Minister shows Concern for Community
Representatives from the Jewish community along with Member for Caulfield David Southwick met with the Victorian Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship on Wednesday.
Rabbi Yaakov Glasman (front right) blows the shofar for the Hon Nicholas Kotsiras MLA (back right)
Nicholas Kotsiras requested the meeting with the Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC), the Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) and the Rabbinical Council of Victoria (RCV) to learn about matters of concern to the community.
ADC Chairman Anton Block, JCCV Vice President Nina Bassat and RCV President Rabbi Yaakov Glasman welcomed the opportunity to make the Minister aware of current issues facing the Jewish community, including white supremacy activity in Victoria, ritual slaughter, sexual abuse allegations, and antisemitism that is coming out of the BDS movement and being felt particularly on university campuses.
“The Minister was clearly disturbed to learn that Jewish Victorians are being targeted in this way and was keen to ensure his colleagues responsible for police and tertiary education were made aware of these problems,” said Mr Block.
He also expressed his pleasure at the Minister’s support for the ADC’s Multifaith Future Leaders Program.
Nina Bassat, Vice-President of the JCCV, said: “It was encouraging to see that the Minister had both an understanding and a full appreciation of the complexity of issues that our community faces. There are a number of matters which we will now be able follow up for the benefit of the community.”
Rabbi Glasman explained to the Minister the Jewish stance against cruelty to animals and debunked many of the myths surrounding ritual slaughter. He also informed the Minister of the work the RCV had done in producing guidelines for engagement with other faith communities.
The meeting concluded with Rabbi Glasman blowing the shofar for participants, including an exceptionally long tekiah gedolah.
Don’t miss an opportunity to smear the BDS movent! Even when the leaders of it in the UK are Jewish, the persons arrested in Melbourne for the Max Brenner protest included Jews and the movement has the support of anti-racists, progressive Jews within Israel. and then go out and sermonise about mixing “politics” with sport, business, culture!