Australian Jewish Periodicals

As migrants came in waves in response to currents in Europe so the pattern of Jewish publication changed. As the geographical sources from which Jewish migrants came changed, so the languages in which publication took place changed. This fact is underscored by an examination of the range of periodicals and publications of Australian Jewry. One sees that they include the organs of societies which sprang out of the concerns of Judaism and its various sub groups. Others are the voices of societies which sprang from the social and ethical teachings of Judaism and which grew to offer help, education, succour and assistance to the poor and needy. There are many, however, which represent the voices of groups of confrères, landsmanschaften, who came to these shores and organised their social life and group publications in languages and ways that reflect their origins. It goes without saying that some publications reflect the interests of like-minded people who were concerned to express themselves and spread their message in public. It is therefore a sine qua non of a sensible discussion of the Jewish Press in Australia that it incorporates a brief analysis of the settlement of Jews in Australia .⁴ It is also essential to limit the scope of the discussion to an examination of types of materials published, with only occasional diversions into an analysis of particular works: a broader discussion would inevitably be too long.

In general it should be observed that proportionate to its size among Jewish communities in the English speaking world, the Australian Jewish community has been in the forefront of Jewish periodical publication .⁵ Dacy's recent survey of its output runs to one hundred and sixty one pages and the second edition will list more than four hundred journals and twenty six yearbooks;⁶ the first bibliography of Australian books of Jewish interest runs to 569 ⁷ pages and showed a substantial range of topics. A second edition was soon necessary to cope with the current spate of publication.⁸

The Jewish community in Australia was born with the first white settlement for there were at least six and perhaps as many as fourteen Jews in the first transport, the 'First Fleet' of January, 1788. The number of Jews in the colony gradually increased with every convict transport until the end of transportation in the 1840's. In that period perhaps 0.5% of each transportation was Jewish.⁹At the 1828 census there were one hundred Jews in the colony. As Fredman has remarked, ¹⁰it is extraordinary how quickly an organised Jewish community appeared in some of the provincial towns as well as in Sydney and what substantial resources a small group, at no stage more than 0.5% of the population, ¹¹could find to use to erect synagogues and maintain their activities.In Sydney the Jewish settlers, convicts and emancipists, gathered their first minyan² in 1817. They established a Jewish burial society and campaigned for a Jewish section in the cemetery. ¹³The first free Jewish settlers arrived in 1821 and by 1841 there were one thousand and eighty three free Jewish settlers in the country. It was the arrival of these free settlers that triggered the slow development of Jewish community organisation. In 1828 a Jewish burial ground was established in Hobart and in 1832 attempts were made, unsuccessfully, to do the same in Launceston. Jewish communal life began with the establishment of the first congregation in Sydney in 1831 in rented premises in George Street, Sydney followed by a move to Bridge Street, Sydney, in 1837 (the Beth Tephila congregation) and the establishment of the Sydney Jewish Philanthropic Society. In 1844 a synagogue was consecrated in York Street, Sydney.

From the 1840's Jewish settlers were to be found in most of the growing country towns. The town of Maitland was declared in 1829 and by the 1840's the first Jewish burials and services were being held. The oldest surviving synagogue building in the Commonwealth is that of Hobart where there was once a flourishing community which is now reduced to less than one hundred persons. The first Jewish congregation assembled in Hobart in 1842 and the foundations of the synagogue were laid in 1843.

The census of 1841 showed that at that time the majority of Jews in Australia was in New South Wales¹⁴ and it is not surprising that the first attempt at publishing a Jewish newspaper took place in Sydney, the largest city in that State. A good many periodicals were produced in Australia during the nineteenth century. Many were begun with a confident assumption of success but few received adequate support. A long publication run was quite out of the ordinary and only half went beyond their first year. The influences at work in Europe and England which caused a flurry of nineteenth century publishing of parochial or sectarian journals were very likely at work in Australia ¹⁵ for at first, Australian periodicals were modelled on successful publications in England and America or were even printed there. Anglo-American proprietors had good facilities for production and distribution and extended their markets overseas, seeking and finding a steady income from the developing Australian colonies. British immigrants, especially, trying to ward off the alienation and disorientation which was endemic among settlers in the new continent, sought after familiar scenes and subjects from the country which many of them still referred to as "home" .

The Australian Jewish press was no exception to phenomena common in European Jewish journalism at the time. Indeed, even in the remote continent, there may well have been the sort of connection noted between the English language Jewish Press and the Hebrew journals of the Haskallah in Europe ¹⁶ for one of the prominent Jewish writers of early nineteenth century Ballarat, in Victoria, Nathan Spielvogel, was a frequent contributor of Australian Jewish news to the Hebrew language periodical, Hamagid, published in East Prussia.¹⁷ The natural concern of the community has always been to develop a literary medium that would inform the community of the activities of its members, mediate information of concern to Australian Jews, strengthen the faith, improve knowledge and bring news from England at first and then from the various mother countries of the Jewish Diaspora which contributed settlers to this country.¹⁸ Many of the latter would have been accustomed to seeing Hebrew periodicals in their native lands, and it is not surprising that non-English speaking immigrants have played active editorial and commercial roles in the Australian Jewish press. Naturally, as we see from the beginning, the Jewish press served to provide a vehicle for individual expressions of opinion. Perhaps the isolation of Australia and the distance from major Jewish cultural centres intensifies these needs, accounting for the nineteen attempts¹⁹ at publishing community newspapers either on the state or national level.

