The doctor & his brothers: The Abrahams family
This article by Rabbi Raymond Apple appeared in the Journal of the Australian Jewish Historical Society in 2023, Vol. 26, Part 2.
Abstract
Rabbi Dr Joseph Abrahams was the longest serving chief minister (1883–1919) of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation and the leading Australian rabbi of his time. In his youth, he applied for the position of Haham of the Sephardim in England and at a later stage he was a candidate for the position of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the British Empire but neither aspiration succeeded. This article analyses his achievements and disappointments and compares him with two of his brothers.
Rabbi Dr Joseph Abrahams was the longest serving chief minister of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation and the leading Australian rabbi of his time.[1] His career alternated between accomplishments and disappointments. This article looks at Dr Abrahams in the context of his family, depicting both the accomplishments and the disappointments and comparing him with the two of his brothers who were eminent in Jewish leadership, against the background of Anglo- and Australian Jewish history.
His accomplishments are encapsulated in the story often told by Rabbi Jacob Danglow that, arriving at Port Melbourne from London in 1905, he immediately recognised Dr Abrahams amongst the crowd on the wharf. The rabbi greatly resembled his brother Israel, one of Danglow’s teachers at Jews’ College, the rabbinic seminary in London.[2] Dr Abrahams, Australian Jewry’s highest qualified rabbinic scholar had been in Melbourne at that stage for over twenty years, was the community’s senior minister, and became Danglow’s role model and mentor.
Reverend Barnett Abrahams
The Abrahams family were all associated with Jews’ College. Joseph and Moses studied there and became rabbis; Israel was a Judaica scholar, academic teacher and prolific writer. Abraham, their other brother, went into banking. The first great disappointment in Joseph’s life was the sudden death of his father, Rev Barnett (Baruch Yehudah Leib) Abrahams,[3] dayyan and acting Haham of the Spanish and Portuguese community, headmaster of Jews’ College School and then principal of the College. Barnett Abrahams was born in Warsaw in 1831. At the early age of 20 he was already preaching at Bevis Marks Synagogue, but he died before he was 33, leaving a widow (Jane, nee Rodrigues Brandon) and six small children (four boys and two girls). Barnett was the son of London’s chief shochet, Abraham Sussman (1802–81), who was an Eastern European Chassid who wrote a number of rabbinic books. There is an apocryphal story that when enrolling at school in London, Barnett was asked for his surname. He did not know that word. The headmaster said, “What is your father called?” He replied, “Abraham”, so henceforth he was known as Barnett Abrahams.
Barnett was educated at the City of London School and gained a Bachelor of Arts at University College, which – founded in 1826 – had no religious test for admission and allowed women to become students. Barnett was the first Anglo-Jewish minister to gain a university degree. He studied Talmud with his father and with the chief rabbi, Nathan Marcus Adler. He was ordained in Berlin in 1858. His father was an Ashkenazi but liked the Sephardi ritual, so Barnett was brought up at Bevis Marks. Some say he was gentle in nature, others that he was bad-tempered. Before he could be named to the formal post of Haham he became ill and suddenly died. A fund was then raised to support his wife and family. Grandfather Sussman was unable to give much financial support but paid his grandson Israel a few coins for reading him the newspapers. Joseph as the eldest son felt his father’s death very keenly. Fortunately, his mother was a steadying influence and guided all her children in the fields of literature and music.
Rabbi Joseph Abrahams
The Spanish and Portuguese congregation undertook responsibility for the education of Joseph (1855–1938), who was widely expected to inherit his father’s rank and roles.[4] It is interesting that, though an Ashkenazi, he was deemed suitable to be the Sephardi Haham. It is also interesting that years later he was considered for the post of Ashkenazi chief rabbi. Apart from shi’urim (classes) at the Sephardi Medrash (study hall), Joseph studied at Jews’ College and University College, and proceeded to Germany, attaining advanced-level rabbinic ordination at the Hildesheimer Seminary and a doctorate at Friedrich Wilhelms University for a thesis (published in Berlin in 1883) on the sources of the Midrash Echah Rabbah. In 1886, he was awarded a Master of Arts from the University of Melbourne.
