Why Australia’s oldest Jewish cultural organisation survives and thrives

The Kadimah is Australia's Yiddish culture centre but forming its identity took plenty of arguments, writes RENATA SINGER.

On Boxing Day, we will celebrate the close of the 110^th anniversary year of the Kadimah Jewish Cultural Centre and National Library.

Founded in response to the Melbourne Jewish establishment’s belittling of the culture of newly arrived Eastern European Jews, Kadimah is now the oldest Jewish cultural organisation in Australia.

Big ambitions and a passion to prove that their culture was as good as – or better than – anyone else’s, were the drivers of Kadimah’s origins. At the first AGM, President Joshua Rochlin wrote, “Founding a library that brings together whatever has been written about Judaism and the Jewish nation … in any language … will benefit not just Melbourne, or Australia, but the whole Commonwealth.”

The Kadimah was an immediate success. At the end of its first year, Kadimah had 200 members and 125 people a week using the library, which took out subscriptions to journals in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, English and German. 

Although the Kadimah is now known for its Yiddish culture, Yiddishists were a minority among the pioneering visionaries of its early decades. 

The battle for control of the organisation is captured in the title of 12-time president Shloyme (Sam) Wynn’s essay about those early years: “The Melbourne Kadimah, 25 years of pain and joy in a modern Jewish cultural corner in the furthest corner of the world”.

Despite the very wide disparity of views – religious and secular, pro- and anti-Zionist, left, centre and right wing, Yiddish or Hebrew or English – the Kadimah survived and thrived.

Throughout this 110^th anniversary year, a team of volunteers has been researching Kadimah’s history. It discovered that in almost every decade there have been deep and sometimes irreconcilable conflicts. Perhaps the perpetual debate and disagreement in part accounts for the Kadimah’s good health and long life. The Kadimah was always contested territory. There was no option of becoming complacent.  Members had to keep shouting over each other, banging fists on tables to get their point across, and their vision of the Kadimah realised.

In the late 1920s, a new wave of Yiddish-speaking intellectuals,including writer Pinches Goldhar, arrived from Europe and inspired the local Yiddishists.

By 1933, Yiddish culture was thriving. A purpose-built centre was opened in Lygon Street, Carlton, in 1933, then the Yiddish heartland,  literary giant Melekh Ravitsh visited Australia for the first time, and the Kadimah annual report was published in Yiddish, as well as English. It remains bilingual to this day.

The first Yiddish book published in Australia was the 1937 Almanac edited by Hersh Munz, Aaron Patkin and Melekh Ravitsh. In the Almanac’s English foreword, Ravitsh wrote of this all-Yiddish collection of essays, history, fiction and poetry: “Hence the ambition to send out this first delicate shoot [of Australian Yiddish literature] in this far flung land of beauty and freedom.”

Since the 1930s, Yiddish language and Jewish culture has been at the core of the Kadimah. Sam Wynn, along with other philanthropists like Leo Fink and Moishe Grobsy, combined passionate leadership with the financial support needed to create a world class Yiddish organisation.  Another, perhaps overlooked, but important factor in Kadimah’s survival has been owning its building.

Along with financiers, intellectuals, and ideological firebrands were thousands of devoted and committed volunteers. From 1912 and for decades thereafter, the only woman on the Kadimah Committee was Miss M. Zacharin. Reporting her death in 1963, the Australian Jewish News wrote, “Miss Zacharin devoted most of her time and energy to the Kadimah, which was for many years her spiritual home.” 

The home away from home became even more important to the next wave of Jewish immigrants – those who left Europe just before the Holocaust and those who arrived after the destruction of Jewish culture in Europe. 

Because of all they had lost, these new arrivals were even more dedicated and passionate to maintain Jewish identity through language and culture. From the 1950s until the end of the 20^th Century, the committee was dominated by members of the social-democratic Bund. Even in these years there was no shortage of stormy committee meetings and AGMs – always a good sign that an organisation has not ossified.  

In the 1960s and ‘70s, the Kadimah supported Yiddish literature, language, theatre and music, moving with the Jewish population from Carlton to Elsternwick. Establishing Sholem Aleichem College as a day school that taught Yiddish was another important step ensuring Yiddish students and Yiddish teachers for the future.

And so here we are, in the 21^st Century, in a world which the first three waves of committed Yiddishists would not recognise. They built an organisation that was ready to embrace and cater for a world-wide revival of interest in Yiddish language and culture among the young and not so young.

Kadimah is 110 and focused on looking forward – where and what will it be in the next decade and beyond? To maintain and develop Jewish identity – individual and communal – you need to know where you came from. We must gather and preserve our unique local Jewish history, and it is critical that we gather memories and materials before they deteriorate and disappear.  Our Community History Day is the perfect opportunity to be part of preserving the past, to honour those who built Yiddishland in Melbourne and shine a bright light into its future.

Kadimah Community History Day. Sunday, 13 November, 12 – 4pm, 7 Selwyn Street, Elsternwick. 
Community members are invited to bring Kadimah-related photographs, documents and memories to this event where we will scan your items and add them to our digital community archives. For more information or an appointment, contact Esther Singer: yiddishcoordinator@kadimah.org.au

Photo: Ensemble from 1964 production of Wandering Stars. Credit: Rebecca Albeck