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Australia’s Jewish community is defined by Holocaust survivors, Yiddishkeit, and immigrants
An attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday killed 15 people and left Jewish communities reeling worldwide. The violence has also drawn attention to the resilience of Australia’s distinctive Jewish community, shaped by the world’s largest concentration of Holocaust survivors outside Israel, a growing Yiddish revival scene, and a large number of South African Jewish immigrants.
Demographics and culture
About 117,000 Jews live in Australia, according to 2021 Census figures adjusted for likely undercounting. The community is largely urban, with 84% living in either Melbourne or Sydney.
Just over half of Australian Jews were born in the country. Among those born overseas, the largest immigrant groups come from South Africa and Israel.
Religious practice within the community is diverse, with roughly 4% identifying as Haredi, 18% as Modern Orthodox, 33% as traditional or Conservative, 11% as Reform, and 21% as secular. In other respects, the community is uniquely cohesive: About half of children attend Jewish day schools — the highest rate for Jewish day school attendance outside of Israel.
In recent years, the revival of Yiddish language and culture in Australia has drawn significant attention, with young people who view it as a “language of protest” leading the charge. Yiddish is a required daily subject at Melbourne’s Sholem Aleichem College, a secular day school with roots in the Jewish Labor Bund. The annual Australian “Sof-Vokh Oystralye” retreat immerses attendees in 48 hours of speaking Yiddish exclusively, while Kadimah, a Jewish cultural center and library in Melbourne, stages plays in the language.
Being in the Southern Hemisphere, Australians celebrate Hanukkah during their summer, taking pride in being among the first in the world to light the holiday candles due to their early time zone.
A destination for refugees
The Australian Jewish population nearly tripled in size from 1938 to 1961. The influx was driven by Holocaust survivors, Hungarian refugees who arrived after the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, and British Jews who migrated under the “Ten Pound Poms” program, which allowed them to move to Australia for just 10 pounds.
In the aftermath of World War II, Australia accepted Holocaust survivors who were living in displaced persons camps, at a time when many countries either refused to take them or imposed strict quotas — including the United States.
Not only was Australia one of the few countries willing to accept survivors, it was also just about as far from Europe geographically as one could get, offering a sense of safety in its isolation.
Yet the acceptance of Jewish refugees was at times begrudging. Minister for Immigration Arthur Calwell sold large-scale immigration in the aftermath of World War II not as a humanitarian concern, but under the slogan “populate or perish,” reflecting the need for population growth to boost the economy and enhance national security.
Calwell also covertly introduced bureaucratic measures to limit the number of Jewish Holocaust survivors allowed to enter Australia, including restricting the number of Jewish survivors permitted on ships leaving Europe to a quarter of all passengers.
But Calwell’s efforts to limit Jewish immigration ultimately fell short. In the aftermath of the war, roughly 27,000 Holocaust survivors settled in Australia. As of 2023, about 2,500 of those survivors were still living.
One of those survivors, Alexander Kleytman, who immigrated to Australia from Ukraine, was killed in Sunday’s attack at Bondi Beach while protecting his wife.
Australia’s relationship with Israel
Relations between Israel and Australia have been increasingly strained in the past year. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had been sharply critical of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, calling Israel’s “excuses and explanations” for blocking aid to Gaza “an outrage.”
Tensions further escalated in September, when Australia was one of about 150 countries that moved to recognize a Palestinian state. In response, Israel revoked the visas of Australian representatives to the Palestinian Authority.
Yet Australia and Israel have historically been strong allies. Australia’s first external affairs minister, Herbert Vere “Doc” Evatt, played a key role in the United Nations partition plan for Palestine and the creation of the Jewish state.
In 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the first incumbent Israeli leader to visit Australia, and former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison had said he was considering recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. But that position was reversed in 2022 after Albanese, a member of the Labor Party, took office.