A second major disappointment affected his hopes of being head of Jews’ College and becoming the Sephardi Haham. Neither of these positions eventuated, partly because of Joseph’s youth and inexperience, but also due to congregational prevarication. Instead of seeking another post in England and waiting for the office of Haham, he went out to Australia in 1883 on the recommendation of the chief rabbi, who must have felt that a highly-qualified, firmly orthodox rabbi would stabilise the Melbourne community after the upheavals caused by the conflicts with Rev Moses Rintel[5] and the Reform tendencies of Rev Dr Dattner Jacobson.[6] There had been a sheaf of applications of relatively senior ministers for the position, and at first there were misgivings about whether Abrahams was experienced enough. In the end it was he who received the appointment. He was the first Jewish minister in Australia to hold both rabbinic ordination and a university degree, though for many years he used the title “Rev Dr” and people simply called him “The Doctor”. In 1885, he married Rachel Davis, daughter of Rev Alexander Barnard Davis of the Great Synagogue, Sydney. Joseph and Rachel had met in London whilst Rev Davis and his wife, Blanch Annie, were there on a visit from Australia. It is likely that Hermann Adler, the chief rabbi’s son, and eventual successor, was the matchmaker. The Australasian Hebrew explained:
Among the applicants for the (Melbourne) post was young Abrahams. His claims were overwhelming and the choice fell unanimously on him. But there was a difficulty. He was unmarried. Now, Dr (Hermann) Adler has a craze. He hates to think of an unmarried Rabbi. He is the most inveterate match-maker in the United Kingdom. Here was young Abrahams, learned, able, nominated for a good billet, without a wife and not affianced. On the other hand, here was Adler with a say in the disposal of that good billet, and any quantity of young and beautiful and dowerless daughters of Israel, in whom he took an interest. Cunning Dr Adler wished to insist on Dr Abrahams marrying … Rev. AB Davis (of Sydney) was then in England on a visit and met Joseph Abrahams, and eventually the latter became engaged to AB Davis’ daughter.[7]
The Abrahams had no children. Rabbi Abrahams stayed at the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation from 1883 to 1919, a period of nearly 40 years, with the exception of a few months in 1903 when he resigned in the aftermath of allegations that the clergy were charging for conversions. When he resumed his office, it was agreed that he be called by the title Rabbi to which he was clearly entitled.
For the whole of his incumbency, the synagogue was located in Bourke Street. Its move to Toorak Road – which Abrahams at first opposed – came in 1930 in the time of his successor, Rabbi Israel Brodie. The move recognised that the community no longer lived in the inner city and most people travelled on the Sabbath. The new synagogue occupied an iconic corner site in an affluent area, but it had no surrounding resident community.
The synagogue secretary/assistant minister for many decades was the Australian-born Rev Solomon Marks Solomon.[8] Solomon was a mohel, teacher, headmaster and scoutmaster – even an army chaplain, though he never served outside Australia. Solomon held the courtesy title of Reverend but had received no formal ministerial training. He resented others who had the education which he lacked. He was not on good terms with Danglow of St Kilda and deliberately referred to him as “Danglowitz”, referring to the surname that the critics called an “odious Russian tag”. Solomon had little patience for people who practised their religion in what he called “a foreign way”; in his view, such people belonged at East Melbourne, which had a higher proportion of “foreigners” and attracted more of the orthodox element. Solomon was a more overt supporter of Zionism than Abrahams was, though the latter was helpful towards Zionist projects and in this way was a contrast to Rabbi Francis Lyon Cohen of Sydney who was antagonistic towards political Zionism.[9]
Abrahams was not only learned but studious. He was far more erudite than any of his Australian colleagues. His intellectual interests ranged from philosophy to mathematics. He was adept at modern and classical languages. He was a loyal Freemason and a keen sportsman, particularly keen on rowing. At the Melbourne Hebrew School – the day school headed for a time by Solomon – he taught subjects as far apart as Hebrew, German and mathematics. His sermons, though always orthodox in content, brought in considerable material from general cultural sources. As a well-known public figure, he addressed many gentile audiences on contemporary social and ethical issues. Huxley, Ruskin and Shakespeare peopled his lectures, together with Biblical and Talmudic quotations. He knew the Christian as well as the Jewish scriptures, but he declined to debate questions of theology with the Christian clergy. He was self-confident but not as confrontationist as Rev Moses Rintel, who founded the East Melbourne shule after falling out with the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation. The tension between the Melbourne and East Melbourne congregations abated in time, probably thanks to Abrahams’ diplomacy, and there was even talk about re-unification. Abrahams was undisputed as the ecclesiastical head of the community; he worked well with Rev Jacob Lenzer of East Melbourne and Rev Elias Blaubaum of St Kilda. He had no problems with Blaubaum’s successor Rabbi Jacob Danglow. They all recognised that Abrahams had the greatest rabbinical expertise and acknowledged that he was what he called a “first-class” rabbi whose halachic rulings could be relied upon and were not likely to be countermanded by the chief rabbi in London.
