A Chabad rabbi in Nepal averted the cremation of a 32-year-old Australian woman who died in a road accident. Rabbi Chezki Lifshitz told JTA by phone from Kathmandu Wednesday that he had just recovered the body of the former student of Beth Rivkah College in Melbourne. He said he was flown by helicopter from Kathmandu…
Three decades after twin bombings rocked the Israeli Consulate and a Jewish social club in Sydney, Australian detectives believe they are closing in on the suspected perpetrators of the attacks that took place just two days before Christmas in 1982. No one was killed in the blasts at the consulate and the Hakoah Club, an…
A former security guard at an Orthodox Jewish school in Melbourne was convicted of child rape and molestation. David Cyprys, 44, was a contract worker for Yeshivah College, a Chabad-run boys’ school, when he abused nine boys in the 1980s and early 1990s. A jury at the County Court of Victoria found him guilty last…
The sole Jewish member of the new Australian government was appointed to a junior minister position. Joshua Frydenberg was promoted to parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister on Monday by the newly elected Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Abbott’s Liberal Party won the Sept. 7 election in a landslide over the Labor Party, ending its six-year…
The president of the Orthodox rabbinate in Australia issued an unequivocal apology to the victims of child sex abuse and urged perpetrators to turn themselves in to police. On the eve of Yom Kippur, Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, president of the Organization of Rabbis of Australasia, said the “culture of cover-up” in Australia is wrong. “An…
Australia’s Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott, a staunch supporter of Israel, was elected the country’s new prime minister. The Labor government was swept from its six-year term in office on Saturday as the conservative Liberal Party won a convincing, and expected, victory. Abbott – a surf life-saver, volunteer fire-fighter and one-time trainee Catholic priest –…
Maccabi Australia will conduct an independent review of its handling of a child sex abuse scandal that resulted in a former basketball coach being jailed last month for eight years. Shannon Francis was found guilty of several child sex abuse offenses between 1999 and 2000, including sexual penetration of a minor, while he was coaching…
A Jewish lawmaker in Australia is under fire for changing his sample ballot cards in deference to the large Orthodox Jewish community in his electorate. Michael Danby, a junior minister in the Labor government, placed the Sex Party last in sample ballot cards he sent to Orthodox Jewish voters in his Melbourne electorate ahead of…
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