‘I leave with a heart full of hope, a bucketful of dreams’

The Caulfield Hebrew Congregation taught me to not be afraid of change but to be afraid of not changing, says RALPH GENENDE in his farewell speech after 14 years as rabbi

IN THESE PAST weeks of dream sequences in the Torah reading - Jacob’s ladder, Joseph’s stars, Pharaoh’s cows - I would like to acknowledge the original owners of this land, the Wurundjeri. We, more than others, know what it is to be connected to land, we can easily recognise the dreamtime people, for after all, we too are “as dreamers”.

Langston Hughes, the great American poet, put it well: “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly”. The Talmud says that it is a bad sign if you don’t dream or cannot recall your dreams.

I have always been a dreamer. This was of great concern to my late dear father-in-law, Zelik Bedell, during my long courtship of his daughter. The tough old soldier was really worried about what he called the “luftmensch” romancing his daughter, the apple of his eye, Caron.

 I looked up the definition of luftmensch. It read: “an impractical contemplative person having no definite business or income”. In other words - an impractical dreamer.

Which is what my own parents thought when I first told them I was going to be a rabbi. So I decided that I would have to strive to be a practical dreamer if I was to leave some small imprint on those around me.

It’s one of the privileges and perils of being a community rabbi that you get to share your dreams and visions.

By the time I joined Caulfield Shule some 14 years ago, I’d had some experience. I had a pretty good idea of who I was and how I could help shape and change this pivotal Orthodox community.

Help move it from a fractured and fractious place to one of energy and empathy, crossing the generations and reaching out to people of different stations.

Help it recognise and realise its place as a centre of an inclusive and enlightened Modern Orthodoxy, a progressive voice for change and social action in a complex world.

Change is never easy for an individual nor and organisation. It’s not a word or concept easily adopted by Orthodoxy, which is traditionally conservative and often implements innovation at a glacial pace.

But it was initially embraced by the board, led by the irrepressible and talented Gary Frydman and the very capable Dr Howard Zeimer, who recognised that Caulfield Shule needed a paradigm shift and perhaps that Orthodoxy in Melbourne itself needed to shift.

No Orthodox shule should be backwards in coming forwards to have a social action committee, to move from the comfortable space of conventionality to the challenging place of creativity, to move from the known inner group to the unknown face of the stranger.

That’s why we created the social action Darchei Shalom group, with visits to the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre and giving attention to the homeless and alienated.

And no shul can thrive without looking to the future. A Jewish future is built on learning and on young learned leaders. How fortunate was I to be able to facilitate the move of Hineni, a progressive Modern Orthodox youth movement, to Caulfield Synagogue, and also to attract such outstanding youth directors.

When Jethro, father-in-law of Moses, visited the nascent nation at Sinai and saw how Moses was burning himself out, he reminded him that just as you cannot live alone, you cannot lead alone.

Moses had his Jethro and I’ve been privileged to have my own Moses for the past 24 years of my life in Australia. l’m referring to Moshe Lang.

As a rabbi, especially of a large congregation, you are constantly at the coal face of community with emotionally charged challenges, trauma, tsuris and some certifiable individuals. You need a person and a place you can go to, a safe place to reflect, learn and recentre yourself. Moshe helped provide that.

I know that I’ve changed Caulfield Shule but I also know it has changed me. We transform places but they also transmute us.

I’ve been so deeply privileged to be trusted by families and individuals in their most telling and trying times, in their moments of elation and desperation, to grow with and from them, to watch their children grow and their parents age, to witness the sorrow of their aching hearts, to feel my heart tear with their unbearable pain, and to soar with their resolute and remarkable spirits. And what a privilege to be part of the lives of our Shoah survivors who have been so pivotal to Caulfield Shule.

All of the congregation has transformed me, helped me to clarify, modify, compromise and dig deep into myself; to hone and appreciate my own authentic voice. They have taught me not to be afraid of change but to be afraid of not changing.

And from whence does courage come if not from a woman who knows her mind and understands the minds of others, who has plumbed the deep wells of human frailty and fallibility and is frighteningly true to her own self?

Caron Genende has copped it for being a rebbetzin without a cause, but she is the cause of my success, the rock of my being. She was never enamoured with the title Rebbetzin, which comes with a host of assumptions and expectations, especially of being seen as an extension of the Rabbi.

Caron should take some credit for the recent recognition that rabbinical spouses are independent workers and contributors to community in their own right.

She can certainly take the credit as mother of our three singular, resilient and capable children. She has helped each find their own pathway and withstand the pressures of public expectations. I know that they will teach their own children well, tutor them to appreciate what it is to be a full human being, to be caring and thoughtful menschen.

Caulfield Shule has given to me and I’ve given back. I’ve given some of the best years of my life – and it has given me some of the best and yes, some of the worst years, of my life!

But I leave with a heart full of hope, a bucketful of dreams.

I haven’t given up dreaming and neither should the congregation. Caulfield has an energetic and enthusiastic team in their new Rabbi, Daniel and Rebbetzin Sarah Rabin and the board. The challenges ahead are immense as the world changes under our feet.

To them I say, go well, go with strength. Let’s all remember the words of the inimitable Irish poet, William Butler Yeats:

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.