‘A Tribe Within a Tribe’ | How South Africans Came to Dominate Jewish Life in Australia

SYDNEY – Jillian Segal heads the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Yair Miller is CEO of the Australian branch of United Israel Appeal (Keren Hayesod). Alain Hasson heads the Jewish Communal Appeal. Vic Alhadeff is the former CEO of the Jewish Board of Deputies and ex-editor of the Australian Jewish News. Rabbi Ralph Genende is the chief Jewish chaplain of the Australian Defence Force and was until recently the spiritual leader of Melbourne’s largest synagogue. Norman Seligman is the outgoing CEO of the Sydney Jewish Museum, while David Gonski is arguably the country’s most prominent Jewish businessman.

What do all these Australian Jews have in common? They were all born in South Africa. And it is probably no coincidence. According to recent figures published by the national statistics bureau, some 100,000 Jews live in Australia – primarily in the two big southern cities of Sydney and Melbourne, with a slightly larger share in the latter. Throughout the years, though, Sydney has been by far a bigger magnet for South African Jews.

Indeed, it is estimated that nearly 20 percent of the roughly 40,000 Jews living in Australia’s largest city originated in the southern tip of Africa. And if you ask most Jews in this city, they will tell you it feels more like 80 percent.

South African Jews clearly enjoy more than their fair share of representation in Jewish communal life in Australia. Not only do they fill key functions in Jewish organizations and institutions engaged in advocacy work, fundraising, social welfare services and culture, they have also created their own Jewish day schools and shuls while helping grow others. In the process, they have injected new energy into a Jewish community once thought to be past its prime.

At its height, in the mid-1970s, the Jewish community of South Africa numbered more than 120,000 and was nearly double the size of its Australian counterpart. It has since shrunk to barely 50,000, though, and is now less than half the size of Australia’s Jewish community. For the tens of thousands of Jews who have left South Africa since the ’70s, Australia has more often than not been the destination of choice.

“The draw card for us was that we already had family and close friends here,” says Amanda Penkin, who moved to Sydney with her husband David and their two children nearly 20 years ago. They settled on Australia after ruling out a host of other destinations, including the United States, England and Canada. (Because she is not good with languages and doesn’t speak much Hebrew, Penkin says Israel was never a serious option for them.)

“I didn’t like the American culture, Canada was too boring and cold, and England was too gray and rainy,” says the 55-year-old business consultant. A key advantage of Sydney over Melbourne for her and her family, she says, is its proximity to the ocean.

“We’re a swimming family, and unlike Melbourne – which really doesn’t have much of a beach – Sydney’s proper living by the sea,” says Penkin, a lifelong swimmer and former president of the Maccabi swim club in New South Wales. “You can go to a different beach every weekend of the year here.”

Explaining the outsize influence of her South African cohorts on the Australian-Jewish community, she cites cultural factors. “I may be generalizing, but South Africans are quite forward – some might say even too forward. So, when they want to contribute to a community, they know how to make their feelings heard. We’ve been raised – and I’m not saying that this isn’t true for Australians – but we’ve definitely been raised on the value of giving to the Jewish community.”

Suzanne Rutland, a leading authority on Australian Jewry and a professor emerita at the University of Sydney, says the dynamics of the apartheid system, in which many of these South African Jews were raised, may explain their unusually strong sense of Jewish community and identity.

“It was a system that actually encouraged Jews to see themselves as a separate ethnic group and a community apart from other groups in South African society,” explains Rutland, who has conducted extensive research on the different Jewish immigrant groups in Australia.

“So, Jews there were white but they were also not white. And unlike the Australian-Jewish community, which was more multiethnic, the overwhelming majority of South African Jews originated in one place, Lithuania, and this further contributed to their sense of cohesion.”

The Jewish day school system and Jewish communal organizations had taken root in South Africa long before they had in Australia, notes Rutland, so that when South African Jews began moving to Australia, bringing with them experience and expertise in these areas, they were able to fill a vacuum that existed.

“You had this new group of immigrants arriving with a lot of drive, dedication and Jewish knowledge, who were very keen to become part of the Sydney Jewish community,” she says. “When I was growing up in Sydney, I used to call it a spiritual desert. After the South Africans started arriving, it no longer was.”

‘Writing on the wall’

Australia has seen several waves of South African Jewish immigration. The first significant group arrived in the ’70s and ’80s, and included many Jews who were ideologically opposed to the apartheid regime. Another large group came in the late ’90s and early 2000s after apartheid had ended. Many of those arriving during this second big wave were motivated by concerns about personal safety, given the soaring crime rate in South Africa, and concerns about economic prospects for their children.

These were certainly factors behind the Penkin family’s decision to leave. “We had our cars stolen a couple of times and our house broken into, but we were also worried that our son – being a white, Jewish male – would be sitting on the last rung of the ladder when it came time to look for a job,” she says.

David Gonski’s family was among the early arrivals, setting sail for Australia back in 1961 when he was 7 years old. The trigger for his parents, he says, was the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960, when 69 Black demonstrators were shot dead by police during a peaceful protest outside the township’s police station.

