Jewish Life in Melbourne by Sender Burstin

JEWISH LIFE IN MELBOURNE BY SENDER BURSTIN Over 30,000 Jews live in Melbourne today. In comparison to other Jewish settlements around the world, it is moderately small, but it shouldn’t be ashamed compared with other Jewish settlements with its branched net of institutions of national, religious, educational and helping character compared with many big Jewish settlements. Sydney also has about the same number of Jews. It also possesses several Jewish institutions. This settlement is older than the Melbourne settlements, yet the pulse of Jewish life beats a lot stronger and impulsively in Melbourne and is more colourful than in Sydney. The reasons that caused the difference between the two cities were different. In the time when the Sydney community consisted of a majority of British‐German ‘stock’ and less Jews from Eastern Europe, the content of the Melbourne community was just the opposite. The big national and social ideas that caught the Jewish people in Eastern Europe, in Russia and Poland at the end of the 19th century, were carried here by the stream of Jewish immigration. This was expressed even more by the post‐war immigration. While the Jews from Hungary and Germany went to Sydney, the Polish Jews went to Melbourne. They helped form and shape the character of the community. It didn’t just help a little that personalities from big cultural communal worth settled for a time or permanently in Melbourne. They, with their national‐educational work, influenced the development of the community. In the coming chapters, an attempt will be made to give, in short features, the road of development of the Jewish settlement in Melbourne. The First Sprouting The sprouting of Jewish life in Melbourne, like in Australia overall, is noticeable from the first half of the 19th century. Understandably, at that time, it expressed itself almost entirely in a religious form. But, already in the 50s of that same century, the need for social help was clear and the Jewish Philanthropic Organization was created with the goal “to help poor and lonely members of the Jewish faith”. Later, its activities broadened. And the Montefiore Home was created. About this last institution we will write later. In the 80s, the charity box was created. Overall, Jewish life at that time revolved around the synagogues, kosher meat, matters and different communal arguments. It is worth, at this opportunity, to cite Shloyme Vinen, a pioneer of our community. He writes in the first Australian Jewish Almanac about that time: “The local Jewish population of that time consisted of, in abundance, two sorts: From one side the total assimilationist, so‐called Yehudim and just ignoramuses. Just as is the way in all English‐Jewish communities, Jewish philanthropic institutions and an afternoon and Sunday school for religious studies existed here. And – you understand – all the religious hoi poloi. And this all was under the strongest influence of the clerics and the Yehudim and the spirit of assimilation spread over all. The major goal of the leaders of that time was to anglicize the local community and to keep it under the influence of religious institutions”. So goes Jewish life until the beginning of the current century. Some years before the outbreak of WWI, a new element of Jewish immigrants arrived. They came from Poland and Russia. For them, the local reality was absolutely foreign. There were times of strengthened anti‐Semitic reaction in Czarist Russia after the failed revolution of 1905, full of disappointment on the one hand and signs of the growth of Jewish modern political and social and national movements on the other hand. These fresh Polish‐Russian immigrants, with their momentum and energy, brought in a new spirit to Jewish life, full of the national and social ideas of Eastern European Jewry. They were the pioneers of a Jewish‐secular and national‐folkish life in Melbourne. At that time, the Kadimah was founded. We do not choose to write the history of the Kadimah, about its influence on its surroundings, here. This will be written about elsewhere in this publication. It needs to be underlined, however, that all those who helped to modernise and secularise local Jewish life assembled around the Kadimah. The Visit of Peretz Hirshbeyn During WWI, a crisis of communal cultural work occurred. Many of the folk Jews mentioned here were overtaken by apathy. Just as the earth needs annual renewal, a society needs new streams of human energy in order to avoid stagnation. And at this point Jewish immigration stopped. Yisroyel Sher, one of the pioneers and activists of that epoch, writes about that time in the already noted First Australian Jewish Almanac: “Just at that time our Jewish cultural life was