Perth Voice Interactive

TEMPLE David in Mount Lawley has a new rabbi.

Israeli-born Adi Cohen says he took on the job in Perth because it represented a challenge to strengthen the local Jewish community.

“When I came here for the final interview I saw the potential in the place,” he says.

“It’s very easy to take a role in a well-established congregation where your work is mostly maintenance, but I was looking for a challenge to turn a great congregation into an innovative congregation.”

Temple David is part of Judaism’s more progressive wing. More orthodox traditions have strict rules on who’s Jewish, holding that it’s passed down only through the mother.

The progressive school has a wider definition and accepts patrilineal descent for people who grew up in a Jewish home with a Jewish identity.

It also constantly re-examines the original Torah in new contexts.

In his office bookcase, Rabbi Cohen has books stretching back thousands of years with progressively updated interpretations of how the texts should be seen in new eras.

“We’re an egalitarian congregation,” he says, “one of the things we cherish here is pluralism and a non-judgmental approach.

“I believe one of the roles I took upon myself … is to provide people a way to live a full Jewish life in the modern era.

“We’re living in a world that’s different from 50 years ago, 100 years ago.

“The question is not how I preserve the Jewish world and shield it from change, my task is how do I bring the Jewish world into modern life while holding onto our traditions.

“It’s about forming our present from the bricks of the past—being respectful and knowledgeable toward it, but not living in the past.”

He’s previously been a rabbi in New Zealand and Israel, and before that served in the Israeli Defence Force’s navy and then as a search and rescue officer.

As to the never-ending conflicts back home, Rabbi Cohen says he loves his country and that’s why he’ll criticise its actions when he thinks it’s done wrong.

“We’re not afraid to criticise Israel… [but] I think that although Israel is far from being perfect, it is the only state in the world where the culture, its day to day life, its language, is rooted in Judaism,” he says, and that makes it important to Jews who live elsewhere in the world.

As for taking up the top job at the temple, he says he’s not there as a “boss” exactly but to help guide the conversation of where the congregation wants to go.

“In a progressive world, the rabbi is not calling the shots.

“It’s not about pulling rank, it’s the wind leading the clouds.”

by DAVID BELL