Jews in Sydney are Pretty Nice

Shana Tovah (Jewish New Year) to all of my Jewish family and friends.  There is a reasonably big Jewish community in Sydney with roughly 40,000 Jews.  Over 90% of them live in the eastern suburbs, near where I live.  So, there are a few synagogues and temples I can take a quick bus ride to.  I found a progressive (reformed) Rosh Hashanah service being offered at a Emanuel Synagogue, so I went there on Wednesday.  

I was kind of wandering around the block because I couldn’t find the synagogue so I asked a nice older lady and two younger girls with her if they knew where Emanuel was.  It turned out that they were going to services as well and invited me to follow them.  I told them I was from America and they invited me to a dinner at their house afterward.  The older lady was the grandmother to the younger girls, Natalie and Natasha.  Nat and Tash are my age and also studying at the same university as me.  The service was really short and the building was very beautiful.  The congregation probably had about 125ish people.  

So I met them after schul and we drove over to their friend’s, the Newman’s, house. The Newman's had a really nice home and eventually after all 50 relatives and friends arrived, we started eating a delicious dinner.  I got to sit amongst 6-7 Jewish girls between 20 and 25.    I was introduced to everyone, even though I don’t remember any one’s names, and I felt very welcome at their dinner.  I sat next to Jenna who is the daughter of David and Nadine Levine, who invited me to a luncheon they were having the next day.  The family was absolutely and ridiculously nice to me.

Tash was nice enough to give me a ride halfway to the Levines’ house after I met her at Bondi Junction.  The Levines live in an area called Point Piper which is a fairly wealthy neighborhood overlooking Double Bay, (which is gorgeous).  Most of their 150ish friends and family there at the luncheon were from South Africa originally.  The South African Jewish community in Australia (supposedly around 10,000) mainly boomed in the years during the revolution in South Africa.  

Anyway, a lot of them know each other from back in South Africa and so now that their kids have grown up knowing each other, there is quite a close-knit community.  I met a lot of cool people including a family with the exact same last name as me.  I met Clyve and Brett Isenberg who are originally from South Africa.  My great grandfather lived there for several years and there is a chance some other family immigrated there that I don’t know about, so it’s possible that I’ve found some relatives!!  I will update as that situation develops…gotta love Sydney :)