ARCHIVE OF AUSTRALIAN JUDAICA (JULY 4, 1983+)
UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY LIBRARY
A History of the Archive of Australian Judaica
by Marianne Dacy
The Archive of Australian Judaica was set up in the Rare Books Section of the University of Sydney Library on July 4, 1983 to help arrest the deterioration and destruction of Australian Jewish records which were needed for research in a central repository. The Archive of Australian Judaica has been in existence for thirty years in the University of Sydney Library, having been founded on July 4, 1983. The original project directors were Dr Neil Radford, the University Librarian, Dr Jennifer Alison (Selection and Collections Librarian) and Professor Alan Crown, then head of the Semitics Studies Department. Professor Crown remained a director till his death on November 2, 2010, and his place has been taken by Professor Suzanne Rutland. John Shipp replaced Dr Neil Radford in 1995 till his retirement in October 2011.
As is known, the Jewish community came with the first Fleet – with an estimated sixteen convicts arriving with the first Europeans in Australia. Thanks to extreme poverty and little social security, people had to survive as best they could in Britain and Ireland, and, as a consequence, British goals were filled to overflowing with the poor, and those who were imprisoned for petty crimes such as the stealing of a loaf of bread or lace. Those transported also included Irish political rebels. The Antipodes were seen as convenient dumping ground for this unwanted population.
Why an archive? This Archive was established to halt the deterioration and destruction of records that traced the growth of the Australian Jewish community and to centralise these records in a research repository that would be accessible to researchers in a university setting. In the course of the years, the Archive has come to house records that include those of some key Australian Jewish organisations such as the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies and the Australian Zionist Federation. The records of some 80 individuals who have contributed to Australian Jewish life and the life of the nation are also housed in the Archive, as well as ephemera, journals, a few resource books, tapes, videos and subject files culled from newspapers. Notable among the collections are papers and family photographs from the acclaimed Australian author Nancy Keesing, the Holocaust survivor Max Joseph and Ruby Rich-Schalit, musician and feminist activist.
The idea for an archive of the records of the Australian Jewish community at Sydney University started to become a reality when Professor Alan Crown, Head of the Department of Semitic Studies and Dr Neil Radford the University of Sydney Librarian acquired a Government Grant in 1982 from the Australian Research Grants‟ Commission. A second librarian, Dr Jennifer Alison was involved in the project and remained as one of the three original Archive directors till her retirement in the early 1990s. Dr Alison died in July 26, 2010. I am the original research assistant and remain with the Archive, which now will be relocated in a refurbished Rare Books‟ section, following the Fisher Library renovations.
The initial government grant was $10,000, but government funding continued for another four years until 1987. Currently, the position is funded for three days a week, from February to December by the Mandelbaum Trust, which has pledged its continuing support for the part time salary of an archivist. Any funds for equipment, archive material or filming must be raised through donations. Certain stalwarts still remaining of the Friends of the Archive of Australian Judaica continue to donate much needed funds each year.
The Mandelbaum Trust took over the funding of the project in 1988. The Trust was founded from the legacy of Rachel Mandelbaum, the daughter of Rev Bezalel Mandelbaum, who served at
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Ballarat at one time. She was an early woman graduate of Sydney University and married Harry Lipton, a chocolate manufacturer who amassed a substantial fortune. The plan to build a Jewish College at the University of Sydney was brought to fruition through many years of negotiations by Professor Alan Crown. A small residential Jewish College was opened in 1995 at in Abercrombie Street, Chippendale.
I began work as a research assistant on July 4 1983 and began downstairs in Rare Books with just a desk, and a New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies diary. That afternoon Professor Crown carried over a very large typewriter. My task was to contact Jewish organisations round Australia and request they send us their journals and annual reports and the flyers that they issue from time to time. This was the beginning of the periodical collection and also of the ephemera resources. I started writing letters, ringing people and locating and collecting records and seeing to their listing and documentation. This process continues to the present day, except we now use email as well. My contract is till the end of 2012, but I hope to continue another year longer.
