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The Australian Jewish community has only one major hard copy weekly publication, The Australian Jewish News , but has a long history of boutique publications and zines. With the advent of the internet, blogs and online magazines have proliferated reflecting the community's multitudinous religious, political, and cultural orientations.
The primary Australian Jewish news source is The Australian Jewish News (also known as The AJN), a hard copy weekly that also produces a website; owned by Robert Magid and edited by Gareth Narunsky.
Its major rival is an online news magazine, J-Wire, which publishes similar content. [1] It is owned and operated by Henry Benjamin.
A recent entry into the market is the free monthly hard-copy newspaper, The Jewish Report, which bills itself as a tool for fostering social cohesion.' [2]
Alongside zines, and other community newsletters, Melbourne Jewry produced two literary journals, the Melbourne Chronicle, in the 1980s and Generation Magazine. [3] The Melbourne Chronicle [4] initially produced a companion Yiddish edition; however, like the Australian Jewish News, which also published additional material in Yiddish, the dwindling Yiddish-speaking market proved incapable of supporting it.
After Generation Magazine ceased publication in the 1990s, there was a period in which there was no dedicated publication for Australian Jewish literary expression. In 2009, however, a group of young Jewish writers launched the online magazine, Galus Australis. It billed itself as a pluralist space for the discussion of Jewish Australian ideas and stories, but it ceased publication in 2015. [5]
Jewish Women of Words is the newest literary venture in the Australian Jewish media scene.
Australian Jewry's religious and political diversity is best reflected in its blogs. The conservative collective blog, known as Jews Down Under [6] / publishes opinion pieces arguing from a right wing Zionist perspective; while the Australian Jewish Democratic Society and +61J [7] publish content more critical of the Israeli government.
Notable individual blogs have similarly provided the community with a platform for expression. The first such blog, in 2009, to be reported in the wider Australian media [8] was The Sensible Jew, written by Alex Fein. [9] It provided controversial critiques of communal politics. [10] Blogs such as Pitputim [11] and The Fifth Chelek, [12] meanwhile, concern themselves more with religious argument.
Radio and television have also provided the Jewish community with a broadcast outlet. The long running TV show, The Shtick, [13] first airing on channel 31 and then moving to YouTube, features stories and segments about Jewish life in Melbourne. Melbourne Jewish Radio has also had a long tradition and the SBS station currently provides a service in Hebrew. [14] The community attained a radio licence in 2011 and established the station, LionFM; however, this was short lived as its license was revoked. In its place is the community run radio organisation, J-Air, which bills itself as, 'the Jewish voice of Melbourne'. [15]
Yiddish is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originates from 9th century Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages. Yiddish has traditionally been written using the Hebrew alphabet; however, there are variations, including the standardized YIVO orthography that employs the Latin alphabet.
Ashkenazi Jews, also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim, constitute a Jewish diaspora population that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally spoke Yiddish and largely migrated towards northern and eastern Europe during the late Middle Ages due to persecution. Hebrew was primarily used as a literary and sacred language until its 20th-century revival as a common language in Israel.
The Black Book of Soviet Jewry or simply The Black Book, also known as The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry, is a 500-page document compiled for publication by Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman originally in late 1944 in the Russian language. It was a result of the collaborative effort by the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) and members of the American Jewish community to document the anti-Jewish crimes of the Holocaust and the participation of Jews in the resistance movement against the Nazis during World War II. The 1991 Kyiv edition of The Black Book was subtitled The Ruthless Murder of Jews by German-Fascist Invaders Throughout the Temporarily-Occupied Regions of the Soviet Union and in the German Nazi Death Camps established on occupied Polish soil during the War 1941–1945.
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), represents the interests of the Australian Jewish community to government, politicians, media and other community groups and organisations through research, commentary and analysis. The organisation is directed by Colin Rubenstein, who was previously a political science lecturer at Monash University. AIJAC has office locations in Melbourne and Sydney. AIJAC is formally associated with the American Jewish Committee.
The history of Jews in Australia traces the history of Australian Jews from the British settlement of Australia commencing in 1788. Though Europeans had visited Australia before 1788, there is no evidence of any Jewish sailors among the crew. The first Jews known to have come to Australia came as convicts transported to Botany Bay in 1788 aboard the First Fleet that established the first European settlement on the continent, on the site of present-day Sydney.
Yidisher Kultur Farband was a Communist-oriented organization, formed for preserving and developing Yiddish culture in Yiddish and in English, through an art section, a writers' group, reading circles, and publications. YKUF was founded in Paris in September 1937 by Jewish Communists and their supporters as an international body to disseminate ideology to the Yiddish-reading and Yiddish-speaking community.
Non-Zionism is the political stance of Jews who are "willing to help support Jewish settlement in Palestine ... but will not come on aliyah."
