Name Yitzchok Groner | Died July 7, 2008 | |
 | ||
Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner (18 April 1925 – 7 July 2008) was the most senior Chabad rabbi in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and the director of the Yeshivah Centre.
Contents
Biography
Born in New York City, United States to a Hassidic family (his brother Leib Groner was one of the secretaries to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson), he arrived in Melbourne, Australia for the first time in 1953 at the bidding of the prior Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, and began his position officially in 1958.
He has been referred to as one of the pioneers and builders of the Melbourne Jewish community. He was also known for his Talmudic erudition, his sermons and rousing High Holiday cantorial services (chazzanut) in the Yeshivah synagogue, specifically Ne'ilah.
On 18 May 2008, he explained at a Shabbat gathering that he was the forerunner and organiser of the Lag B'Omer Parade in 1942 and personally arranged the event as a request from Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson spoke for the first time in a public fashion at that gathering and Rabbi Groner suggested that somebody should take notes. In fact, the entire talk is available today thanks to Rabbi Groner.
On the occasion of his 80th birthday, the then Prime Minister John Howard said
Prime Minister Howard was, of course, unaware of matters that were revealed subsequently about Groner to a Royal Commission. Rabbi Groner died on the morning of Monday, 7 July 2008, aged 83; and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.
In February 2015, during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, it was revealed that Rabbi Yitzchok Groner sought to deal internally with reports of the sexual abuse perpetrated by a security guard at the Yeshivah by requiring the guard to undertake spiritual counselling, with the aim of motivating him to repentance and reform. He thought that declarations by the guard following the counselling of remorse were sincere and that the matter did not need to be taken further, nor reported to the police. When, some years later, he was informed of continuing abuses, as testimony by witnesses indicated, he was surprised and deeply dismayed. However, he did not contact the police, and by this time the victims were determined to make formal complaints to the police, convinced that he did simply not care about the suffering of students and their parents and they blamed him for covering up allegations of sexual abuse.
His 5 children who live in Melbourne apologized to one of the victims, Manny Waks, after the public hearing of the Royal Commission and resignations of some of the rabbis involved.
Family
He was survived by his wife, Rebbetzin Devorah, and his children: