Australian Jewish

The history of the Jews in Australia traces the history of Australian Jews from the British settlement of Australia commencing in 1788. The first Jews came to Australia as convicts transported to Botany Bay in 1788 aboard the First Fleet that established the first European settlement on the continent, on the site of present-day Sydney. There were 97,335 Australians who identified themselves as Jewish in the 2011 census, but the actual number is estimated to be 112,000. (An answer to the question on the census was optional.) The majority are Ashkenazi Jews, many of them refugees and Holocaust survivors who arrived during and after World War II, and their descendants. Jewish citizens make up about 0.5% of the Australian population.

Major general histories of the Jews in Australia are Hilary L. Rubinstein and William D. Rubinstein, The Jews in Australia: A Thematic History (2 vols., 1991) and Suzanne D. Rutland, Edge of the Diaspora: Two Centuries of Jewish Settlement in Australia (2001; first ed. 1988). Each of these academic historians has written more concise general histories also. Rabbi John Simon Levi, co-author of Australian Genesis: Jewish Convicts and Settlers, 1788-1850 (1974), has authored the magisterial biographical directory These Are The Names: Jewish Lives in Australia, 1788-1860 (2013). The Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal (started 1939) appears twice a year, published in Sydney and Melbourne respectively. There are also a number of published monographs on aspects of Australian Jewish history, for a guide to which (as well as to Australian Jewish literature) Serge Liberman, A Bibliography of Australasian Judaica, 1788-2008 (2011) is a distinguished reference work.

Australian Jews never constituted more than 1% of the total colonial community. Eight convicts transported to Botany Bay in 1788 aboard the First Fleet have been identified as Jewish. There were probably more, but exact numbers are not possible as the transportation records did not indicate a convict's religion. Over a thousand more people of Jewish descent are estimated to have been sent to Australia as convicts during the next 60 years. Most of them came from London, were of working-class background and were male. Only 7% of Jewish convicts were female, compared to 15% for non-Jewish convicts. The average age of the Jewish convicts was 25, but ranged as young as 8 to some elderly people.Esther Abrahams (who arrived with the First Fleet, with her baby daughter Roseanna) and Ikey Solomon were among the convicts who were Jewish.

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