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Address 36 Flood St, Bondi NSW 2026, Australia | ||
The Yeshiva Centre was established in 1956 by Mr. Abraham Rabinovitch, along with a few others, as a synagogue and learning centre. The leaders from 1956 to 1968 were Rabbi G. Hertz and Rabbi C. E. Barzel. In 1968 the Yeshiva Centre's board of trustees appointed Rabbi Pinchus Feldman to lead its synagogue and to assist with expanding its small ultra-orthodox Jewish day school.
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Activities
The Yeshiva Centre runs various educational programs.
Yeshiva Gedola - Rabbinical College of Sydney
The Yeshiva Gedola, like other Chabad Yeshivot Gedolot, is a centre for Jewish higher learning. Established in 1986 by the Yeshiva Centre, it forms part of the Tomchei Temimim Yeshiva network.
Rabbi Boruch Lesches served as its Rosh Yeshiva and Mashpia for almost twenty years. He has since left Sydney, and is currently serving as the rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch shul in Monsey, which also contains a Yeshiva that is part of the Tomchei Temimim network.
The Yeshiva Gedolah was administered by Rabbi Yossi Feldman, a son of the chief rabbi of Chabad in Sydney, Pinchus Feldman until February 2015. In February 2015 the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard Rabbi Yossi Feldman testify, where he stated that he "was not aware it was illegal to touch a child's genitals". Feldman told the commission that he did not find it necessary for victims to report sexual abuse to the police if offenses took place decades prior. He proposed that the law be lenient on sexual predators who had not committed any sexual abuse for two decades if they had repented. His comments outraged the Australian Jewish Community, and victims of sexual harassment called for him to stand down. Rabbi Yossi Feldman stood down from his administrative positions at the Yeshiva Centre.
Yeshiva College
Yeshiva College was a Jewish day school, established by the Yeshiva Centre in 1956. From 1968 to 2003 it was headed by Rabbi Pinchus Feldman.
After financial difficulty, in late 2003 the Feldman family ceded control over the school to philanthropist Meir Moss for A$1. The school later rebranded as Kesser Torah.
The Yeshiva opened a new School in 2007 called Cheder Chabad Lubavitch, later renamed Yeshiva College Bondi Ltd.