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.