Abrahams took his orthodox rabbinic responsibilities seriously. The religious laxity that had become endemic in Australia had to be overcome. He opposed a proposal to use organ music in synagogue services. He insisted on proper halachic procedures in kashrut and other areas of Jewish practice. He allowed minor changes to the synagogue services including mixed male-female choirs but strongly opposed the incipient Liberal movement which was supported in England by his brother Israel. The Doctor said he was always prepared to debate Reform and Liberalism so long as it was with courtesy and respect. His letter book – now held in the archives of the Australian Jewish Historical Society – contains details of how religious practices ought to be performed.
During the Depression of the 1890s, when many children were getting no Jewish education, either at the synagogue classes or the Melbourne and East Melbourne day schools, he was one of the founders of the United Jewish Education Board and was its president for several years. After the day schools closed down, the UJEB conducted part-time classes at various venues including the Model School in Spring Street. St Kilda declined to join the UJEB system, though its ministers were supporters of the organisation. Abrahams examined the top pupils of the Education Board, some of whom, like Minnie Kierson, became Hebrew teachers themselves. He was impressed at the levels attained by pupils of a private Cheder in Carlton but could never persuade the parents of UJEB pupils to provide for them the intensity of Hebrew studies that children gained in the Cheder. He had charge of the congregational Sabbath School which initially met at 3.00 o’clock on Saturday afternoons and subsequently in the morning after the Sabbath service. In colonial public life he represented the Jewish community with dignity and was considered an educational expert. He was consulted by an Education Department commission about the Scripture instruction in Victorian schools, but he dissented from the commission’s recommendations when they failed to provide for Jewish children.
He was disappointed at the Sabbath attendance and visited members to urge them to come to services. He was an adequate but not exceptional ba’al tefillah (officiant) though he had a melodious voice and was a good ba’al k’ri’ah (Torah reader). He was not a cantor but nonetheless regularly officiated at the reading desk. He shone as a preacher and public speaker. Not all of the congregation, however, appreciated his pulpit reprimands. It is said that one Sabbath he discovered that some of the racing fraternity had deposited their bookmakers’ bags with the synagogue caretaker and he blasted them with a sermon on the verse, “A horse is a vain thing for salvation” (Psalm 33:17), evoking a rebuke from the shule board. They probably thought his comments were too pointed, but when the Doctor was moved by a matter of principle he could not be restrained. He attacked those who presumed to dictate to him on religious law. He said plainly that he was no “polite shoe black who dared not assert any independence.” A second-rate man might be willing to take orders, but he was a first-rate man and would not accept being “led by you according to individual fad, temporary passion or passing phase”. This is part of a statement cited by Aron and Arndt in their history of the congregation.[10] In view of his eminence in Melbourne one might have expected him to support the idea of a federal synagogue body, but he was unenthusiastic because he feared any such body could undermine orthodoxy.
