East Melbourne Synagogue

When a young Anne Fromer met Samuel Symonds, Shabbat services at the East Melbourne shule still pledged allegiance to King George V.  For the Fromers, the Symons and other Jewish residents of inner Melbourne, East Melbourne shule was an important part of the fabric of life. Both Anne and Sam’s parents had vowed their devotion to one another under the chuppa at the ‘new’ Albert Street shule, after all.

Mrs. Symons grew up in Abbotsford where her father worked in the shoe trade and her mother looked after nine children, following a stint running a fruit shop.  “We would walk to shule from Abbotsford  on  shabbat  and holidays. It was a lovely warm atmosphere.  We’d  grown  up together and knew everyone.

There was competition among the women on holidays, as they tried to outdo each other with hats and so forth,” Mrs. Symons said.  Once the Rabbi sent a message upstairs for the ladies to remove  the furs they had slung over the railing of the balcony as their presence was seen as inappropriate, Mrs. Symons recalls.  Life then had its trials. “My brother Harry was killed in the First World War and my mother died two months later, at the end of 1917)’ Mrs. Symons said, but the shule and the community provided a steady support for life in both good times and bad for the Symons over more than a century.

Then, as now, the shule reached out into the community, and daughters of then minister Rev. Jacob Lenzer taught the young Anne Fromer Hebrew and Judaism at Abbotsford Primary School.  Her married years were spent in Kew but she still attended at East Melbourne synagogue regularly.