3^rd September 2013
As we approach the Yamim Noraim, our time of reflec­tion and renewal, we begin to assess the events of the past year and to express our hopes for the year ahead.
We live in a world of con­tra­dic­tions. Science and tech­no­logy hold out the tan­tal­ising prospect of curing illnesses, ending hunger and poverty, and dimin­ish­ing many of the other tra­di­tion­al causes of conflict. Yet strife and bloodshed are every­where. Not since the first half of the twentieth century have the world’s horizons been darkened so ominously by the pro­lif­er­a­tion of hatred and war.
Dictators and despots once again issue blood-curdling calls for the destruc­tion of Jewish life, as though Israel and the Jewish people are somehow to blame for the internal carnage in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in the region.
In Hungary and Greece, and other parts of Europe, a reversion to acts of violence against Jews and public expres­sions of anti-Semitism are becoming more frequent and are even tolerated. In Poland, the surviving Jewish community is facing attacks on its religious freedoms in the form of a ban on kosher slaughter.
Even in peaceful Australia, anti-Semitic incidents are reported daily and the threat to our communal insti­tu­tions remains credible and per­sist­ent. Against this backdrop, the old bipar­tis­an consensus in support of Israel has started to break down.
While these chal­lenges must not be minimised, we express our hope for a better year to come. We are a hopeful people. And so, we express our deep and solemn prayer that the coming year brings a com­pre­hens­ive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestini­ans, even while the Palestini­ans and Israel’s Arab neigh­bours are unable to make peace within and among them­selves.
We hope that a resurgent anti-Semitism in Europe is con­fron­ted and van­quished. We hope that blow by blow, the shameful movement to demonise and boycott Israel is dis­cred­ited and defeated. We hope that this will be a year without a new Lebanon war, without a new Burgas bus bombing, without a new Toulouse Jewish school massacre.
But to hope is not enough. We are a people defined by our will­ing­ness to act, by our ability to join together and overcome. In this year, we as a community have acted and achieved a great deal.
We joined with our col­leagues from around the world at the World Jewish Congress plenary in Budapest to show our resolve to stand up to antisemitism in the places where it is most pervasive.
We have worked tire­lessly with our inter­na­tion­al friends to ensure that Jewish com­munit­ies around the world are able to live as Jews and practise the ancient rites of cir­cum­cision and kashrut.
We ensured that while some countries seek to revise or even glorify their Nazi pasts, in Australia, we continue to revere those who stood against Nazism. Raoul Wal­len­berg is now an honorary Aus­trali­an citizen and the London Declar­a­tion on Combating Anti-Semitism has been signed by a higher pro­por­tion of Members of Par­lia­ment in Australia than anywhere else in the world.
We have ensured that now every Aus­trali­an child will learn about the Holocaust and its lessons for humanity and under­stand the true nature of anti-Semitism as part of the national cur­riculum.
We have stood up to the insti­tu­tion­al anti-Israel bias in numerous main­stream media sources in this country and caused them to modify their behaviour
And we have ensured that communal security is an election issue and both parties have pledged to increase funding to secure our schools.
As we reflect on these and other achieve­ments and the great chal­lenges that face us ahead, we thank you, members of our superb community, for your passion, ded­ic­a­tion and support and urge you to stand with us again in the coming year and help us to represent the interests of the Jewish people in this country and through­out the world.
On behalf of all of us at the ECAJ, we extend best wishes to each and every person in our community for a Shana Tova Umetuka K’tiva v’Chatima Tova, a year of health, happiness, prosper­ity and peace.
Contact:
Peter Wertheim AM | Executive Director
phone: 02 8353 8500 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 5888
e: [email protected]