Abrahams held honorary positions in a range of Jewish and general charity organisations including the chaplaincy to the prisons. He worked ceaselessly for the welfare of Jewish prisoners and their families. He became a familiar figure in Melbourne, riding a bicycle wearing a “cup and saucer” hat. Years later, after his regular Talmud study sessions on Thursdays with his successor Israel Brodie, the latter used to take him for a drive, and the Doctor told Rabbi Brodie, “Don’t tell me how to start a car, only how to stop it!” The two rabbis both had a sense of humour.
Abrahams was not only a rabbinic scholar but a shochet (slaughterer), mohel (circumciser) and sofer (scribe), and he trained others in these skills. The chief rabbi authorised him to deal with all Australian halachic queries and to head the Sydney as well as the Melbourne Beth Din, though neither city was happy with the arrangement. Sydney resented having to bring a rabbi from Melbourne; Melbourne objected to its rabbi having to go to Sydney even though his parents-in-law lived there. It is strange that when, in 1870, Sydney appealed to the chief rabbi to allow a local Beth Din, it boasted of having “men of equal learning and religious zeal” to Melbourne, an obvious exaggeration when we consider that the then Av Bet Din (Beth Din head) in Melbourne, Rev Samuel Herman of Geelong and Ballarat, was a great Talmudist even though he was elderly and old-fashioned with a poor command of English. Abrahams succeeded Herman as Av Bet Din. Not until Rabbi Cohen arrived in Sydney in 1905 did the Sydney Beth Din function independently.
Abrahams was officially an Ashkenazi, though at home he liked to use the Sephardi ritual and pronunciation. Perhaps this reflected his mother’s Sephardi antecedents and his youthful associations with the London Sephardim. At the end of Shabbat, he said both the Sephardi Buenas Semanas and the Ashkenazi Gut Voch (“Good Week”). He must have come to terms with his failure to become either a Sephardi Haham or an Ashkenazi chief rabbi. However, some of the more observant members of the Jewish community were puzzled at his practices. They suspected (perhaps because of bitter experience with his predecessor Dattner Jacobson) that he was not really orthodox, and they checked his garden on Sukkot to see that he had a sukkah.
As Australia’s senior rabbi, he was consulted by the federal government on the appointment of a Jewish chaplain to the AIF in the First World War. He himself was too old for overseas duty (as was Rabbi Cohen of the Great Synagogue, Sydney) but he nominated Rabbi David I Freedman of Perth and subsequently Rabbi Jacob Danglow of Melbourne. Both Freedman and Danglow were highly regarded by the military authorities and the troops.
The third major disappointment in Abrahams’ career was his failure to become chief rabbi of the British Empire. When Hermann Adler died in 1911, Abrahams expected to succeed him. His lineage, learning and long experience were well known. He took leave to travel to England to promote his cause, and he preached in a number of English synagogues. The Jewish Chronicle was on his side. It said in an editorial on 8 December 1911:
Dr Abrahams is widely mentioned and discussed in the community as a possible successor to the late Dr Adler. Dr Abrahams is a member of a distinguished family, and this, together with his English birth and training, and the responsible position which he has already occupied, entitles him to a place in the communal consideration at this moment.[11]
Another Jewish Chronicle report said, “Whatever may be future eventualities, Dr Abrahams’ visit has been a triumphant progress. There are no two opinions on this fact; the verdict is unanimous.”[12] The Jewish press in Australia reprinted the Jewish Chronicle’s reports of Abrahams’ visit to England and supported his candidature. Abrahams was so sure that he would win the appointment that he sold off his household goods in Melbourne. However, his efforts were unsuccessful. In the end, he was not even one of the front-runners, who were Joseph Herman Hertz (who gained 298 votes) and Moses Hyamson (who had 39 votes). Apart from the pro-Hertz influence of Lord Rothschild, three factors probably weighed against Abrahams: his age, his wife’s poor state of health, and his brother Israel’s reformist views. The choice of Rabbi Hertz, however, was highly controversial as Anglo-Jewish historian, Hyman A Simons explains:
