Hasen brought nameplates to place on the 11 unmarked Jewish graves there.
In a written piece on the AJHS’s website published last week, that summed up each day of this remarkable event, its president, Peter Philippsohn, concluded by pondering how Broken Hill “has the most remote synagogue-museum in the world – however, the synagogue and the Jewish community established [there] in the 1880s, are not forgotten”.
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