November in a very different era

With the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration having just passed and the approach of Remembrance Day – originally known as Armistice Day – marking the end of the war that it was hoped would end all wars, it is fascinating to reflect on local community attitudes to the events of that time. Those events and dates are now barely noticed given all that has transpired since commencing with and of course including the horrors of Kristallnacht, November 10, 1938, just 20 years after the Armistice.

In the records of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation we find that at the 1914 AGM that took place a month after the outbreak of war, president Phillip Cohen declared: “The Union Jack of old England has always been a symbol of peace, of security, of freedom, of justice … it therefore behoves us as loyal citizens of the King to rally around the flag and assist in every way the cause of the empire. When you come to read of the way our gallant comrades are fighting our cause, it makes your blood tingle with pride that you are Britishers.”

Assistant Minister and Secretary of the congregation, the Revd SM Solomon, acted as a chaplain assisting Jewish servicemen within Victoria. The Jewish Herald reported that “Chaplain the Revd SM Solomon attended at the military training camp in Langwarrin and addressed the trainees … in compliance with his request, exemption from firing and other duties on Sabbath and Holy Days was granted to the Jewish units [sic] and the supply of motzos and rations other than meat was also provided by the military authorities.”

In his biography of Rabbi Jacob Danglow, Rabbi John Levi notes that by September 1916 “St Kilda Hebrew Congregation alone had sent 45 of its young men to the front. It now became customary for Jewish boys who were about to be sent overseas to come to St Kilda to be called to the Torah before they embarked. Rabbi Danglow (who was only called overseas himself towards the end of the war to succeed Chaplain Rabbi David I Freedman of Perth in ministering to troops at the front) began to wear his chaplain’s uniform on Shabbat.

“Almost every service concluded with the congregation singing ‘God save the King’ as the congregation farewelled the young volunteers.” Sadly there were to be many casualties.

Percentages of Jewish enlistment were way above percentages in the population generally; from Sydney Rabbi Francis Lyon Cohen wrote to the Jewish Herald in August 1915 that: “We Jews of NSW would have been contributing our full proportion to those already enlisted under arms if 85 of us had gone. This week I sent a message to 114 Jewish sailors and soldiers and my list is not a complete one.” The Melbourne Hebrew Congregation Honour Board and similar boards in other synagogues are indicative of those of that congregation alone who served, listing 18 who laid down their lives for the cause of King and country. After four years of suffering including the deaths of so many of the community as part of the Australian casualty toll generally, the Armistice was greeted with great relief. Impromptu thanksgiving services took place in all congregations on Shabbat November 16. A further typical reaction was that shown at a committee meeting of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation on November 21, 1918, when at its conclusion: “the President asked as a tribute of thanksgiving and loyalty at the good news just received that all present shall unite in singing the National Anthem. ‘God save the King’ was then sung and hearty cheers given for King and Empire.”

During that era a feature of communal social life in Melbourne was an annual celebration of the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha held on Kislev 15. For nearly two decades it served as Melbourne’s biggest annual Jewish social event. On November 28, 1918, barely three weeks after Armistice Day, the hall and tables at this first major post-Armistice communal event were decorated with the flags of Great Britain and her Allies. Additionally, emphasising historic developments, a “Zionist flag” [sic] donated by Mr H Leber adorned the platform. Key speaker entrusted with toasting “The Allies” was Melbourne City Councillor HF Barnett who as reported in the Jewish Herald spoke of the freedom for which Britain and the Allies had fought, and thanked God that they had succeeded. “The nations of the world where Jews had the same rights and privileges had triumphed and those where Jews were denied them had perished.”

At this point however he added a new note indicative of the Jewish Australian reaction (at least in Melbourne; Sydney was more reserved) to the events that had transpired in Palestine over the previous 12 months with the assistance of Australian troops including many Jews. “Britain and her Allies, following upon the lines of Justice and Right for which they had been fighting, were restoring to the Hebrews their old home – Palestine – and it was for the Jews of the world to make it a true home for the persecuted and a centre for promulgating the splendid ideals of Judaism.”

Incidentally it was not only Jews in Australia who had taken the view expressed in the Jewish Herald that following General Edmund Allenby’s victorious entry to Jerusalem on Chanukah 1917 “the future of Palestine and its famous capital under the suzerainty of free nations is for the Jew to create”. Even the Melbourne Argus explained: “War is the ‘mother of surprises’. This new land of the South Seas with its lusty unhistoric life has slipped into the place of the Saracen and the Crusader. The Australian Light Horse instead of the Knights Templar and the boys from the Australian bush in a place of pilgrims and warriors of the Middle Ages! What it may mean to the world to have a free modern state can only be imagined, not foreseen.”

Indeed, as per the “Ode of Remembrance”: “At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them” – and all that was achieved at the time of which the developments in our homeland were at least one lasting benefit.

Shabbat shalom,

Yossi

Yossi Aron OAM is The AJN’s religious affairs editor.