Israeli chief rabbi’s 72-hour visit

Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi, Yona Metzger, made a lightning 72-hour visit to Australia this week as a guest of Sydney’s Yeshiva Centre.

Arriving on Monday morning, he delivered the keynote address to more than 1000 people at a gala fundraiser on Monday night to mark the 50th anniversary of the Yeshiva Centre, and the 20th anniversary of its rabbinical college.

Among the speakers was Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia president Rabbi Mordechai Gutnick, who was one of the first students of the Yeshiva, and whose father, the late Rabbi Chaim Gutnick, was one of its founders.

Hosted by Yeshiva’s life governor, Meriton chief Harry Triguboff, the evening paid tribute to the work of Yeshiva’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Pinchus Feldman, who was sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to Sydney in 1968.

Describing Triguboff as “my dear friend and mentor”, Rabbi Feldman said: “A true friend is somebody who sticks together through thick and thin” — one of many references throughout the evening to the Yeshiva crisis in 2003 when a Supreme Court of NSW judge ruled in favour of Melbourne’s Rabbi Joseph Gutnick, whose sister Pnina is married to Rabbi Feldman, and ordered the Sydneysider to repay $16.5 million, prompting the near meltdown of the Yeshiva and some of its ancillary Chabad activities.