Brisbane's noble 1886 Synagogue/shule

The first Jews in Brisbane were convicts in Moreton Bay penal colony in 1824 - home to repeat offenders who moved from larger NSW convict colonies where c1% of Moreton Bay convicts were Jewish. When Brisbane’s penal colony closed, a free settlement opened in 1842 with no ex-convicts. Instead some families came north from Sydney, seeking new prospects with Qld’s 1859 separation from NSW.

Byzantine minarets & circular stained-glass window 

Beautiful white building, the twin towers soared above the nearby buildings in 1906. 

Brisbane Synagogue in State Library’s collection 

In 1859 there were just enough Jewish men to form a 10-man minyan for worship but by early 1865, services were so popular that private homes were needed. More settlers came and the community needed a proper synagogue/shule. Most of the new Jewish residents settled around North Quay, meeting in each other’s homes on Sabbaths and holy days.

Ads Brisbane Courier, Mar 1865 said: All members of the Jewish community are requested to attend a meeting at Mr B Benjamin’s Queen St to form a Congregation. A committee was created, to find a fitting site and to recruit members. For 10 years the new group used a leased rooms in Queen St business buildings each Sabbath. Bulcock’s Building Queen St even has a historical wall plaque.

Congregation leaders approached the colony’s Surveyor General to secure land but unlike many Christian neighbours, Jews lacked the infrastructure & land holdings of Anglican and Catholic churches; Jews needed to raise building funds. But young Qld colony’s economy was unstable in the 1860s, closely tied to UK banking investments and agriculture. From mid-1866, a Depression caused financial disaster for many members who returned to Sydney bankrupt; the building fund ended. The other Jews used in rented rooms, buying ritual objects and helping fellow Jews who’d suffered in the Depression. However worship in a rented hall was uncertain eg women needing to sit upstairs.

Men's seating downstairs, women upstairs

 
Rev Jonas Myers moved to Brisbane in late 1865, as President, Treasurer, teacher and kosher butcher. A George St cottage in 1867 served as a synagogue and minister’s home, plus he travelled far up north in the Qld colony to serve their needs. But members who lived in central city liked Adelaide St while members settled in a commercial district Fortitude Valley didn’t. A long weekly journey by horse-cart was too long, so Rev Myers sold Adelaide St. Another man, business man Samuel Davis, built a small shule hall in the grounds of his big North Quay home in 1870, now Mater Misericordiae Hospital. But the Committee needed a permanent site.

In the 1860-70s many churches went up in Brisbane as part of the civilising role of the new colony’s architecture. Mean-while Jewish members renovated the Masonic Hall in 1876 and stayed until the new synagogue opened. Most early gentlemen’s social clubs excluded Jews from membership; only freemasonry’s universal outlook gave the chance for Jews to socialise widely. These men from Brisbane rose in the Freemasons’ ranks, incl President Adolphus Hertzberg.

To find a architect, some men offered design proposals. But the Building Committee’s decisions led to conflicts. The official Qld Government heritage register for the shule listed British Arthur Morry, engineer-architect-parliamentarian as designer in 1884.

Alas financial struggles continued when the Shule Building Committee asked for ambitious plans. Their minutes showed plans for a schoolroom, board rooms and upper Ladies’ Gallery, plus seating for 600 people within a budget of £3,000. Morry assured the committee that he could deliver their financial requests, but by Jan 1885 when the tenders were returned, the cost blew out. Using an image of the sh-ule’s planned design to raise subscriptions, they advertised in Jewish Chronicle newspaper in London and in the British Empire. The congregation was eventually able to raise £6,450 in private donations from local and overseas Jewish donors, incl from London’s Rothschild and Mocatta banking families. In July 1885 the Building Committee led by Rabbi AP Phillips laid the foundation stone to commence building, in a grand public ceremony reported in local papers. The Brisbane Courier newspaper discussed R’ Phillips speech about the importance of a fixed shule to the Jewish community, esp for the lonely immigrants.

In July 1886 the shule was finally consecrated in Margaret St. In the history of Qld Jewry, there was no more brilliant function than the historic opening of the new synagogue. It was full to capacity with congregants and public dignitaries, including the colony’s Chief Justice, Attorney General, Mayor and members of the Qld Legislative Assembly.

Raised platform & reading table holding Torah scroll while facing the ark.

Surrounded by prayer books for congregants to read in their seats

Holy Ark, the most sacred part of a synagogue,

resting place for Torah scrolls

 

Brisbane was an ornate & exotic marker of Jewish presence. The structure’s elegant design was referred to in reports as Byzantine style, like the public architecture across Europe deriving from C13th–14th Islamic design elements eg Spanish Alhambra. See a pair of minaret-style turrets out front, octagonal columns & horseshoe-shaped buttresses supporting the Ladies’ Gallery. The exterior had a Romanesque style ornate gable & circular tracery, while the interior had a Gothic cathedral style. The members belonged both as Jews and British Subjects in the colony.

As the community grew, school rooms were added in 1906; in 1920s a newly-built hall with a retractable roof was used for Sukkot harvest festivals. Then as time passed, a large new group of Russian Jews, culturally distinct from the older Anglo-German Jews, arrived in the early C20th. They had different identities, speaking Russian and Yiddish, and not feeling comfortable in Margaret St Synagogue. So they created South Brisbane Hebrew Congregation, their own timber shule in Woolloongabba, 1915.

 

When German Nazism rose in 1930s, some cultured artistic & religious Jewish refugees fled to Brisbane. Their experiences had a profound effect on the community, esp when Brisbane became the epicentre of WW2’s S.W Pacific campaign. Hundreds of American Jewish servicemen flooded into Qld and sought the comfort of Jewish religious practice in shule.

Stained glass

In 1955 a grand 2-storey Memorial Hall opened for social events and learning. In 1986 new and elegant stained-glass windows were based on Torah stories; and a Star of David behind the Rabbi. The shule remains a testament to the early pioneers who dedicated themselves to Brisbane’s community. Thanks to Morris Ochert for History of the Brisbane Hebrew Congregation, 1984