Creating Transformation: South African Jews in Australia

Abstract

Since the 1960s Australian Jewry has doubled in size to 117,000. This increase has been due to migration rather than natural increase with the main migration groups being South Africans, Russians, and Israelis. Of the three, the South Africans have had the most significant impact on Australian Jewry—one could argue that this has been transformative in Sydney and Perth. They have contributed to the religious and educational life of the communities as well as assuming significant community leadership roles in all the major Jewish Centres where they settled. This results from their strong Jewish identity. A comparative study undertaken by Rutland and Gariano in 2004–2005 demonstrated that each specific migrant group came from a different past with a different Jewish form of identification, the diachronic axis, which impacted on their integration into Jewish life in Australia, the synchronic axis as proposed by Sagi in 2016. The South Africans identified Jewishly in a traditional religious manner. This article will argue that this was an outcome of the South African context during the apartheid period, and that, with their stronger Jewish identity and support for the Jewish-day- school movement, they not only integrated into the new Australian-Jewish context; they also changed that context.