History of The Jews in Australia - Jewish Settlement Outside New South Wales

Jewish Settlement Outside New South Wales

Tasmania, being the second oldest settlement in Australia, is most likely the second Jewish settlement in Australia. The oldest surviving synagogue is the Egyptian Revival Hobart Synagogue in Hobart was consecrated on 4 July 1845. The largest numbers of Jews in Tasmania was recorded in 1848, when the census recorded 435 Jews in Tasmania.

Jews also began to assemble in Victoria in the 1840s. The Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, Melbourne, formed in 1841, and the first synagogue building opened in 1847, at 472 Bourke Street, with a seating capacity of 100. With the arrival of large numbers of immigrants in the 1850s, the need for a larger synagogue was felt. Construction of a larger 600 seat synagogue at South Yarra commenced in March 1855. This was followed by St Kilda, Geelong, Bendigo, and Ballarat (1853). By the 1850s, during the time of the Victorian Gold Rush, Melbourne had become the largest Jewish settlement in the country. The East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation split from the Bourke St congregation in 1857. A religious court (Beth Din) was set up in Melbourne in 1866. The St Kilda Hebrew Congregation was formed in 1871, with the first services held in St Kilda Town Hall and the building of a permanent building in Charnwood Road commencing in 1872.

Jews settled in South Australia from 1836, arriving in the ships at Holdfast Bay among the first free-settler colonists from England. A group of the male Jewish colonists met in Emanuel Solomon's Temple Tavern in Adelaide in 1848 to form the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation and raise funds to build a synagogue. The first synagogue was consecrated in Adelaide in 1850 followed by an attached larger synagogue consecrated in 1870. The city synagogue was the longest continuously used synagogue in the southern hemisphere until the congregation moved in 1990 to a larger synagogue built at Glenside. The need to move was due to an influx of South African Jewish families in the 1980s as well as the difficulty in finding family homes near the city synagogue. Portions of the original 1850 synagogue had also been listed as a heritage building which made adaptation to accommodate an influx of migrants difficult. The Jewish population has fluctuated with waves of migration, varying between 1,000 and 2,000 over the last century. Apart from the early settlement of Jews from England (many of whom were originally from Poland, Russia or other Ashkenazi communities), there were consecutive waves from Europe, Britain, Egypt, Russia, South Africa and more recently, Israel. The Jews who arrived from Egypt from 1947 to 1956 were mostly Sephardim and numbered many hundreds, and the Adelaide Jewish community continues to be unique in this regard. The wave of post-World-War-II Jewish migration from Europe led to a population peak; their children were also among the 'baby-boomer' peak but their grand-children left in large numbers for Melbourne or Sydney to seek marriage partners after completing their tertiary education. Of around 60-70 South African Jewish families who came in the 1980s, the majority moved after several years to large South African Jewish communities, mostly in Perth or Sydney. The Jews from the USSR in the 1990s came with little involvement in Jewish life. The Israeli migrants arriving in recent years have formed a Tarbut Society for Hebrew speakers to preserve their cultural identity. Four decades after a Jewish day-school was established by the congregation, the decline in enrolments resulted in the closure of Massada College (Adelaide) in 2011 and the return to synagogue cheder classes for education of the children of the community.

Somewhat later than the southern States, the Brisbane (Queensland) congregation took form. Services were held in the Masonic Hall for more than twenty years (1865–1886), after which a synagogue with a seating capacity of 400 was built in Margaret Street. The youngest of the Australian communities is that of Perth, Western Australia. It was formed in 1892 as a result of the great influx of people into the western colony after the discovery of gold in the 1890s. The Jewish congregation grew rapidly, with the Brisbane Street synagogue being built and consecrated five years after the first minyan.

Each of the colonies has witnessed the rise and decline of a congregation. In New South Wales there was at one time a flourishing community in Maitland. A synagogue was built there in 1879; but owing to adverse circumstances most of the Jews left for other parts. The same fate befell the congregation of Toowoomba, Queensland, where in 1879 the Jews built a beautiful house of worship on their own ground, and under such favourable conditions that within a few years the synagogue was entirely free from debt. It was used only on the High Holidays by the few living at Toowoomba. Rockhampton, also in Queensland, has suffered similarly.

Perhaps the shortest career was that of the Coolgardie community in Western Australia. In 1896 a number of Jews, attracted by the rich gold-fields, were in that city. They at once obtained a grant of land from the government, collected subscriptions, and forthwith proceeded to build a synagogue. Within three years, however, such a thinning-out had taken place that the remaining members were unable to pay the debt on the synagogue; and the building was sold by the creditors to a Masonic body and converted into a Masonic hall.