By COLlive reporter
Key moments and figures from Australia’s Jewish community come to life in a recently discovered historic film that was taken in Melbourne in 1963 and has been now released.
The footage was filmed with a “movie camera,” which takes a series of images, each image constitutes a “frame” and thus creating a movement-like scene.
The video was released ahead of the 25th of Iyar, marking the second yartzeit of Rabbi Sholom Gutnick OBM, who served as a Shliach, Rosh Yeshiva, Chabad Rov and Av Beis Din in Melbourne.
It opens with showing a pioneering activity of Rabbi Gutnick – “The World’s Largest Sukkah” on the grounds of the Yeshivah Centre. It was a major sensational project of Tzeirei Agudas Chabad, which was then called “Yeshivah Youth,” and Bnos Chabad.
Seen talking to the children is Rabbi Shmuel Gurevitch, who together with Uri Kaplun, ran the Yeshivah Youth organization.
Held on Chol Hamoed Sukkos 5724 (late 1963), hundreds of boys and girls were invited, and they streamed in from all over Melbourne to join in the excitement.
In the course of the program, side-by-side with all kinds of attractions and activities, every boy and girl enjoyed lunch in the huge sukkah at the Yeshivah College at 92 Hotham Street and joined in all the relevant brachos (many for the first time).
The footage shows how each participant took his or her turn at saying a berachah over a lulav and esrog. Reb Abba Pliskin showed them, one by one, what to do, and said the bracha with each of them.
Born in Russia, Rabbi Pliskin’s command of English at the time was not that great. Nevertheless, several years after one of those little boys had enjoyed those hours in the World’s Largest Sukkah, he arrived at the Yeshivah Centre one day and asked to be taught for his bar-mitzvah by “the little rabbi with the long beard…”
The video also shows the first Sukkah-Mobile in Melbourne which Rabbi Gutnick organized in 1963. Seen with his nephew Mottel Gutnick, Rabbi Gutnick drove the Sukkah-Mobile attached to his car to the schools and various locations all around Melbourne.
As the Rabbi of the largest Shul in Melbourne, a Dayan in the Beis Din and a teacher at the Yeshivah, he was a Chossid at heart and found the time to help with Yeshivah Youth activities.
This video also documents Camp Gan Israel in the Basin. Seen is Rabbi Binyomin Klein who later became one of the Rebbe’s secretaries. He was sent at the end of 1961 on Merkos Shlichus for 3 years together with his wife Leah Klein and was involved in strengthening Judaism in the community at large and especially with the youth programs.
In 1962, he received a letter from Rabbi Mordechai Aizik Hodakov, the Rebbe’s Chief of Staff, encouraging him to be involved in Lubavitch Youth in Australia. He traveled to different states around Australia and also New Zealand.
At each location, he strengthened Judaism and also distributed Kehot books including Talks and Tales. He delivered many shiurim and he even accomplished that they should teach more Jewish studies in the mostly secular Mt. Scopus School. Mrs. Klein taught in Beth Rivkah girls school and was involved in the operation of Mesibos Shabbos.
Also seen in the video is a young Sholom Ber Groner, now a Shliach in South Africa, and Shaya Kantor, a grandson of R’ Moshe Zalmen Feiglin, the first Lubavitcher to settle in Australia. Also seen is Rabbi Chaim Gutnick, a distinguished Rabbi in Melbourne who came to visit the camp and plays a game of cricket with the boys.
This video is presented liluy nishmas Reb Sholom Dov Ber ben Reb Mordechai Zev Hachoen Gutnick, zichrona levrocha. A special thanks to his son Rabbi Meyer Gutnick who brought this to the public for the first time.
VIDEO:
Thank you for sharing. Can you please write who filmed this footage?
Best.
Rabbi Sholom Gutnick had organized for tbis film to be made he brought it to New York to 1964 presumably for the Rebbe to see.