Dr Abrahams presented his credentials as did several others to Lord Rothschild, but they went into the waste paper basket. The only three men who were considered as candidates were Dayan Moses Hyamson, Drachman and Hertz. As a point of interest that election was in its way more bitter than the Brodie/Jacobs controversy. Family friendships were split and never healed, Drachman withdrew and the battle centered round two parties, pro- and anti-Hyamson. It was a sad but interesting story.[13]
Abrahams returned (presumably in a state of some dejection) to his old post at the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation and stayed there until he retired in 1919, though thereafter he still continued to carry out occasional halachic functions such as conversions (giyyur) and religious divorces (gittin). In the four years until a new rabbi (Israel Brodie) was appointed, synagogue services and pastoral duties were maintained by Solomon though he (Abrahams) gave occasional sermons, especially on the High Holydays. The communal leaders appointed Danglow as Jewish ecclesiastical representative in place of Abrahams, adding a vague announcement that Brodie would take over once he was married and had indicated his intention to remain in Australia. Rabbi Abrahams and his wife left the house in Burlington Terrace, Eastern Hill (near the East Melbourne Synagogue) where they had lived for thirty years (other leading members of the Jewish community had been their neighbours there) and moved to St Kilda – around the corner from the St Kilda Synagogue – and lived in Rabbi and Mrs. Isaac Super’s house in Crimea Street. Mrs. Abrahams died in 1931 and the rabbi established a prize competition in her name. The rabbi himself died in 1938, presumably having long overcome his disappointments.
Turning to his brothers, we find a number of differences of personality and priorities. The sections of this paper dealing with the brothers are relatively short as they have little Australian connection.
Moses, the second Rabbi Abrahams
Joseph’s younger brother Moses (1860–1919) ministered from 1886– 1919 at the Great (Belgrave Street) Synagogue in Leeds.[14] He was not a great preacher – the congregation expected a monthly, not a weekly sermon – but he was quite a scholar. His writings included Aquila’s Greek Version of the Hebrew Bible (1919) and an essay on liturgical history in the Jews’ College Jubilee Volume (1906). It was a time when immigrants were settling in Leeds (some coming via Glasgow) and finding English words, customs and rabbis rather strange. They were surprised that their rabbi (unlike his brother Joseph) could not speak Yiddish, which put him out of touch with many of his community. In those days, Leeds was England’s main centre of Jewish immigration outside London. It is said that whereas in the mid-nineteenth century one hardly ever met a Jew in Leeds, by 1900 Jews formed a higher proportion of the population than anywhere else in the provinces. The more orthodox Jews of Leeds gravitated to Rabbi Joel Herzog whose son Isaac became chief rabbi of Israel. Joel’s grandson, Chaim (Vivian), served as president of Israel from 1983–1993 and his great grandson, Isaac, is the current incumbent.
Moses Abrahams was educated at Jews’ College and University College, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree. He was head Hebrew Master of the Stepney Jewish Schools before moving to Leeds in 1886. His position in Leeds was significant but difficult. Synagogue attendance was consistently low; people claimed that they had to go to work on Saturdays. Initially, Bradford was also part of Moses Abrahams’ parish and he had to go there every now and then. In Leeds itself, he was kept constantly busy. He was minister/secretary of the synagogue, honorary secretary/ relieving officer of the Board of Guardians, principal of the Hebrew School, treasurer of the Jewish Young Men’s Association, honorary secretary of the local Anglo-Jewish Association and chairman of the local branch of the Jewish Territorial Organisation.
In that era, many ministers and chazzanim were also secretaries of their synagogues, not only in the interests of the congregation’s finances but because the minister was usually better equipped than his congregants to write grammatical letters and keep clear accounts and records. Eventually the congregations released their clergy from the synagogue office: the ministers themselves long argued that administrative duties detracted from their religious and spiritual status. In his Epistles to the Jews of England in 1902, Solomon Schechter made caustic comments on rabbis being clerks.