The Voice of Jacob

On Rosh Hashanah (New Year's Day) 1841 (16 September) the first issue of the Voice of Jacob, an English Jewish newspaper was published, and was soon exported to Sydney. In effect this was one of the first Jewish, English language newspapers in the world. In England it was preceded by two others ²⁰and in the USA by one paper.²¹ The Voice of Jacob can be regarded as the forerunner of Jewish periodical pubolishing in Australia since it carried regular correspondence from George Moss, an Australian contributer, which gave the scattered Australian Jewish community some local news. The later later became the editor of another newspaper, seeing this venture was short lived.

The paper must have had some sort of commercial success for on 27th May, 1842, George Moss began to publish an Australian edition of this newspaper which he name the Voice of Jacob or the Hebrew Monthly Miscellany, Sydney edition for private circulation. It was printed at the 'Australian Office' in Bridge St., Sydney. The editior noted that he had no Hebrew type. He imitated the format of the English Voice of Jacob as he wanted to provide for those persons who wished to bind the new 'colonial edition' with the predecessor. In fact, the majority of the articles in the local edition were culled from the English edition with relatively few local contributions. In the first number we note a description of the laying of the foundation stone of the York Street Synagogue, and there was a detailed breakdown of the statistics of the Jews of Australia drawn from the census of 1841. The second issue is dated 24th June, 1842 and the third and final number was issued on 5th September, 1842. The editorial in the final issue deplored the lack of support which he had received and observed that he was obliged to give away a large number of copies at considerable expense. Signalling his intent to publish no longer he wrote, 'The compiler would be guilty of neglect and injustice towards his domestic and social relations if he risked his means or wasted his zeal and enthusiasm to any greater extent than he has done, without an efficient support from his brethren'. In retrospect we must observe that the lack of support is hardly a matter of surprise. The failure of newspapers with a larger public indicates quite simply that the community had too small a base to support a weekly publication of this type. The English edition of theVoice of Jacob continued to be available in Australia until September 1846, and carried Australian news until issue no 136 on 28 August 1846.²²

Synagogue publications, newsletters, reports, guides to the community and synagogue magazines are an important genre in Australia and they contain much information about the local communities which they serve. The first such publication to appear in Australia was the Report of the Committee of the Sydney Synagogue to which is appended the message that it was "Presented to the General Meeting Held on 28th September 1845", that is a little more than one year after the opening of the York Street Synagogue.²³This sixteen page report contains a wealth of information about the early Australian Jewish community. The first six pages are devoted to describing the progress of the Australian Jewish community to date. The attempt to write the sketch history was clearly hampered by the lack or inaccessibility of records, for the writers stated, "Your Committee have now laid before you a rough and imperfect sketch of the rise and progress of the Hebrew religion in this Colony, but, from the want of authentic records, they have collected the best information they could obtain from private sources and it now only remains to furnish some statistical information which is annexed to this report". ²⁴In their report the committee recommended the formation of a Hebrew library²⁵ and such was the community interest in the printed word that we find such a library in existence by 1846 with a holding of four hundred and nineteen books including Jewish and secular works. ²⁶A printed catalogue was available with an index arranged sometimes by author and sometimes by title, showing size and binding of the books as well as the date and place of publication. It is probably the work of the same George Moss²⁷ who edited the Hebrew Miscellany and should be noted as one of the early products of the Australian Jewish press.

The position of the community and its publishers began to change for the better with the remarkable surge in the Jewish population in the gold rush years of the 1850's. Census figures show that between 1851 and 1861 the community almost tripled in size, growing to some five thousand, four hundred and eighty six persons. Some Jews dug for gold, seized with the idea of the mass of making their fortune with a rich strike. Most others were engaged in secondary industries such as peddling or transporting goods from place to place or store-keeping. It seems to have been at this time that a number of Yiddish and Hebrew words passed into Australian slang on the goldfields.

Between 1830 and 1880 the majority of Jewish immigrants had come from the United Kingdom or Germany but from 1880 immigration from Russia began to grow. The persecutions in the Ukraine and Lithuania caused a mass emigration: some adventurous Jews chose Australia instead of the USA as their future home. At first the new settlers were easily absorbed into what today would be defined as a multicultural society but by the 1890's there began to be seen some considerable discord between the older settlers and the newcomers who numbered more than one half of the total Jewish community. The cause of the conflict was the contrast between the foreign (i.e. European) vibrant Judaism of the newcomers and the anglicised and more staid Judaism of the older established settlers.

This cleavage was a major factor in the development of Australian Zionism. Jewish migration temporarily came to a halt during World War I but, immediately after the war there was another influx of European Jews who had been displaced, especially from Poland and who sought to escape the rising tide of anti-Semitism. After the introduction of restrictive immigration quotas by the United States' government in 1922 the number of immigrants from Poland increased and Yiddish became an important community language. In 1924 restricted visas were introduced to Australia and financial restrictions were tightened in 1930. Between 1925 and 1930 there was a substantial influx of migrants from Palestine with an effect on internal community politics. All of these movements were reflected in the Jewish press.

