AUSTRALIA
J-Wire
February 13, 2015
According to Melbourne’s Monash University research, the fully observant or frum community in Victoria accounts for about 15% of the Victorian Jewish community.
This includes Adass, Chabad/Lubavitch and observant Modern Orthodox Jews. Hence, the Chabad community is a very small percentage of the overall Jewish community but it is also the main source of Rabbonim for the mainstream Orthodox Jewish community. This means that it dominates the Rabbinic Council of Victoria, which is the peak body for the Orthodox Rabbinate.
The Yeshivah Centre is the leadership centre for the Lubavitch community whose key institutions includes various community institutions, most notably Chabad and Yeshivah Synagogues, Chabad Youth and Yeshivah Beth Rivkah College.
None of the Yeshivah or Chabad organisations are members of the mainstream Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) and tend to operate separately to the rest of the community, which includes Modern Orthodox, Conservative or Masorti, Progressive Judaism and secular Jews.
The vast majority of Jews in Victoria identify as Orthodox because of tradition or family connection to an Orthodox Synagogue. Nevertheless, most of these Orthodox Jews are not particularly observant, and would find their views on social and communal issues far closer to the views of the general Victorian community rather than anything espoused by the Chabad leadership.
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