Relations deteriorated further after an arson attack on a historic synagogue in Melbourne in December. Netanyahu sharply criticized Australia’s government, saying, “It is impossible to separate the reprehensible arson attack from the federal government’s extreme anti-Israeli position.”
Following the attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, Netanyahu doubled down, saying he had warned Albanese that “your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.” Albanese rejected any link between the two, arguing that support for a two-state solution is a widely held position.
The post Australia’s Jewish community is defined by Holocaust survivors, Yiddishkeit, and immigrants appeared first on The Forward.
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Board of Peace Members Have Pledged More Than $5 billion for Gaza, Trump Says
A drone view shows the destruction in a residential neighborhood, after the withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the area, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Gaza City, October 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas/File Photo
US President Donald Trump said Board of Peace member states will announce at an upcoming meeting on Thursday a pledge of more than $5 billion for reconstruction and humanitarian efforts in Gaza.
In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump wrote that member states have also committed thousands of personnel toward a U.N.-authorized stabilization force and local police in the Palestinian enclave.
The US president said Thursday’s gathering, the first official meeting of the group, will take place at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, which the State Department recently renamed after the president. Delegations from more than 20 countries, including heads of state, are expected to attend.
The board’s creation was endorsed by a United Nations Security Council resolution as part of the Trump administration’s plan to end the war between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza.
Israel and Hamas agreed to the plan last year with a ceasefire officially taking effect in October, although both sides have accused each other repeatedly of violating the ceasefire. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, more than 590 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops in the territory since the ceasefire began. Israel has said four of its soldiers have been killed by Palestinian militants in the same period.
While regional Middle East powers including Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel – as well as emerging nations such as Indonesia – have joined the board, global powers and traditional Western US allies have been more cautious.
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Why a forgotten teacher’s grave became a Jewish pilgrimage site
Along Britton Road in Rochester, New York, a brick gatehouse sits across from ordinary homes. Beyond it lies Britton Road Cemetery, its grounds divided into family plots and sections claimed over time by Orthodox congregations and fraternal associations, past and present. Names like Anshe Polen, Beth Hakneses Hachodosh, B’nai Israel, and various Jewish fraternal organizations are found here.
On the east side of the cemetery, a modest gray headstone draws visitors who do not personally know the man buried there, who were never taught his name in school, and who claim no personal connection to his life. Some leave notes. Some light candles in a small metal box set nearby. Others whisper prayers and stand for a moment before going. They come because they believe holiness can be found here.
The grave belongs to Rabbi Yechiel Meir Burgeman, a Polish-born teacher who died in 1938. He did not lead a major congregation or leave behind an institution that bears his name. And yet, nearly a century after his death, people still visit.
Over time, Burgeman has come to be remembered as a tzaddik nistar, a hidden righteous person, whose holiness is known through their teaching and daily life rather than through any title or position. His grave has become a place of intercession. People come to pray for healing, for help in times of uncertainty, and for the hope of marriage. What endures here is not an individual’s biography so much as a practice: the belief that a life lived with integrity can continue to shape devotion, even after the body has been laid to rest.
In life, Burgeman was not known as a miracle worker or a public figure. He was a melamed, a teacher of children, living plainly among other Jewish immigrants in Rochester’s Jewish center in the early decades of the 20th century. At one point, he was dismissed from a teaching post for refusing to soften his instruction. He later opened his own cheder, or schoolroom. There was no congregation to inherit his name, no institution to archive his papers. When he died, he was buried in an ordinary way at Britton Road Cemetery, one grave among many.
What followed was not immediate.
Remembered in return
The meaning attached to Burgeman’s resting place accumulated slowly. Stories began to circulate. People spoke of his kindness, his discipline, his integrity. Over time, visitors came. The grave became a place not of answers, but of belief. For generations, this turning toward the dead has taken this same form. It is not worship. It is proximity. A way of standing near those believed to have lived rightly, and asking that their merit might still matter.
