Everything But The Chicken Schnitzel

The Age

Saturday January 12, 2008

Owen Richardson

Modestly called a souvenir, this book on the Jewish Museum works on its own terms, writes Owen Richardson.

Jewish Museum of Australia

Jewish Museum of Australia, $49.95

SMALL BUT PERFECTLY formed, the Jewish Museum of Australia is one of this town's gems. Conceived by Rabbi Ronald Lubovsky in the late '70s and opened in 1995 at its present location in Alma Road, St Kilda, the museum works to provide Jews with a sense of their history in the world and in Australia, and to introduce non-Jews to the Jewish way of life: it has also played host to exhibitions of the work of talents such as Daniel Libeskind, Maurice Sendak and Diane Arbus. Celebrating 25 years since the museum first found temporary rooms in the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation, this book, though modestly called a souvenir, works on its own terms to convey the museum's richness.

The museum has four permanent exhibitions: the timelines of Jewish history, the Jewish calendar, belief and ritual, and the gallery of Australian history, which shows that here as elsewhere, Jews punch well above their demographic weight. There were 12 Jews on the First Fleet; a later transportee, Esther Abraham, became the wife of George Johnston, Rum Rebel and, briefly, Lieutenant Governor of NSW. The pogroms that sent so many Jews to the US also brought waves of immigrants in the late 19th century, introducing an eastern European, Yiddish component to what had hitherto been an Anglo community.

The museum itself is now part of Australian Jewish history, Australian history. It's a shame there's no chicken schnitzel sandwich from Scheherazade but you can't have everything.

© 2008 The Age

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