It was during the second period of rapid expansion when the majority of the population was still British based, before the inflow of Russian migrants began, that the second newspaper, the eight-paged weeklyThe Australian Israelite, co-titled in Hebrew Hayisraeli, was published and survived for the comparatively long period of four years from 1871-1875. Its publisher was subsequently the proprietor and editor of the Tamworth News , Solomon Joseph.²⁸ The new tabloid paper, priced at sixpence per issue, was Melbourne based and printed, containing local correspondence, lengthy and frank editorials, notices and advertising. It also presented some news from Sydney as well as material (usually articles on history and religion) drawn from "back home" in England. After two years, in 1875, it began to suffer from a lack of subscribers and attempts were made to form a limited company to take over the publication. Ostensibly, the project lapsed when only 466 of the proposed 2,000 share issue were taken up but the reality was that there was a conflict between the fearless and outspoken editor and community factions over many issues. On 7 May, 1875 with the issue of volume 4 no. 44 publication stopped despite the editorial support of the London Jewish Chronicle. It is probable that attempts were to establish another newspaper, the Australian Jewish Chronicle in 1861 as there was some consternation at the lack of a community journal. However, the first issue of the Jewish Herald , in 1879 describes itself as the sole news sheet of the Jewish community throughout the Australian colonies indicating clearly that there was no news sheet published between the death of the Australian Israelite and its own founding. Despite the lack of a newspaper other forms of publication were taking place.

In 1873, several Jewish schoolboys from the Sabbath School in Adelaide established a short-lived magazine the title of which is uncertain. No copy of this celebrated magazine has yet been sighted by the writer and we are forced to rely on secondary sources for information. Marks speaks of the Jewish School Fellow in Adelaide whereas Goldhar speaks of The Jewish Schoolboy . It is understood that it survived but a few weeks.

Two years later a monthly journal called The Dialectic Jewish Monthly was published in Melbourne in an attempt to fill the void left by the demise of the Australian Israelite. The sixteen page, medium octavo size magazine was printed in Fitzroy, Melbourne. An editorial announcement in the first issue indicated that its primary purpose was to give 'to the Essays, Lectures, speeches, etc., delivered at the Melbourne Jewish literary and debating society a local habitation and a name'. It went beyond this purpose carrying general news of the Jewish community and reports of meetings. Two extant sets of the journal support the view of Marks that The Dialectic survived from May 1875-November 1875 during which time seven issues were published.

Throughout the nineteenth century, newspapers and broadsheets came and went, some short-lived and others with longer lives. ²⁹ Most were published in New South Wales or Victoria which always had the largest concentration of Jewish settlers. Some declared their affiliation or bias at their birth, such as The Australasian Hebrew which proclaimed itself to be 'Orthodox with a tendency to liberality' and others adopted stances on issues, especially in relation to the development of Zionism, which made them the focus of hostile community attention.³⁰

Jewish Herald

The Jewish Herald, a substantial newspaper, began its publication in 1875. The vicissitudes of this paper give us an insight into the way the longer lived Jewish newspapers survived by amalgamations and changes of editors. It is instructive to trace the career of the paper until its demise in 1968 for its closure was a cause célèbre in the Jewish community. The Jewish Herald, which described itself as being devoted to the interests of Judaism in the Australian colonies was first established in Melbourne in December 1879 as a monthly. It was founded by the gifted and diplomatic Rev. Elias Blaumbaum and edited by two Anglo-Jews which kept its orientation towards England. From 1873-1919 a Sydney edition was published and throughout this period, it began to be influenced increasingly by the eastern European migrants.

When the Jewish Herald changed its name to the Australian Jewish Herald (between 1920 and 1933) it appeared fortnightly. In 1933 it amalgamated with a Yiddish newspaper, the Die Oystralier Leben which had been established in 1931 by a Russian Jew and it was edited by Pinchas Goldhar, an important Yiddish writer, until it changed hands in 1933. In that year it merged with the Australian Jewish Herald to reappear as the Jewish Weekly News which maintained the Yiddish connection by publishing a Yiddish supplement, Di Yiddische Voch (The Jewish Week).

The Australian Jewish Herald

The merger survived for two years when an Anglo-Jewish group bought the rights to the name and resumed publication of the Australian Jewish Herald. The Jewish Weekly News became the Australian Jewish News, which also had a Yiddish supplement, Die Oystralier Yiddisher Naies , to cater for the influx of Yiddish speaking migrants. The new series of the Herald had an editorial committee which included Rabbi Israel Brodie, later to become the Chief Rabbi if the British Empire, Rabbi Jacob Danglow, a conservative opponent of Jewish nationalistic movements and a staunch leader of the Anglo-Jewish faction and Sir Archie Michaelis. Newman Rosenthal, who was later to teach at the University of Melbourne, was the editor.

In 1936, the editorial Board launched a Yiddish supplement to the paper, but it was unsuccessful for the paper was reaching an Anglo-Jewish readership and the supplement survived for but seven weeks. In 1949, following the second influx of Yiddish speaking migrants in the post-war migration a new Yiddish supplement was launched and this was continued until the closure of the paper.

