Shadow minister reconnects with roots
AS he prepares to take his seat on the NSW opposition’s front bench, newly elected Heffron MP Ron Hoenig has opened up to The AJN on how he reconnected with Judaism.
AS he prepares to take his seat on the NSW opposition’s front bench, newly elected Heffron MP Ron Hoenig has opened up to The AJN on how he reconnected with Judaism.
Hoenig was announced as the new shadow minister for energy and ports in a shadow cabinet reshuffle last week, which also saw former AJN journalist Walt Secord promoted to the shadow ministry.
Earlier this week, Hoenig received an invitation to be called up to the Torah at Maroubra shul and attend a kiddush next month in honour of his election to State Parliament.
Hoenig attends Maroubra Synagogue regularly and keeps a kosher home. But he told The AJN this was not always the case. “I was probably like a lot of survivors’ children. Judaism didn’t play a part other than parents taking you to shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,” he said.
After his bar mitzvah, Hoenig only went to shul on the High Holy Days. “That was about the extent of it, you know when your parents compel you to go and then you reach the age that you no longer have to go.”
He would go on to marry a non-Jewish woman with whom he started a family. It was when his eldest son, now 22, was ready to start school that his journey back to Judaism began.
The Hoenigs consulted with the then principal of Daceyville Public School about education options. “She strongly suggested that we go talk to Harry Taibel at Mount Sinai,” Hoenig recalled. “So we actually sent Ben to Mount Sinai for a secular education rather than a religious one.”
Over the years, Ben formed a good relationship with Rabbi Chaim Perez and became “quite committed to Judaism at a very young age”.
“He wanted to go to shul regularly and he wanted to go on Saturday afternoons, they played indoor soccer in the shul hall then, and so I would take him,” Hoenig said.
“After a couple of weeks I picked up the Chumash and was sitting there reading the translation of the Torah portion and the commentary and in it I discovered the laws on which our current laws are based.
“You know the doctrine of independence, the separation of powers, the doctrine of corroboration, all contained in the Torah. And I started to think that ‘how could a human being three-and-a-half thousand years ago have the knowledge to write concepts on which our current laws now are based?’ How can an individual person do it without divine intervention?
“I started to get fascinated by it, I started reading some of the translations of some of the psalms and the Amidah in the siddur.”
Hoenig went on to kasher his home and nine years ago his sons converted to Judaism. “Since they were four years old they’ve had a Jewish education, so both of them spoke fluent Hebrew and both of them davven the Shabbos services [and] they were bar mitzvahed, so they’ve both had a Jewish education,” he said.
As well as keeping a kosher home and insisting his sons are home on Friday nights, Hoenig now regularly attends shul. “Even if I’m away interstate, for example in a capital city, if I’m there over Shabbos I’ll go to shul there, at least one service on Shabbos.”
GARETH NARUNSKY
Ron Hoenig (left) with Jewish House CEO Rabbi Mendel Kastel and fellow frontbencher Walt Secord.
comments