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. In short, the Kadimah, at that time, sat on the Olympus of purely blue and white a‐politicism and it liked the dynamicity of a modern Jewish‐communal cultural activeness”.

“The Kadimah, with all its faults was, nevertheless at that time, the only little cultural corner where fresh immigrants with cultural communal movement could live, to a certain extent, spiritually and communally. However, they did not for one moment make peace with the thought that the situation needed to stay so frozen”.

On this place, the role of the deceased Dr Aron Patkin needs to be noted. Himself a new immigrant, he had only just come to Melbourne, where he settled. A communal activist in Russia before WWI and later in Berlin ‐ where he was tied to the colony of the Jewish immigrant intelligencia ‐ he, with his experience and knowledge, helped broaden the horizons of the Jewish life in Melbourne.

We, the Jewish‐socialist elements, continued to be members of the Kadimah, but in parallel with it a new club arose, which grouped the elements with a Jewish‐secular and national‐socialist colour. The uniting of different directions with Bundist‐Communist tendencies led to the founding of the so called ‘Australian Gezerd’. This happened in 1931. One cannot say that the program of the new institutions made everyone happy. It was an attempt at opposing sides compromise.

The newly founded club, both with its seriousness and with its work, drew in many friends and had the best possibilities of growth in a nice Jewish‐secular, socialist cultural institution. Unfortunately, the Communists began to lead the institution on the way of the ‘party‐line’ and terrorised those who dared to have a different opinion, until there was an open split when they locked out the writer of these lines. This led to the downhill of the ‘Gezerd’ and a short time later, it needed to completely close down.

The Committee ‘Friends of Yiddish‐Secular School ‐System in Poland’

The Bundists, as well as other national‐secular Jews, did not give up their desire for local communal work. They organized and created a committee, which went into the history of our community under the name ‘Friends of the Yiddish‐Secular School ‐System in Poland’.

This committee wrote a brilliant chapter of cultural‐communal work. It was an institution without an address, but everyone knew where it was. It was a society without a written constitution and yet everyone knew its goals. Though officially the committee took to raising material help for the Jewish school‐system in Poland, there was not one communal or cultural‐secular action in which the committee did not take part, like the boycott of Hitler‐ Germany, helping those who were fighting in Spain, etc. Thanks to this work its communal horizons broadened and it exercised strong influence on its surroundings. It left deep roots in the community. Today when we look back on that time, we can prove that the committee of ‘Friends of the Yiddish‐Secular School ‐System in Poland’ in an indirect way influenced the road of the Kadimah.

With the outbreak of the last world war, the committee, in fact, ceased to exist because other problems arose, but its influence remained. In future activities we were able to write about the effect of this committee.

At that time, a theatre circle by the name of ‘Yiddish Stage’ already existed under the leadership of Yankev Ginter. It used to perform modern Yiddish theatre. This isn’t the place to write about this in detail. Undoubtedly this drama group brought much to our settlement in national terms and garnered respect for our modern Jewish culture.

Since the people‐material of these two groups, both ‘Friends of the Yiddish‐Secular School ‐System in Poland’ and the theatre circle by the name of ‘Yiddish Stage’ was almost the same, meetings occurred at the same time, creating a duality. Jewish Melbourne needs to thank these people for the visit of the poet Melech Ravitch and the fact that Yoysef Gilligich, Yankev Waislitz and later Rochl Holzer settled in Melbourne. They, without a doubt, pushed our community forward in the cultural and national‐secular sense.