The circumstances of the closure are noteworthy. Between 1944-1948 the Australian Jewish community had faced a traumatic schism. The majority of the community was staunchly Zionist and whole-heartedly supportive of the effort to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Sir Isaac Isaacs and his supporter Rabbi Danglow took public stances in face of the community and a public debate flared with Julius Stone serving as the public spokesman of the Zionist majority.³¹When the State of Israel was established in 1948 the public controversy came to an end and the community closed ranks though Isaacs published a few more pieces in the Australian Jewish Forum, a journal dedicated to the Freeland League which looked to establish a Jewish settlement in the Kimberley region of western Australia. In 1968 the Australian Jewish Herald began to publish a series of anti-Israel articles from the doctrinaire, orthodox Sydney Jewish publicist, Mark Braham. The views expressed by Braham were no longer tolerated by a community which had been riven by the Isaacs/Stone controversy and had seen Israel fight three wars for survival within a space of twenty years. The Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies protested to the editor of the Herald requesting an undertaking that the Herald would no longer offer the freedom of its columns to Braham's views. The Board of Deputies made it clear that should the Herald not comply with this request the community would withdraw its advertising, Though the paper had a circulation of 12,500 it may not have been very profitable and it certainly could not survive the loss of advertising income.³² The editor, David Lederman, shut the paper down, though he claimed that his action resulted from his unwillingness to submit to censorship rather than for economic reasons.³³

Hebrew Standard of Australasia

The Hebrew Standard of Australia, first published in 1895 in Sydney was also embroiled in communal controversy from the 1920's through to the 1940's again in the matter of the Zionist or rather anti-Zionist stance of its editor, Alfred Harris who was worried about the possibility that an active Zionist movement in Australia indicated community disloyalty to the Crown. ³⁴ Because of the community reactions to Harris's attitudes, attempts were made to establish rival news papers in the 1920's. The first of these was the Sydney based Australian Jewish Chronicle which was taken over by Zionist activists. However, the economic effects of the depression caused its closure in 1931. A second rival paper was the Sydney Jewish News which was an offshoot of Melbourne's Australian Jewish News. However, the Hebrew Standard continued in publication until in 1952 the Harris family was forced to sell the paper and it was renamed The Jewish Times which, in turn acquired the Sydney Jewish News. Renamed The Australian Jewish Times, the paper was acquired by the late Louis Klein in 1969 and continued publication as a substantial and active weekly with community an international news and features. For some years it incorporated the international edition of the Jerusalem Post Weekly. In 1987 the Australian Jewish Times merged with the Australian Jewish News owned by the Pratt group, and now has a national distribution. A majority interest was sold to the Adler family in 1991. In 2007 Dan Goldberg stood down as national editor and Ashley Browne was appointed his successor. In July 2007 Robert Magid, a Sydney-based developer, became the new publisher of the AJN purchasing the newspaper from the Shand and Dunkel families.

Before World War II it seemed to be very likely that the Jewish community would disintegrate. It enjoyed full religious, political and social equality and the emphasis on the Britishness of Australia caused a levelling in the whole community. The Jews of Australia showed a strong tendency to intermarry and it has been suggested that the intermarriage rate reached thirty percent of the Jewish male population. World War II changed that situation. Immediately before the war there was a rapid increase in migration from Europe, after the rise of Hitler and, despite some restrictions on the number of permitted migrants at least seven thousand Jews came to Australia between 1934-1940. The impact of these newcomers was felt in the development of new synagogues, landsmanschaften within the orbit of the Yiddish speaking society, the Jewish Folk Centre, Hebrew speaking groups and the like.

Synagogue Publications

The establishment of new synagogues in Sydney and Melbourne and the increase in the numbers of members of established congregations in all States in the two inter-war migration peaks saw the growth in the publication of synagogue journals and newsletters. Some were monthlies, some were quarterlies. We note among these the Great Synagogue Journal,The Liberal Jewish Digest and South Australian Jewry. We might typify the effects on the synagogues as a whole, as publishers, by considering what has happened within the Great Synagogue, Sydney. While not considering itself as a publisher in any formal sense the Great Synagogue has a long record of using the printed word as a vehicle for communicating with its congregants. Its journal has now been published since 1944 and publishes both congregational news and articles of wider Jewish interest. Tracts and leaflets on a range of religious and educational topics appear from time to time, especially, materials published for the congregants at the High Holyday services to guide them in the conduct and content of the services. Some of the materials appearing under the synagogue's imprint have had a wider community appeal and may fall under the category of public relations materials. These include the annual Jewish calendar and synagogue diary, (which now has a rival in the community calendar) a guide to Jewish activities in Sydney with the not immodest title of a Guide to Jewish Sydney and a booklet on basic Judaism. The A.M. Rosenblum Jewish museum at the synagogue issues exhibition catalogues and has occasionally ventured into the publication of books. We note, for example, Lysbeth Cohen's book on the Biblical Tabernacle issued for an exhibition. The synagogue has a close connection with the Australian Jewish Historical Society and its archive which is based in the synagogue and which has published its proceedings since 1939.

The synagogue publications are especially important outside Sydney and Melbourne. Once, the States with smaller Jewish populations produced a variety of periodicals, some of them of literary merit. Western Australian Jewry had an exceptional record of producing small magazines largely, because of the influence of the migrants, firstly from Russia and then from Palestine who left their ships at the first port of call in the Antipodes and clustered in Perth. The first Jewish periodical publication in Western Australia was the Annual Report of the Perth Hebrew Congregation published in 1897. ³⁵ Though the report, like its annual successors, was ostensibly a review of the years' events in the synagogue, it gave an indication of the nature of the community organisation, personnel, problems interests and concerns of the community.

