JBD – Jews of the Melbourne CBD is now on LinkedIn. Follow us here.
Shabbat starts on Friday at 5:20pm and ends on Saturday at 6:19pm. The weekly Torah portion is Re’eh and Mevarchim Chodesh Elul. Rosh Chodesh is on Thursday and Friday.
Mincha continues at 1.00pm at A-P GF/459 Collins, using the WhatsApp group to confirm a minyan each day.
Weekly sushi & shiur continues on Wed at 1.10pm at A-P GF/459 Collins – and via zoom. Current topic: property set-backs. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.
Thought of the Week with thanks to David Prins
The weekly Torah reading of Re’eh opens with a striking grammatical juxtaposition: “See [singular] I set before you [plural] today a blessing and a curse.”
While national destiny is experienced collectively, the moral vision required to shape it remains an individual obligation.
In today’s world, this duality underpins a core challenge, as communities face rising antisemitism. In his foundational work Kol Dodi Dofek first presented 70 years ago, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik distinguished between a “covenant of fate” – unity imposed externally by antisemitic threats and shared vulnerability – and a “covenant of destiny” – unity forged internally through shared spiritual and ethical purpose.
External hostility routinely unites Jewish communities within the plural dimension of fate. Defensive survival permits no alternative. However, achieving sustainable blessing necessitates the singular dimension of destiny. It demands that each individual consciously chooses to construct a positive, cohesive Jewish future. True blessing depends on defining our Jewish identity not based on those who oppose us, but through the eternal values that we collectively and individually choose to uphold.