Melech Ravitch, Yoysef Gilligich, Yankev Waislitz, Rochl Holzer

The poet Melech Ravitch visited Australia twice. The first time he came was in 1933, just for 6 months while he raised money for the ‘Tsisho’ schools in Poland. The meaning of his mission was not just to create material help for the Yiddish schools in Poland, but much more. The settlement, for the first time, became acquainted with the problems of a Jewish school in Yiddish. In 1935, Ravitch came for the second time and settled here for two years. We hold this period to be a turning point in the Jewish life of Melbourne. Ravitch was the creator of the Yiddish school, which was known in later years as the I.L. Peretz School. He also encouraged the small group of local writers to take to the pen, like the prematurely deceased Pinkhas Goldhar and others (by the way Goldhar was also a member of the group ‘Friends of Yiddish‐Secular School ‐System in Poland’). Thanks to the initiative of Ravitch and under his editorship, the First Australian Jewish Almanac was published. This was the first Yiddish book that appeared in Australia. Ravitch finished his renowned book of poetry Continents and Oceans, in Melbourne. He was the first Captain Cook, who first discovered Australia for the Jewish world. Thanks to his letters, published in the Warsaw Bund newspaper ‘Folkstsaytung’, a new land for Jewish emigration was found. In 1935, due to the financial situation in this country, the doors of Australia were closed, but when conditions improved two or three years later, a bigger Jewish immigration to Australia could be noticed.

In 1938 Yoysef Gilligich settled in Melbourne. Earlier, he had raised money for the ‘Tsisho’ schools in Poland. Later, he took over the running of the Yiddish school. (Ravitch, by then, had already left Australia). Under his leadership and thanks to increased Jewish immigration, the small Yiddish school, which at first had in total 30 children, grew to be 2 schools: the I.L. Peretz School and the Sholem Aleichem School, with two kindergartens and two individual big buildings where 500 children learn. Gilligich’s name became identified with the school: the parents used to call it the Gilligich‐school. He became the preferred lecturer about Yiddish literature, culture and pedagogy. Hundreds and thousands listened to his lectures.

At this opportunity, one episode about the role of the Yiddish school should be noted, which was printed in the jubilee publication ‘25 Years I.L. Peretz School in Melbourne’:

“It was war time. The children’s choir, under the leadership of friend Pinkhas Sharp, sang many folk songs that not one adult choir could be proud of. They turned to the local government radio station to see if they were ready to allow the school‐choir to record a radio program. They didn’t agree at first but did eventually agree. The performance had a big success. A year later, with fresh songs, they wanted to record another program. They agreed on the spot. But the performance was a little different – they sang from the Kadimah building. The hall was packed with hundreds of listeners, yet whilst they were singing – a dead‐quiet. This time, the Yiddish song was transmitted not just over all of Australia, but also to all the Pacific islands, where the Australian and American armies were stationed at the time. The success was colossal. In the middle of our big Holocaust, when Jewish life was gassed, one could hear on the waves of radio over the whole world the singing of Yiddish songs, that we Jews continue to live...

“We received many thank you letters not just from Melbourne but also from the wider world for the big enjoyment that we created.”

In the same year, the artist Yankev Waislitz came to Melbourne for a visit and a year later the stage‐artist Rochl Holzer arrived. The world war stranded both in Australia and later there was no one to go back to... It needs to be underlined here their addition to our local national cultural life. With their word‐concerts and theatre performances, with their performances of big Yiddish plays, they awoke respect for the Yiddish word.

Help and Immigrants

During the pre‐Holocaust years, tragic news came from the old home, from Poland. The country was becoming Fascist, the Jewish folk‐masses were victimised by the Polish government and by the Polish masses. Our responsibility to help our brothers grew. A committee was created, called the ‘Polish‐Jewish Help‐Fund’, under the leadership of the deceased Arthur Rose. Hundreds of pounds are collected.

At the same time, the burning problem of emigration for Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia arose. Tens of thousands of Jews were forced to escape from from the Nazi regime like from a fire. There was nowhere to run to. The doors of the immigration‐countries were almost closed. It became an international problem, and the democratic world needed to interest itself with our problems. At the Evian Conference in 1938, which was especially called for this intention, the Australian government agreed to issue 15,000 visas during three years, about five thousand a year. The Australian government and public opinion was not inclined towards a bigger, non‐British immigration. Due to the outbreak of war in 1939, only a total of 7,500 refugees manage to be saved. Two thirds of them settled in Sydney, the rest in Melbourne. At the same time, an immigration of Polish Jews settled in Melbourne.