Perth

On 8th October, 1913, the Perth community launched the first conventional periodical, the monthly,The Communal Opinion which survived for twelve months under the editorship of its founders, the brothers Zeffert. ³⁶Closure may have been because Maurice Zeffert enlisted in the Australian armed forces in 1914. His demobilisation was marked by the appearance of the Jewish Observer,(1920) also under his editorship, but the hopes of its founders failed to be realised and it too lapsed after nineteen months. Hoffman³⁷ draws attention the valuable service the journal rendered to the Palestinian immigrants to Western Australia who were penalised by some of the state laws then in operation. In 1924 (1 November) the highly successful The Westralian Judean was founded; it closed after twelve months of losses (1 September 1925) and began to appear again in 1929 when it started an unbroken run of thirty years. It was not only a community magazine but a vehicle for the many budding young writers who entered the country in that period and it contains many fine short stories and similar literary contributions. It was followed in Perth by The Maccabean Bulletin (1944-1946)³⁸ a roneoed monthly bulletin of the Maccabean youth club. After a stormy beginning in which it changed its name for its third issue to Rotary Youth Week Brochure, presented by the Maccabean Youth Club of Western Australia,³⁹ to avoid being stifled by stringent paper rationing, it grew into The Maccabean which had a fourteen year run. Ostensibly a youth magazine it was increasingly concerned about the fate of European Jewry, the rehabilitation of survivors in Australia and the creation of a Jewish State. It was both the moral and financial support of the youth club for these issues, in contrast to desultory support of sporting activities, which led to a difference of opinion within the club about the role of their printed organ and its ultimate demise.

The Maccabean was followed by an opposing voice The Australian Jewish Outlook, a monthly which survived but a little over one year (May 1947-September 1948). This periodical was founded with the express intention of providing a forum for the anti-Zionist group in Western Australia. Its founder and editor, Harold Boas, admitted that he misjudged their number and significance but apparently had no regrets at flying in the face of community feeling.⁴⁰The journal had so little support in Perth that it had to transfer its operations to Melbourne and the majority of its sales was to the anti-Zionist few in the eastern States. Nevertheless it was unable to stay in business.

Today, the States with smaller Jewish communities have lost any independent press that they may have had; they are represented either by synagogue journals which serve the whole community rather than their own parochial interests or else by community roof organisation journals. Among such we note the weekly Maccabean , (West Australia) not in any way related to theMaccabean Bulletin described above, and Shalom (Queensland) a monthly, Hamerkaz , (Australian Capital Territory), South Australian Jewry, and the Tasmanian Jewish Times.

We might say that the synagogue publications give the lie to the frequent suggestion within the Australian Jewish community, that it is immature and parochial, a Diaspora outpost. The listings of the synagogue press alone tell rather a different story. It is a vigorous synagogue press, with some thirty-two newsletters, magazines or journals of longer standing as well as the recent periodical publications, (some six in number), of the Yeshivot (Rabbinical Schools) and Kollelim (communities of scholars).

Since the publication of The Dialectic (Jewish monthly, Melbourne 1875) no less than forty eight periodicals have been launched with an overt cultural purpose. Some, such as the journal of theAustralian Jewish Historical Society,⁴¹ have had a specialised but culturally important role. The majority, journals such as Unity or The New Citizen , appeared in the post-war period and represent the literary aspirations of migrant, European Jews who transferred cultural leanings and social and political predilections from the old world. Unity , which described itself as a magazine of Jewish affairs, appeared in Sydney in 1948.⁴² Like its successor, The Bridge, (see below) the journal was published by a foundation, the Jewish Unity Committee which was established with a programme of assessing the concerns of the Jewish community and mediating them to the wider community. It worked in liaison with the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-semitism and had editorial sub-committees in Melbourne and Perth. The prime mover in the publication of Unity was Hyam Brezniak a man of remarkable literary and artistic talent of Polish origin who arrived in Melbourne in the pre-war migration. He was heavily involved in left wing activities and worked with a group which represented the literary and political aspirations of an inter-community group of social democrat and anti-Fascist writers. The Unity team soon became involved in public controversy over the matter of political activism in support of Jewish objectives, for the Jewish Board of Deputies saw them both as a rival body and as a provocation to the non-Jewish community. In the event Unity was able to keep on the public agenda matters related to the holocaust and the subject of the immigration into Australia of escaped European fascists and did a substantial service to the Jewish community. It numbered among its contributors a wide circle of Australian literati and young writers each of whom achieved distinction in later life.

