Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As everyone in this place will know, I have stood up countless times over the past 18 months to share some of the difficult days that my community, the Jewish community of Australia, have faced. But today I don't want to mention the bad things. I want to talk about positive things, the things that make me proud and the people who make our community wonderful.

Macnamara is beautifully diverse, and one part of our history that people may not know is that Melbourne is home to Yiddish culture, Yiddish theatre and a vibrant Jewish life. Australia became home to the largest per capita percentage of Holocaust survivors after the war, many of whom spoke mame lushen, the mother tongue of Yiddish. But, before World War II, Melbourne also had the highest Jewish population in Australia. The community was proud.

The year 1909 marked the beginning of Yiddish theatre in Melbourne, and in 1911 the Kadimah library and cultural centre was opened as a home for Yiddish theatre, art and music. After World War II and the decades that followed, Melbourne became home to top Yiddish actors and artists dedicated to re-creating the Jewish world they left behind in Europe. But it wasn't just theatre. St Kilda was home to cake shops filled with kugelhopfs and rugelach which were opened in the 1930s. In the 1950s, Sholem Aleichem College opened up, and it is today one of the only secular Yiddish-speaking schools in the world.

In Europe in the late 19th century the Jewish labour bund, a union movement, was established, and the Melbourne bund is one of the few that still exist in the world today, including its youth organisation, Skif. It is, I believe, the only Skif left in the world. The Kadimah library and cultural centre is still around, and it has supported Yiddish literature, language, theatre and music in Melbourne for over a century.

I wasn't planning on mentioning this, but, just in the last few moments, I got news that one of the Holocaust survivors in Melbourne, an amazing woman by the name of Cesia Goldberg, passed away this afternoon. Her husband, Abram, is 100 years old, and Cesia, I believe, was 95. She passed away peacefully today. I want to send my condolences and my best wishes to Helen and Charlie and the entire Goldberg family. Cesia was only a small person, but she had a very big heart.

I grew up knowing Cesia and Abram. They are truly remarkable people. They came fleeing the Holocaust. They fled the concentration camps to be here in Australia and helped set up this vibrant Yiddish and Jewish life that I was speaking about before. Cesia used to run the Wednesday club at the Kadimah, which was a group of people that came to the Kadimah for community, gatherings and food, and Cesia was the driving force behind it. She will be remembered as one of the finest, one of the kindest, one of the bubbliest and one of the most wonderful people that we have in our community that help make the Jewish community in my electorate so wonderful. I again pass on my best wishes to the entire Goldberg family and to Abram, who I know will be devastated by the death of his beautiful wife, Cesia, who was with him for, I believe, 70 years or more.

I stood in the Kadimah in Elsternwick only a couple of weeks ago with the Deputy Prime Minister. We were celebrating the In One Voice Festival. It is a festival that is all about celebrating Jewish music, culture, food and art. It was a wonderful gathering. There was rain, but it didn't dampen anyone's spirits. Community groups were on display, and thousands of people came to experience the festival. And that's what we want in Australia. We want people to be able to feel proud, to feel open to express themselves and to express their culture, and to have a rich and vibrant life in our wonderful community, especially, for me, in my home in Macnamara.

I've also been involved in a project which is all about the future of Jewish life and what project we can pass on to the next generation. The one that I'm working on, which I'm very proud of, is the Jewish Arts Quarter. The state government of Victoria have already contributed significant amounts to it. This is an idea and a concept that will bring together the Jewish Museum, the Kadimah and a number of other Jewish institutions right next to the Melbourne Holocaust Museum in Elsternwick and hopefully be a place where people can come and experience Jewish life and Jewish culture, learn about the history and learn about all the things that make our community so vibrant.

With that, I again give my condolences to the Goldberg family. Cesia was a truly wonderful person.