A triumphant Torah march
ALMOST two years after a vicious anti-Semitic attack in Bondi a celebration with a Torah has been held at the site of the attack.
ALMOST two years after a vicious anti-Semitic attack in Bondi a celebration with a Torah has been held at the site of the attack.
Rabbi Ritchie Moss heard former Jewish National Fund NSW shaliach Shlomo Ben-Haiem, who was one of the people attacked, speak at his farewell, and the rabbi was dismayed to hear of the “bitter taste” Ben-Haiem was left with in Australia.
“I felt that this was a terrible thing … for him to be leaving Sydney with such a feeling,” Moss told The AJN.
“I felt we [couldn’t] let that happen … We needed to make a tikkun, a correction. To fix the wrong that was done and to redeem our community, and to redeem Bondi, and to redeem Glenayr Avenue.”
In this climate, on Saturday, July 4, Moss decided to make a small gesture in his shul, where Ben-Haiem was reading from the Torah on the final Shabbat before he left Sydney.
“I asked the community to please stand up, and I said that we’re going to go right now on a march [with the Torah], a victory march, down Glenayr Avenue – the very place where the attack happened,” Rabbi Moss said.
“We were singing Am Yisrael Chai, and upbeat Jewish songs … Everyone in the shul felt really uplifted and proud. It was a moving thing for everyone there,” he recalled.
Shlomo Behar and Zeev Aronstam, who were also injured in the attack in October 2013, were present on the day as well.
“[Ben-Haiem] thanked me and he said that every time he thinks of it he tears up,” Rabbi Moss said.
PHOEBE ROTH
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