for many reasons, backwards. Our cultural organization, the Kadimah, existed, but more on paper than in reality. The Jewish communal and cultural activists were torn. Differences of opinion broke out. Some of them absolutely went on strike. The other part was silent and rested more than did in whatever form – they were all passive.” A miracle needed to occur to bring the community out of its apathy. And a miracle happened. The writer Peretz Hirshbeyn with his wife, the poet Esther Shumacher, came to Australia at the end of 1920 as guests of the Melbourne folk‐Jews. This was a turning point in the life of the local Jewish community. Yisroyel Sher writes about Hirshbeyn’s visit in the same almanac: “The news of Hirshbeyn’s visit electrified everyone, bounded everyone, amongst yes and no everyone was equalised, everyone awakened to a new activeness. Everyone soon understood that all rubbings needed to disappear, all differences needed to be placed to one side – and the coming of Hirshbeyn is a yontef, and a yontef it needed to become. Soon it also became clear to everyone that the best place to receive such a guest was the Kadimah. Those who only had or brought with them from the old home with a little sense for cultural work and society, soon became full with ambition to show the guest that though he surely thought that he was on an island in the desert in the cultural sense – still there was activity. The closeness of Hirshbeyn’s visit actually became a dynamic power that drove everyone.” After the long war years of full isolation, Hirshbeyn was the first dove of the big Jewish world that came to the distant, back of the black stump island of Jewish life. He brought a fresh, lively greeting from the creativity of Yiddish‐land. He poured a new stream of communal energy into the folk mass of Melbourne, which was thirsty for a new Yiddish word. Hirshbeyn, all in all, was in Melbourne for five weeks. However, he left an impression which the community fed on for years. It seemed to be just a short visit by a writer, but what deep roots, what a influence he left in the community! The ‘Welcome Society’ In the old home, in Poland, hard times for the Jews came during the 1920s. The Grabski government, wanting to save the hard economic and financial situation in the country, had a policy of raising taxes, taxing the urbanites ‐ and therefore the Jews – at a higher rate than the peasantry. This was its’ intention. This actually ruined the middle class and also others. This led to a bigger Jewish emigration. Some of these emigrants also came to Australia and the majority of them to Melbourne. In order to help the new stream of immigrants, the already existing Kadimah created a new institution, the so called ‘Welcome Society’, which helped lessen the loneliness of the new arrivals, through receiving them at the ship and creating work places for them. At this opportunity it is worth underlining the role of the charity box, which helped the immigrants to stand on their own feet with interest free loans. Fresh Immigrants – New Ideas With the stream of the so called Grabski‐immigration, which came the end of the 1920s, Australia inherited a new element that was educated to social activism in Poland, modern Jewish culture on the winds of the ideology of universal freedom. The writer of these lines was also part of this immigration. And he wrote about that time in the book ‘10 Years Yiddish School’, in the article ‘Raw Earth is Cultivated’: “From one place one could see a light ray, this was the Kadimah. In the big spiritual desert, the Kadimah was like an oasis, where one could refresh the dry, burning tongue with a spiritual Yiddish word. At that time the Kadimah had a library of some hundreds of Yiddish books, as well as books in other languages. There also used to be Yiddish newspapers and journals from the whole world. Every Sunday, we used to come together in the hall of that time at 313 Drummond Street, Carlton, read a Torah portion of Peretz, Sholem Aleichem, read a Yiddish writer, remember a yortsayt of a deceased Yiddish communal activist, sometimes also a concert. Everything was woven with Zionist coloured stitches. With that, the whole cultural communal work ended. In general, it looked like a type of congregation. There was a St Kilda synagogue, a Burke Street synagogue, a Carlton synagogue, and there was also a Kadimah synagogue. If a green, a new immigrant asked for a discussion of Jewish and social problems ‐ which were so important in Poland ‐ this was thought to affect the all holy a‐politicalness of the Kadimah, leaving the path that had been trod since its founding. To call on the Kadimah to fight Yehudish assimilation tendencies was almost revolutionary.

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