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The Jewish Community in the Hunter Valley (Part 2)
Part 1 - Part 2
Newcastle Synagogue, Tyrrell Street
During electioneering in West Maitland, a heckler had taunted Cohen with being a Jew. He had replied:'If I do not disgrace the name of Jew, the name of Jew will never disgrace me.' That philosophy guided his life.' I may, perhaps, be permitted to say that whatever success I may
have achieved under Providence has only accentuated my love for my people and taught me that the self-respecting Jew is respected by Jew and Gentile, and need not, as he should not, weaken in broad fealty to his God-given, time honoured faith,' he wrote in a typical statement after his accession to the Supreme Court in 1896. And at his swearing in ceremony as a judge he proclaimed his trust in the God of Israel. Unlike some holders of communal office, Cohen was never a 'passenger' or a figurehead. His commitment to his communal involvement was total. He worked hard for Jewish causes, was a frequent donor to charities, and worshipped regularly at the Great Synagogue. As the Jewish Herald exulted:'He has always been a Jew, not alone in heart, but in practice.'
David Cohen (1818-1902) established one of colonial Australia's most successful businesses, the huge importing firm in New South Wales which bore his name. One of a large family of brothers, Cohen arrived in the colony from London about 1835 and shortly afterwards established himself in business at Maitland and Sydney with his brother Samuel and Lewis Wolfe Levy. Shortly after the turn of the century the firm established its headquarters at Newcastle.
David Cohen returned to London about 1857 but remained in close contact with his Australian-based company, paying several return visits. Unlike his two business partners, both of whom entered state parliament, he took no part in public affairs. Described as 'a kindly, benevolent and thoroughly Orthodox Jew' he was a generous supporter of Jewish and general charities: 'his heart and purse were ever open to the call of the distressed and needy, to the requirements of public institutions for the relief of the sick and suffering...' The Macquarie Street Synagogue, the Montefiore Home and the Sydney Jewish Aid Society were on the receiving end of his beneficence, and Jewish employees of his company - of whom there were many - were always assured of time off on Sabbaths and festivals, something that few of their counterparts in other Jewish-owned firms could take for granted. Cohen was himself a regular attendant at synagogue in both Sydney and London. In his will he declared that his children and three nieces would forfeit their inheritance if they married a non-Jew or failed to marry in a synagogue, but with his typical generosity he urged his sons not to allow his nieces to want for anything.
Sydney banker and financier George Judah Cohen (1842-1937) was, during the inter war period, the grand old man of New South Wales Jewry, and 'stands in a unique position in the minds of the general community in the financial and business world of Sydney'.' The son of Samuel Cohen, co-founder of David Cohen and Company, he began his business career in 1865 when he took charge of the firm's Maitland office. With the advent of rail transport he established the Newcastle branch but after 1879 he based himself in Sydney. In 1885 he succeeded his father-in-law, Lewis Wolfe Levy, as director of the United Insurance Company, the Australian Gas Light Company and the Commercial Bank of Sydney. As Deputy Chairman and later Chairman of the bank he was the helmsman who steered that institution through the banking crises of the 1890s and 1930s. His prominence as a Jewish communal leader and a banker - rather than his wealth which, while considerable, was not extraordinary - led to him being dubbed 'the Rothschild of Australia". Active in civic affairs and horse racing circles, Cohen was a trustee of the Macquarie Street Synagogue and served several terms as President of the Great Synagogue. He also held office in the New South Wales Board of Jewish Education, the Sydney Hebrew Literary and Debating Society and the local Angle-Jewish Association.
The prominent communal leader Sir Samuel Sydney Cohen (1869-1948) was, like his father George Judah Cohen, also a leading businessman. He began his commercial career at the age of sixteen when he joined the family firm of David Cohen and Company, of which he eventually became Managing Director. He was on the boards of many
For Sir Samuel was proud of his Jewish heritage and was a regular worshipper at synagogue. While based in Newcastle with the family firm he helped his father to establish a congregation and, as we saw in Chapter Four, served as foundation President. Following his return to Sydney in 1915 he joined the board of the Great Synagogue and remained on it for the rest of his life, serving as President for ten terms and Treasurer for three. He was a staunch supporter of the Maccabean Hall, and donated liberally to that and to virtually every Jewish organisation in Sydney. As we saw in Chapter Three, he also assisted in the foundation and became the first President of the Australian Jewish Welfare Society. He was also less reticent than most Jews of his class and background towards the Zionist movement, and advocated Liberal Judaism as an answer to the drift which he witnessed in the community, even among his own family.
The parliamentarians on this list, Maurice Alexander and Lewis Wolfe Levy, have been discussed elsewhere in this chapter. The latter was, of course, associated with the importers David Cohen and Company, and David Cohen himself, while not on this list since he had long since moved to England where he died in 1902, was also a very wealthy man. He left over £210,000. Other listees associated with the firm are his brothers, Samuel and Abraham Cohen, Benjamin Wolfe Levy, Burnett David Cohen, and George Judah Cohen. The firm, which began in Maitland and spread to Newcastle, Sydney and London, was one of the most prominent in colonial Australia. Its clients included some of the biggest graziers in northern New South Wales and at times before its incorporation as a public company the partners - all members of the immediate and extended family - shared a six-figure income.
'The Jews', goes a wry Jewish saying, 'are like other people, only more so.' This being the case, it is not surprising that Australian Jewry produced a couple of bushrangers -three according to people who with no evidence to support them have attributed a Jewish identity to a John Cowan ('Cohen') of Tasmania!. Of the two indisputably Jewish bushrangers one, Joshua Lazarus of South Australia, was promptly caught and hanged for robbing a shepherd at Mosquito Creek in 1853. The other's reign of terror lasted longer. Edward Davies or Davis? (1814-41), destined for notoriety as 'Teddy the Jewboy" was the son of convict Michael John Davies who had preceded him to the colony through his own misdeeds and who had better luck with another son - emancipist John Davies of Tasmania.
The diminutive Edward Davis was transported in 1832 for stealing money from a shopkeeper's till. Once in Sydney, he proved incorrigible, absconding often from assigned servitude, and in 1839 this excellent horseman - he had once been a stable boy and in view of his small stature might have intended to become a jockey - formed a gang of bushrangers in the Hunter Valley district of New South Wales. During the next two years he and his six-man gang, gaudily dressed and flashing jewellery, became the scourge of the Maitland district. Caught at last after a posse chase, Davis and his men were put on trial. He alone had a lawyer, whose services were paid for by the Jews of Sydney, but could not escape the gallows. Jacob Isaacs, minister at the Sydney Synagogue, accompanied Davis at his execution, which was witnessed by the future parliamentarian Morris Asher.'They were all repentant,' Asher recalled decades later, 'and said that it was through bad treatment that they took to the bush.
Davis was an achiever of sorts:'next to Jackey Jackey and perhaps Matthew Brady, more yarns have been told about the Jewboy, this hero of the roads, than any other bushranger in the pre-gold digging era.' His body was saved from a felon's grave and he was lain to rest in a corner of the Sydney Jewish cemetery. It was claimed that he played a Robin Hood role of robbing the rich and protecting the poor - he even acquired a Maid Marian -- and if this was so it perhaps owed something to a misplaced Jewish sense of justice. But he had no scruples about robbing his fellow Jews.
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