AUSTRALIA
J-Wire
February 12, 2015 by admin
The Commission has extended its times of operation to accommodate all those scheduled to give evidence and the first to do so today was Melbourne’s Elwood Synagogue’s Rabbi Mordechai Gutnick.
Rabbi Mordechai Gutnick told the Commission that he had grown up with jailed offender David Cyprys’s father and that David Cyprys, now serving an 8-year sentence had served on the Board of the Elwood Shule. He resigned at the time of being charged.
Rabbi Gutnick told the Commission about the cultural differences between his modern orthodoxy congregation and the ultra-orthodox Yeshivah kehilah. He said: “There is a greater emphasis on strictness of performing the various Jewish rituals in the Chabad community that there may be in the ordinary orthodox community. They both keep the same laws but our congregation will have people who are not that observant.” He agreed with Maria Gerace, the Counsel assisting the Commission that the Yeshivah community was more “insular”.
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