A Life To Live...

by Israel Kipen

  Of these two groups, it was the non-religious Zionists who fought for their beliefs within the school Council, and it was as a result of their persistence that some improvement in Hebrew learning at Mount Scopus College occurred. However, while such improvement was fought for both from within the College and, externally, on the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, it was clear that it would not be possible to achieve the desired longer-term results in the face of the prevailing atmosphere. The Mizrachi representatives were in a much more uncomfortable position. Nominally, the College received their full support. But within the Mizrachi movement, there was a great deal of ideological dissatisfaction and muted grumbling about the direction the College was taking.

  Independent of one another, but with a remarkable unanimity of analysis, both groups came to the conclusion that if they wanted to see the sorts of school they believed ought to exist, then they should have to create them. By the end of the first decade of Mount Scopus College, it became clear to me, as it must have to others involved with the shaping of the spirit of the school, that we had reached a point where, for a while, little more could be achieved to accelerate change from within, and that, because of the nature of the original all-embracing compromise, it would from here on probably continue at the level to which we had managed to bring it.

  The idea thus began to germinate in Mizrachi and General Zionist circles separately, though centred within the Victorian Zionist Organization, that the stage had been reached for further diversification of Jewish education in Melbourne, that is, for the establishment of new schools in the community. Both groups had nuclear structures around which to build and develop their own educational institutions. Both groups had a following which would give support to them. All that was needed was resolve on the part of committed individuals to take the necessary first steps to translate those embryonic ideas into practice.

  By that time, a second day-school had already been functioning in Melbourne. This had been established by the Chabad movement, made up of Lubavitch Chasidim. I recall the first visit, in 1947, of a young, tall, broad-shouldered rabbi named Groner who arrived from the United States to survey the situation in Melbourne. I recall debating with him in a public forum at the communal hall of the Toorak Synagogue the concepts of modem Jewish education. The Lubavitch movement had some followers in Melbourne. The pioneering Feiglin family of Shepparton were probably the first Lubavitchers here, while others arrived in the early 1950s direct from Russia. Among them were Reb Zalman Serebranski, Reb Nachum-Zalman Gurevitch, Mr Althaus and his brother-in-law Mr Kluwgant, and their families. They quickly organised themselves into a self-contained community, and, with a single-mindedness so characteristic of the movement worldwide, and prompted by directives from Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn in New York, they gained an increasing number of adherents. David Feiglin became the founding President of Yeshiva College in Hotham Street, East St Kilda, where an existing house was donated to them by the Liba family.

  The education offered by the Yeshiva was thoroughly religious not only in name but also in essence. The atmosphere of the school was deeply religious; its ideology was clearly defined and practised. Its Judaism was of an Orthodox Chassidic brand which was observed both individually and communally. In contrast to Mount Scopus College, it made no concession to the pressures and wishes of the market, and insisted that all students who enrolled in the school must accept the rigorous religious demands basic to its teachings. What has proved so remarkable about the school – and the movement behind it – is the fact that it has established itself in a society which, by and large, did not identify with its extremism, but has nonetheless emerged, in the face of numerous difficulties, as a potent educational and social force in the wider Jewish community.

  The emergence of Yeshiva College had a major psychological effect on the community and its leaders. The fact that a breakaway school with a specific ideological orientation was established alongside Mount Scopus College severed the psychological stranglehold that the older school held. Once the community absorbed the fact that more than one school could exist in Melbourne, the community learnt to accommodate to a new notion which, a decade earlier, would have been considered both outrageous and audacious. Where the contemplation of the establishment of even one independent Jewish day-school had but a short time before been deemed unwarranted and undesirable, people were now thinking in terms of two or three or four schools, each with different ideological orientations, and beginning to discriminate between them and voice considered opinions about the sort of school they preferred for their children. Such a rapid change in attitudes represented a quantum leap in the collective thinking of the Jewish community.

  What facilitated such a transformation in these attitudes was, of course, the concurrent change through which the Jewish community at large was just then undergoing. In those immediate post-war years, the influx of migrants had not only substantially increased the absolute number of Jews in Melbourne; it had also brought an array of Jews from a diverse range of backgrounds bearing their own clear understanding of what Jewish life was all about and bringing with them outlooks based as much on their pre-War upbringing as on their experiences during the war. This influx of people and ideas became the fountainhead for the communal and institutional expansion that has taken place in Melbourne since the war and is directly responsible for the diverse and multi-coloured community that is Melbourne Jewry today.

  It was around 1958 that I felt that I could achieve no more at Mount Scopus College. My intuition, in tandem with developments that were taking place in the community, persuaded me that it was time to become involved in new initiatives and, with regard to Jewish education, to advance new ideas to the community and work towards realising them in practice. Hence, I withdrew from Mount Scopus College. It was a hard decision to make. I had invested much work, hope and emotion into the school, while our daughter Aviva was a student there at the time. I had to overcome all the sentiments and long-standing connections I had built up, on the whole creative and fruitful, but, these notwithstanding, I was being drawn away. It was important for me now not to settle into a rut. I made my decision to leave Mount Scopus with a heavy heart but with a sense of purpose, however undefined it still seemed.