Political activism, as indicated, also included work in attempting to influence the various Australian governmentsto formulate policies which were regarded as desirable or to change policies which were regarded as undesirable. The Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism, one organisation which arose to meet the specific needs of its day, came into being in the immediate post-war period. Though its main sphere of activity was in Melbourne theUnity group in Sydney transformed itself into the Sydney branch of the Council. Unfortunately many members of the Council were either perceived as being communists or indeed were avowed socialists of extreme left wing bent, including such writers as Judah Waten and Hyam Brezniak, and in Victoria the Council was perceived as a threat to the Jewish community at this period when the Cold war was beginning and Communism was a whipping post for Australian politicians. Nevertheless, six journals and eight pamphlets published by the Council appeared in the years between 1950 and1964 by which time the Australian Jewish community had subdued (but not lost) its interest in the issue of the migration of Nazi war criminals to Australia and it was no longer the sole target for racist attacks on post-war migrants as Australia began its slow progress towards its current multi-culturalist ideology. Among these publications we note The Jewish Advocate, edited by Ernest Platz, The Jewish Council News, Council News, Sydney (but printed in Melbourne which was the principal centre of activity of the council).

The Bridge

In the 1960s and 1970s one saw the reappearance of the same cultural influences, refreshed and reinvigorated by post-war Anglo-Jewish migration, in such journals as Contact in Melbourne (which ran for three issues) and The Bridge (In NSW) which lasted for eleven years.

The Bridge was established in 1962 when the then Israel Consul in Sydney, the late Shammai Zvi Laor, sat down with Joachim Schneeweiss, one of the community's leaders and Alan Crown, an academic immigrant from the UK, and discussed ways to establish and finance a literary magazine. In 1963 the Australian Jewish Quarterly Foundation was established (it is still technically in existence though moribund) and in 1964, under the editorship of Hyam Brezniak the Foundation began to publish The Bridge a reasonably substantial quarterly which had links with the Jewish Quarterly in England. The editorial panel and content of The Bridge reflects the influence of the cross- currents in the Jewish migration pattern. Hyam Brezniak's editorship was the cause of a series of outbursts by the extreme right winger, Frank Knopfelmacher who was convinced that Brezniak had transferred the political outlook of the Unity team to The Bridge.⁴³ Joachim Schneeweiss represented the cosmopolitan, culturally rich, German pre-war immigrant group acculturated to, but not dominated by, Australia. The author represented the continuing post-war migration from England, and others represented European cosmopolitanism or the Yiddish speaking, socialist oriented Polish migration. The printer who was both friend and committee member, was Walter Stone, an important figure in the Australian literary scene,⁴⁴ a 'father' to many small magazines and an active contributor to this journal. His close and friendly cooperation with the editorial team was the sole reason it was able to carry on for so long. In the end the lack of professional office editorial staff proved to be too great a burden. Shortly before it ceased publication in 1973 financial responsibility and the distribution of the journal was taken over by Louis Klein, the owner and publisher of the Australian Jewish Times, but this professional expertise was too late to offset the problems of a group of busy editors finding the material to keep the journal alive⁴⁵ when they were unable to pay contributors. The Australian Jewish Quarterly Foundation has published a number of pamphlets and one book, the tri-lingual collection of poetry In the Midst of the Night, in the Midst of Jerusalem by Yossi Gamzu, which appeared in 1977.

There were two replacements for The Bridge. The first is the Melbourne Chronicle which was bi-lingual and was published by the "Kadimah" cultural centre in Melbourne, which was once a part of the Bundist Yiddish immigrant establishment. It was published as an annual, when formerly it appeared five times a year. Another journal, a quarterly, which began in October 1989, is Generation. Initially edited by Alan Charak and Mark Joel it describes itself as a 'journal of Australian Jewish life, thought and community', and numbers among its contributors an impressive array of both the older and younger community leaders. However, the journal was forced to close in December 2000.

Yiddish Journals

Yiddish writers, writing both as novelists and journalists in Australia, have been major contributors to the development of the Australian Jewish press. When we examine the time scale for the development of publication in Yiddish in Australia it is clear that one must be cautious in evaluating the role of post-war migration from Europe in the development of the Australian Yiddish press. Clearly, the impetus to write in Yiddish did not stem directly from post World War II migration as is sometimes suggested, though this migration played a major part in stimulating the publication of Yiddish novels. Of the twenty Yiddish periodicals which have been published in Australia, ten began their publication before World War II. The first Yiddish book to be published was a periodical, the first Australish Yiddisher Almanac (Australian Jewish Almanac) a very valuable collection of survey articles of Australian Jewish life and history, which appeared in 1937.⁴⁶ Virtually the only surviving Yiddish publications today are supplements to the newspapers or other periodicals. Yet the production of novels shows a slightly different pattern. Throughout the nineteen forties and on into the 1970's a number of Yiddish authors, displaced from Europe, wrote belletristic works,⁴⁷ plays and novels, often autobiographical, about their experiences in Europe and as new settlers in Australia: altogether forty seven titles are recorded.⁴⁸ Typical of the writers who worked as a journalist and novelist is Pinchas Goldhar who edited a newspaper, (see above) wrote for the First Jewish (Yiddish) Almanac. and published his first longer work Derzeilungen fun Australia (Tales From Australia) in 1939. He was also the first Yiddish writer to have his work translated into one of the Australian quality literary magazines. The background to much of his writing was the contrast between the vibrant Jewish life of his home town and the hostility met by the newcomers on arrival in Australia: a regular theme was the Anglo-Jewish snobbery of Melbourne's Jewish 'establishment'.

