Fall 5769/2008 a Publication of the Montreal Torah Center
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FALL 5769/2008 A PUBLICATION OF THE MONTREAL TORAH CENTER BAIS MENACHEM CHABAD LUBAVITCH JOANNE AND JONATHAN GURMAN COMMUNITY CENTER • LOU ADLER SHUL BAIS MENACHEM CHABAD LUBAVITCH Gleanings From the Rebbe’s wisdom The Harder Easier Path There are two paths you could take: An easier path or a harder one. Knowing that G-d is everything, you may wish to reject all that the ‘world’ stands for. Since everything is emptiness and vanities, you may deny yourself even necessities, living far and removed from the banalities of mankind, engaging only in the truths of the spirit, running from the confines of physical, mundane life. This is the easier path. On the other hand, knowing than within each thing G-d can be found, you may be inspired to refine and elevate our world, struggling with all its facets to find their true purpose, seizing every opportunity to coax out a little more of the world’s inherent good, living a spiritual life by using physical things in an enlightened way. Both paths are true paths, and great sages have tread them both. But the second, more difficult one, is the one we will all have the most benefit from, especially today. Volume 13 Number 1 MONTREAL TORAH CENTER BAIS MENACHEM CHABAD LUBAVITCH Joanne and Jonathan Gurman Community Center • Lou Adler Shul INDEX Rabbi Moishe New Rabbi Itchy Treitel Nechama New Editorial . .3 Mazeltovs . .20 Pre-School & Day Camp Director Sponsors of the Day . .6 Sympathies . .21 Zeldie Treitel Program Director Youth Directors . .8 MTC Moments . .22 Rabbi Zalman Kaplan Adult Education Director Courses Schedule . .9 The Quiet Flame . .24 Velvel Minkowitz Shabbat & Holiday Programs iVolunteer . .29 Administrator for Kids . .10 Shimi & Leah Uhlman Day Camp . .30 Sunday Funday . .11 Youth Directors Roving Rabbis . .32 Joannie Tansky Fall & Winter Prayer-Schedule . .11 Co-ordinator Yom Kippur Anthology . .35 To Ignite the Soul . .12 Sterna Hagege Pre-School . .38 Accounting Kids in Action . .15 My Bubby . .40 Publication Mail Agreement No. #40030976 MTC Draw 2008 . .16 Questions or return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Around our Table . .42 The Montreal Torah Center, 28 Cleve Road, Hampstead PQ H3X 1A6 A Torah’s Journey . .18 Tel. 514-739-0770 • Fax 514-739-5925 Kabbalah . .44 Email: [email protected] • www.themtc.com Pizza-in-the-Sukkah . .19 Our thanks and appreciation to Ponctuation Grafix 2 Editorial have been in mourning. I lost my family rabbi. Danby saw Groner’s greatest achievement in I Melbourne’s Yeshiva Centre and the schools he Dear friend, I want to share with him with headed; Yeshiva College and Beth Rivkah Ladies you. I want you to get a sense of him. I want College, “two of the most highly regarded Jewish you to be touched by this extraordinary man. schools in Australia or anywhere,” he said. In this way, I hope to give him a gift that I know he would cherish - that you be inspired “His towering achievements and charismatic and warmed by his story. presence at all communal levels played a major role in transforming Australian Jewry into one of the finest communities in the Diaspora,” added Leibler. “The extraordinary expansion of Chabad- In the days following the passing of Rabbi Lubavitch educational institutions positively influ- Yitzchok Dovid Groner, an avalanche of articles enced the growth of Torah education and day and personal testimonials flooded the media in schools throughout the entire Jewish community.” Australia and Jewish news agencies worldwide. What follows is a sampling. Born on April 18, 1925, Groner was the fifth of eight children born to his parents, who immigrated “History will record that From chabad.org by Dovid Zakilkowski to the United States from what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. Rabbi Yitzchok Groner was …Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, a passionate educator who devoted more than fifty years of his With a lineage tracing back to the first Chabad life to Australian Jewry, passed away at eighty- Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Groner beyond a doubt, the greatest three-years-old on July 7, 2008. vividly recalled the New York arrival of the sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of Australian Jewish leader A man whom politicians and Jewish communi- righteous memory, from war-torn Europe in 1941. ty officials credited with shepherding a Jewish In a rare newspaper interview shortly before his population whose numbers swelled after World eightieth birthday, Groner described the Chasidic of the past century.” War II, Groner originally intended his 1958 move to gathering that took place four days later at the the continent from New York to be temporary. Rebbe’s hotel over the holiday of Purim: Sent at the behest of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of righteous memory for at “Hundreds and hundreds of people came from least three years, Groner ended up calling all walks of life because they wanted to hear Melbourne home for five decades. In that time, what’s going on in Europe,” he told Dan Goldberg he built a school system serving over fifteen of the Australian Jewish News. “I remember hundred students. how the Rebbe said ‘gut yom tov,’ a traditional celebratory greeting. “Australian Jewry has lost one of its noblest personalities,” said Isi Leibler, who led the Executive “And then he said, ‘How can I say gut yom tov Council of Australian Jewry for close to twenty when my brethren are being burnt?’ ” continued years. “History will record that Rabbi Yitzchok Groner, pointing out that while the Rebbe experi- Groner was beyond a doubt, the greatest enced the greatest joy at coming out of Europe Australian Jewish leader of the past century.” alive, his heart was still with the Jews suffering there. “That talk killed me.” “Rabbi Groner’s work is shown most of all by the institutions he has fostered,” echoed Michael As a student, Groner enrolled in the Tomchei Danby, a member of the Australian House of Tmimim Lubavitch yeshiva that was established Representatives. “When he arrived in Melbourne, soon after the Rebbe’s arrival. Though he kept he saw a community increasing in size due to strictly to the school’s learning schedule, he Publication Mail Agreement post-war immigration, and he gave very strong also immersed himself in the time-consuming No. #40030976 Questions or return undeliverable Canadian support to Jewish education in order that the outreach activities headed by the Rebbe’s son-in- addresses to: The Montreal Torah Center community would be able to survive in a secular law and future successor, Rabbi Menachem 28 Cleve Road, Hampstead PQ H3X 1A6 society such as Australia.” Mendel Schneerson. Tel. 514-739-0770 Fax 514-739-5925 Email: [email protected] 3 Under the future Rebbe’s guidance, carried on willingly, without compulsion and atheist who harbored no sympathy for Groner helped organize a grand children’s without considering it as penal servitude religion. On the contrary, he thought that parade down Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway, or deportation.” organized religion was the bane of society, then the center of a sprawling secular Jewish and that everyone would be better off if community. With hundreds of children When the Groners arrived, the Melbourne children went only to public schools. As far singing Jewish songs as they marched community was debating if it should open a as Edwards was concerned, the yeshiva was down one of the city’s landmark boulevards, Jewish day school. Groner recalled that at the nothing more than a client, and a particular- residents would look back at the parade as time, he viewed the school as “the only ly bad client at that. If the school couldn’t a quintessential moment of Jewish pride means by which the Jewish community will pay, it would face the same fate as any other serving as a catalyst for similar events world- remain Jewish.” business in default. wide in the decades to come. After about a minute, Groner – a very big After yeshiva, Groner began traveling to man – got up to address Edwards, something rural communities to assist in the building of the businessmen at the table were unable, or Jewish educational institutions. In 1947 at unwilling, to do. the age of twenty-two, the sixth Rebbe sent him and his newly married wife Devorah on “Hello,” he said. “Your name is John. a mission to Australia and New Zealand. My name is Isaac. How do you do?” With that, The trip to Melbourne, which took fifty-five Groner placed his hands on Edwards’ shoulders. hours, was the Groners’ first connection to “I don’t think you understand what we do a community that would end up adoring here,” he said. “We make mentschen. Do you their fearless and unabashed dedication to know what a mentsch is? A mentsch is a Jewish activism and their boundless love for person who has respect for all other human every Jew. beings. A mentsch is a person who cares about others. A mensch is a person who is “I came in there and saw a hundred a good civic citizen. Australia needs people [in the small synagogue],” Groner said mentschen, and we produce them.” of his first visit to the city. “I went to the corner and I started to cry. The next day Groner and the other officials walked out I wrote a letter to the Rebbe, ‘You should know of that meeting with a compromise deal. there’s Judaism here.’ I was so impressed.” Today, a chain of similar schools operates An anecdote related at the dinner honor- across Australia. Over the years, they have He later visited Australia again in 1953, ing his eightieth birthday captured Groner’s trained a whole generation of Orthodox this time as emissary of the seventh Rebbe.