A blueprint for a wholly Australian life

Although I became fascinated by First World War stories when I was a teenager – All Quiet on the Western Front was a favourite, well-read novel – it wasn’t until I started attending the Anzac Day dawn services as an adult that I decided to investigate General Sir John Monash, whose name is so often invoked there. The fact that he was Jewish – like me – was a point of pride, for which other Australian was both a war hero and so heavily involved in the community?

But as we approach Anzac Day this year, I wonder what Monash would have made of the antisemitic wave that has swept across Australia shortly after October 7, 2023, following the brutal attack on Israel by Hamas, and when locally we started seeing open hostility towards the Jewish community. How would he have reconciled the young and idealistic nation of his birth with the one in which synagogues have been attacked, Jewish businesses targeted, Jewish creatives ostracised, Jewish students made to feel unsafe, and then Jewish people targeted and murdered on the iconic Bondi Beach?

For most Australians, Monash features largely because of his spectacular success leading Australian troops on the Western Front in France, at famous battles including Messines, Hamel and Amiens. His leadership was exemplary, his preparation meticulous and his concern for those that served under him was legendary.

This was not his sole contribution to Australia. Before the war, he was a visionary engineer who worked on major projects across Melbourne including the Princes Bridge and the Outer Circle Railway. Post-war, he served as the first chairman of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria and he became vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne. He was also the driving force behind the establishment of the Shrine of Remembrance as a permanent memorial. These days, Monash’s name is everywhere. His face is on our $100 note. Australia’s biggest university is named after him. In Melbourne, we have the City of Monash and the Monash Freeway, along with schools, libraries, art galleries, research and medical centres bearing his name.

At the same time, there has never been more antisemitism in Australia, a country that once provided such safe haven to Jewish people that it enjoyed the second largest influx of Holocaust survivors in the world, per capita. That said, even in his time, Monash himself experienced antisemitism in various corners. Charles Bean, the official war correspondent of the Australian Imperial Force, wrote this about Monash during the First World War: “We do not want Australia represented by men mainly because of their ability, natural and inborn in Jews, to push themselves.” Punch magazine described him as “stout and ruddy with the typical Hebrew mouth and typical Hebrew eye”.

None of this deterred him from expressing his identity. Monash was a proud Jew and a leader in his Jewish community. The son of Prussian immigrants Louis and Bertha, he was not religiously observant, but his life was punctuated by Jewish milestones. His bar mitzvah was held at the East Melbourne synagogue.

What would he have said, a century and a half or so later, if he knew that this synagogue would be the subject of an arson attack while Jewish people were praying inside? Or if the synagogue that presided over his 1891 wedding to Hannah Victoria Moss would be targeted with antisemitic graffiti slogans scrawled over its heritage-listed building – which has happened multiple times, to date?

Later in his life, Monash served an 11-year term on the board of the St Kilda Hebrew Congregation. In 1927, he was appointed the first honorary president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.

Our longest-serving Prime Minister Robert Menzies once gave a clue to what made Monash prevail, writing about his “force of character, the utter integrity, the persuasiveness of language, the clarity of vision which enabled him to take all the ideas that he had and put them clearly into the minds of other people”.

Given that, while I can guess his response to the current state of affairs, I feel sure he would not despair – for his way was to be resolute and resilient. This was a man who fought hard to defend our way of life, and all that we still hold dear; loyalty to our country and a deep, abiding commitment to the betterment of society. In his words, “Equip yourself for life, not solely for your own benefit, but for the benefit of the whole community”.

He provided us all with a blueprint for living a wholly Australian life. Look outward towards the collective. And never forget the debt we owe this country of ours, for no matter our background, we are all Australian.

Andrew Komesaroff is a Melbourne-based lawyer.