A Tour of Jewish History
in Australia
www.jewishhistoryaustralia.net/jha
To embark on a tour of Jewish History in Australia click anywhere on this gold panel.
This historian argues that a price of creeping assimilation and ultimate
fragility
was paid by the community is accepting an implicit social contract
requiring that in Australia Jews forsake Yiddish and any other outward sign of separatism
to meld into a middle class British society.
This social contract, how it was transformed during the twentieth century,
and the issue of the Jewish Future in Australia in the twenty first century
is discussed in The History of Now.
|
|
Jews have been an integral part of Australia’s history since the beginning of European
settlement. In the First Fleet that landed in Sydney in 1788 there were at least
14 Jews, and Jews participated in the initialisation of the first settlement in
Port Phillip, the establishment of Hobart, Melbourne, and Adelaide. And the story
continues, with the numerically small Jewish population in the forefront of
development of Australia.
|
| 
| Sir John Monash
Staunch Zionist
|
| Sir Isaac Isaacs
Staunch anti-Zionist
| 
|
|
Notable Jews include Sir Isaac Isaacs who at a time
when
Fascism was rampant in Europe
became
the first Australian-born Governor General;
another celebrated Australian Jew was Major General John Monash who lead Australian Infantry
Forces in World War I. All of which fits so well in the classic account of
Australian Jewish History in which it is stressed that
Jews have participated fully and equally in the course of Australian history starting with the First Fleet of 1788.
|
|
