Melbourne’s only Jewish radio station has been forced to close. Lion FM, barely a year old, ceased broadcasting at midnight Monday following a decision by the Australian Communications and Media Authority not to renew its radio license.
A Jewish Indigenous woman was awarded a top honor in Australia. Lisa Pulver, the co-founder and director of the Muru Marri Indigenous Health Unit at the University of New South Wales, was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the annual Queen’s birthday honors list announced Monday. Pulver also is a professor of Indigenous health at the university.
At least a dozen Jewish families in northeastern Australia have been evacuated from their homes as a major flood ripped through Queensland this week, killing at least 12 people. More than 40 people are still missing, and one Jewish man remains unaccounted for near the rural town of Toowoomba, which was flattened Monday by what police described as an “inland instant tsunami.” The bulk of Queensland’s 6,000 Jews live in the state’s capital, Brisbane, which was bracing for its river to peak early Thursday morning as analysts revised up their predictions of the damage bill to $13 million, or 1 percent of the gross domestic product.
The Australian government is appealing a court ruling that spared an alleged Nazi war criminal from being extradited to Hungary. Home Affairs Minister Brendan O\’Connor approved the extradition of Charles Zentai in 2009, but a Federal Court judge overturned the decision last year. The government on Tuesday appealed the ruling that said Zentai, 89, of Perth, was not eligible for extradition. Zentai, a former soldier in the Hungarian army, is wanted for questioning in the murder of an 18-year-old Jewish man in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944.
A local council in Australia that has a sister-city relationship with Bethlehem voted to join the international boycott of Israel. The Marrickville Council in inner Sydney voted 10-2 on Dec. 14 to support a ban on any government, academic, trade, sporting or cultural ties with Israel. The council, which is dominated by members of the Green and Labor parties, first raised the ire of the Jewish community with its 2007 vote to adopt the sister-city relationship with Bethlehem. The action prompted the government to warn lawmakers that they risked breaking the law if they met with Hamas members on the Bethlehem council.
The first Shabbat service in 50 years was held at a synagogue in Australia\’s outback. More than 200 Jews, mainly from Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, converged on Broken Hill Synagogue on the weekend of Nov. 28 to mark the centenary since the laying of the foundation stone in 1910. The mining town, dubbed \”the silver city\” and \”the capital of the outback,\” is more than 620 miles west of Sydney near the border with South Australia.
Every other year, our congregation travels to a different part of the Jewish world to meet and, if necessary, help our fellow Jews. Having traveled to Israel, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union many times, as well as Turkey, Morocco, Spain, Argentina and Brazil, our experiences have mostly been with communities under political, demographic or economic siege. This trip was different.
Because Australia is situated below the equator, its seasons rebel against the Jewish calendar. Our winter is their summer; our spring their fall. Although Passover\’s rituals and symbols resonate spring, the holiday is celebrated in autumn Down Under.
\”Passover begins just as the temperature drops, days grow shorter, and grapevines lose their leaves,\” said Jenni Neumann, a New Yorker who grew up in Sydney. \”It\’s rather odd, if you\’re not used to it, I guess.\”
What started out as a joke between friends fast became a million-dollar goal for a retired Jewish soccer player.
Ethan Zohn emerged as the sole survivor of the third installment of the CBS reality show \”Survivor\” during the two-hour Jan. 10 finale, defeating Kim Johnson, a 57-year-old retired teacher from Oyster Bay, N.Y.
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