Publisher's Synopsis
Australian Jews, or Jewish Australians, (Hebrew: יהודים אוסטרלים, romanized: Yehudim Australia) are Jews who are Australian citizens or permanent residents of Australia. There were 91,022 Australians who identified as Jewish in the 2016 census, [2] which is a 6% decrease on 97,355 Jewish Australians in the 2011 census. The actual number is almost certainly higher, because an answer to the question on the census was optional and because Holocaust survivors, Haredi Jews, or many non-practicing Jews are believed to prefer not to disclose religion in the census. By comparison, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz estimated a Jewish-Australian population of 120,000-150,000[3] (not limited to adherents of Judaism), while other estimates based on the death rate in the community estimate the size of the community as 250,000.[citation needed] Based on the census data, Jewish citizens make up about 0.4% of the Australian population.
This book is a memorial to a working-class Australian-Jewish woman, my Great Grandmother Rose Pearlman. It takes the reader on a voyage from London's Spitalfields to Jewish life in Australia in Melbourne, the gold-mining town of Ballarat and the seaside suburb of St Kilda in the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The book is pieced together from found fragments and the memories of Rose's youngest son who was approaching 100-years-of-age at the time of writing this book. Rose's life alerts us to the once robust Jewish community in Ballarat as well as the vibrant Jewish streets of St Kilda before and during World war II. Rose also tells us about the unknown. Four of her eight surviving children served overseas during World War II forcing her to wait for their letters to confirm if they were safe. One son goes missing and Rose has to wait four years to learn if he is alive in a POW camp or dead. Rose's story illuminates the little-known narratives of mothers who had to wait during the war to hear of news about their sons missing in Rabaul, New Guinea.
