AJHS celebrates 70 years
The society began in 1954 under the presidency of state parliamentarian Sir Archie Michaelis as a branch of the Sydney-based Australian Jewish Historical Society.
The Australian Jewish Historical Society–Vic. Inc., which celebrates its 70th birthday this year, mourns the recent passing of Rabbi Raymond Apple, who in his youth was one of its founders. Now headed by Gavin Silbert, the society began in 1954 under the presidency of state parliamentarian Sir Archie Michaelis as a branch of the Sydney-based Australian Jewish Historical Society, founded in 1938 in the awareness that the unique history of Jews Down Under is worth telling and its records worth preserving.
Other founders of the Victorian branch included future University of Newcastle history professor Lionel Fredman, the well-remembered teacher of successive generations of the St Kilda Shule’s bar mitzvah boys Miss Hettie Feuerman, surgeon and Zionist activist Dr J Leon Jona, Rabbi L M Goldman of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, future MHC president Isidor Solomon, and Australian Jewish News editor Israel M Oderberg.
Rabbi Goldman delivered the branch’s first talk, on “Early Jewish Settlers in Victoria”, followed by future professor Israel Getzler on “Problems of Australian Jewish History”. A varied program of talks by historians, history-makers, and history buffs has been the society’s hallmark ever since.
In 1939 the society in Sydney began publication of a Journal under the editorship of lawyer and historian David J. Benjamin, and in 1988 the branch in Victoria, incorporated the following year, launched a Journal of its own, with an attractive modern format. The Journal appears each November, a few months after its mid-year Sydney-based equivalent, edited by Professor Emerita Suzanne Rutland. Members of each society receive both journals, either in hard copy or electronic format.
“We are proud of the range and scope of our Journals,” said Victorian editor Dr Hilary Rubinstein, an academically trained historian herself. “We carry articles on all aspects of Australian Jewish history, and our authors are a felicitous mix of professional and non-professional historians. Biographical articles about cultural figures often rescue those figures from undeserved obscurity. Personal memoirs and family reminiscences are as welcome as academic studies since they are not only fascinating in themselves but provide source material for future historians. If authors require peer review for their articles we arrange it.”
In this 70th birthday year Michael Danby, Professor Philip Mendes, and Professor Leon Mann are due to address the society.
New members are welcome, and membership is open to anyone.
For details contact davidhmarlow@gmail.com
comments