The idea for an archive of the records of the Australian Jewish community was the “brainchild” of Professor Alan Crown who envisaged an archive that was easily accessible and at the University, and was readily available for students and those who needed access to the records of the Australian Jewish community for research. Records, although zealously collected also by the Australian Jewish Historical Society in Sydney, Melbourne and other states, still continue to disappear, as people quite often throw out papers of Jewish organisations when moving to smaller residences or shifting to new office buildings. In addition, partial runs of Australian Jewish newspapers of the twentieth century are scattered in various State libraries or in private hands or offices throughout the country and some are difficult to access. Nowadays many journals are “virtual” and appear only on webpages.
The Archive began a successful project of gathering and microfilming the various nineteenth and early twentieth century Australian Jewish newspapers, having them filmed in cooperative projects with the National Library in Canberra and other State Libraries. These microfilms are housed in the Fisher Library collection on Floor 3. Microfiche of small runs are stored in the Archive filing cabinet at present. As yet, the latter have not been made available “online”.
Another problem faced and not completely solved today is that records continue to be lost or are deteriorating because of poor storage. The records may be in private hands, or stored in synagogues or Jewish organisational offices where adequate provision is often not made for their preservation. Thus for example, some important archives were lost in the 1990s, when the Central Synagogue in Sydney burnt down and the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation suffered a flood. A larger central repository is needed to facilitate research. The Archive partially provides for this need, but rather basic funding makes it difficult to provide optimum service to users, with a staff of one person three days a week and no funding except for what can be raised through donations. Most requests for assistance arrive by email from all around the world. This alone occupies a good deal of my time, as well as keeping the Archive web page up to date.
The Australian Jewish Historical Society, first set up in 1938 by the historian and bibliographer Percy Marks has housed a collection since that time, with branches in other states, so
3 much of their material is older than what is housed in the Archive but it also complements our collection. However, Professor Crown‟s unfulfilled desire was for the Sydney collection of the AJHS to be integrated into the Library at Sydney University to be available for research and for future generations. The current collection housed at Mandelbaum house needs larger storage space, but the two collections cannot be merged in the University Library as space is at a premium.
The newspapers, crumbling copies of the Sydney Morning Herald for example, were moved out about five years ago, so I had six ranges instead of three for the Archive collection. Three years ago, the Jewish Folk Centre Library closed and was sold. People wished to send the Yiddish books out of the country but Professor Crown and Dr Jennifer Dowling asked for the Yiddish books to be temporarily housed in the Archive, pending a new home. Some 4000 Yiddish books were moved in to my newly acquired extra space. The arrangement was always meant to be a temporary. Eventually, earlier in the year Emanuel Synagogue pledged to house the books, but in about two years when their purpose built library will have been finished. In the meantime the Library has generously allowed the Yiddish books (many very rare) to go into storage till the end of 2013, at the Library‟s expense. They will be relocated in the new library being built especially to house them at Emanuel Synagogue in Woollahra.
Some Problems- a setback
At the end of August, the last of the Yiddish books (box 170) was being taped up when disaster struck. Dr Dowling and her son Shaun had come in for couple of hours on that fateful Sunday afternoon to finish packing up the Yiddish books for their removal into storage when the shelving collapsed from the back of the room. The incident warned all that wide shelving (which exists elsewhere in the Library stacks) on which the books had been removed must be packed evenly from both sides, as the actual shelves are wider than the shelving bases and thus are inherently unstable if a weight is removed from them. The total removal of weight from the sides on which the Yiddish books had been caused an imbalance and subsequently the shelves were de stabilised and collapsed without warning. Fortunately neither was injured, apart from some bruises. The concrete pillar in the centre of the room stopped the fall of some of the shelving, the piled up boxes of Yiddish books protected them as well, and the three filing cabinets stopped a further fall. Only the first range is standing upright at present and preparations to stabilise the shelving have begun. No work can begin on the new lift till the Archive is put upright, as a wall will be built at the front of the Archive for the foyer of the new lift which will take a third of the space in Room 237, which will be adapted for other purposes in the renovation plan.