  Six years earlier, Benzion Patkin, the school’s founding President who had fought hard for its establishment and who had tried desperately to imbue it with an identity and a soul, lost his fight on ideological grounds. In a regrettable scene, an independent Council chairman requested him, on the pretext of Constitutional provisions, to leave the meeting which Patkin attended as immediate Past President. I was the only Council member who had the courage to speak out against its conniving and then left the meeting as an act of solidarity with Patkin. I stayed on the Council for a further six years after his departure to continue Patkin’s struggle. By the time I left, the Hebrew component of the curriculum at Mount Scopus College was more clearly defined and more widely understood, even if its implementation was marked by considerable tardiness. Jewish studies overall had attained by then a certain plateau. More time would be needed for the next upward spurt to take place, and when that would come about, and who would be its catalyst, I could not then know. As it happened, it took another six years after my departure. In 1965, Arnold Bloch took over the Presidency. In the mid-fifties, he had been openly critical of Mount Scopus College at Zionist assemblies. As a member of the State Zionist Council Executive, I begged him “not to snipe at the school from behind” and suggested that the only way he could change things was from within. I may have contributed to his decision to become directly involved with the school. Be that as it may, with his accession to the Presidency, the school’s fortunes underwent a major transformation. Consolidating its borrowing and obtaining remarkably favourable support from the Commonwealth Bank – this in itself representing a turning-point in the school’s security – Arnold Bloch stabilised the erratic finances of the College. More than this, however, as a religious man with a knowled
ge of Hebrew and the background to know what a school required, he was the first President after Benzion Patkin who was conscious of the nebulousness of the school’s direction and aware of its spiritual drifting. Given his authority, he was neither questioned nor challenged, and it was he who saved its soul.

  What gave added urgency for change in the school was the fact that by the time Arnold Bloch became President, two more Jewish day schools, apart from the Yeshiva, had been established. These were Bialik College and Yavneh College, both of which opened for the 1963 school year. Each had a distinctive character and clear aims in terms of Jewish orientation and philosophy, and proved not only that they were attractive alternatives to the schools already in existence but also that they could obtain results in Hebrew studies previously undreamt-of. These schools were a challenge that no intelligent leader could ignore. To his credit, Arnold Bloch understood the situation precisely and proceeded to initiate and accomplish certain changes. By the time he stepped down, the College had undergone major changes of personnel at the top. Abe Feiglin had left; Mr Max Walhaus from South Africa had been Principal for eighteen months; and Alexander Ranoschy had come to the helm. As Mr Ranoschy had originally come from Galicia, he knew what Jewish education should be and could be. Had the College management not put certain constraints upon him and given him greater freedom, he would probably have attained a better balance in Jewish studies. Nonetheless, he succeeded in building a bridge between the College and the Melton Centre attached to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, whose new educational ideas for the Diaspora were tested. Thus, Israel-oriented direction entered into its program. Fifth-form students were encouraged to spend three months in Israel on an Ulpan, a centre for Hebrew learning, to gain in this very direct way insights into a different kind of life and reality as well as appreciation of the spirit that animated Israeli society. Many graduates from Mount Scopus College subsequently deferred their formal tertiary studies for a year, choose to spend the time in Israel.

  The spirit in the secondary division of Mount Scopus College was greatly influenced by the infusion of Yavneh and Bialik College graduates at the secondary level. Both colleges imbued their students with a distinct Zionist spirit which they carried with them. In addition, Yavneh students brought with them a more pronounced religious fervour gained in their primary education. The sustained objections by Mount Scopus College to the extension of the other schools into secondary levels were not only for the reasons given, but also for the unstated reason that the College wanted the Yavneh and Bialik students for the extra dimensions they would contribute.

  Officially, Mount Scopus College always claimed that Melbourne’s Jewish community could not carry the financial burden of a diversified secondary education system. This has from the outset been a contentious issue. The financial aspects of private education in Australia has a history of its own. In post-war years, with the major influx of new arrivals from Europe, many of whom have been Catholic, the Catholic education system became grossly overtaxed, and a persuasive case was argued for government support to denominational schools, which, when approved, had to be all-embracing.

  The funding of private schools was one of the achievements of the Whitlam government. The legislation came at a time of desperate need for the entire private school sector, and it saved the denominational system which catered for a quarter of the total number of Victoria’s school children, at the same time removing the financial burden of their education from government shoulders. For, by subsidising the private sector, the government bought itself off very cheaply, simultaneously enabling private schools to bridge their operating deficits which fees alone could not meet, especially in those years of massive wage increases for labour generally and for teachers in particular. For a decade the system worked. With the ever-increasing demands of social expenditure, however, the Hawke Government, through its Education Minister, Susan Ryan, began to revise the system of education support to meet the political feelings within the Labor Party. Because of the need of Jewish colleges, unlike other schools, to employ two tiers of staff, both for secular and for Jewish studies, this placed the Jewish school network under particular stress. However, a formula was in time arrived at which resolved the problem.

