AUSTRALIAN JEWISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC. Member of the JCA Family of Communal Organisations NEWSLETTER ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Address: 146 Darlinghurst Road, Issue No 113. September 2018. Darlinghurst NSW 2010 ISSN-0816-714-1 Website: www.ajhs.com.au Telephone: (02) 9380-5145 Email address: [email protected] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Australian Jewish Historical Society is a member of the JCA family of organisation ROSH HASHANA GREETINGS The President and Committee of the Australian Jewish Historical Society extends to all its readers its best wishes, L’Shona Tova Tikatevu, and hope it will be a good year for all Israel, and especially for the members of the Australian Jewish Historical Society. VALETE LOUISE ROSENBERG OAM (1914 – 2018) Louise with great grandchildren: - Abby Helm, Anna Helm, Celia Nguyen and Noah Nguyen (2010). Louise Rosenberg passed away on 19 August 2018 at the remarkable age of exactly 104 years and 6 months. Her funeral was held on 21 August 2018 where Rabbi Elton delivered the eulogy. 1 Eulogy: Louise Rosenberg OAM, 21 August 2018 Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton, The Great Synagogue This is the funeral of a phenomenon. Louise Rosenberg OAM, Liba bat Chanoch, died at the age of exactly 104 and a half. There is a vanishingly small proportion of people who live to that great age. And she was still active until very near the end. She was at the Falk Lecture earlier this year. She attended the kiddush to celebrate the birth of my daughter about six weeks ago. The fact that my daughter met her, a woman born over a century before she herself was born, will be something I will tell her, and I hope she will treasure. Louise really lived two lives. The first was a conventional life as a housewife and mother. The second, when she became independent, was of voluntary work, interests, friendship and scholarship. Louise was born in Mosman in February 1914 to Henry and Celia Rosenberg nee Weingot. There is a parochet, and Ark curtain in The Great Synagogue dedicated to her parents. Weingots had been in Australia for many years, some from the time of the 1850s gold rush, and Louise still had the ship ticket that brought them here. They were long standing members of Newtown Synagogue. Her father had gone from Europe to England to Australia. He was a window dresser and was head hunted by Grace Bros and brought to Australia. They had seen a window he had dressed for a sale, with a ship’s sail prominently displayed, and this ingenuity caught their attention. Louise spent her early years in Penrith, while her father Henry commuted to Sydney. During the depression years she ran a general store in Memerambi, Queensland, with her brother Sam. In 1938 Louise was taken by her father to Palestine to meet his cousin, who was her age, Werner/Moishe Rosenberg, a locksmith. The couple returned to Australia in 1942 with their daughter Ruth Marianne, living for several years in the Blue Mountains, where Moishe had a chicken farm. Late, she and Moishe divorced and Louise came to Sydney. When Louise moved to Sydney she managed the property she inherited and bought a house in Castle Cove where she lived for sixty years, latterly sharing her home with her grandson, Martin. When she came to Sydney she joined The Great Synagogue. She was a member of the Women’s Auxiliary and contributed regularly to the Synagogue Journal. She was truly beloved at The Great. Every year on her birthday the Women’s Auxiliary hosted a special kiddush in her honour, and I always made a point of welcoming her from the pulpit whenever she was in shule. At The Great, Morris Forbes encouraged her to get involved with the Australian Jewish Historical Society. They became great friends and she was also a good friend of Morris’s sister Hannah. Louise was the Honorary Secretary of the AJHS for twenty-two years (1967-1989). She also acted as the Society’s genealogist. For many years she carried out her research at The Great Synagogue on a daily basis and had a prodigious memory for Jewish family names. She knew the Society Journal so well that she could go to a required article without the need to consult either an index or a list of contents. She contributed reports, articles and reviews for many years. Among her many achievements was an extremely comprehensive biography of Rabbi Abraham Tobias Boas which was published by the Society. She was a Fellow of the AJHS and its Honorary Historian. Louise wrote three books: Of Folk Tales and Jewish Folk; True Blue Jews; Collected Essays of the Adult Study Group, which she edited. Each displayed her wonderful command of English. As a historian she taught the Sydney Jewish community about its own past, explained the present through revealing what came before. She safeguarded our memories and enhanced our insight. Until remarkably recently Louise still had her sharp mind. She loved to read and to walk her dog and to solve problems. For a while she kept five bull terriers at one time and loved them. She kept in touch regularly with her family in Melbourne and her friends and cousins in Sydney. 2 Louise had her favourite expressions: ‘no complaints’ – as she said to me when I saw her in hospital a few week ago; and ‘my tomorrows will be better than my yesterdays’. She told the nurses when she was in hospital most recently that they were ‘a thing of beauty and a joy forever’. She was a very positive person and loved by all who knew her. I would like to acknowledge Helen Bersten who was a tremendous support, especially from 2012. Despite accidents and ill health, Louise kept bouncing back. Eventually she just stopped eating, but she was still chatting the day before she died. In just three weeks we will be standing in shule asking God to write us in the Book of Life. For more times than almost anyone else who has ever lived, God wrote the name Liba bat Chanoch over and over again in the Book of Life. That in itself is a sign a great merit. But now we have faith that her tomorrows will be better than her yesterday. She has gone from life very nearly eternal, to life truly eternal. She will be remembered as a loved and unique member of our community, who contributed a huge amount to our community’s understanding of itself. May her memory be a blessing. To honour her memory, we are reprinting her last contribution to the Society, at the age of 101. WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A JEW IN A CIVILISED SOCIETY Louise Rosenberg, OAM (Dictated to Helen Bersten - November 2015) My mother was wrong when she said to me, “Don’t flaunt your Jewishness”, because I got the impression it was something to be ashamed of. My mother, Celia Weingott, had grown up in Mosman, having been born in Sydney before the turn of the twentieth century where her family became members of the Newtown Jewish community. I grew up in Penrith where my parents settled after their marriage. My father, Henry Rosenberg, who had emigrated from England, refused my mother permission to visit her family. I have to agree with the man who wrote, “Childhood wasn’t much of a pastime, and I don’t want there to be a next time, because I remember the last time.” I am fond of saying, “I wouldn’t go back for quids”. My primary years were especially unhappy. I‘ll call her Miss Smith, because that was her name – the anti- Semitic teacher I had in the 1920s who would call me out to the front of the class to show my hands, whereupon she would say, “These are the bitten fingernails of a Jew!” I don’t know why she was like that, but no matter how much my father tried to placate her, it was to no avail, so my parents made the decision to send me to a private Anglican school, where I had no further problems. Maisie Woodward was a friend at the second school, which I left at about age 16 to work in my father’s office in Bond Street, Sydney. He was a commercial traveler. When the Depression came, my father arranged for my brother Sam and me to run a general store in Memerambi, Queensland, but there were no Jews there. My dilemma was that my mother had taught me that the Jews were special (and even better than others). Then this woman Smith belittled me and mum then taught me to keep a low profile, however at the same time, she threatened that marrying out would bring me bad luck. So my father took me to Israel where I met and married my cousin, Moishe Rosenberg. After living there for three years, we returned to Sydney with our daughter, Marianne, and settled in Leura where the Weissman family owned the famous resort, “Chateau Napier”. They held Seders for a number of years in the resort and so I kept a link to Judaism. I am still friendly with their daughter, Ruth Mc Donald. I became truly involved in the Jewish community after my relocation to Sydney in the late 1950s when I joined the Great Synagogue where I was one of the early members of the Jewish Adult Study and Discussion Group. Rabbi Lubovsky was the first Study Advisor to the Group which was founded by Jacques Goldman and continued from 1958 to 1978. A reunion was held in 1993.