In western Sydney, a thriving Jewish community looks to the future

“The problem with Sydney Jewry,” says Parramatta Synagogue President Michael Morris, is that “the majority of them don’t recognise anything beyond the Harbour Bridge.” Indeed, just 25 kilometres west of the city, there’s an active, welcoming Jewish community in Parramatta, which many of us in Sydney’s Jewish hubs know little, or nothing, about.

In the not-too-distant past, Western Sydney was home to three synagogues: Bankstown, Strathfield and Parramatta. Established in 1912, Bankstown Synagogue was destroyed in a 1991 arson attack, during the First Intifada. It was never rebuilt. Strathfield Synagogue opened in 1959 and closed in 2013 due to dwindling membership. That left Parramatta Synagogue as the only Jewish place of worship in western Sydney.

But today, Parramatta Synagogue is more than just a religious site. The shul is part of the Greater Western Sydney Jewish Cultural Centre, the brainchild of Vincent Uno, the Synagogue’s Vice-President. Uno now serves as the Centre’s director, under the leadership of Rabbi Roni Cohavi. Israeli-born Cohavi, his Australian wife, Michal, and their family moved from Bondi when Cohavi took up the role of chief minister of Parramatta Synagogue in 2014.

Cohavi always had the idea of opening a Jewish library in Western Sydney. But after October 7, many people – both Jewish and non-Jewish – reached out to him, wanting to connect and offering support. Cohavi realised that a place to pray and a library wouldn’t be enough to meet the needs of the western Sydney Jewish community. He needed to create a space where people felt a sense of belonging.

The result was the Western Sydney Jewish Cultural Centre, which opened in November 2024. Both Parramatta Synagogue and the Daat Library are part of the Centre, which provides “a place of culture, learning, education, celebration, connection, and also building bridges with other communities”, says Cohavi. So far, he tells me, it’s been “working very well”.