The Great Synagogue has been in the forefront of work within the Sydney Jewish community towards Reconciliation with Aboriginal and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people for over thirty years.
Rabbi Raymond Apple, Chief Minister of the Synagogue from 1973 to 2005 was an outspoken advocate of this work, even when it caused him some unpopularity in parts of the congregation. He was the first to incorporate a reference to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander in the Prayer for Australia recited each week in the Shabbat morning service and he participated in the Walk for Reconciliation over the Harbour Bridge in 2000. Rabbi Apple said “Jews have always believed that humans deserve justice, and this is a case where indigenous human beings have been denied justice. So we have a moral imperative to say what we believe and be seen to say it.”
In more recent years, the Synagogue has marked Reconciliation Week each year with a dedicated Shabbat service, when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags are displayed in the sanctuary. The Synagogue’s Prayer for Australia recited weekly contains an explicit reference to Elders of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples among the leaders of the nation, and prays for all Australians to live together with justice and equity.
In conjunction with the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies the Synagogue hosted a Friday night service and dinner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders on Friday Night Parashat Vayeitse 5780. That night Chief Minister Rabbi Benjamin Elton delivered this heartfelt sermon, which reflected the Synagogue’s part in the story of the colonisation of Australia and encapsulated The Great’s approach:
“Shabbat shalom and welcome.
I begin by making my own acknowledgement of the traditional owners of the land on which we gather, the Gadigal People of the Eora nation, and I pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging, and all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are here with us. The Jewish community is grateful for the safety we have found on this land and to the people who looked after it for thousands of years.
It is a great honour to host this evening for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I want to thank the Jewish Board of Deputies for bringing this event to The Great Synagogue and everyone who is attending. I hope you enjoy this very special synagogue and the atmosphere of Shabbat.
This evening is not an isolated event. There have been strong links between members of the Jewish and indigenous communities for many years. We will always be grateful to William Cooper, who protested Kristallnacht some eighty one years ago. We celebrate the role of Ron Castan and others in the Mabo case. Wonderful work is going on today through Jewish institutions around Australia building relationships and learning with and from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We will hear about some of that activity tonight. I think also there is a deep connection we share in our intense relationship with land, for Jews the Land of Israel, and for indigenous Australians, this land.
The basis of all good relationships is honesty, honesty to ourselves. I want to make an honest acknowledgement as the Rabbi of this Synagogue. We love this building. It has been the centre of Jewish worship in Sydney for over one hundred and forty years. It is saturated with prayers, memories, love, holiness, meaning. But as precious as it is to us, and I hope to all Australians Jewish and non-Jewish, indigenous and non-indigenous. It is also part of the legacy of colonisation. As I said at the beginning of these remarks, we meet on Gadigal land, which was never ceded, which was taken without any treaty or agreement, which was violently cleared of its aboriginal population. That process allowed this Synagogue to be built, and when it opened in 1878 displaced aboriginal people were still a familiar sight on the edges of areas of settlement. We too are part of that history of displacement.
I was struck over the past few days by a parallel to our attempts to deal with our past and our present and future. We were all shocked by the terrible attack in London last Friday, when a terrorist killed a man and woman in their twenties. The murderer was attending a conference on the rehabilitation of offenders, and one of those who attempted to protect the female victim and disarm the assailant was a man called John Ford. Normally Ford would be hailed as a hero, but in his case it is rather more complicated. He is also a convicted murderer, of a young woman, in fact he is still serving his sentence and was on day release. Ford’s actions last week were heroic, and probably saved lives. His actions fifteen years ago were wicked and cruel and took an innocent life. How do we view him? As a hero or a villain? As a man redeemed or simply a murderer?
Good deeds can and should follow bad deeds but they cannot expunge them. Work being done today is important and positive and we should celebrate it, but it cannot erase the harm that was done in the past, and the damage which is still felt today.
Given that reality what do we do now? Tomorrow morning synagogues will read a portion of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, which describes our forefather Jacob leaving the Land of Canaan, his native country, and going into exile. He settled down to sleep for the night and dreamed of a ladder, with its feet on the earth and its rungs reaching up to heaven. Angels were ascending and descending. In the vision, God stood by Jacob, and blessed him, telling him that his descendants would be spread out throughout the world in all directions, and then said:
וְנִבְרֲכוּ בְךָ כָּל־מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה וּבְזַרְעֶךָ
Through you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed
There are two ways to read that verse. Either, as I have just translated it, using the future tense, as a promise or assurance. ‘The families of the world will be blessed through you’. But in terms of Hebrew grammar it can also be read as an instruction: ‘let all the families of the world be blessed through you’. It is a charge: ‘make sure that wherever you go in the world, you bring blessing to the families you find’.
That is the Jewish mission, to be a source of blessing to whoever we encounter, whoever we live amongst and alongside. In this country, that is what we seek to do for Australians, and in this gathering this evening, we think most of indigenous Australians. All we can do, and therefore what we must do, is find ways to enhance to the relationships between our communities, and to make positive, practical, real and concrete contributions to the lives and experiences of indigenous Australians. Happily, that work goes on and grows stronger. Only last month I attended a meeting as a member of the Council of Mandelbaum House, the Jewish residential college of the University of Sydney, and it was announced that with the help of Prof Jackson Pulver, we will now be able to offer indigenous scholarships, starting very soon.
Because far more important than words, are actions. They are what matter. We do not bring blessing by talking, but by doing, and tonight can be an opportunity not only to enjoy each other’s company, to engage with each other’s cultures, but also to recommit to working together for the betterment of Australia and all Australians.”