If the Jewish‐Polish immigration was normal, sponsored by local relatives, the Jewish‐German immigration had to rely on the community for help. This is why the committee called the ‘Welfare Society’ was created.

The war broke out and the immigration stopped. Only 70 odd refugees managed to be saved from Poland, by coming here through Russia and Japan.

Many more would surely have been able to save themselves if Japan had not entered into the war. All those, who were stuck there, were later interned in a ghetto in Shanghai.

Another immigration occurred during the war. We will call it a ‘strange’, painful immigration that was characteristic of that time. Many German Jews, who saved themselves from their ‘home’ and went to England were interned there as citizens of the enemy country... Because England, due to the tense situation in that country, was afraid to have such a foreign element, they sent them, along with imprisoned soldiers, to Australia. Here they were newly interned in some special camps. Of course, the local Jewish community did everything possible in order to free the Jews and they are all, with time, freed. This is how, in a dramatic way, thousands of German Jews were saved in Australia.

Post‐War Problems – Help and Immigration

The bloody war ended and our tragedy was discovered in its whole pain. The Melbourne community felt, with all its senses, that everything possible needed to be done in order to save the survivors, through direct help with money, medicines and packages or through immigration and rehabilitation. The base for this work was already prepared much earlier, before the bloody curtain was raised. Under the leadership of Leo Fink, a Help Fund committee was organised, which wrote a wonderful chapter in our history. Dozens and dozens of Jews volunteered. We can’t count everyone who lent a hand, but for one person we will make an exception: the late Dovid Abzats. At that time he was the driving power, the dynamic motor of this work. Jewish Melbourne, proportional to the size of the community, was number one in the Jewish world in giving help. This was documented by the Jewish help institutions, like the JOINT and HAYAS. The Jewish Welfare Fund grew in the later years to be one of the most fundamental institutions of our community.

Meanwhile, the survivors were in Poland and DP camps in Germany and other countries. The time had come to resettle them. Also, Australia needed to take in some of them. The president, Mr Meyzel, of the Melbourne ‘Advisory Board’ (that is what our community was called then) turned, with a memorandum, to the then immigration minister of the Labor government, Mr Arthur Calwell, calling on him to allow in a certain number of Jewish immigrants. This would partially sooth the painful problems of the survivors. The request was well received by post‐war public opinion.

In Australian government circles, in that time, there was a change in the immigration policy. Until the war, the Labor Party, like all of Australian public opinion, was against bigger immigration overall, and especially by non‐ British stock. It was held that the strange elements, the foreigners, took jobs and food out of the mouths of Australians, not thinking that the Australian continent was as big as Europe with a total population of seven million people. In the north, in Asia, there were a million people ‐ due to natural growth ‐ who were looking for new homes. They lived in a fool’s paradise and thought that the English fleet would protect Australia from a foreign invasion. Dark clouds, however, spread out over the Australian sky, when the Japanese fleet came close to Australian shores during the last war. Mother England, which dipped its’ own head in its own worries in Europe and in Africa, could almost do nothing to help Australia. Its fleet, which was stationed in Malaya and Singapore and needed to protect Australia from an eventual attack from the north, departed and was drowned by the Japanese air force. Japanese aeroplanes bombed the Australian northern port, Darwin. The big Australian continent remained a lone in its fateful hour. Only a miracle saved the country from a Japanese invasion. America brought a million‐man army to Australia within a few weeks and stopped the Japanese.

These days of danger taught Australia a bitter and instructive lesson. The government circles and in general all political parties came to the conclusion, that the situation must change radically, and the mistake made must be corrected: Australia must quickly become populated, either through natural growth, or through immigration.

