Australian Jews
Australian Jews, or Jewish Australians, are Jews who are Australian citizens or permanent residents of Australia. In the 2021 census there were 99,956 people who identified Judaism as their religious affiliation and 29,113 Australians who identified as Jewish by ancestry, an increase from 97,355 and 25,716, respectively, from the 2016 census. The actual number is almost certainly higher, due to differing perceptions of Jewish identity, however Australian census data is based on religious affiliation, so secular Jews may perceive it would be inaccurate to answer with "Judaism". Also, since the question is optional, many religiously observant Holocaust survivors and Haredi Jews are believed to prefer not to disclose their religion in the census. By comparison, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz estimated a Jewish-Australian population of 120,000–150,000, while other estimates based on the death rate in the community place the size of the community at 250,000, which would make the Jewish population about 1% of the total population. Based on the census data, Jewish citizens make up about 0.4% of the Australian population.
The Jewish community in Australia is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from diaspora communities in Central and Eastern Europe, and their Australia-born descendants. There is, however, a minority from all Jewish ethnic divisions, as well as a number of converts. The Jewish community in Australia comprises a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions, encompassing the full spectrum of religious observance, from Haredi communities to Jews who are entirely secular and atheist.
History
The history of the Jews in Australia is contained in comprehensive major general histories by the academic historians Hilary L. Rubinstein, William Rubinstein, and Suzanne Rutland, as well as in specialised works by such scholars as Rabbi John Levi and Yossi Aron covering specific topics and time periods. The twice-a-year journals of the Australian Jewish Historical Society include many original articles by both professional and amateur historians.The first Jews to come to Australia were at least eight convicts from England transported to Botany Bay in 1788 aboard the First Fleet. About 15,100 convicts had been transported by the time transportation ceased in 1840 in New South Wales and 1853 in Tasmania. It is estimated that of those who arrived by 1845, about 800 were Jewish. Most of them came from London, were of working-class background, and were male. Only 7% of Jewish convicts were female, compared with 15% for non-Jewish convicts. The average age of the Jewish convicts was 25 but ranged from as young as 8 to the elderly.
At first, the Church of England was the established religion, and during the early years of transportation all convicts were required to attend Anglican services on Sundays. This included Irish Catholics as well as the Jews. Similarly, education in the new settlement was Anglican church controlled until the 1840s.
The first move toward organisation in the community was the formation of a Chevra Kadisha in Sydney in 1817, but the allocation of land for a Jewish cemetery was not approved until 1832. In 1830, the first Jewish wedding in Australia was celebrated, the contracting parties being Moses Joseph and Rosetta Nathan.
Jewish immigration in the interwar period came at a time of antisemitism and the White Australia policy. The Returned Services League and other groups publicised cartoons to encourage the government and the immigration Minister Arthur A. Calwell to stem the flow of Jewish immigrants.
Sephardi Jews first immigrated to Australia in the mid-to-late 19th century. The community thrived for some twenty years. During this period, there was a Sephardic congregation, and some Sephardi families occupied important communal positions. Gradually, however, the Sephardi population declined, and the congregation was disbanded in 1873. A new Sephardic community also emerged in the post-war period. Previously, Mizrahi Jews were generally not permitted to enter due to Australia's White Australia policy. However, following the Suez Crisis in 1956, a number of Egyptian Jews were allowed to enter. Over the following years, overtures from Jewish communities led the government to drop its previous stance on entry of Mizrahi Jews. By 1969, when Iraqi Jews were being persecuted, the government granted refugee status to Iraqi Jews who managed to reach Australia.
In Australia, in the wake of the outbreak of World War II, Jews escaping the Nazis who had German passports, such as two-year-old Eva Duldig, who years later was a top tennis player for Australia, and her parents sculptor Karl Duldig and artist and inventor Slawa Duldig, were classified as enemy aliens upon their arrival due to their having arrived with German identity papers. Beginning the year prior to their arrival in Australia, a new Australian law had designated people "enemy aliens" if they were Germans, or were Australians who had been born in Germany. The Australian government therefore interned the three of them for two years in isolated Tatura Internment Camp 3 D, 180 kilometers north of Melbourne. They were held with nearly 300 other internees. The internment camp was located near Shepparton, in the northern part of the state of Victoria. There, armed soldiers manned watchtowers and scanned the camp that was bordered by a barbed wire fence with searchlights, and other armed soldiers patrolled the camp. Petitions to Australian politicians, stressing that they were Jewish refugees and therefore being unjustly imprisoned, had no effect. They remained in the internment camp until 1942, when her father enlisted in the Australian Army.
