Bialik celebrates seven splendid decades

THE misconceptionthat Bialik College is among the younger of Melbourne’s Jewish day schools will be debunked this Sunday, when the school celebrates its 70th anniversary.

In fact, it is the oldest Jewish school in Melbourne and its doors have been open since 1942 – when it began life as a kindergarten and after-school Hebrew centre in Carlton.

“Bialik College is a school that has been part of the fabric of the Melbourne Jewish community for a great deal of time – longer than some people may even realise,” said acting principal Gary Velleman.

“We are always learning, evolving and adapting – just like our students; and throughout the college’s long and proud history, we have been deeply committed to the belief that our young are best raised by a community approach,” he said.

While the college saw its first VCE students graduate in 1990, it has been operating as a full-time Jewish day school since 1963, when the burgeoning postwar community felt the

need for a pluralist approach to Jewish education.

“I built Mount Scopus for my children. I built Bialik for my grandchildren,” said Israel Kipen, a founder of Bialik who also helped establish Mount Scopus Memorial College in the late 1940s.

Kipen said he had felt at the time that the Jewish community would be nourished by multiple education options.

Issac Ernest was principal of Bialik at its birth as a day school with just 40 students. “I was able to receive a lot of satisfaction from that year at Bialik and was able to return to Israel with the feeling that I had laid the basis for an important contribution to the Jewish educational scene of Melbourne,” he said of his decision to move to Australia from Israel to help set up the school.

“I still remember with trepidation the impending first visit of the Education Department superintendant and awaiting his written report, which had nothing but superlatives to say about the facilities and stressing in particular the warm, family-like relationship which he felt existed between pupils and staff.”

Former and future principals will meet at the school this weekend, where an exhibition of Bialik’s history will be on display alongside student work.

“This school embraces children from the whole mosaic of the Jewish community regardless of ability or affiliation,” said incoming principal Jeremy Stowe-Lindner, who will commence as Bialik’s 12th principal in September. “[Bialik] nurtures students to be strong in their own values, and to see difference as healthy, positive and good. This is a school that my family and I are thrilled to be joining because its values sit so comfortably with our own,” he said.

Hands-on kids science activities, art workshops, carnival activities, performances, a panel discussion and multimedia exhibition will be part of the festive line-up as Bialik honours its past while looking to the future of Jewish education in Australia.

Bialik’s anniversary celebration and exhibition opening are on Sunday, June 3 from 1-4pm at 429 Auburn Road, Hawthorn.

LIVIA ALBECK-RIPKA

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