In Jewish tradition, prayer at a grave is a reflection on those believed to have lived with righteousness, asking that their merit accompany the living in moments of need. Psalms are traditionally recited. Words are often spoken quietly.
I have done something similar too. Years ago, before I converted to Judaism and before I had the means to travel, I sent a written prayer through a Chabad service that delivers letters to the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York. Someone else carried it. I cannot say with absolute certainty what happened because of it. Only that the practice itself made space for hope that I was seen, and that a prayer was later answered in ways that shaped my life and deepened my understanding of Judaism.
Burgeman’s grave functions in a similar register, though without any institutional frame. People come not because his name is widely known, but because the story has endured. Over time, that story gathered details. The most persistent involves a dog said to have escorted Jewish children to Burgeman’s cheder so they would not be harassed along the way by other youths. The dog then stood watch until they were ready to return home. The versions differ. Some are reverent. Some are playful. Some verge on the miraculous. The story endures because it names something children needed: care, in a world that could be frightening.
In recent decades, Burgeman’s afterlife has taken on a digital form. His name surfaces in comment threads and genealogical forums, passed along by people who never met him and are not always sure how they are connected. Spellings are debated. Dates are corrected. A descendant appears. A former student’s grandchild adds a fragment. Someone asks whether this is the same man their grandmother spoke of. No single account settles the matter. Instead, memory gathers. What once traveled by word of mouth now moves through hyperlinks.
The internet allows fragments to remain visible. Burgeman’s story survives not because it was officially recorded, but because enough people cared to remember it. In this way, his legacy resembles the man himself: quiet, unadorned, sustained by actions rather than declaration.
This story does not offer certainty. It is about remembering a life and asking if we might still learn from it and if, perhaps, it can bring us closer to faith. Burgeman left no grand monument. He left descendants. A grave. A life of Jewish values that continues to teach.
Burgeman did not seek recognition in life. After death, he became something else: a teacher still teaching, not through words, but through the way people continue to act on his memory. That is the lesson. Not any miracle. Not any legend. The quiet insistence that a life lived with integrity does not end when the casket is placed into the earth.
Some graves are instructions.
This one still asks something of us.
The post Why a forgotten teacher’s grave became a Jewish pilgrimage site appeared first on The Forward.
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Turkey Sends Drilling Ship to Somalia in Major Push for Energy Independence
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a ceremony for the handover of new vehicles to the gendarmerie and police forces in Istanbul, Turkey, Nov. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Murad Sezer
i24 News – Turkey has dispatched a drilling vessel to Somalia to begin offshore oil exploration, marking what officials describe as a historic step in Ankara’s drive to strengthen energy security and reduce reliance on imports.
Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar announced that the drilling ship Çagri Bey is set to sail from the port of Taşucu in southern Turkey, heading toward Somali territorial waters.
The vessel will pass through the Strait of Gibraltar and around the coast of southern Africa before reaching its destination, with drilling operations expected to begin in April or May.
Bayraktar described the mission as a “historic” milestone, saying it reflects Turkey’s long-term strategy to enhance national energy security and move closer to self-sufficiency.
The operation will be protected by the Turkish Naval Forces, which will deploy several naval units to secure both the vessel’s route and the drilling area in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. The security arrangements fall under existing cooperation agreements between Ankara and Somalia.
The move aligns with a broader vision promoted by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, aimed at reducing Turkey’s dependence on foreign energy supplies, boosting domestic production, and shielding the economy from external pressures.
Bayraktar said Turkey is also working to double its natural gas output in the Black Sea this year, while continuing offshore exploration along its northern coastline. In parallel, Ankara is preparing to bring its first nuclear reactor online at the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, which is expected to begin generating electricity soon and eventually supply about 10% of the country’s energy needs.
The current drilling effort is based on survey data collected last year and forms part of Ankara’s wider plan to expand its energy exploration activities both regionally and internationally.