“My parents saw the writing on the wall,” says Gonski, a former chairman of the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group – among a long list of other board positions he holds, both in the corporate and nonprofit worlds.

The Jews who came at that time were mainly professionals. Gonski’s father, for instance, was a doctor. By contrast, the big immigration wave of the ’70s and ’80s was dominated by small business owners.

“There were many families who came then with young children,” says Gonski, 67, who has been described as “Sydney’s most networked man.” “At the time, this was an aging community, and they would help revitalize it.”

Something familiar

Given the well-known challenges of immigration, Australia provided South African Jews with the advantage of something familiar. It was also part of the Commonwealth and a country where English was spoken. It too was located in the Southern Hemisphere, so the seasons were the same and school holidays fell at the same time of year. The weather tended to be mild, people drove on the same side of the road, and there was a penchant for the same sports – in particular cricket and rugby union.

And if that didn’t make for a smooth enough landing, there was the added benefit of having an already established community of former South African Jews in Australia waiting to welcome them and help them get on their feet.

“All immigration is difficult, and these people found solace with family and friends who were already established in Sydney,” reflects Gonski. “They moved near them, set up schools with them and, eventually, they would all become a tribe within a tribe.”

Many of those early arrivals would move to the suburb of St. Ives (aka “St. Joburg”) on the Upper North Shore, where they established the Masada Jewish day school. Eventually, they spread out to the eastern suburbs of Sydney and became a dominant force at Moriah College – the largest Jewish day school in Sydney, where it is often joked that students graduate speaking English with a South African accent thanks to the disproportionately large number of South African-born teachers and students.

Robert Gavshon, a prominent Jewish businessman who was born and raised in South Africa, is a past president of Moriah. Together with his wife, he left South Africa 44 years ago. “My wife and I decided we did not want to bring up children in an apartheid country,” says Gavshon, who had been a partner in one of Johannesburg’s biggest law firms at the time.

Their three children were born in Sydney, and Gavshon would eventually set up a number of highly successful business ventures – including Rebel Sport, the largest sporting goods retailer in Australia and New Zealand. In addition to his various commercial endeavors, Gavshon has also taken on various leadership roles in the Jewish community. He is currently a trustee at Moriah and has previously served as chairman of the North Shore branch of Keren Hayesod and treasurer of the Jewish Communal Appeal. He was also a founding member of the Jewish Learning Center in Sydney.

“My late father had been president of the South African federation of synagogues,” relays Gavshon in his thick South African accent. “So, this was something I saw growing up. But I wasn’t the only one. South African Jews have a long tradition of involvement in community affairs, and it’s something we’ve brought with us to this country.”

When he and his wife arrived in Australia in 1978, they were considered the trailblazers of their family. “Now, between Sydney and Melbourne, we have 80 members of our family here, including many children and grandchildren born in this country,” he says proudly.

According to the last major survey of Australian Jewry, among Jews born outside the country, South Africans are by far the largest group. Published five years ago by the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University in Melbourne, the survey found that 14 percent of Australian Jews were born in South Africa, 8 percent in the former Soviet bloc, 6 percent in Israel and 5 percent in Britain.

Among South African immigrants, 20 percent said their main reason for coming to live in Australia was to join family or a partner, another 20 percent said they were brought over as children by their parents, 17 percent said they were seeking a better future for their children, and 11 percent said they were seeking a safe environment.

Another prime destination for South African Jews living in Australia has been the city of Perth on the west coast, where they account for nearly 30 percent of the Jewish population (although the Jewish community is much smaller there in absolute terms). In Melbourne, South Africans account for 8 percent of the Jewish population.

Community tensions

Penkin was meeting her close friend Ruth Tofler-Riesel for coffee on a recent winter morning – that is to say, winter in Sydney, which could be mistaken for summer in many other parts of the world – before heading out to work. A native Australian, Tofler-Riesel wondered over their conversation whether Penkin had any other good friends outside the South African community besides herself. After all, it is well-known that the South African Jews tend to stick together in this city.

“Of course I do,” Penkin reassured her, clearly amused by the question.

Tofler-Riesel admits it is common among natives like herself to refer to the South Africans as a “separate group,” and even joke about them and their accents behind their backs. “But I almost feel we would have imploded if it weren’t for the South African revitalization,” she says. “Well, perhaps ‘imploded’ is a strong word, but I really feel the South Africans, being so community-minded, brought so much strength and energy to our Jewish community here.”

According to Rutland, this desire to be involved and contribute was not always welcomed. “It became a real source of tension as the South Africans were seen as pushy, arrogant, cliquish and trying to take over everything,” she says.

But the South Africans can take comfort in the fact that this is nothing new, and they are certainly not alone.

“The accusations made against the South African Jews were the same as the accusations made against the German and Austrian Jews who came in the ’30s,” says Rutland. “They, too, were often attacked for trying to take over.”