Archive - Thursday October 21st.

On Thursday October 21st, Marshall thought he would try to break the record for most vocational sites visited by one VTT member in one day. With the help of Rabbi Mendel Kastel, he did.
Between 9:30 am and 4:30 pm, he was at 7 - yes 7 different sites: Jewish House, Jewish Care, Reddam House (a school), Moriah College, Sydney Clinic (a treatment centre for adults with Mood Disorder and/or Borderline Personality Disorder), Kesser Torah College and the Rabbinec Council of New South Wales.
In between everything, he was interviewed by the Australian Jewish News.
The scary thing is, that was just a typical day for the Rabbi! He is a dynamo of energy, with his finger in just about every Jewish pie in Sydney and yet throught it all he maintains an inner calm which radiates to everyone he helps. The various hats he wears (in addition to the "kippah" or religious skullcap) include: hospital chaplain (visiting the sick), advocate for housing and financial assistance for the mentally ill, crisis counsellor, manager of a mental health service agency and Rabbi of a congregation.
In the middle of the day, he received a call from the Israeli Embassy. An acutely disturbed youth had just arrived from Israel and needed to be urgently assessed, or else he would be deported. The Rabbi arranged it.
By the end of the day, Marshall was thanking God- and the Rabbi- that there were no more places to go....He learned that the problems of mental health in Jewish youth in Sydney are not much different to those in Toronto, and good ideas about how to bridge cultural divides were mutally shared. Perhaps the only difference was the exchange rate- one Rabbi Kostel is worth about 10 Rabbis anywhere else.