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NEWS FROM SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
Gallia Butow, Sydney Melton Co-ordinator, announced record enrollments for Melton this year, when classes commenced in February - the start of our academic year “Down Under”.
A total of 84 students have enrolled for Melton courses which are conducted in venues across Sydney. Melton classes are conducted at The Shalom Institute at the University of New South Wales, at WIZO House in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs and this year, for the first time, at Temple Emanuel on Sydney’s lower North Shore.
Both our faculty and students represent the broad sweep of affiliations within the Jewish community of Sydney – providing our students with a truly pluralistic environment.
We welcomed to our faculty two new additions:
- Rabbi Gary Robuck, Senior Rabbi at North Shore Temple Emanuel, who brings to his work a commitment to social issues, continuing scholarship, broad experience and a chazzan’s musicality!
- Mandy Lawrence, who recently moved to Sydney with her husband, Jeremy, the new Rabbi of Sydney’s Great Synagogue, and holds degrees in philosophy and psychology, bringing many years of teaching experience to her new role at Melton.
They join our stalwarts:
- Peta Jones Pellach , The Shalom Institute’s Director of Adult Education
- Rebbetzin Esty Gutnick, experienced and much-loved Melton facilitator from Sydney’s Mizrachi Synagogue
- Rabbi Elizabeth Hersh, Director of Education at Temple Emanuel
- Mark Schneider, a international banker who teaches Ethics, and President of Sydney’s largest Jewish Day School, Moriah College
Each December, our graduates are asked to “reflect” on their two years of being a Melton-ik! We would love to share some of their “reflections” with you.
- Thanks to Melton I visited Israel for the first time in July this year – Naomi D
- The knowledge, passion and insight that out lecturers had was amazing - there was nothing that they could not answer for us – Michael E
- I found the program, my teachers and my fellow students a source of information and inspiration – Bernard F
- I am constantly stimulated, encouraged to delve more deeply, and reassess my own feelings and views – Hester G
- Gary H –asked that his reflections be sung to the tune of “Tradition” from “Fiddler on the Roof”.
A Student of Melton sounds crazy, No?
But here in our little class at Shalom College
You may say that every one of us was a student of Melton.
Trying to scratch our little Jewish heads without breaking them!
It wasn’t easy.
You may say, why did we study if it was so difficult?
We studied because being Jewish is important to us.
And how did we keep our sanity?
That I can tell you in one word – WE DIDN’T!
But because of our Melton studies everyone knows who he is and what G-d (and Peta) expects him to do!
Who day and night, must study all the Torah
Learn the whole megilla, make it like a thriller?
And who has the right, as leader of the class
To tell the story of our past?
The Teacher, The Teacher! TRADITION!
Who must know the way to use a fax and phone
Raise a loan, work to the bone?
Who must do the emailing and work at home
So other’s free to teach the holy books?
The Staff, The Staff! TRADITION!
'Bout eight we start our Melton class.
At ten still going strong.
What do they add in the coffee,
to make us stay so long?
The Students, The Students! TRADITION!
And who at sixty nine,
Decided it was time,
For teaching all the Hebrews
The things they never knew?
Flo Melton, Flo Melton! TRADITION!
(With apologies to Shalom Aleichem, Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick)
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