Moses Abrahams was well aware of the problems of being Jewish in Leeds. He gave testimony to parliamentary select committees on immigration and sweated labour, reporting that in 1889 there were 6000 Jews in Leeds, mostly poor. There were only 728 synagogue seat holders. This seems a low figure, but seat holders had to be adult males, and formal membership was far too expensive for the immigrants. In 1900, the Jewish population of Leeds was 12,000, with 1100 synagogue seat holders. The newcomers preferred the chevrot (small immigrant groups), who prayed at shtiblach (informal prayer rooms) without being paying members of the community. In many cases the immigrant’s secret ambition – the mark of having “arrived” – was to be able to join a synagogue.
Moses Abrahams died in 1919, leaving his books to the Leeds public library. They included some rare items which had belonged to his father and grandfather. Other rabbinic books from Abraham Sussman’s or Barnett Abrahams’ libraries came to Australia with Joseph; some were inherited by Israel Abrahams.
Israel Abrahams, the scholar
The most famous Abrahams was Israel, who was born in London in 1858 and died in Cambridge in 1925.[15] Though lacking the formal title of rabbi he was a widely read and deeply learned scholar and writer who, from 1881, spent many years teaching subjects as diverse as mathematics and homiletics to aspiring ministers at Jews’ College before assuming Solomon Schechter’s role as Reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge University in 1902. Israel had his mother’s happy temperament and her knowledge of English tales, poems, songs and ballads. He liked cricket and rowing and had quite a sense of humour. In his Book of Delight[16] and his Festival Studies[17] – two of several collations of his articles – he made incidental reference to people and events in his own life, not bemoaning the difficulties of his early years but being constantly cheerful and almost amazed at the interesting things with which life acquainted him.
Despite his immense knowledge of Judaic literature and history, his teaching subjects at Jews’ College were generally neither halachic nor rabbinic but secular. Was that because the College principal, Michael Friedlander, sensed that Abrahams was no longer completely orthodox? Nonetheless Abrahams was a father figure for the students, who held him in great affection. In Cambridge, where he lived amongst the learned and was a dynamic part of the academic community for a quarter-century, he and his wife were mentors to many young people. His prolific writings included articles in the Jewish and general press, as well as academic papers in the Jewish Quarterly Review and the Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, plus a number of major books.
For many years his “Books and Bookmen” columns in the Jewish Chronicle (signed “IA”) were widely read, not just by the more erudite segment of the paper’s readership but all over the community and beyond. He lectured in the United States as well as England and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Divinity. His Jewish Life in the Middle Ages[18] was later updated by Cecil Roth and went through many editions. His two-volume Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels[19] were acclaimed by Christians and have recently been reprinted. He mixed easily with gentile academics and broke down many long-standing barriers between the faiths. He helped Christians overcome the misreading of Hebraic sources and made an awareness of Jesus’ Jewishness axiomatic amongst scholars of Christianity. He was not a political Zionist, but he supported Jewish settlement in the Holy Land. His friendship with the Palestinian scholar David Yellin (with whom he wrote a book on Maimonides) encouraged Hebrew as a spoken language. A visit he paid to Palestine and Egypt resulted in a sheaf of rather amusing letters, which his daughter Phyllis edited for the Jewish Historical Society of England.
Whilst teaching at Jews’ College his views became increasingly reformist, despite his orthodox background and his deep knowledge of traditionalist sources. He was one of the founders of the Liberal Synagogue and often preached there. He believed that the Liberal liturgy was more devotional than orthodoxy. Like his Cambridge predecessor Solomon Schechter, he appreciated what he called “the (Jewish) law’s manifold joys, its power of hallowing life”. When Emil Schurer[20] attacked the Pharisees – a progressive Jewish movement in Mishnaic times – and claimed that “a spurious legalism” had “laid a fearful burden” on Jewish shoulders, Abrahams responded, “Against Professor Schurer’s judgement based on books, I can protest an experience based on life”. Whilst insisting, “I have enough sympathy with the Law to do it justice,” he said he had “not enough sympathy to do it the injustice of unqualified flattery.” His scholarship was admired and often cited by his friend, Chief Rabbi Hertz.