Apart from the latest crisis, there have been some setbacks in the collection of archives attempted. Perth Hebrew Congregation reneged on giving copies of their synagogue records in 1988, which I had gone over especially to list, as more recent records than anticipated had been copied by mistake. Adelaide Hebrew Congregation, then in the old 1840s synagogue in Arundel Street refused the Archive copies of microfilmed records now kept in the South Australian State Library. Unfortunately an earlier researcher had been paid a sum of money and had actually absconded with some of the records, Thus, I did not feel so welcome in 1988 in teh aftermath of this
4 incident. Again, Melbourne Hebrew Congregation would not allow me to organise the microfilming of the minute books of the Congregation from the late 1890s, and subsequently a flood damaged the minute books which dated back to the late nineteenth century, and one was lost altogether. Again at the Central Synagogue in Bondi all of the records were destroyed by an electrical fire in the 1990s. All this loss could have been prevented, but distrust of a non Jewish organisation, a legacy of the Holocaust, was at the basis of these refusals of cooperation. Again, the records of the Australian Zionist Federation were destroyed when moving premises in the 1950s and again in the late eighties, and well known personalities who were active in different Jewish organisations tended not to preserve records, and some destroyed them.
Fortunately some of the early Australian Jewish material has been preserved in archives kept overseas in Israel, America, and England for example. Thus, on several visits to the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, I listed and had filmed the earliest correspondence between Australia and the World Zionist Organisation which began in the 1890s. Further funding is need to film more of this material in the CZA, which unfortunately charge high rates for copying. All correspondence from 1890s, which was housed in Berlin at that time and later moved to Jerusalem has been preserved in their files and includes material which did not survive in Australia from Percy Marks and other early Zionists who played an important role in the organisation. I also visited the archives of YIVO in New York and the synagogue of the late Rabbi Hillel Silver in Cleveland, USA in 1990 at Professor Crown‟s request.
Another challenge being faced in the preservation of archives and journals is the digitalisation of records that is taking place now at an accelerating rate, with paper copies of journals being phased out. While this is very convenient for users and makes some archive resources available quickly in multiple locations around the world, one wonders about the permanency of these records “online” which do not exist in hard copy. The problem is acute in the case of digital journals that appear regularly every week on the web pages of some organisations. Some websites keep a copy of each journal from its digital inception on the webpage, but other digital journals have disappeared and file copies have not been kept. The archive has attempted to record each “online” Australian Jewish journal webpage and the names of the journals that were featured and the runs of some of them.
“On line” journals tend to be longer with large, brilliant coloured photos and much more longer making them very resource consuming to print out. Some journals such as The Great Synagogue Journal are issued as printed copies to subscribers but the journal is also “on line”. This situation is ideal. Others appear weekly and essentially are reflections and copies of the torah readings for the week. Ideally each “online” journal should be downloaded on to a disc and sent to the Australian National Library. The printed copies already are sent on legal deposit, but many of the smaller journals are not submitted in any form and will not survive.when webpages are updated or closed down.
As an addendum I should add that in the course of running the Archive I have encountered some very colourful and interesting characters. These were some of the donors of papers to the Archive.
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Donations of Archives from individuals
Karen Angell gave me the first donation, the papers of Max Joseph, her father, in two deliveries which I organised by taxi. Max Joseph was interned for three weeks in Sachenhausen, but this wife and daughter fled to England and obtained papers for the family to migrate to Australia on his release the Concentration Camp in 1939. Subsequently, the records, which included a full edition of The New Citizen were copied for Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Mount Hertzl, and the Washington Holocaust Museum. Karen Angell worked in a factory in Glebe, but subsequently I realised she owned the factory.
Yehuda Feher, a Hungarian refugee to Australia, who trained as a textile engineer gave me his collection of Zionist Youth magazines and I helped him write a 10,000 word article on Percy Marks, which was published in the Journal of the Australian Jewish Historical Society.