At that time our memorandum to open the doors of Australia for Jewish immigration arrived. The request was made on the line of the new policy, therefore it must be underlined that the immigration minister, Calwell, was not only a statesman, but also a great humanitarian in relation to our specific Jewish problem, for which we are very grateful to him.

Thanks to the post‐war immigration, our settlement grew strong. During the last 15‐16 years our population more than doubled. From a stingy 30,000 souls, it went to over 60,000.

The newly arisen landsmanshaftn played a big role. They represented Jews from many Polish cities, like Bialystok, Lodz, Warsaw, Zelechow, Radom and many others. The sentiment and longing for their home‐city led to hundreds and thousands of immigrants joining landsmanshaftn. The majority of the settled Jews lost their own relatives in the Holocaust and the refugees didn’t have anyone here. It was, however, enough if one could meet from time to time, or even just show that one originated from the same city. Then all was done so that the request of a landsman could be granted. Some landsmanshaftn, like that of Bialystok, and a certain time later also the Warsaw and Radom groups, bought big houses, in order to allow new immigrants to have a roof over their heads when they arrived here. When one takes into account the shortage of dwellings at that time, one can understand how much of a great help it was for the new arrivals. The landsmanshaftn also created their own funds to help their landslayt in case of need, or helping them stand on their own feet by settling them in a business or workshop.

Also, the Bundist organization in Melbourne did well in making permits. It was the first organization to receive permits for 30‐odd refugees from Shanghai who had been there since the beginning of the war, from Minister Calwell. Hundreds and hundreds of Jews from different camps are grateful to the Bundist organization for bringing them to Australia. The late Jacob Waks did especially well in receiving permits for these refugees.

The Role of Aid Fund

Over all the help groups stands the Melbourne Jewish Welfare Society, which coordinates and in fact carries out the whole aid‐work, which grew to a giant form during the post‐war period. Thanks to the Jewish Welfare Society, thousands of Jews came from different camps, from Germany, from faraway places in Russia and Poland. The JOINT and HIAS covered the travel costs for many of them. The Welfare Society bought five big houses and organized them as hostels, where many of the new‐arrivals found a temporary home. The ‘residents’ of these houses always shifted because the ‘old’ ones needed to make the place for new arrivals. Some of them live there until today because they don’t have any opportunities to have to an independent dwelling.

The immigration law foretold that a permit to come into Australia could only be received for close relatives, until a cousin and not further. The reason was that the immigrant should not be a burden on the state. That meant that the relative is responsible for him. But, where would we find so many relatives to save those who survived? We had to. Close relatives, cousins arose... The Immigration Department understood and looked the other way. Apart from that, the government gave permits for many Jews who were sponsored through the Board of Deputies of Australian Jewry. The HIAS and JOINT, which led the rehabilitation and resettlement of the Jews in the camps, sent some of them to Sydney and some to Melbourne. Sydney also had its own hostels at that time. However, when the ships anchored in Melbourne for a day in order to let off the ‘Melburnians’, the ‘Sydneysiders’ in many cases said: “We will not travel further, we also want to stay in Melbourne”. All our arguments, that good Jews awaited them in Sydney also, that there are hostels with work‐places, that the Melburnian ‘houses’ were overfull and that we could not take them in, did not help. We had to run to the ship quickly to take out their baggage out of the ship’s cellars.

At the Welfare Society, a consistent social aid‐commission exists, which gives direct help weekly to every one of the new‐arrivals and even long‐settled in Jews in case of illness or unemployment. In order to have an idea of the extent of aid, during 1962‐63 we spent around 30,000 pounds.

At the committee, there is also a fund for loans. If one counted up all existing forms of loans that exist under the sponsorship of the Welfare Society, like the charity box and guarantees in the bank for overdrafts, one would lend out in one year over 200,000 pounds.

