Melbourne synagogue raises $600,000 after attack

Zev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.

The Adass Israel Synagogue has raised more than $600,000 in a crowdfunding campaign for its reconstruction, after it was destroyed in an antisemitic arson attack last Friday.

“The horrific attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue was an attack on the very heart of the Jewish community and on our Australian way of life,” the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) says in a statement. “We can’t let that un-Australian hate destroy the country we love. We have to stand with the Adass community and help them to rebuild, and rebuild even stronger.”

The Adass Synagogue is home to a Hasidic congregation of several hundred families.

It was founded in 1949 by Holocaust survivors from Hungary, Germany, the former Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Many of the current members are Holocaust survivors or descendants of Holocaust survivors.

Some of the Torah scrolls that were saved from last week’s fire had been rescued from the ashes of the Holocaust, the campaign’s website notes.

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