On the eve of the Jewish New Year, on Friday morning, when Rabbi Yakov Glassman sat down at his St. Gilda synagogue, he felt empty.
He admits that this feeling may have been shared by more than 1,500 associates of his synagogue, but the emptiness is physical.
This weekend will be the first since the founding of St. Guilda Hebrew Church in 1871, since the first Jewish settlement Victoria, About 60 synagogues in the city will be vacant for the Jewish New Year Rosh Hashanah.
Australian communities in Sydney and elsewhere in Australia, USA, London and Even locked up Israel, This Rosh Hashana, can attend prayer temple services through the current Covid 19 restrictions of Victoria 55,000 Jews of Melbourne Among the many congregations, religious gatherings will be banned.
As a result, the eastern suburbs of the city will offer a rare sight this weekend: rabbis and Jewish men blow Rams’ horns as they stand in the suburban street corners.
Ordinarily, this scene would attract an interested audience, perhaps even an angry neighbor.
But Rabbi Coffee Caldman, of the Ark Center in Hawthorne East, would not have many to stare at the streets as a tool used for more than 3,000 years to go to his local streets and blow his shower. In Rosh Hashana.
“It saddens me,” Glassman of St. Guilda says of the lockout, as generations of Jewish Australians look at the empty Pius sitting with their families.
“World Wars One and Two did not close our doors,” he told the Guardian, wondering what Sir John Monash, the military commander and engineer featured on Australia’s $ 100 note, might have thought of closing. Monash was a regular congregator at the synagogue and served on its board for nine years.
The classman would usually fill the meetings to prepare the nearby function hall on the morning of Rosh Hashanah, which would exceed the 1,000 capacity of some synagogue.
Most weekly Sabbath services attract about 100 people, but according to Glassman, even inactive Jews are usually part of the 1,500-strong commitment to Rosh Hashanah.
On Friday, a classman sent his members a video recording of a sermon to watch online before sunset, officially ending the year.
The use of work and technology for the next two days is prohibited, and families Melbourne Locked up every night they would sit down to dinner with the same people they ate.
In addition to chauffeur and prayer temple services, the New Year is traditionally a time for families to gather for a meal and bring a sweet New Year’s apple and honey for specific meals. A round salla is also a common feature – a loaf of bread is eaten weekly on the Sabbath, but is made in the shape of a circle for a week to mark the cycle of the year.
The New Year begins with a period of time known as the High Sacred Days, which lasts through the week of Monday until the end of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
While most Rosh Hashanah customs are rooted in expanding the metaphors of a pleasant new year and early period, Jews in Melbourne will struggle to differentiate between 5780, the Jewish year that ended at sunset on Friday, and 5781.
To break the deadlock, and instead of a prayer temple service, the health department will allow nearly 500 rabbis and volunteers to blow the shopper in the street corners on Sunday.
Caldman spent Friday training some parts of his trail, which is limited to a 5km radius from his Hawthorne home. He expects Hawthorne to blow the shower about 50 times across Camperwell and Glen Iris, and energy bars and water bottles have been prepared for what would be several hours of walking and performance.
Only a Jewish resident in some of the corners where he stops would hear it.
“It’s the New Year, it’s festive and happy. Everyone wants to hear Schoffer even if you are not religious. “
Although this is the first time Kaltman has not been to the chapel for the festival, he is excited about the opportunity to see community members even from a distance.
“My job has completely changed, from preaching to being a social worker, chatting with people on the phone every day,” he said.
Caldman, who has been subjected to the loneliness of allies, hopes to see renewed interest from secular Australians as the locksmiths of chapels and places of worship are relaxed because they will be interested in the community in the absence of workplaces.
Caldman said when small religious meetings were briefly allowed between Melbourne’s two locks, the need to attend public services increased by 60% and registered associates had to be turned away.
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur were the people I usually see twice a year and they were eager to come to a Sabbath service.
“I called them and said,‘ What the hell happened? Have you found God? ‘”
“They all said ‘no’, they just wanted to see each other, talk about legs and want to be in the same place with each other.”
Caldman, who is the rabbi of a modern orthodox synagogue, also noted the financial impact of the closure of synagogues on high holy days. Since it is the only week of the year, most members come to a service, and churches rely on donations made during membership fees and services to fund their annual activities.
Caldman believes his synagogue, which has about 600 members, is facing a shortage of about 000, 200,000. The Guardian Australia spoke with another Melbourne rabbi, who believes he will lose half a million dollars to his synagogue, while taking into account the loss of revenue from bar mitzvah ceremonies during operational hall rents and locks.
Most Jews in Melbourne will be concerned about their dinner, as more religious people will be concerned about avoiding prayer in groups of more than 10 – the demand for a proper service.
At her home in Glen Iris, Donna Cullenbach and her husband Paul spent less time preparing Roche Hashana food than ever before.
Usually on the first night of the festival there is a dinner party with 30 extended family members and the second with 60 friends, their schedule is set for them and their three children on Friday.
When the family was not religiously observant – they did not keep kosher or observe the Sabbath each week – Cullenbach and his children were “devastated” at not hearing the blown-up Schoffer in a synagogue, Josh, 16, Adam, 14, and Mia, 9.
On Sunday, Caldman arrives at their street corner and blows Ram’s horn.
“It’s a beautiful sound, it connects us to our heritage, I think it’s been heard for a long time.”