Ruby Rich-Schalit. I recorded her reminiscences for five hours on one visit, but having only two or three tapes, I chose what I recorded, as she talked without a break for that five hours. She mentioned Nellie Melba as an acquaintance. I was invited to go with her to the concert of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and met her at her flat on the ground floor of an address in Darling Point Road. You could see Sydney Harbour from her window. As well as being a philanthropist, she was the founder of the Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Was active in the Racial Hygiene Society in the 1920s and was a talented musician. When her father would not allow her to become a concert pianist, she turned to women‟s issues. She married Maurice Schalit when in her fifties and died just a few days before her one hundreth birthday.
I visited her sister in law Colleen Rich, married to Ruby‟s brother, a doctor, with the Rare Books Librarian, Trevor Mills. Colleen had a rather ancient and blind cocker spaniel who appeared not to like Trevor Mills and barked at us horribly. She did not approve of the recording I made of her interview. At the age of 91 she had a cataract operation and told me happily that she could read the paper without her glasses. She lived to be over 100.
Catherine Gluck I had some adventures on he account at Potts Point. The latter, who also lived to be 100, threw books at Trevor Mills, the Rare Books Librarian who had come with me to look at her artist‟s brother‟s books and papers. She gave us no papers or books but wanted us to buy some of her pamphlets, examples of which I already had collected in my Archive ephemera collection. I next encountered her at the Jewish book Fair in Darlinghurst in the late 80s where she sold more of her papers and old books (from her late artist brother) than either Helen Bersten (Jewish Historical Society archivist) or I sold of our publications. It was not surprising. Catherine Gluck had been a Holocaust survivor and had no inhibitions about confronting all who showed the slightest interest in her collection. If they approached her stand within a metres, and looked in her direction she managed to get them to buy something. She did quite well financially, I believe, on that day. On the other hand, Helen Bersten and I were not assertive enough, apparently, and sold almost nothing at our stalls.
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Benzion Patkin and Aaron Patkin‟s papers. I visited Benzion Patkin at his home in Caulfield in late 1983 and in early 1984. He was writing another book, this time on the Australian zionism and was guarding his papers from me. Dramatically he unlocked a small gray metal box, allowed me to the collection of papers inside and then shut it with a bang, declaring he would never let me have his uncle‟s papers as he needed them for his book. A few weeks later, to my surprise, he phoned me and said he would give me the papers. Three weeks later he died. It was round about Anzac Day, 1984. For years I visited his widow who over the space of many years gradually gave me his papers which included some original music by Boaz Bischofswerder, the father of the Melbourne musician Felix Werder and a handwritten diary in Yiddish, which I had copied on to microfiche.
Hemda Patkin. I used to have lunches with her quite regularly when I visited Melbourne, from 1984 till mid 2003. She gave me small amounts of her husband‟s papers each time, if I was lucky. She would always save another batch till the next time, as she wanted to examine each page and to read it carefully. Also, I think she enjoyed my visits. When she took ill, I visited her in her nursing home from the time of her stroke in August 2003 for two years, till the last week of her life when she had pneumonia, which everyone calls „the old person‟s friend‟, the same malady from which my mother died. We also visited Hemda‟s friend Rose Kornan, where we talked, ate wonderful cakes and drank tea out of glorious fine bone china cups. When Hemda was 91, she last drove me to see her friend Bertha Porush, who lived five minutes away, and gave up driving shortly afterwards.
I continued to take myself off to visit Mrs Bertha Porush,as my mother also lived in Melbourne, and once took a whole week off to list her husband‟s papers. Rabbi Israel Porush had been the rabbi of the Great Synagogue from the early 1940s till 1973, when Rabbi Raymond Apple replaced him. The Porushes then moved down to Caulfield where I used occasionally to visit them. After Rabbi Porush died, Mrs Porush asked me to take her husband‟s papers for the Archive. At each visit to sort through the papers, time was restricted to a very short time and included lunch with her.
I also tried to obtain copies of the papers of her son in law, Isi Leibler and organised their filming with a film company, but in the end, the filming did not go ahead and he took all his vast collection to Jerusalem where they now are in an archive of his own in the basement of his home in Jerusalem, where he has lived since 1995 or so. Is Leibler‟s house was just across the road from that of Mrs Porush. I saw is silver ethrog collection, his original paintings from great masters, the enormous television which was uncommon in the nineties, and his large collection of books, many of them rare originals. I last visited Mrs Porush in Jerusalem, in 2008 when she was 104. She moved to Jerusalem with her daughter and son in law when she was in her mid nineties, and lived till 105.