We see the influence of Abrahams’ mother in the happy mood of his book on Jewish life in the Middle Ages, which depicted an age of liveliness and poetry (he used to say that “its merry spirit” was “the coping stone of piety”). This contrasted with the ghetto with its “dirty, dark, narrow” streets, though these words were not said about a European Jewish district but the Jewish quarter in Hebron. Maybe it was his Englishness that made him so keen on cleanliness. In some respects, he might have bypassed the larger themes of Jewish history, but his contribution to social history is important and his observations about what people did and how they lived their lives retain their colour and interest.
Israel Abrahams’ wife Freda (Fredericka) was the daughter of Rev Simeon Singer, whose literary heritage he edited in three volumes. He compiled a Companion to the daily prayer book which Singer had edited under the guidance of Nathan Marcus Adler, and his great scholarship and sound Jewish instinct endowed his Companion with considerable theological and devotional value. All in all, Israel Abrahams was an unusual Jewish polymath and a highly interesting Jewish human being.
Can we compare the three brothers? All had a presence. Of the two rabbis, Joseph was more of an activist than Moses. Australia stretched him and turned him into a quasi-chief rabbi. This does not mean that he presented a challenge to the two Adlers, Nathan Marcus and Hermann. He was loyal to both, unlike Herman Hoelzel of Hobart and Sydney, who fancied himself as the Adler of Australia.[21] However, Australia was trying to find itself Jewishly, and Joseph’s tussles with some of the lay leaders reflect the relative uncertainty that marked (and marred) lay/ religious relationships.
Joseph Abrahams added years of Australian experience to his already high qualifications and could undoubtedly have made a competent chief rabbi of England and the Empire. So, incidentally, could Rabbi Moses Hyamson, who was defeated in the chief rabbinate election of 1912 by Joseph Herman Hertz.
Moses Abrahams certainly did an effective ministerial job in Leeds but was probably too anglicised to handle both the old and the new community. He also was probably not such a solid scholar as Joseph, though they shared orthodox theological views and firmly believed in the Judaism of tradition.
Israel was a broader scholar and a more prolific writer than the others. Though he helped to train ministers at Jews’ College until he was 44, he was not a congregational rabbi but an academic (his Cambridge years were probably the most satisfying time of his life), a diligent research worker (he was blessed with a quick and absorbent mind) and an authority on Christianity as well as Judaism. He trained preachers but was not a great preacher himself. He discarded the orthodoxy of his background but welcomed the emergence of Liberal Judaism – not the original “Secessionist” Reform movement of the 1840s, the once controversial movement that had become a conservative establishment of its own, almost indistinguishable from Anglo-Jewish orthodoxy, but Liberalism, with its more radical theology and its non-traditional liturgy promoted by Claude Montefiore. He was not sympathetic towards political Zionism, but where did he stand on Zionist ideology? He lacked sympathy with the organisational activities of the Zionists, but he had visited the Land of Israel, collaborated with David Yellin, and saw merit in the idea of the restoration of Zion.
Some of the great cultural icons of Anglo-Jewry, such as the Jewish Historical Society of England and the original Jewish Quarterly Review, would never have eventuated, or at least not in the form they assumed, without Israel Abrahams’ involvement. His energies were dedicated to countless causes. His financial resources were meagre, and he could not afford to relax, though he enjoyed reading novels. His brothers were well-read, but Israel was far ahead of them in creativity. The interesting question about Joseph was how he would have developed professionally and personally had he stayed in Britain. Did Australia stretch him more than Britain would have? Would Moses Abrahams have become a more dynamic rabbi if he had held a post outside the constraints of Leeds and of Britain as a whole? Did the brothers have opportunities to exchange ideas and experiences? Presumably Joseph spent time with his brothers on his 1911 trip. By 1932, when he visited England again, Moses and Israel Abrahams had died. The other brother, Abraham, did not hold community positions of similar eminence. Nonetheless we ask whether this brother had any serious religious interests. Did he live an orthodox life or (like Israel) opt for Liberalism? Was he envious of the eminence of his brothers? These are questions for which there are no clear answers, although further research might shed some light on these issues.