  By the mid-eighties, there were about 5,000 children receiving education in Jewish day-schools, of whom half were at Mount Scopus College. Another 800 attended Yeshiva-Beth Rivkah College (Beth Rivkah being the girls’ counterpart of Yeshiva College), and 200 were taught at the ultra-religious Adass School. The balance of 1,500 children were at Yavneh (religious Zionist), Bialik (General Zionist), King David (Liberal), and Sholom Aleichem (Yiddish) schools. Not all have yet attained to fully-developed secondary levels, and the need for more secondary schools remains. This is not to deny the crushing financial burden imposed by such education on any school, but time will probably permit the meeting and fulfilment of this need.

  In 1985, Mount Scopus College was on the eve of a major change. Alexander Ranoschy retired after twenty years at the College, sixteen of them as Principal, and a young Canadian-born, Rabbi Dr Steven Lorch took over.

  Around the same time, far-reaching changes were to be made to secondary education in Victoria as a consequence of the Blackburn report. The main thrust of the recommended changes was the termination of secondary education at the end of Year 10. Years 11 and 12 were to be spent in special colleges so structured as to provide a broader range of subjects for all students. Inevitably, the implementation of such restructuring, when it comes into effect, will also affect Jewish schools, but one cannot yet determine precisely in which way.

  12

  Zionism in Australia

  I arrived in Australia one year after the end of the Second World War in Europe. The Holocaust was by then common knowledge the world over. Morally, the West stood accused for the tragedy by its deliberate inaction in the face of information available as early as 1942 on the destruction of European Jewry and of the pleas made to them to destroy the gas chambers.

  Meanwhile, post-war England had a newly-elected Labor government led by Clement Attlee, whose Foreign Minister was a one-time union leader Ernest Bevin. While the political philosophies of the country’s Conservative and Labor parties were distinctly different, their attitude to Palestine was identical. The White Paper of 1939 prohibiting Jewish immigration into Palestine remained intact and observed to the letter. The plight of the dispossessed survivors of the concentration camps was not sufficient to move the supposedly “progressive and humanitarian” British Labor to respond to President Truman’s request that 100,000 Jews be immediately admitted into Palestine. Boats carrying refugees attempting to land in Palestine were intercepted by the British navy and their passengers interned in Cyprus. Those who managed to get ashore were hounded down.

  The mood of world Jewry in the face of the revelations that continued to emerge about the Holocaust was one of despair and disbelief. If Zionism ever needed proof for its historical validity and inevitability, the war and its aftermath provided such proof. The nations meeting at Evian in 1938 had denied the Jews of Germany the opportunity to escape while there was still time. During the war, the Allies had refused to bomb the crematoria and, thereby, destroy the means of mass slaughter, President Roosevelt having supposedly said that he had “no time for Jewish wailing”. And even after the war, when the full extent of the Jewish tragedy was laid bare, a democratic country like Britain still found it possible to refuse the beleaguered surviving Jews a haven in Palestine that had, but a generation before, been designated for them. – Given the facts, in whom could a decimated Jewry believe?

  Apart from the 500,000 Jews who then lived in Palestine under British Mandate, there was one Jewish movement which was at once emotionally attuned, politically aware and structurally organised to act under the circumstances. This was the World Zionist Movement, which threw itself into the twin battle of physical rescue on the one hand and political activity on the other. There was by then little doubt that a political s
olution to the Palestine question could be delayed no longer. The more stubborn British policy became and the more inhumane the consequences of its stubbornness, the more obvious was it that the hour of reckoning was drawing near. Zionist organisations everywhere began to act on a political level in their respective countries to arouse support for a just and equitable solution to the Palestine problem.

  In October 1946, Britain and Egypt initialled a draft agreement securing complete British withdrawal from Egypt by September 1949. In early 1946, 250,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust had reached Allied zones in Germany, but were stranded there. As late as July 1946, a British-American plan known as the “Grady-Morrison Report” envisaged the establishment of separate Jewish and Arab provinces in Palestine under British control, allied to a strictly limited immigration policy for Jews. The Zionist Movement rejected the plan, as did President Truman. It took the mounting pressure of world opinion, coupled with violence against the British in Palestine for Britain to decide in February 1947 to pass the Mandate to the United Nations. In April 1947, an eleven-nation commission of the United Nations went to Palestine. Its recommendation, issued on August 31 of that year, was to partition Palestine into sovereign Arab and Jewish states. Palestinian Jewry accepted the recommendation in principle; the Arab representatives flatly rejected it. On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour of partition.