Approximately six hundred people attended the Shloshim Service for our Bobbe, Rebbetzen Maryasha Garelik, on Monday night.
who passed away in New York at the age of 106 last month.
The speakers at the service included grandchildren of the Bobbe,
Rebbetzen Henya and our cousin the world-renowned Rabbi Feitel Levin, Rabbi of East Brighton shule and Dean of the Smicha Insitute in Melbourne. Levi Milecki and Yisroel Goldman, great grandchildren of the Bobbe, also participated in the service.
Many in the congregation were moved to tears as they heard of the determination and self-sacrifice of a single mother with six little children pitted against all the might of Stalin's Soviet Empire. Alone and without support she declared that the Soviet Union would fall before she allowed any of her children to attend a Soviet school where they would be indoctrinated by the communist system.
In spite of losing all the men closest to her to anti-semites, - father,
grandfather, husband and brother - she stood her ground. And by time of her death last month, not only had the Soviet Union fallen, but she had 733 children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great,great grandchildren. The vast majority of 
these are today involved in spreading Yiddishkeit in every continent, including that land of persecution - the Former Soviet Union. The diminutive Jewish mother had taken on the Soviet superpower and won!
I concluded with the hope and blessing that the 
Torah for which our ancestors so vigorously fought under the most adverse of circumstances should be appreciated in the lands of freedom. The congregation was then deeply moved as a song by the Lubavitcher 
Rebbe on this theme was played.
Chazan Niasoff and the South Head Choir rounded off the evening with truly beautiful Chazonus and song. All in all a deeply moving and inspiring event. As promised last week, we have a fantastically exciting month coming up. Please be sure to book for a fully catered lunch with Rabbi Boteach, as places are strictly limited. Call Helen on 9371 7300 Ext. 4 or email her by clicking here. Later that afternoon, February 24th, we will be hosting the internationally renowned Rabbi Shlomo Riskin for a Seuda Shlishit - see details below. There is no charge for the Seuda Shlishit, but in order to facilitate catering, please email Helen if you are intending to come.
There are more surprises still to come, so please stay tuned!
And now for a short Devar Torah, briefly explaining what the Torah achieved.
Before the Giving of the Torah (Matan Torah of which we read in this week's parasha), there was a disjoint between Heaven and Earth, between the material and the spiritual. You could as holy as Abraham and Sarah, and yet have no permanent effect at all on the physical world.
Once the Torah was given, all that changed. You could be the simplest, least learned Jew, but when you do a mitzvah, it permanently changes the structure of the physical world. Every time you eat kosher, every time you put on tephilin, every time you light Shabbat candles, the material world becomes a more refined and more holy place.
Although not physically measurable, this is what happens. And when, as a result of the cumulative effect of everyone's Mitzvot, there is enough holiness in the physical world, Moshiach will come.
So what are we waiting for?