They built an orphanage for orphans and abandoned children for 80,000 pounds. Now the Welfare Society began building apartments for older people (no connection to the old‐aged‐home) worth 100,000 pounds. A workshop was also created for the elderly, who could not work in a normal factory. It was, however, necessary that they be employed in order to calm their nerves. Their income only covered half of the real expenses. The rest was subsidised by the Welfare Society. To this day, 53 elderly people of both sexes work there.

At this opportunity, the old aged home, called the Montefiore Homes, should be noted. It has existed for 100 years. It has grown in time to a big and important institution. Recently, a fresh four‐story wing was built on, worth 200,000 pounds. The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, came to the opening of the new building, in the name of the Australian federal government. Today, there are 100 old people there and it is foretold that they will be able to take in around 150 in the future.

Also, the Jewish Labor Committee in America donated aid to the new Jewish immigration. Quietly, with the help of the late Jacob Waks, they gave direct help to the needy. The Labor Committee also assigned 4,000 pounds to be dispensed by the Welfare Society to buy a house for a hostel to settle new immigrants.

Growth of the Community

In the post‐war period around 18,000 Jewish immigrants came into Melbourne, more than doubling the size of our community. Being in their majority Polish or Eastern European Jews in general, they influenced with their mentality and scope the local Jewish life, giving it a more folky and Yiddish character. They changed the face of the community in many ways. If until now the whole authority and local communal life used to have the assimilator‐Yehudish elements, the last now started to play the second violin.

With the growth of the city, a new immigration began. The old city regions were left, like Carlton, Brunswick, etc., and they settled in new suburbs, in freshly‐built houses. New religious congregations with their own synagogues and rabbis developed there, and a series of educational institutions. Now we don’t just have the above‐mentioned Sunday schools, like the I.L. Peretz and Sholem Aleichem schools, but many others that are under the influence of different communal and religious institutions, like Caulfield Talmud Toyre, Elwood Talmud Toyre, Temple Beth Israel, Lubavich Yeshivah, Adass Israel, Moriah College, Mount Scopus College, Bialik College, and many more. We can’t stop at every school, as this would take up too much space. But, one must make an exception for one of them. That is the day school called Mount Scopus. There can be different opinions about the character of the school and whether or not its educational program makes the Jewish‐secular and national sector of our community happy. This is not the place to write about this. One must say, however, that the school is a big educational institution with its own school buildings and is worth over half a million pounds. Its yearly budget reached around 200,000 pounds. 1,500 children learn there – from kindergarten until graduating class. Some have already graduated. The fact that Jewish children receive their general and Jewish education in a Jewish environment has big meaning for the fight against assimilation.

One must happily prove that almost 4,000 children receive in this or in other forms, a Jewish education. Only a small number receive no Jewish education. All the school‐buildings that were built especially for Jewish education reach the value of one million pounds.

The Organized Jewish Society

The youth in Melbourne is organized in a proper way. There is almost no one youth that in some way does not belong to a Jewish youth organization. This helped to cement our settlement nationally and also maybe this is why we have so few mixed marriages. Our Jewish life is so colourful, and the youth organizations are also different: ‐ the a‐political sports organization ‘AJAX’, with a big membership, the religious B’nei Akiva, the Zionist Habonim, Hashomer Hatsair and Betar, SKIF – Tsukunft at the Bund, etc. All these youth groups do intensive work. When the summer holidays come, each youth group organizes their own summer‐camp, where the youth spend a few weeks together under the responsible care of their leaders.

The communal life of the adults is even more colourful, with all consequences of religious and party‐political battles. In the religious world, there is a big ‘war’ between the Orthodox Jews, who mainly consists of Eastern Europeans, and the Liberals of Austrian‐Czechoslovakian‐German descent. This is not the place to handle their differences. This is not just an Australian issue. The same arguments are occurring in America. Its only worth noting one fact that illustrates how much they hate each other. An Orthodox rabbi refused to appear at a Holocaust commemoration because a rabbi from the Liberal synagogue was also meant to speak at the commemoration... Lately, the relationship between the Orthodox and the Liberals has become somewhat more tolerant.

