The Great Synagogue (known in Hebrew as Beth Yisrael – “House of Israel”) is one of Sydney’s most beautiful, fascinating and historic heritage buildings. The Synagogue has stood on its present site for well over a hundred years, since 1878, but the congregation itself has a history going back at least 50 years before that date, to the decade of the 1820s.
When New South Wales was founded as a penal colony in 1788, among the 751 First Fleet convicts were at least 16 Jews. One of them, Joseph Levy, who died on 15 April 1788, was the first Jew to be buried on Australian soil; but his burial was without any Jewish rites, and it took many years for Jewish practice to make itself evident on the Australian scene. Only after three decades did Joseph Marcus, a German-born convict with a good Hebrew education, succeed in gathering 30 or so Jews together for regular worship.
By the end of the 1820s a few free settlers had arrived. They included Philip Joseph Cohen, aged 25, who came with recommendations from the Chief Rabbi in London. He commenced regular services in his home in George Street. Resenting his ambitions, another group started services; the rival congregations continued, but without government recognition, until 1830 when peace was made by Rabbi Aaron Levy of London, who had braved the long voyage to Australia to arrange a religious divorce between a Jewish man in New South Wales and his wife in London. Whilst here, Levy corrected a number of irregularities that had crept into the services.
A petition to Governor Darling for a Jewish house of worship had previously been refused. Now, however, there were 25 free Jewish settlers, and they included influential people from distinguished families such as Joseph Barrow Montefiore: and it was felt the government would take more notice of them than of the emancipists.