Goldhar, wrote mostly in Yiddish and it is for his writings in this language and his contribution to Australian literature in this language that he is most respected, but some of his later essays in the Australian Jewish Forum are in English. Some of his earlier work has been translated: in particular, his story 'Cafe in Carlton,' (Southern Stories, 1945) was rated the best story of the year by literary critics. A second story, 'The Funeral,' was published twice in translation in two years, in the annual anthology Coast to Coast , (1944) and in Meanjin (1945).⁴⁹

The recurring theme of his essays and short stories is the tensions and trials of migrants trying to adjust themselves to a new life, as he put it, 'eating the hard bread of an immigrant' . He considered that the Jewish life of Europe could not easily survive the transfer to alien shores. However, he argued, on the basis of his extensive studies of Australian literature, that a new Yiddish literature could be created in Australia and that through the medium of Yiddish Australian Jewry could be at one with creative Jewish communities the world over.

Many of the Yiddish novels of the post-war years were published privately by authors, through subscription or through well-wishers in the communities.⁰ The role of the York Press in Melbourne needs especial mention. The York Press was the publisher of the Australish Yiddisher Almanac and was the principal (though not the only) Yiddish printer in Australia.⁵¹Yiddish works of all kinds came from this press. It also gave its imprimatur to many items which circulated in Australia in the information and propaganda war which preceded the establishment of the State of Israel. The York Press may well have been the catalyst in stimulating the revival of Yiddish in the Melbourne Jewish community.

Among the authors published by York Press was Herz Bergner, (the younger brother of Melekh Ravitch) and, since his career is illustrative of his contemporary Yiddish writers some expanded reference to his work is justified. Bergner migrated from Poland to Melbourne in 1938 .He immediately resumed a literary career begun in Poland, where he had published a book of short stories, Shtibn un Gasn (Houses and Streets) (1935) with a continued output of short stories in Yiddish published in periodicals in Israel, the USA and Australia. His first novel, Dos Naye Hoyz, (The New House) ( Melbourne 1941) fuses his Polish background with Australian scenes. His second novel, Tzvishn Himmel un Vaser ,(1947), published in translation asBetween Sea and Sky, a year previously, was awarded the gold medal of the Australian Literary Society for the best book of the year. The story of a boat load of refugees, mostly Jewish, at sea after the Nazi invasion of Greece, was described as a literary tour de force, and put Bergner into the first rank of Australian authors. His largest novel, almost a sociological work, A Shtut in Poiln (Melbourne 1950) was a literary monument to Polish Jewry. In 1955 he published another collection of short stories, Dos Hoiz Fun Jacob Isaacs, which presents the theme of Jewish alienation in the Australian environment, a theme which he was to take up at greater length in his Licht un Shotn, (1960) republished by Georgian House as Light and Shadow (1963).

Bergner's later short stories, especially his Vu der Emet Shteyt ayn (Where the Truth Lies) (1966) and Mdarf zein a Mentsch, (One Must be Human) (1971) published posthumously, continued to focus on Jewish migrant life in post-war Australia, especially the life of the Yiddish speakers.

Political broadsheets and pamphlets have been an important feature of the printed output of Australian Jewry. The close involvement of the Jewish community in both local and Middle eastern politics and policy making has meant that the community, in all its centres has had to maintain a flow of information both to inform its own members of current situations and developments and to help influence public opinion. Different interest groups such as the Jewish Boards of Deputies, the State Zionist Councils and the Zionist Federation have all published broadsheets for specific occasions or with a more general interest. Zionist publications tend to be concentrated in the period between 1929 (when the Zionist Federation of Australia and New Zealand was established) and the years immediately after the establishment of the State of Israel. The 1940's and 50's saw what might be termed the decades of the pamphlets as the Jewish community and its supporting groups in the Anglican Church⁵² kept the public well informed as to the feelings of the Jewish community about Middle Eastern affairs and the role it sought Australia to play. The 1970's-1980's marked the rise of eight journals devoted to Australia-Israel cultural affairs and news briefing.⁵³ Today almost the whole of the organisational information flow is channelled through the group known as Australia Israel Publications and once by the Australian Institute of Jewish Affairs. Both of these organisations produced news sheets, the first the influential fortnightly Australia-Israel Review which is still current and the second, the occasional newsletter AIJA Survey, as well as AIJA Briefing issued as a monthly since 1991. A broadsheet called Without Prejudice provided academics, journalists and policy-makers with up-to-date and authoritative reports and analyses on vital issues in the Jewish world, Israel and the Middle East. It was issued as a quarterly since September 1990. These documents have been supplemented with occasional research papers on specified topics such as W.D. Rubinstein's study of the effect of the recent economic recession on the Jewish community in Melbourne.⁵⁴

