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Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg joined the Jewish community for an Erev Pesach service last Friday at a suburban Melbourne synagogue.

Frydenberg thanks Morrison for being “such a strong, genuine friend of the Jewish people,” the Australian Jewish News reported.

“Whether it’s your steadfast support for Israel, or whether it’s your understanding of our festivals, or whether it is standing firm in the face of rising antisemitism, here and abroad, you have been a genuine friend of Israel and the Jewish people,” Frydenberg said.

Morrison told the congregants of the Ark Center synagogue, quoting the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, that “as you come together to celebrate Passover, teach your children the history of freedom, if you want them to never lose it.”

“I think Passover is so much about that, teaching our children, we can become complacent about freedom, we can become complacent about our prosperity,” Morrison said. “We can become complacent about so many things that we could take for granted as a country as amazing as Australia, where so many have come and found freedom and found prosperity.”

He added that there is “something very special about the Jewish community” and spoke of the community’s “deeply held belief in the dignity of every single human being”.

“It’s a belief in both the frailty of every human being as well as their strength, and appreciating the frailties of others and the vulnerabilities of others, we understand the vulnerabilities and frailties of ourselves,” he said.

(Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of the Seventh Day of Passover in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)