In the secular sector, in terms of influence, the Zionists of all stripes come first, like the general Zionists, Mizrachi, Revisionists, Poalei Zion and WIZO. They are all represented in the Zionist State Council. Their communal work mainly consists of raising money for Israel, which brings in big sums. The Israel‐Appeal, JNF and WIZO raise more than 300,000 pounds yearly. Many young people have joined the Zionist youth organizations.

The Bundist organization has grown in the post‐war period to a great communal power. Bundists are active in local Jewish life. They can be seen in a series of Jewish organizations, like the Kadimah, Yiddish schools, Aid‐ Fund, landsmanshaftn, etc.

We have another political group, the so called ‘Progressive Centre’, under the influence of the Jewish communists and the ‘Council to Fight Anti‐Semitism and Fascism’ – a left front‐organization. Today they are isolated and they are not allowed in the leadership of the Jewish institutions. However, there were other times in the not far off past, when they ruled the Jewish life and ran in the Kadimah, Board of Deputies, etc. The stream of the new immigration from the Soviet camps with their bitter experiences of Russia, and the destruction of national and religious life of the Jewish‐Soviet community similarly made an end to their rule.

At this opportunity, the big role that the writer Y. Rapaport played in the fight with the ‘Yevsektsia’ must be noted. He came to us from Shanghai, where he spent the war‐years. His settlement in Melbourne was a big win for the community. He released some books of essays about literature here. As an editor of the Jewish News and later of the Jewish Post (these are the two Jewish newspapers that appear weekly in Melbourne), he, in his weekly column, ‘To the Point’, helped to show the true face of communism.

The landsmanshaftn have, in the last years, received a general organization frame with the rise of the Federation of the Landsmanshaftn. Thanks to this, their number rose to higher than 20. They give their donations to different activities of the community, most of all, keeping up the cultural traditions of Eastern European Jewry.

Of the many, not‐counted institutions, one needs to be mentioned. This is the B’nai Brith, which works with English‐speaking Jews. Formally, it is a lodge, but in fact it is an institution with branched cultural‐communal activities in English. It has its own lovely building.

In the last years, the Jewish Art Society was formed, which has several hundred members, amongst them a large number of youth. The Society deals with spreading art amongst Jews of our community and carries out its work in English. It is to be mentioned a series of successful events especially painting exhibitions and theatre productions.

It remains to be seen whether the Society will localise in the life of our community, or if it will be just a passing event, like many other Jewish groups, that existed in Melbourne and disappeared.

In this place, one would have needed to write about the role of the Kadimah in Jewish life, but as it has already been noted, it will be written about separately in this publication.

‘Board of Deputies’

The Jewish community in our settlement is represented through the so called Board of Deputies. This is the central body of the Melbourne settlement. When we say ‘kehile’, this must not be understood in the legal sense, like it was in the past in the old home. There it is guaranteed by law through the state. All Jews needed to belong to it. The kehile could tax its members and demand one’s due through a court, if someone refused to pay the tax. It’s different here. It consists of a voluntary takeover of the Jewish institutions and congregations that delegate their representatives to the Board. Such a Board of Deputies can be found in every capital city of the different Australian states ‐ in Melbourne, in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth. All together they build the general Australian Jewish representation, the so called Executive Council of Australian Jewry. The Australian government and other official bodies count this representation. In the meaning, this Australian Jewry had advanced much further than the Jewish settlement in the United States of North America. There, they are far away from having one representative organization, that can speak in the name of the whole of American Jewry.

In the forming of the Board of Deputies in all the cities, also at the creation of the Executive Council Mr Morris Ashkenazi from Melbourne, a well‐known lawyer not just amonst Jews, was very active and also Mr Sid Aynfeld from Sydney, a former Labor‐Party deputy in the Australian parliament.