Nehama Patkin (musician), Hemda Patkin‟s daughter whom I met at her mother‟s place occasionally later asked me to come and see what she had left of her father‟s papers. I visited her at her home in January 2008, and she gave me some more copies of The Zionist that her uncle Aaron Patkin had edited in the 1940s and 50s. Like her mother before her, she counted every page, and asked me to return as she had more, she thought. I did not go back as
7 at that time my mother had become ill and I had to spend all my time with her on my subsequent visits to Melbourne. Nehama rather unexpectedly died in mid March 2009, not long after my mother, who had died on January 24 of the same year.
Mrs Bertha Porush. I had to watch „Days of our Lives‟ before I was allowed to speak to her, whenever Mrs Patkin took me over from her house to see her. In fact, I think it was two programmes we usually watched before she would speak to us, for fear of missing out on some vital incident, and there was always a nice cup of tea and refreshments! There always was a strictly limited time to view the papers of Rabbi Porush. Eventually they were given to me when she went on alia to Jerusalem at age 94 with her daughter Naomi and son in law, Isi Leiber. I had visited her earlier when Rabbi Porush was alive and he wished to donate the papers to the Archive. Isi Leibler once, in 1993 gave me a ticket to Rome when he was in charge of Jet Set so on that occasion I had only to pay for the $600 ticket from Rome to Israel. A $2000 saving was much appreciated! I was attending the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies to give a paper on the Archive of Australian Judaica at their invitation, and continued my listing of Australian materials in the Central Zionist Archives. I also was able to attend the conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews in Haifa, Carmel in 1993, as the conference times coincided really well.
Mrs Eliza Siderowitz was an expert teacher of Yiddish. When I visited her at her home a couple of times she gave me gefilte fish and a marvellous lunch. I received no donations of material, but we had very interesting conversations at that time and over the phone at times.
The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies : A truck load of an enormous number of cartons smelling horribly of mould and dust was delivered to me in the Archive in December of 1983. This was at the time I worked in the basement of Rare Books, an originally almost empty space with no windows. It still has no windows in the basement. Only the old editions of Shakespeare or incunabula were there when I began work there on July 4, 1983 and there is still the safe there for the most valuable items, which include Hebrew manuscripts. I returned to work after the break in February 1984, later in the middle of that year arranging for the Zionist Federation material to be filmed both in Sydney and then in Melbourne. In 1984, we were assigned four Archive students from the University of NSW(of which my sister was one) to list the Jewish Board of Deputies‟ material on Professor Crown‟s initiative, as there was an enormous amount of material to catalogue. The students worked under the direction of Peter Orlovich. It was mostly well catalogued, but I had to relist one collection which one of the students had incorrectly numbered. Other records were listed by archive students from New South Wales University, in latter years those of Sam Karpin (by one student) and the voluminous Zionist Federation material that arrived from Melbourne in the 1990s was catalogued by four more students. Sadly, the archive course and library courses at the University of New South Wales were stopped in favour of more IT course, so there are no more students to help in listing archives. It is worth mentioning that the minutes of NSW Jewish Board of Deputies were put on microfiche to 1974when I first started in the Archive.
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The Zionist Federation of Australia Before organising the Melbourne filming in 1984, W & F Pascoe‟s already had filmed the Sydney material which was stored in a musty storeroom in the Darlinghurst Building. Some minute books had been singed from a fire from which they had been rescued. There was a distinct smell of burning.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Early in 2011 I received 20 large cartons of material from the Executive council of Australian Jewry and catalogued in 100 acid free white boxes them shortly before the library renovations and their removal to storage. The alter material was joined on to the large collection alrleady listed.
Central Zionist Archives. I listed what had not survived in Australia and had it filmed up to the 1940s, and then it was 1995, and I had no more money to film Australian Zionist material that is only available in Jerusalem.