Culture
Jewish streams and movements
There are three main streams of Judaism active in Australia: Orthodox, Conservative and Reform. Statistics are only available for the Melbourne community, but they are considered representative of other Jewish communities around the country. In Melbourne, 6% of Jews identify themselves as 'strictly orthodox,' 33% as 'traditionally religious' and 15% as 'Liberal or Reform.' 43% consider themselves as 'Jewish but not religious,' whilst 1% as 'opposed to religion' altogether. Many of the Jews who consider themselves 'Jewish but not religious' still send their children to orthodox Jewish day schools or are members of Orthodox synagogues.According to Suzanne Rutland, 'most Australian Jews can be best described as non-practising orthodox.' This Anglo-Jewish community developed its own form of 'modern Orthodoxy' which remains predominant until today.
Hitler's ascent to power and the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust also brought large numbers of refugees from central Europe. From the mid-1930s, Temple Beth Israel in Melbourne became the basis of a Reform community because of its newly arrived German members. The Temple's German-born rabbi played an integral role in promoting the movement and, in 1938, when visiting Sydney, he established Temple Emanuel. It also attracted many Jews from Germany and other parts of Central Europe, who arrived in Sydney prior to the outbreak of the war.
In the 1940s and 1950s, due to the conditions leading up to and resulting from the Holocaust, the HMT Dunera being diverted from the United Kingdom to Australia, and the stifling of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 saw the emergence of ultra-Orthodox Haredi and Hasidic communities in Sydney and Melbourne. Although a small Hasidic community existed in Shepparton since the 1910s supported with additional families by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. The first Sephardic synagogue in Australia was founded in 1962.
There had been at least two short-lived efforts to establish Reform congregations, the first as early as the 1890s. However, in 1930, under the leadership of Ada Phillips, a Liberal or Progressive congregation, Temple Beth Israel, was permanently established in Melbourne. In 1938 the long-serving senior rabbi, Rabbi Dr Herman Sanger, was instrumental in establishing another synagogue, Temple Emanuel in Sydney. He also played a part in founding a number of other Liberal synagogues in other cities in both Australia and New Zealand. The first Australian-born rabbi, Rabbi Dr John Levi, served the Australian Liberal movement.
In 2012, the first Humanistic Jewish congregation, known as Kehilat Kolenu, was established in Melbourne, with links to the cultural Jewish youth movement Habonim Dror. Later in 2012, a similar congregation was established in Sydney, known as Ayelet HaShachar. The services are loosely based on the Humanistic Jewish movement in the United States and the musical-prayer group Nava Tehila in Israel.
Education
Schools
The Melbourne Hebrew School was a Jewish day school established in 1855 under the auspices of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, providing general and also Hebrew studies until 1895.In 1942, the first Jewish day school and kindergarten was formed in North Bondi, Sydney. The first communal Jewish day school, Mount Scopus College, was founded in Melbourne in 1949. In its first year, the school had 120 students, and reached a peak of 2,800 students in the 1980s. Today it is still one of the largest Jewish day schools in the Jewish diaspora. The largest Jewish school in Australia today is Moriah College, Sydney.
The Jewish day school system provides an excellent academic, religious, Zionist, sporting and social experience. In recent decades, the ultra-orthodox and Reform movements have established their own schools and community schools have also formed. All in all, there are 19 Jewish day schools in Australia. It is estimated that in Melbourne between 70% and 75% of all Jewish students attend a Jewish school at some stage of their schooling. In Sydney, this figure is 62%. In 1996, over 10,000 Jewish students attended a Jewish school in Australia.
Jewish day schools in Australia are much more expensive than the government/state schools. Therefore, a number of state schools, especially in Sydney, have a large number of Jewish students. The Boards of Jewish Education attend to the Jewish educational needs of such students. As a result, several state schools offer Hebrew or Jewish Studies as elective courses. Further, a number of education boards also attend to Jewish students in the smaller centres of Adelaide, Brisbane and Canberra.