The projects of the Board are – to coordinate and regulate the different activities of existing Jewish institutions, that works and serves all the needs of the settlement, like education, social welfare, cultural work, religious needs, statistics and others; distributing appeal periods for raising money; fight against anti‐Semitism; ‘public relations’ work and many other projects.

The Board of Deputies is not a democratically elected institution in the modern sense of the word: one person – one vote. The delegates are sent from the institutions, because one can be a member of more than one organization, so the same person becomes doubly or triply represented. This creates an un‐proportional representation and the result is that the representation does not reflect the true communal powers of the community. For many years, there has been an ongoing battle in the Board and also outside of it to democratise the central institution. The representatives of the Kadimah, Yiddish schools, and in general the Yiddish speaking sector, lead this fight. This fight is sometimes crowned with success. The existing representatives of the institutions are now voted on through directly elected delegates, who need to receive a minimum of 150 votes. Such elections occur every two years.

The Fight for Yiddish

The plenum of the Board became the grandstand, where all problems of our community are expressed. The make‐up of the Board is already different today than it was in the day of the Advisory Board, the predecessor of the Board of Deputies, where the Yehudim had the power. With the arrival of the last immigration, we see fresh people with new ideas there. They started to use the Yiddish language at these meetings. This did not come on easily. A big fight for giving civil rights to the Yiddish language continued. Today in the Board, Yiddish is spoken and the Yiddish speakers are translated straight away into English because the English speaking Jews, who do not understand any Yiddish, also want to know what the Yiddish speakers have to say...

The fight for Yiddish in the Board and outside of it helped to raise the respect for the language in the community. Until lately, a Yiddish word was seldom heard in the community. Until lately a Yiddish word was seldom heard at open assemblies; people believed in the saying – “Don’t push with Yiddish on the streets”. Today there are almost no open events that occur without a Yiddish speech. In fact, the Yiddish speech is the attraction. At this opportunity it is worth telling about a characteristic case: Some years ago, the Israeli‐consul, Mordecai Nurok, was openly farewelled upon his leaving Australia. He speaks a very weak Yiddish, but when farewelling, wanting to express his feelings, so after a wonderful English and good Hebrew, he also spoke a few minutes in his bad Yiddish. The Yiddish audience therefore thanked him with a big ovation.

Social Content of the Community

As was shown earlier, the Melbourne settlement is made up of a majority of new‐arrivals. Jews are a capable people and have the ability to fit in in different conditions. They truly take full advantage of the economic running of the country and try to settle, economically not bad.

The number of Jewish workers is small. The majority of the community has their own undertakings and is employed in textiles, tailoring and other branches of lighter industry, in trade or they are professionals. They are a worthy part of the general economic life and they total not more than half a percent of the whole Australian population. And because the Jews are economically not badly situated, they tried to build, in a short time, a series of educational institutions and shuls. They call mostly not badly at the appeals in raising money; there is enough to show that Melbourne donated for different aid‐goals, for Israel or local needs, up to half a million pounds a year.

True, the secular sector cannot be famous as it did a lot to build its institutions. It needs to still show by realising the project of carrying over the Kadimah in a new neighbourhood where the majority of the Melbourne community now find themselves. There isn’t yet for the Melbourne Jews the tradition of donors, who donates with a broad hand for cultural goals, like giving out a Yiddish book, etc. True, there are many Yiddish books appearing in Melbourne (and no Yiddish books in Sydney), like, for example, some books from writer‐essayist Y. Rapaport, some books from novelist Hertz Bergner, a book of stories by young‐deceased Pinkhas Goldhar, a book of essays from Itzkhak Kahan, a volume of songs from Y.M. Levin, two books from Rabbi Dr. Y. Rapaport, but almost all books appeared with the help of communal committees.

Jews as Citizens of the Country

Australia is a democratic country and everyone is a citizen, either settled, or disadvantaged are of the same rights. The democratic principle of equal rights is 100% carried out. True, there were other times, before the last world war, when they looked at the new‐arrivals with doubt. Today is different. The government circles and the daily press carry out educational work amongst the Australians to help the immigrants localize quickly in this country.

