Published: 12 September 2020
Last updated: 4 March 2024
WHEN FAMILIES WERE FORCED to socially isolate over Pesach, it felt like an extraordinary blip. Five months later, it’s clear the impact of Covid will be felt for some time. It’s made me wonder how Jewish life will be affected in the longer term, for good and bad.
Traditionally, we have relied heavily on our physical institutions with major investment in synagogues, schools and cultural centres which form the core of our mainstream Jewish community.
In NSW, $60 million is being invested in the redevelopment of the White City tennis complex into a sporting and cultural hub. Just a few years ago, Emanuel Synagogue spent millions renovating its campus to create a beautiful new prayer space, alongside major upgrades of the adjoining preschool and offices.
There are many magnificent buildings and much valuable real estate held by communal institutions. Will we one day think of them as white elephants or will they again become centres of connection?
If people are unable to attend these institutions in person, will community focus shift to online resources? Will Jewish Communal Appeal (JCA) still need to spend $2 million a year on security in NSW alone? Will there be a major refocus on how the community spends its resources or will donors continue to fund the same structures?
Will donations be heavily affected by the current economic climate? Will Australian Jews benefit from the range of international resources now readily available online?
I had many questions and found only some answers. However, those organisations willing to discuss their plans showed innovation and resilience in their ability to quickly pivot to the new reality. They included King David School in Melbourne, Shalom, the Australian Jewish Funders Network, the Community Security Group NSW (CSG), Limmud and the Sydney Jewish Museum.
I realise this is only a smattering of the existing organisations in the community but wanted to speak to people in a variety of areas. Those who adapt will most likely be the ones to survive.
If people are unable to attend these institutions in person, will community focus shift to online resources? Will Jewish Communal Appeal (JCA) still need to spend $2 million a year on security in NSW alone?
JCA was unwilling to comment, claiming it was too early to share its plans. However, it is currently involved in an educational survey which “will help our community shape the future of education of Jewish children, whether they are in Jewish day schools, government schools or other independent schools”.
We can assume that this sector, which receives the largest percentage of community resources in NSW, will be subject to new pressures.
Some parents have found themselves in financial distress due to Covid restrictions and may struggle to continue paying Jewish day school fees without assistance.
However, for many of the kids attending Jewish days schools these institutions have become their sole point of contact with Judaism and potentially play an even more important role as synagogue attendances plummet, bnei mitzva celebrations are scaled back and Israel trips cancelled.
The community’s response to Covid was swift, with the establishment of the Jewish Emergency Management Plan (JEMP) in NSW and the Victorian Jewish community establishment of a Covid-19 Taskforce.
JEMP offered a unified point of contact and information dissemination for the community, said a CSG representative. “We were able to coordinate the many different organisations offering various services including financial help from JCA, meals on wheels through COA (the not-for-profit volunteer-based organisation for Jewish seniors) and mental health options through Jewish Care. This meant people didn’t have to know who to call for what, they could reach out to our emergency operations centre for assistance,” she said.
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CSG is already repositioning itself in cyber security as more events go online. It plans to become a community resource for those under cyber-attack, suffering data breaches, or receiving suspicious emails and social media posts. This is in addition to a multi-million dollar community grant, supported by the state and federal governments, to upgrade all CCTV systems in the community.
One wonders if there will be greater efficiencies with parallel organisations in other states. Currently, many community groups – including CSG, United Israel Appeal, Zionist Federation of Australia National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, B’nai Brith, and Australasian Union of Jewish Students – have separate teams in Victoria, NSW and sometimes Western Australia. Will it make more sense to consolidate resources in the future or will existing personal relations with individual communities prove more critical than ever?
Many have successfully switched to online programming. The consensus is that even after life returns to normal, some sort of hybrid online presence will continue for many of them. Going online has given organisers the ability to reach people in remote locations, make them more financially accessible by offering free events or programming at a significantly decreased cost, reach people with physical disabilities who find it difficult to get out of the house, as well as those who are time-poor, or those with young children who no longer need to hire a babysitter to attend.
“Zoom enables accessibility. I never realised how significant it was,” said Limmud Oz Melbourne chair Nomi Blum. Its Festival of Jewish Ideas, which is held over the Queen’s Birthday weekend in June, costs hundreds of dollars for a full festival pass.
This year, after combining with Limmud in Sydney and New Zealand, it offered a program over two weekends in June and significant numbers attended remotely. Many sent emails thanking the committee for enabling them to attend for the first time, as previously it had been unaffordable. Regular tickets for the whole program were $36.
Limmud Oz also received calls from Jews in remote communities, including the Northern Territory, thanking it for the chance to connect with Jewish content. “We realise that while we didn’t capture everything without the physicality, there is something to be said for maintaining some online component forever,” Blum said.
This sentiment was echoed by Rebecca Kummerfeld, Head of Education, and Susan Wakil, Chair of Education, at the Sydney Jewish Museum. The museum has reached thousands of teachers, students, volunteers and the wider public through online offerings, though the biggest challenge has been offering these programs without access to both the museum’s physical collection and its survivors.
What we do online won’t replace what we do in the museum. And we don’t think it should. The experience of meeting a Holocaust survivor and hearing them tell their own story is quite transformative Rebecca Kummerfeld, Sydney Jewish Museum
“What we do online won’t replace what we do in the museum. And we don’t think it should,” Kummerfeld said. “The experience of meeting a Holocaust survivor and hearing them tell their own story is quite transformative. Similarly, coming face to face with an object from the museum’s collection shows the long reach of history.”
Despite these limitations, the education team was able to offer a variety of programming, including worksheets and lesson plans for teachers, as schools went into initial lockdown, as well as interactive online excursions based on their existing onsite content. “We have reached schools that would never come to the museum,” Kummerfeld said.
Overall visitor numbers are down from the 28,000-plus students that visited last year, but the museum’s programming has reached 1000-2000 students a month. It has experienced high demand for the interactive HSC workshops, which tie into the Modern History curriculum, as well as teacher training.
Instead of the usual 30 teachers the museum would normally reach over two days of intensive training, 570 teachers have accessed its online training, including many from rural Australia who don’t normally get the opportunity for such professional development.
“This experience has given us food for thought for what it will be like in the decades to come,” says Kummerfeld, who believes online learning will be a companion to the school excursions. “Schools won’t just drop in and out for three hours as we will be able to offer additional touchpoints in the classrooms via webinars to scaffold their visit.”
It’s too early to say how the community will adapt to Covid in the long term. New opportunities are opening up, but will they offer enough to maintain the primacy of Jewish identity? And will they bring the financial support needed to continue making it viable?
Like all great changes, we will only really discern their shape in hindsight.
Illustration: An artist’s impression of the new Hakoah at White City
