NAJEX commemorates Remembrance Day

In his last Sydney Jewish Remembrance Day service as president of the NSW Association of Jewish Service and Ex-Service Men and Women (NAJEX), Roger Selby reflected upon why the annual service still resonates so strongly.

He told the 250-strong audience in Woollahra last Sunday that WWI’s “carnage and scale of death had been previously inconceivable, and no-one was left untouched”.

“I still recall my grandmother tearfully telling me that in WWI, she’d lost every male friend she’d had,” he said.

Selby reserved special thanks for the captains from all Sydney Jewish day schools, the Third Rose Bay Judean Scouts, the Israeli Scouts, Mount Sinai College choir members, and other young people, saying “this event would be much the poorer without your participation”.

NSW Minister for Local Government Ron Hoenig presented the 2025 NAJEX Youth Leadership Awards during the service.

The recipients were Ella Bortz (Emanuel), Layla Vissel and Choni Kavka (Kesser Torah), Zara Duder-Forrai (Masada), Sophia Grynberg (Moriah), and Mika Hammerman (Mount Sinai).

Moriah vice captain Joseph Shteinman spoke about the bravery and leadership of Jewish Digger and Distinguished Service Order recipient, Major General Paul Cullen, during the Second World War in North Africa, Crete, and Kokoda.

The service included wreath laying, memorial candle lighting, a reflection by Chaplain Rabbi Dr Dovid Slavin on the importance of active remembrance, and a moving address by Queen Dunbar, president of the Families of Veterans Guild.

Dunbar urged those who, like her, have lost a loved one who served in the armed forces, to remember that “wherever you find yourself on your journey, keep looking ahead, and know that even in the midst of pain, there is beauty, grace, and purpose”.