Tasmania

views updated May 23 2018

TASMANIA

TASMANIA , island S. of Australia and Australian state; established as a penal colony in 1803. Jewish names appear in its early history. Solomon, reported to be in safe custody (1819); a land grant to Emanuel Levy (1820); the charter granted for the Bank of Van Diemen's Land with Judah and Joseph Solomon among the shareholders (1823); a letter of recommendation as a settler to A. Aaron (1824). A petition from Bernard Walford was granted for a Jewish burial ground (1828). Ikey Solomons, a famous convict, may have been the model for Fagin in Dickens' Oliver Twist. In 1837 there was a total of 132 Jews, of whom 124 were free. By 1854 the Tasmanian Jewish population was 435, of whom 259 were free. In 1847 it was arranged that all Jews in Hobart and Launceston prisons should have the privilege of attending synagogue and refraining from work on the Sabbath. Pass holders were permitted to be counted in a minyan, but they could not have honors bestowed on them. By 1891 the number of Jews had fallen to 84. Most of the early settlers were illiterate and stated their occupation as farmers. Some, however, rose to prominence. Samuel Benjamin, born in southern Tasmania in 1839, attained the position of an alderman of Hobart City in 1897; John William Israel, born in Launceston in 1850, became auditor-general in 1895 and was elected president of the Civil Servants' Association at its foundation in 1897.

With the arrival of Orthodox newcomers from England, and spurred on by the need to distribute charity, the community consecrated its first synagogue in Hobart on July 4, 1843. In March 1864 the Hebrew Proprietary School was permanently incorporated with the synagogue. The first bet din in the city dates from 1911. The Hobart synagogue is the oldest standing synagogue within the British Commonwealth outside of England. The Tasmanian Hebrew Benevolent Society was formed in 1847. The Hobart synagogue celebrated the 120th anniversary of the laying of its foundation stone in 1963. The community remained small and has been constantly reduced by intermarriage. The Launceston synagogue was consecrated in 1846, with D. Benjamin as its president. It flourished for some years, serving about 100 families, but eventually the Jewish population of the town dwindled, the trustees died, and the religious articles were removed to Hobart. The synagogue was closed down in 1871, but it was reopened in 1939.

Tasmania failed to benefit from the arrival of thousands of refugees in Australia during and after the Nazi period, and its Jewish population steadily declined during the first post-1945 decades. The number of declared Jews in Tasmania, according to successive Australian censuses, totaled 158 in 1954, 136 in 1961, and only 98 in 1971. Since the 1970s, however, the community has grown again, thanks to migration from the mainland and from overseas, and stood at 145 in 1981, 160 in 1986, 167 in 1996, and 180 in 2001. An Orthodox and Reform synagogue currently exist in Hobart, as well as an Orthodox synagogue in Launceston, and a Chabad House in Sandy Bay.

bibliography:

M. Gordon, Jews in Van Diemen's Land (1965); Australian Jewish Historical Society, Journal and Proceedings, 1 pt. 3 (1940), 72; 2 pt. 8 (1947), 413–8; 3 pt. 5 (1951), 209–37; 5 pt. 8 (1964), 428–33. add. bibliography: H.L. Rubinstein, Australia i, index; W.D. Rubinstein, Australia ii, index.

[Shmuel Gorr /

William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)]

Tasmania

views updated Jun 08 2018

Tasmania (formerly Van Dieman's Land), a 26,282-square-mile island 150 miles south of Victoria, and member state of the federal Commonwealth of Australia, has a population (2002) of 470,000. Hobart (population 195,000), established 1803, is the largest city and state capital. Its Aboriginal inhabitants, none of whose descendants now survive as full-blooded Aborigines, numbered c.4,000 at the coming of the British. The island's original inhabitants probably came across Bass Strait during a period of low sea level.

Discovered by Dutch navigator Abel Tasman in 1642 and named Van Dieman's Land it became infamous, following British occupation in 1803, for its ill-treatment of convicts (especially at Hell's Gate and Port Arthur) and the extermination of its Aboriginal population. Its name was changed to Tasmania in 1856 to help rid the island of its evil reputation. Until the 1860s Tasmania was Australia's major wooden shipbuilding centre and an important exporter of food to the mainland. The island lost population and was adversely affected by the discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851.

The island's agricultural settlements and typically small farms are concentrated in its northern and south-eastern lowland areas leaving the mainly rugged, mountainous, and high-rainfall forested western two-thirds largely uninhabited. The latter was for a time after 1880 important for the mining of tin, gold, lead, silver, and copper (Queenstown, Zeehan, and Mount Lyell). Today the island's mountainous centre and west's main economic resources are tourism and the production and export of hydroelectricity to lowland centres of metal-refining and paper and pulp and cement manufacture. Tasmania's natural beauty has encouraged a strong environmental movement. The island is politically notable for its adoption of the Hare-Clark system of proportional representation.

Martyn Webb

Tasmania

views updated Jun 27 2018

Tasmania Island state of Australia, separated from Victoria by the Bass Strait. The chief cities are Hobart, the state capital in the s, and Launceston in the n. Tasmania is mountainous and forested, with a temperate maritime climate. The first European discovery was made by Abel Tasman in 1642, and it was named Van Diemen's Land. In 1777, Captain Cook visited it and claimed it for the British, who established a penal colony. In 1825, Tasmania became a separate colony and it was federated as a state of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Mineral deposits include copper, tin and zinc. The development of hydroelectric power has stimulated the growth of manufacturing. Industries: metallurgy, textiles. Area: 68,332sq km (26,383sq mi). Pop. (2000 est.) 470,100.

http://www.tas.gov.au; http://www.discovertasmania.com.au