During the month of Elul, our minds turn to Rosh Hashanah, and we reflect on the year which is drawing to a close. We have many different units for measuring time – seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years – and each serves a different purpose. To paraphrase Marc Levy, if you think a hundredth of a second is a short amount of time, ask the person who won the Olympic silver medal in the…
As the restructure process at Yeshivah Centre inches forward, and we draw closer to elections, the big question is: who will nominate to hold board positions on the new legal entities that will operate the school, shule, and other business units of the Centre? Three new legal entities will require over twenty people to put their hands up. There are a few challenges in taking the leap from where we are now to where we need to be. 1. Despite…
To say it’s been a difficult year for our community would be a gross understatement. The Royal Commission case study exposed us to the world, warts and all. The evidence from victims and their family members confronted us with their pain and suffering. The fallout has ripped our community apart, and opened up the deep rifts that lay festering beneath the surface for years. As we stand at the end of the Jewish year, we can look…
David Werdiger discusses the Jewish theological basis for accountability in community organisations, which starts from the great leader Moses himself [eJewishPhilanthropy]
AFL fans have looked on in amazement as expansion team the Gold Coast Suns have, in only their third year of competition, broken through and are winning games at a startling rate for such a young team. The media has all but exhausted the clichéd headlines. In the meantime, Greater Western Sydney are in their second year and certainly expectations have now been adjusted for when they too will finally break through. Fortunately, offsetting these…
(with thanks to Jeff) There are important changes to power happening at Yeshivah Shul. For a few days now, it has been running on partial power while they upgrade the switchboard. In shul this Shabbos the lights were not all working, electric clocks were flashing with the wrong time, and there was only air conditioning in one room. Outside, there lay parts of an old switchboard that looks like it should have been replaced years…
Four years after Rabbi Groner’s passing, David Werdiger reflects on how the community deals with the failings of a leader held in very high regard, and who can no longer answer for his actions [Galus Australis].
Here is a simple, step-by-step, guide to winning a public relations war. 1. Be a victim. The world loves a victim. Victims are by definition helpless, so they need someone to help them (see 2a), and there are no shortage of do-gooders out there looking for victims to help (whether or not they can actually help them). It doesn’t matter if you actually were a victim, if you were a victim yesterday, 20 years ago, 200…
For about a year, I have been the subject of a negative “advertising” campaign – and all this without even being a candidate for the US presidency! This is just the latest salvo in a bitter hate campaign against me by Chaim Herzog, his father Henry Herzog, and their cronies. The context-sensitive Google adwords links have appeared on all manner of web sites – the Jerusalem Post, Arutz Sheva, The Age, in Google searches, and…
The Ben Cousins story has done for sports columns what Princess Diana’s death did for trashy women’s magazines. The only difference is that the Cousins saga doesn’t have the same degree of finality to it. Let’s hope they have plenty of positive things to write about him, as he begins his career as a Richmond Tiger. It’s been great to see the energy that this has brought to the Tiger fans. As usual, the e-mails…