The Australian Jewish News. I rescued many photos from the dumpers when the offices moved to Surry Hills in 2004. Over the years the Archive has filmed all nineteenth century Australian Jewish newspapers and some into the 20th century and records of Wollongong Synagogue, and other organisations. I did not purchase the many reels of the Australian Jewish Herald from the State Library of New South Wales because of the cost.
Webpage. My Archive was first hosted “online” by Gary Luke in 1993/4. He is the proprietor of feraltek. I had my own computer and modem by 1992 and was on the Listserve of J.O.I.N. (Jewish Ozzies On Line), which continues to be moderated by Geraldine Jones. The Archive webpage has developed very much since that time. In 1995 the Archive‟s‟ own webpage was set up at the University by Kerry Taylor. In 2010, there was a change of branding by the University to a more unified style and the Archive website was integrated into the University of Sydney Library webpage.
Problems: Archives are not valued by many in the community and continue to be destroyed. In many respects they are considered to be the “poor cousins “ if kept in libraries at all, and are not as valued as magazine resources or books. Yet, archives are the raw materials from which books are written and are primary historical resources. There was a spate of books written on topics around Australian Jewish history just before the bi centenary in 1988 and after it, and many have acknowledged the Archive of Australian Judaica as a resource. I have also supplied authors photos from the Archive resources, for displays at the City of Sydney Museum, the Maritime Museum, The Sydney Jewish Museum and the Australian Jewish Museum in Melbourne. Many of the artefacts came from the Cyril Pearl collection based on the fateful voyage of the “Dunera “ and are due to be microfilmed and digitalised for the Washington Holocaust Museum as well as material from three other individual collections, that of Max Laserson, Benzion Patkin (Magen David Adom files) and Wolff Matsdorf. The Washington Holocaust Museum budget for the filming is $10,000 US and the Archive has received copies of all the digitalised material.
Business is mostly done by email, now with the occasional student coming across for help with essays or in search of suitable material from the Archive for their theses. The bibliography of Australian Jewish journals published in 1986 has been updated “online” till
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2008 and will be published as book when formatted for printing. Dr Jennifer Dowling is preparing it for the publication . we will need to find a sponsor, we the editing is finished. .
The Future
I dream of keeping the archive in its beautifully renovated space where the Archive is well housed, with new compactor shelving, adequate space for some expansion, and new file boxes for the journals, the latter which sometimes exist only in this Archive collection, and are actually very rare. I also hope that the position will be funded for five days a week, with a salary scale and budget that will attract a professionally qualified archivist to develop and care for this collection.
The Archive is well known internationally in the Jewish world even if largely unknown by Australians, including most of the Jewish community. It is an extremely valuable resource, and its value will increase over time. My desire is for a prominent Jewish personality to take the funding of the Archive in hand, to run a fund raising campaign and to ask the Government to match a donation from the Jewish community to build a central Jewish archival repository at Sydney University that will be worthy of it name. It is urgent that the Archive be properly funded. Five hundred metres of archives are there in the collection, representing the passions, achievements, and hopes and experiences of many Australian Jews, Holocaust survivors, Jewish migrants, children of migrants, established Australian Jewish families and extensive records of key Australian Jewish organisations such as the Australian Zionist Federation, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, the defunct Bankstown and Woolongong synagogues and many others. These archives are an irreplaceable part to the heritage of Australian Jews, and need proper funding for their maintenance. Who will come forward and help with funding? A major benefactor of two would help ensure sufficient money were to be invested to assure a salary in perpetuity.
As the Mandelbaum Trust is ceasing to fund the Archive at the end of 2013, a donor must be found to finance an archivist‟s salary in order for this collection to remain in the University of Sydney Library. I will cease to run the Archive with the cessation of Mandelbaum‟s funding. I hope I will have a successor. It is a vitally important archive of the records of the Australian Jewish community.
Dr Marianne Dacy (NDS)
Archive of Australian Judaica
C/- Rare Books
Fisher Library University of Sydney
Tel: 61 2 9351 4162
A revised version of a paper presented to the Australian Society of Archivists on 23rd October 2011.
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