Endnotes
1. Keith (Chaim) Freedman, “From Bevis Marks to Bourke Street”, Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal (AJHSJ), vol. 8, part 7 (1979), pp. 400–3; Joseph Aron and Judy Arndt, The Enduring Remnant: The First 150 Years of the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation 1841–1991, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1992.
2. Derek Taylor, Defenders of the Faith: The History of Jews’ College and the London School of Jewish Studies, London, Vallentine Mitchell, 2016, ch. 2.
3. Albert M Hyamson, The Sephardim of England, London, Methuen, 1951; Phyllis Abrahams, “Abraham Sussman: From Berditchev to Bevis Marks”, Jewish Historical Society of England Transactions, vol. 21 (1968) (with incomplete family tree); Jewish Chronicle, 20 and 27 November 1863.
4. Hyamson, The Sephardim of England, index re Abrahams.
5. Raymond Apple, “The Rintel File, Part I“, AJHSJ, vol. 24, part 4 (2020), pp. 614–31; John S. Levi, “The Reverend Moses Rintel: The Life and Times of Melbourne’s First Jewish Minister (The Rintel File – Part Two)”, AJHSJ , vol. 25, part 3 (2021), pp. 371–401; Aron and Arndt, The Enduring Remnant, index re Rintel; Lazarus M Goldman, The Jews in Victoria in the 19th Century, Melbourne, self-published, 1954, index re Rintel.
6. Goldman, The Jews in Victoria, index re Jacobson; Aron and Arndt, The Enduring Remnant, index re Jacobson.
7. Australasian Hebrew, 3 January 1896.
8. Aron and Arndt, The Enduring Remnant, index re Solomon; Goldman, The Jews in Victoria, index re Solomon; Jewish Herald, Melbourne, 30 September 1895.
9. Raymond Apple, Francis Lyon Cohen: The Passionate Patriot, Sydney, AJHS, 1995, ch. 10.
10. Aron and Arndt, The Enduring Remnant, p. 64.
11. Jewish Chronicle, 8 December 1911 (quoted in Jewish Herald, Melbourne, 19 January 1912).
12. Jewish Chronicle, quoted in Jewish Herald, Melbourne, 15 March 1912.
13. Hyman A (Toddy) Simons to Rabbi Apple, 28 September 1980.
14. Ernest Krausz, Leeds Jewry: Its History and Social Structure, London, Jewish. Historical Society of England, 1964, passim.
15. Studies of the work of Israel Abrahams include “Israel Abrahams Centenary Number”, Liberal Jewish Monthly (London), vol. 29, no. 9 (1958); Elliott Horowitz, “Jewish Life in the Middle Ages and the Jewish Life of Israel Abrahams”, in David N Myers and David B Ruderman (eds.), The Jewish Past Revisited, New Haven, Yale UP, 1998; Marc Saperstein, “Israel Abrahams: Historian and Liberal-Traditional Jew”, in Responding to the Call: A Life of Liberal Jewish Commitment – A Festschrift in Honour of Rabbi Harry Jacobi, London, Liberal Judaism, 2015.
16. Israel Abrahams, The book of delight and other papers, Philadelphia [Pa.], Jewish Publication Society of America, 1912.
17. Israel Abrahams, Festival Studies: Being Thoughts on the Jewish Year, London, Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1906.
18. Israel Abrahams (creator), Cecil Roth (ed), Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, Reprint: Meridian Books/Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960.
19. Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels, vol. 1, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1917; vol. 2, Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1924.
20. Israel Abrahams, “Professor Schurer on Life Under Jewish Law”, Jewish Quarterly Review, old series, vol. 11 (1898–99). Christians unfairly criticise the Pharisees as over-legalistic and hypocritical; the truth is that the Pharisaic movement applied the Torah to changing conditions and emphasised Jewish morality and ethics.
21. Raymond Apple, “Rev. Herman Hoelzel – Ambitions of a ‘Presiding Rabbi’“, AJHSJ, vol. 23, part 2 (2017), pp. 233–42.
