Building a community hub
Bondi could soon see a Hakoah Club-style venue available again to the community after Nefesh received the go-ahead to develop its Roscoe Street site.
BONDI could soon see a Hakoah Club-style venue available again to the community after Nefesh received the go-ahead to develop its Roscoe Street site.
The AJN can reveal that work on the new three-storey building will start in October, and is expected to be completed before the end of 2018.
The centre will house a social hall, multi-purpose educational spaces with classrooms, a cultural hall, social areas and dedicated children’s spaces.
Philanthropist and prominent communal identity Aron Kleinlehrer, who has supported several causes in the Sydney Jewish community, has pledged $1 million towards the project.
“We had just received our final approvals to build, and with Mr Kleinlehrer’s generous support, work will begin very soon,” Nefesh’s Rabbi Aron Moss told The AJN this week.
Rabbi Moss’s vision is to channel the spirit of the old Hakoah Club in Hall Street, the former centre of Bondi Jewish life.
“Hakoah was a meeting place for Holocaust survivors, the lonely and new immigrants. There are still many lonely people in all kinds of ways. We want to be their spiritual home,” he said.
“We are not just building a shule. We are building a community hub, a multi-purpose venue that will be the pride of Jewish Sydney.”
Rabbi Moss said the construction of the centre will see Bondi have an affordable venue for weddings and engagement parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, and other simchas.
“This is the real vision of a community home where we pray and
we eat, we play and we meet.”
Kleinlehrer said he has seen first hand how Rabbi Moss “cares for everyone in the community, particularly those who are in need and looking for support”.
“I want to help him make a home for the entire community,” he added.
EVAN ZLATKIS
comments