AUSTRALIA
The Age
September 8, 2012
Barney Zwartz
MELBOURNE and Sydney’s most senior rabbis are at loggerheads over the unexplained sacking of a rabbi from Melbourne’s Yeshivah Centre, with Melbourne leaders accused of ”desecrating God’s name”.
The centre’s chief rabbi, Zvi Hirsch Telsner, has defied an order by the Sydney Beth Din (the rabbinical court) to stay the sacking, prompting an ultimatum from the court to back down by Tuesday or be shamed worldwide.
According to Jewish community figures, Rabbi Telsner overruled the injunction and instructed Yeshivah Centre chairman Don Wolf to sack Rabbi Mordechai Engel, 42, who has nine children, including a newborn baby, and has worked there for 14 years.
The Yeshivah Centre – the headquarters of the Orthodox Chabad movement, with two schools and many other facilities – has been controversial within the Jewish community for its handling of sexual abuse allegations from the 1980s to the present. Police were highly critical of community leaders in the Melbourne Magistrate’s Court last year.
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