MY SITE
Leaving Home4/3/2023 This week I visited the Adelaide Migration museum. It told the remarkable stories of immigrants from all over the world, though also acknowledging the effect that migration had had on the native population. The pattern had changed over the years. At first immigrants were mostly British or Irish, and for several years in the 1950s-60s there had been a ‘whites only’ policy. Now, migrants came from all over the world, including Africa and Asia.
At the same time, I have been learning about the different journeys members of Beit Shalom have made. Several are from South Africa. A 95-year old woman told me how she had grown up there and her husband had served in the British Air Force. She only made the journey here after he had died, to be with her children. Two families with young children had come here because life had become too difficult in South Africa and it no longer felt safe to live there. Others members came to Adelaide as refugees. One, Andrew Steiner, who survived a harrowing childhood in Nazi-occupied Hungary, designed the beautiful stained glass windows at the Synagogue and a sculpture in memory of the Holocaust which is sited at the entrance of the Migration Museum. Others fled from Egypt. Some saw the danger coming as soon as the State of Israel was established; others left after the Suez conflict, when it was no longer safe to be Jewish. One of them, Ed Argy, is the only remaining founder member of the congregation. I am planning this year’s Communal Seder around the theme ‘Leaving home.’ The story of the Exodus can seem like ancient history, but it continues to resonate. For the Israelites leaving Egypt, joy at their delivery from slavery must have been mingled with sadness and anxiety about leaving the familiar and going into the unknown. That story has echoes in so many lives today. Refugees continue to flee to safety, taking with them memories of home which are sweet as well as bitter. An exhibition at the Migration museum showed exquisitely made coffee pots and water jugs which Arab refugees had brought with them as reminders of the home they had lost. Pesach is a time to remember our stories, tell them and listen to the stories of others. I feel privileged to have listened to some amazing stories over the years in Birmingham and have been particularly struck by the resilience of migrants who leave one home and find another. I am glad to be hearing more stories in this country of migrants (though I am not forgetting the indigenous people - I will come back to this topic another time). --Margaret Jacobi
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Leave a Reply.Rabbi Shoshana Kaminsky has been the rabbi of Beit Shalom in Adelaide, South Australia for the last sixteen years. She's very happy to be serving Birmingham Progressive Synagogue for the next three months.
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