Cheap Wine and a 3 Day Genug

I’ve recently returned from nearly a month in Australia. Most of that time I spent in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, which is not bad work if you can get it. I suppose the down side of this trip was becoming what they call in Hebrew “orphaned”. It’s the sort of thing that can really add a particular sort spin to your travel plans, like visiting Central Synagogue in Bondi Junction a lot more than you regularly would. Don’t get me wrong I’m not kibitzing. I find it a very user-friendly shule. The rabbis serving there are very accessible, each in their own style, and every Shabbat they put on a kiddush with generous servings of Tasmanian smoked salmon and all sorts of other sandwiches and hors d'œuvres and Black Label. Its enough to get you through to Motzeh Shabbat without another morsel, wind assited.
All unintended cynicism aside, it’s a very welcoming community to visit.
One of the little curiosities that crop up from a trip like this pertains to the genealogy of a certain “feral” Australian. It reminds me of the running joke, or parody, we would play out back in high school. “Oh that actress, what’s her name? she’s Jewish, and Mike Todd was too and Sammy Davis Jr…”
Rabbi Wolf is quite a raconteur, despite his deceptively young and athletic looks. He’s very outreaching and always eager to spread the good oil on the eminence of yiddishkeit. He also reputedly sports an impressive yichus, from the synagogue of a particularly famous New York rabbi. And it seemed that on every possible occasion during my stay in Sydney Rabbi Wolf would promote from the pulpit an upcoming chazzanic concert, with world renowned Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot and Central’s popular chazzan Shimon Farkas; all accompanied by the Sydney International Orchestra. Whether it was due to outreach or a matter of fund raising, it was always with a lot of heart and soul that he would beseech his congregants to come along and fill the synagogue venue.
But it was apparently Chazzan Shimon Farkas who arranged the evening’s trump card and invited former Cold Chisel front man Jimmy Barnes to perform at the concert.
It worked. 1700 people filled the shule and it’s all over the Aussie Jewish press and blogs and You Tube. Jimmy Barnes may be a practicing Buddhist but if you take his word for it he’s halachicly Jewish. You can catch it on You Tube, his confession; his version of It’s a Wonderful World and his duet on Yiddesheh Mama.
My sources tell me that the concert was a great success and much eng’oyed by all present.