The history of Jews in Australia dates back to the original British settlement of Australia as a penal colony. Jews were among the first convicts deported from Great Britain to Australia in the 18th century. Considered amongst the founding members of the country, they were regarded as equal citizens from the outset.
By the 19th century, there was an established Jewish community, overwhelmingly made up of free settlers. This gave way to a greater concentration of Jews in Australia’s major cities – namely Melbourne and Sydney – as a fear of assimilation caused the Australian Jewish community to consolidate their populations at the end of the century.
Australia experienced an influx of Jewish immigration from Europe early in the 20th century, resulting in an increase of Ashkenazi settlers in the established Jewish urban communities in Sydney and Melbourne. In the late 1930s, some Jews from Europe came to Australia, fleeing from the Nazis. After the war, Australia admitted tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors, and today Australia has the highest percentage of Holocaust survivors of any Jewish community in the world. After the war, Australia admitted tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors, and today Australia has the highest percentage of Holocaust survivors of any diaspora Jewish community in the world.
Jews have long been intrinsically involved in Australian public life. Sir Isaac Isaacs was its first Australian born Governor General (1931-36), and Sir Zelman Cowen served in that office between 1977 and 1982. General Sir John Monash was an outstanding commander of the Australian forces in World War I. Josh Frydenberg is currently the Federal Minister for the Environment and Energy, and Mark Dreyfus was Attorney General in the previous government. Other noteworthy Jews currently holding high offices are Linda Dessau, Governor of Victoria, and Justice James Edelman, who sits on Australia’s highest court, the High Court of Australia.