The Yeshivah Centre is an Orthodox Jewish umbrella organisation in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia that serves the needs of the Melbourne Jewish community. It is run by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, until recently, under the direct administration of Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner. Rabbi Zvi Telsner has been brought as the new Dayan (rabbinical judge) of the Centre and Lubavitch community.
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The Yeshivah Centre was established by a group of Jewish migrants in the late 1940s in response to a massive postwar influx of Jews to Melbourne. In 1949, Yeshivah Centre opened a Jewish day school with only 3 full time students. This led, in 1954, to the purchase of the Yeshivah College campus. This was followed by the purchase of the Beth Rivkah Ladies College campus in 1959. In 1958, Rabbi Y.D. Groner arrived in Melbourne as an emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in order to take up the position of full time Director of the Yeshivah Centre, and appointed honorary officers to assist him in operating the organisation. The first matriculation of students took place in 1965 with a class of 8 boys.
In 2011, Victoria Police launched an investigation into alleged sexual abuse at Yeshivah College between 1989 and 1993 and the consistent failure of the school leadership to report the matters to police.
In September 2011, David Cyprys a former student and employee at the Yeshivah College was charged 13 counts of gross indecency with a child and 16 counts of indecent assault with a child between 1984 and 1991. The youngest of his 12 alleged victims was aged 7 at the time[1].
The investigation by Victoria Police into allegations sexual abuse at the Yeshivah is ongoing.
The centre comprises a network of educational facilities that include:
Not all Chabad institutions in Melbourne are officially under this organisation, e.g., the Yeshivah Gedolah Zal (an academy of advanced Talmudic studies for young men). Although the Yeshivah Gedolah is not officially under this organisation, it is still closely tied, and they coordinate activities with Chabad Youth, Mivtzoim Melbourne, and private classes, especially with children from Yeshivah College.