The Advocate
Rabbis Dov Zaetz and Peretz Chein take a break from the road.

Daylesford Visited by Synagogue on Wheels

A Synagogue on wheels rolled into Daylesford last week. The Chabad of Rural and Regional Australia van cruised around the Hepburn Shire with Rabbis Dov Zaetz and Peretz Chein as part of their mission to connect with Jewish people living in rural and regional Victoria.

The pair spent two days in Daylesford and plan to travel across the Nullarbor Plain to Western Australia.

“We’re both from Brooklyn, New York,” Rabbi Zaetz said.

“The Chebad of RARA is an international organisation which works on either helping Jews who are educated or educating Jews that don’t know and just teaching them the basics and brining Jewish life back to these areas of the world.

“In a lot of rural and regional Australia a lot of these people don’t have time to go to synagogue or have any sort of connection with the Rabbi.

“So this organisation connects them with the Rabbi and also has the opportunity to three or four times a year send people around and visit them.

“There’s a database of Jews that live in the rural parts of Australia and we’re also trying to find new people.”

Rabbi Chein said there were between 20 and 30 Jewish people on the database who lived in the Hepburn Shire.

“We just a met a couple that walked over to us,” he said.

“They approached us, they came inside the van.

“People have been very welcoming.

“They’re ecstatic, they’re excited, they want to know if there’s a synagogue here.

“We know in Ballarat there’s one, that’s the closest one to Daylesford.

“It’s actually a very old synagogue that goes back to the 1800s.”

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