Judaism is a minority religion in Australia. 99,956 Australians identified as Jewish in the 2021 census, which accounts for about 0.4% of the population. This is a 9.8% increase in numbers from the 2016 census.
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, because being a Jew is not just about being religious, but the census data is based on religious affiliation, so secular Jews often feel it would be inaccurate to answer with "Judaism". Also, since the question is optional, many practicing 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 estimate the size of the community as 250,000, which would make them 1% of the population. Based on the census data, Jewish citizens make up about 0.4% of the Australian population. The Jewish community of Australia is composed mostly of Ashkenazi Jews, though there are Jews in Australia from many other traditions and levels of religious observance and participation in the Jewish community.
The Perth Hebrew Congregation is synagogue located in the Perth, suburb of Menora, Western Australia. Established as an organization in 1892, it is the oldest of three shuls and one temple serving the Jewish community in Perth. The synagogue includes a child care - namely Ruth Landau Harp Early Learning offering education to children aged from 6 weeks to 5 years, educating children on the Jewish calendar of events and Jewish values, with all meals being kosher. The synagogue offers facilities for daily services, educational programmes, PHC also houses a library, a mikveh and a bookshop. In July 2004, the shul was heavily defaced with anti-Semitic vandalism.
The Algemeiner Journal, known informally as The Algemeiner, is a newspaper based in New York City that covers American and international Jewish and Israel-related news. It is widely read by Hasidic Jews.
The Jewish Community Council of Victoria Inc (JCCV) is the main representative body for Victorian Jewry, representing 52 Jewish community organisations and over 60,000 Victorian Jews. The JCCV's mission is to represent the Victorian Jewish community, the largest Jewish community in Australia, and deal with matters that affect its status, welfare and interests. The JCCV was established in 1938 as the Victorian Jewish Advisory Board. It has been known as the Jewish Community Council of Victoria since 1989 and became incorporated in 2000.
Mendel Balberyszski was a Lithuanian Jew, Polish politician and survivor of the Holocaust in Lithuania. He is chiefly known today as the biographer of the destruction of the Vilna Ghetto in his book Stronger Than Iron – The Destruction of Vilna Jewry 1941-1945: An Eyewitness Account. It is the account of life and organization in the Small Ghetto from its day of formation until its liquidation, it is also the only complete historical record of the fate of the Jewish population of Vilna from the day of the arrival of the Germans, through the two Ghettos, the concentration camps in Estonia until the liberation of the surviving 84 Jews by the Soviet Army.
The International Jewish Labor Bund (ILJB) was a New York-based international Jewish socialist organization, based on the legacy of the General Jewish Labour Bund founded in the Russian empire in 1897 and the Polish Bund that was active in the interwar years. The IJLB is composed by local Bundist groups around the world and was originally created to defend Jewish national-cultural rights in Eastern Europe. It was an "associated organization" of the Socialist International, similar in status to the World Labour Zionist Movement or the International League of Religious Socialists. Bundist ideology differed significantly from Zionist beliefs regarding the Yiddish language and the immigration of Jews. In the mid-2000s, The World Coordinating Committee of the Jewish Labor Bund was dissolved in New York, although local Bundist groups or groups inspired by the Jewish Labor Bund still exist in Mexico and Australia.
Bundism is a secular Jewish socialist movement whose first organizational manifestation was the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, and Russia, founded in the Russian Empire in 1897.
Suzanne Dorothy Rutland OAM is an Australian-Jewish historian. Rutland serves as Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney. She was previously Chair of the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies, at Sydney University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, serving in that position for 11 years. She specializes in the history of Australian Jews and religious education.
Alex Fein is a community activist, writer and businesswoman, living in Melbourne, Australia. Since 2009, she has been a key player in Australian Jewish media. Her activism utilises multimedia tools, focusing on social justice, good epistemic practice in biomedical research and policy development, transparency, Orthodox Judaism and feminism.
Ark Centre is a modern Orthodox synagogue and Community Centre located in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn East. It was founded by a number of people who were previously members of Kew Hebrew Congregation.
The Melbourne Beth Din (MBD) is an Orthodox / Chassidic Jewish court in the city of Melbourne, Australia. Located in Caulfield North, Victoria, it rules mostly on divorces and conversions although it does rule on other matters as well.
The Jewish Labour Bund, more commonly known as the Jewish Labour Bund Melbourne, the Australian Bund, or simply the Bund, is the Australian wing of the Bundist movement. It was a member of the historical International Jewish Labor Bund, and is the largest and most active Bundist organisation left in the world. It was founded in 1928 Jewish Polish immigrants, and expanded rapidly after the Second World War with the mass arrival of Holocaust survivors to Australia. The Bund is currently registered only in the state of Victoria, where it is legally known as the Jewish Labour Bund, Inc., and is based primarily in the city of Melbourne.
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