New scroll for Masorti shule’s milestone
Rabbi Sadoff described the 25th anniversary event as "a shehecheyanu moment".
Kehilat Nitzan, Melbourne’s Masorti congregation, has celebrated a quarter century by commissioning a new Sefer Torah, with a visiting sofer inscribing the first letters in front of a capacity crowd of the shule’s members and well wishers.
Flanked by donors of the first letters, Rabbi Gustavo Suraszki, an Israeli sofer, painstakingly inscribed them – his calligraphy beamed onto large screens, where it could be followed by the audience.
Speaking to The AJN, Rabbi Suraszki, a Masorti rabbi from Ashkelon, and a longtime friend of Kehilat Nitzan’s Rabbi Yonatan Sadoff from his years heading a congregation in nearby Omer, noted that Nitzan’s Sefer Torah – commissioned under the shule’s Chai Torah campaign – will be the 18th he has inscribed.
The sofer said his work reflects “kavanah – the holiness of the text, patience, technical skills and appreciating the process”. He said Torah scribes are rigorous about the process and have a reasonable idea of how much inscription they can achieve in a day, a week and a month, using the halachic artisanal inks and parchment – and sewing materials.
The December 1 celebration featured video greetings from former Nitzan rabbis Ehud Bandel in Israel and Adam Stein and his family in Canada, and from Rabbi Mauricio Balter, executive director of Israel-based global roof body, Masorti Olami.
The Nitzanim singers and Friday night band, led by Moshe Perl, joined Sydney Rabbi and Chazan George Mordecai and Yuval Ashkar, for a musical feast.
Founding president John Rosenberg traced the shule’s history. Keen to develop a traditional, yet non-Orthodox worship experience in Melbourne, Rosenberg was encouraged by the beginnings of a Masorti congregation in Sydney.
He penned an article in The AJN in 1998, inviting interest in establishing a Melbourne counterpart. The response was positive and first services were held in March 1999 at Kadimah. The shule later moved to B’nai B’rith House, before relocating to its purpose-designed synagogue in 2013.
Thanking the many volunteers, current president Sue Zyngier reflected, “Kehilat Nitzan and Masorti Judaism are all about relationships – connecting to God, connecting our members” through services, shiurim and many other activities.
Rabbi Sadoff described the 25th anniversary event as “a shehecheyanu moment”. Noting the shule’s logo is a flower bud (nitzan), he compared the blank parchment of a Sefer Torah before it is inscribed to a young child before it has begun learning, “a canvas that’s still blank, a parchment that still has its first letter to be written”.
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