Boaz (Bert) Wreschner z”l, was born in Hannover Germany in 1916. After matriculating there in 1935, he spent a year in the Yeshiva at Montreux, Switzerland. In February 1937, he arrived in England, where he studied at Jews’ College and University College, London. He was very active communally in formal and informal education; worked with both young adults and children; and also officiated as rabbi in a Shule in Cazenove Road, North London. During the war, Boaz Wreschner participated in the evacuation of Jewish children from bomb-torn London to towns in the surrounding countryside. After his marriage to Margot Zernik in late 1944, he continued this plight with his new wife, as the young couple became wardens and foster-parents, in a village near Cambridge, to a group of evacuated Jewish children from London, and children who had been rescued from the most harrowing experiences in the Holocaust in Europe. After obtaining his Arts degree with Honours at University College, he went on to pursue further studies in the field of Psychology.
In late 1948, the family emigrated to Melbourne, and in 1949 Boaz Wreschner joined St Kilda Shule as second Minister under Rabbi Danglow, where he remained until 1953. He was very active with Jewish education in the Sunday School, and also taught classes during the week. Boaz Wreschner was well known for his inspiring sermons and educational work, and had many “Hassidim” (devotees) who stuck with him through thick and thin. Some of his students from that time, such as Prof Louis Waller, Prof Paul Gardner, Dr Hugo Gold and others, became life-long friends, and one of his most loyal congregants was Dr Ernest Kirsner, who was also the family’s physician.
Boaz Wreschner had completed his Dip Ed at University of Melbourne, and in 1954, after leaving St Kilda Shul, he established Moriah College in Elwood, a unique Jewish Day School with educational methods that were more than fifty years ahead of their time. Many people from the general community in Melbourne, in the fields of Education and Child Psychology, visited the school and often consulted with Wreschner.
In late 1968, the family went on Aliya to Israel, where my Boaz Wreschner taught at Bar-Ilan University until his retirement in 1984. He passed away in Jerusalem in 2002.