What’s in a name?

BARRISTERS presented evidence in the Supreme Court of Victoria this week during a civil trial over the naming rights of Melbourne’s Sassoon Yehuda Sephardi synagogue.

The trial was called to settle a dispute between the Sephardi Association and the estate of the late Albert Sassoon Yehuda, one of driving forces behind the shul’s foundation.

Legal action was launched last year by the estate, which claimed Yehuda was entitled to naming rights to the centre in perpetuity, based on donations from the founder and later his estate.

The centre was recently renamed the “Lyndi and Rodney Adler Sephardi Centre”, after the Adlers were approached for a donation.

A sum of $150,000 was donated by the Sydney-based couple in exchange for naming rights to the centre, with the synagogue itself continuing to be known as Sassoon Yehuda.

The action was brought by solicitor Dan Horesh, Yehuda’s nephew, and the estate’s executor, who in May this year failed in his bid for an injunction against a sign displaying the new name.

A loan for an undisclosed amount was forgiven by the estate due to the centre’s financial difficulties, and the centre is currently carrying another loan from the estate.

Early this week, in the opening phase of the trial before Justice Peter Almond, Yehuda estate’s barrister, David Sharp, and barristers for the Sephardi Association, Henry Aizen and Daniel Aghion, presented documents.

The lawsuit by the estate named the Sephardi Association, its former president Donald Lelah and its former vice-president Danny Jaffe, as respondents.

PETER KOHN