Even more, if years ago they preached the new arrivals need to assimilate quickly, to refuse their old cultural inheritance, lately we have heard different sounds. Even the leaders of the two big political parties – from the Liberals and the Labor‐Party – believe that the different ethnic groups do not need t give up their national cultures. Rather, the colourfulness of other cultures would further strengthen and enrich the Australian culture. The principle of cultural pluralism is becoming even riper.

The abovementioned also has, you understand, a connection to the Jewish minority. There is no discrimination about the Jews. All political parties of the country, from right to left, are free of every kind of anti‐Semitic colouration. True, there are circles that do not take Jews into their clubs, but this kind of anti‐Semitism does not carry a mass character and is not characteristic for the country.

Jews played a big role in the face of the general Australian life. The creator of the Australian constitution was the Jew Sir Isaac Isaacs. He was also the first Australian Governor‐General, that means the representative of the British crown in Australia. The Jew Monash was the general of the Australian army in WWI. By the way, they were both Melbourne inhabitants.

Today we have parliamentary Jews who represent both political parties, in federal and in state parliaments. Baron Shnayder is a representative of the Liberals in Victorian Parliament. The already earlier noted Sid Ayynfeld was a Labor‐deputy in Federal Parliament. Sam Cohen is a Labor senator. Unfortunately, there were a big conflict between the last and the Board of Deputies because of his leaving in senate in the issue of Russian Jewry. When this painful problem was handled there, he said there that Australians don’t need to mix in in the internal issues of the Soviet Union as the Russian Jews, as citizens of their country, need to alone fight for their national and religious right without our help. This is not the place to write about his leaving. The fact, however, that Sam Cohen set out as a deputy in the senate of the Labor Party demonstrates that it is free of every kind of anti‐ Semitism.

Conclusions

How do the perspectives of Jewish life here appear? We have tried to manage the development of the Melbourne community, the growth of its institutions, its set roots in general economic life. It is a democratic country, without any discrimination. True, the Australian‐English culture, as the culture of the majority, swallows even more the cultures of the other national groups, amongst them also the Jewish. There is, however, no forced assimilation; there are no national, religious or race judgments. Full democracy doesn’t avoid the existence of national minorities with their language and culture. We need to use these conditions. The freedom of the country gives us the opportunity to dedicate ourselves to the Jewish field. Fight against assimilation and for national existence in own creativity needs to be the battle positions of every conscious Jew.

Even more: until the last national catastrophe, we, the Australian community, as in general the Jews all over the world, their uniqueness stems from Eastern European, mostly from Polish Jewry. This Jewry was murderously cut and destroyed. In time, the of the State of Israel was arisen. 5 million Jewish communities also grew in North America, as well as small Jewish communities in the countries of South America. Also, the Australian Jewish community grew to over 60,000 souls, of which more than half are in Melbourne. Unfortunately the tree of Jewish life was cut with its roots, with all its nuances and colours. Branches of Jewish communities are rising over the whole world. The big national responsibility lies on us to continue to spin the golden thread of our national Jewish life.

The author of this article did not present a work to give all aspects of local Jewish life. The issue was for him to give the development of the local community, which is well‐known to him mostly from his own experience for the last 37 years.

Page 61

The old building of the old aged home, named after Moyshe Montefiore.

Page 62

The new wing of the old aged home named after Moyshe Motefiore, built in 1964.

Page 67

The I.L. Peretz School.

Page 72

The building of the Jewish Welfare Society.

Page 73

Workshop for older people at the Jewish Welfare Society.

Page 79

The big Jewish sports club AJAX in Melbourne.

Page 81

The hall of the Jewish art‐society called Ben Uri.

Page 87

The gravestone monument at the Carlton Cemetery in Melbourne in memory of our six million martyrs, built in 1963.

Page 89

The Toorak Synagogue.