Zionist Youth Publications

Distance from the major Jewish cultural centres and the difficulty of obtaining texts specifically in war years meant that over a period of nearly a century there were desultory attempts at publishing textbooks, reference sources or magazines that would serve the cause of Jewish education.⁵⁵ In 1944 a double column of youth educational matters began to be published in the Hebrew Standard , but the attempt was aborted and plans were laid to print a youth magazine which eventually appeared in Sydney in December 1949. Name Ittoni , with information on festivals, history, current events, the magazine was distributed in every Australian State and in New Zealand. In 1953, after twenty issues, it ceased publication because of its cost. In 1946 an attempt was made to produce both a text for use in the classes of the NSW Board of Jewish Education and for distance and home education for young people living away from the major Jewish centres of population, and a 44 page booklet, edited by Norman Rothfield, was produced and distributed. In the same year a Hebrew text from pre-war Germany, Dan and Gad, was printed with additional notes to suit the Australian environment. Further texts followed under the general title of Migdal. These were roneoed documents of from 18-48 pages and were produced and distributed by the Board of Jewish Education .⁵⁶ In 1971 the Board established a publications unit which published more than sixty items in the years to 1979. The younger generation, especially students at the University of Sydney was especially active in the development of Australian attitudes towards the Zionist movement, during the war years. During the 1940's the Zionist youth groups began to provide news sheets for their members, usually in roneoed form. Despite their unpromising appearance some of these were of considerable significance in moulding opinions among young people who, in turn, became the current crop of ageing leaders of the community.⁵⁷All in all the Zionist youth movements have published at least thirty-eight periodicals with some length of run, many of them between 1942-1950.

One of the more active youth movements was the Shomrim Zionist Youth Organization which was responsible for the publication of the Shomrim News , The Young Zionist, the Habonim-Shomrim Bulletin and Halapid .⁵⁸ Altogether these publications represent less than twenty issues, spanning some two and a half years. Yet it was these newsletters and magazines which served as a forum for discussion, a stimulus to the Australian Zionist movement and a forum for the airing of opinions for members and others and acted as a means of communication between the group and those of its members serving in the military. They also drew the attention of the Australian security and intelligence services who seem to have found the support for Zionism a threat to the nation..⁵⁹ In addition to these formal publications, contact was maintained with members of Shomrim by means of regular circulars, especially when no official publication was in print. From the number of publications, it would seem that the leadership of The Shomrim Zionist Youth Organisation felt duty bound to expound its ideas in print. As Shomrim membership aged, changed or entered the military, the tone of the publications changed, becoming far more politicised in their approach. While the size, style and tone of each publication differed, the level of professionalism and personal passion expressed through these publications by the youthful members of Shomrim made a contribution which was unique in that period of Australian Jewish history. This is especially true when it is remembered that members of Shomrim were largely immigrants to Australia and these publications were produced under the difficult conditions dictated by a variety of wartime regulations.

Vol.1 No.1 of Shomrim News appeared in June 1941. It was little more than a three page typewritten roneoed newsletter on foolscap papercontaining an anonymous editorial, words to a Hebrew song and brief articles on the need for a Jewish World Congress to act as the international voice of the Jewish people, The Kimberley scheme,⁶⁰ the need for a Jewish Army, the internees at Tatura and Hay, some gossip about Shomrim members and a review of the most recent edition of the Australian Jewish Forum..⁶¹

The quality and size of Shomrim News increased with each monthly issue. The cover and table of contents of the August 1941 issue were professionally printed in white with blue colour bars at the top and bottom. Shomrim News continued to expand in size and content to twenty five pages in issue 6 of December 1941. Issue 7 was in preparation.⁶² when a request for permission to continue printing, a necessity in wartime Australia, was refused⁶³ by the authorities. The reason for refusal to print given officially was "paper rationing".⁶⁴ but, undoubtedly, the security services were worried about the effect the paper was having in fostering the Zionist cause and links with The Eureka Youth League, a labour-left youth organisation with strong communist ties.⁶⁵

The Habonim leader in Melbourne, arranged to join in the production of another Zionist magazine entitled The Young Zionist in conjunction with the (Melbourne based) Youth Department of the Zionist Federation of Australasia.⁶⁶ and under its auspices. While it was originally produced to cater for the needs of young Zionists in Victoria it was decided to direct it to all young Zionist groups in Australasia.⁶⁷ As an official publication of the Zionist Federation, this publication did not suffer the same fate as Shomrim News; paper was made available for its production.

The Young Zionist was a substantial publication where each issue had a particular theme. It utilised the same general format as Shomrim News but maintained a generally more august tone. It was, in effect, the Shomrim News camouflaged as TheYoung Zionist ⁶⁸ though it lacked the informal tone which had marked Shomrim News, because while Shomrim News was written by individuals who knew each other and had a sense of common purpose, The Young Zionist was written for a broader audience: the intimacies of local gossip or a degree of friendly banter were not meaningful to the majority of readers. The magazine enjoyed a wide distribution to all centres throughout Australia and New Zealand⁶⁹ In all, at least eight issues were produced⁷⁰ from December 1941, but the project was overly ambitious for wartime Australia and publication ceased in 1943⁷³ In March, 1943 a modest newsletter, the Habonim-Shomrim Bulletin was issued with the excess purpose of keeping the Shomrim members who were on active service in touch with local and overseas news. The Bulletin saw a return to the simple typed foolscap style which characterised Shomrim News for its first two issues. Each issue was only two pages with a roughly equal distribution of Zionist information and organisation gossip. Some issues may have continued to be produced following the introduction of Halapid, which appeared in July 1943.⁷²

Halapid marked a return to a magazine along the lines of Shomrim News, being roughly the same style and format. It was a politicised publication whose avowed aim was to fight in public the policy of restricting immigration to Palestine.⁷³ Five issues have appeared before closure. Regular monthly publications originating with Shomrim ceased with the final issue of Halapid.