Mazal tov to Rafi & Michal Goodman on the birth of their baby boy. Mazel tov to the grandparents and great-grandmother.

Times: Shabbat starts tonight with candle lighting at 7:24pm, ends Saturday night at 8:24pm. The weekly Torah portion is Noach.

Upcoming Event: Friday, 27 October: Lunchtime Lecture with Professor Efraim Inbar on “Israel’s Old-New Security Challenges in a Fluid Strategic Landscape” What Israel should do to meet the new security challenges. Lecture at 12:45pm and mincha following.  Location at KCL Law, Level 4, 555 Lonsdale Street.  RSVP for catering purposes to events@jbd.org.au by Wednesday, 25 October.

Mincha in the CBD: Mincha continues at 1:45pm at 459 Collins using the SMS system as a reminder.

Study: Wednesday shiur & lunch is on Wednesday at 1.20pm at Billing Bureau, followed by mincha.

Kosher Food in the CBD: Unfortunately, due to lack of demand there is no longer kosher food being sold in the CBD. Glicks, we want you back!!

Thought of the Week with thanks to David Prins. There is a well-known riddle: “Who was the world’s first financier?” The answer is Noah, because he floated a company while the rest of the world was in liquidation.

Noah, his immediate family, and a collection of animals were saved in the Ark that Noah built, while the rest of the world’s inhabitants were wiped out. The Torah promises that such a destructive flood covering the entire world will never recur, and the rainbow in the sky is a reminder of this promise. But history can repeat itself in other ways. The two major world stock exchange crashes which caused financial wipe-out in the last 100 years were the Wall Street crash in October‑November 1929, and Black Monday on 19 October 1987. Both occurred at the time of this Torah reading. The numerical value (gematria) of Noah (as written in Hebrew) is 58, and these crashes were 58 years apart.
When we read the Torah reading of Noah, we should be cautioned regarding the detrimental effects on society of corruption, which led to the terrible destructive flood at the time of Noah. We should resolve to uproot such corruption, to make the world a better place for mankind, now and into the future.