Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great privilege to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 3) Bill 2021, and particularly to speak on it in the presence of the Assistant Treasurer, who is currently in the chamber. Many of these so-called TLAB bills contain a range of measures in them. One of the measures that you often see in these bills is the granting of deductible gift recipient status to organisations. I didn't want to let the passage of this bill go without saying something about a couple of the organisations that have been given deductible gift recipient status that are very old organisations in the Jewish community of Sydney.

It may not be well known across the country, but Jews have been in Australia since a dozen or more Jewish convicts stepped ashore with the First Fleet. Since that time, Jewish communal institutions have been established. One of the first institutions to be established in the colony of New South Wales was a Jewish burial society, or a chevra kadisha, as it is known in Hebrew. The chevra kadisha which exists today in Sydney is the direct descendant of that original burial society. Jewish burial rituals are very important in terms of respecting the body, and I'll talk a little bit about them in a moment. But chevra kadisha have existed not just in Sydney but right throughout the country. It might interest people to know that, in a recent edition of the Australian Jewish Historical Society magazine—and I pay tribute to Peter Philippsohn, the society's president—they have a very interesting article about the chevra kadisha that existed in the Jewish community in Goulburn. It is now a heritage listed site—not just the burial plots themselves but the home of the people who were engaged in watching over the bodies of people who had died.

A burial society is one of the very first things that Jews establish when they come to a new land. The chevra kadisha is important because of the particular rituals under Jewish law that it provides. Firstly, when a person has died, respect for the body means that somebody needs to remain with the body at all times. These people have particular roles. They are usually orthodox Jewish people. They are called shomrim. Their job is to respect the body by remaining with it. There is ritual purification that occurs. Before the funeral, the deceased is washed, cleansed and purified so that, in a symbolic way, they leave the world in the same condition as they entered it. Only individuals of the same gender perform the tahara, or the purification, for the deceased. The people who do this are trained in proper procedures and perform their duties with the utmost care and preserve the dignity of the deceased.

The shrouding procedure, in which the deceased are prepared to be buried, is interesting. The idea in Jewish law is that people leave the world as they entered it. So a Jewish coffin is always a very plain coffin, and a person is shrouded in plain linen garments that are representative, in their colour and in their style, of the garments that were worn by the high priest in temple times on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Men are buried along with their tallit, or prayer shawl, and it is the chevra kadisha that performs the role of preparing the body for burial. As I said, the coffin is identical. It's plain. There's no ornamentation. Everyone is treated in the same way, from the most distinguished citizen to the poorest or youngest person, sadly, buried by the chevra kadisha. Everything is returned to nature. Under Jewish custom, people are buried rather than cremated or embalmed, and it is considered disrespectful to have open coffins for viewing bodies.

The Sydney Chevra Kadisha is such an important institution in the Sydney Jewish community. It's building on Oxford Street, in Woollahra, has been a site of communal commemoration for over 70 years, but the building is very much run-down. I grew up in the synagogue down there, and the late Rabbi Fox, who was the rabbi that I grew up with, used to say, 'We are Emanuel Synagogue. We're down the road from the Chevra Kadisha. We hope you come to us before you go to them.' That was his way of reminding people where they were. The facilities there are now quite inadequate. They're 70 years old, they are too small for larger funerals—where you can often have people spilling out onto a very busy Sydney street—and they are quite antiquated and run down. The Chevra Kadisha, which is run by a volunteer board—and it obviously has paid staff as well—needs to move with the times. One of the great things about receiving deductible gift recipient status is that it will allow the Chevra Kadisha to raise funds and provide people who are looking to donate to it with a tax deduction for doing so—thereby encouraging more people in the community to donate to and support a very important community organisation.

Whereas the Chevra Kadisha is 203 years old, the second-oldest institution in the Sydney Jewish community is obviously the Great Synagogue. That is a site of much happier occasions for the Jewish community than funerals. It's pleasing to see that the Great Synagogue has been given deductible gift recipient status. The Great Synagogue is the most magnificent Jewish building in Australia. It is built in that classic 19th century cathedral style of synagogue. It has sat in Elizabeth Street since 1878. It is simply a stunning building.

The present rabbi of the Great Synagogue, Rabbi , Dr Ben Elton, is a wonderful scholar of Torah and a wonderful community leader who not only serves there but also serves as an adviser to the Jewish Board of Deputies. The Great Synagogue is one of the key institutions that people who are wanting to understand the Jewish community in Australia go to visit, because of its very deep history. On the ceiling, there are stars painted on the sky. The reason for those stars is that they each represent a different Australian Jewish serviceman who served in the First World War. The synagogue has gone through renovations over the years. The bimah, or the desk, where the rabbi and the cantor read from the Torah on a thrice-weekly basis was originally in the centre of the sanctuary. It was then many years later moved back closer to the arc. But it really is a magnificent building, and a magnificent heritage building of its age requires a great deal of upkeep and a great deal of care and conservation.

The Great Synagogue wasn't the first synagogue—there were two predecessor synagogues that amalgamated in the 1870s and came to establish this new community—but it was certainly for a long time the main and only synagogue in Sydney. It is referred to by many in the Jewish community as the mother congregation of Sydney. Many important religious festivals but also commemorations and celebrations have been held there. I have attended services for the Council of the Order of Australia there. They had a service recently to commemorate the life of His Royal Highness Prince Philip, who passed away recently. It is the central and focal site for the Jewish communal commemorations in New South Wales and one of the central sites in Australia, and it is a most beautiful sight. It is therefore, I believe, a very significant thing that, if this bill is passed, such an ancient and important institution in the communal life of Australia—not just Jewish communal life but the broader communal life of Australia—is being granted deductible gift recipient status, which, again, provides an incentive for people to donate to the restoration, the maintenance and the upkeep of the synagogue. The synagogue also has the magnificent Reverend Falk library, which has one of the most impressive collections of Jewish history and Judaica anywhere in the world but particularly in Australia. It is a great place of study, and it is a great place to learn more and understand more about the history of the Australian Jewish community.

I didn't want to go through any of the other details of this bill, but I didn't want to let the occasion of this bill's passage through the parliament pass without paying particular tribute to those two very important and very old institutions in Australian Jewish communal life. I think it's appropriate that the government and the parliament support the maintenance of institutions of a very old community that goes all the way back to the First Fleet. I commend the bill to the House.

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