1950s
The 1950s was a boom time in Australia.
Over a decade of fundraising and no-interest loans by members and friends enabled the building then opening in 1963 of the Fanny Reading Council House, NCJW War Memorial Centre, at 111 -113 Queen Street, Woollahra, NSW.
At the opening ceremony Dr Fanny said, “We have waited a very long time for Council House. I little thought when I returned from New York in 1926 with the idea of a Council House here, that it would take 37 years to reach its fulfillment. We have been wandering for 40 years in this city, from one place to another. Now that we shall have a home of our own worthy of our aims, I hope its doors will always be open, day and night, to welcome the stranger and those that need us, where our members can carry out our work of service with greater efficiency, and where peace and loving-kindness should reign within its walls."
Our History
1930s and 1940s
They helped establish these people
as Australian citizens, and maintained relations with international migrant agencies including the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), London's Polish Federation of Jews, and the American Joint Distribution Committee (The Joint). In 1930 Council volunteers assisted with the formation of Sydney's Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) and later its Melbourne and Hobart branches. A Hobart Section of the National Council was formed in 1932.
Founder of the National Council of Jewish Women in America, Hannah Greenebaum Solomon, was a role model for Dr Fanny. Greenebaum engaged her members intellectually and also demanded their time and energy for social causes. Henrietta Szold, the founder of the Women’s Zionist Organization of America and Madame Bella Pevsner of the Jewish National Fund USA both strongly influenced Dr Fanny to support the re-establishment of a Jewish state in the ancestral homeland.
Fanny was impressed, she said, “by great women imbued with the ideals of service,” and her intent was for NCJWA to inspire Australian Jewish women to support the Jewish community, the general community, and Israel.
This was a time when Zionism was not universally accepted in the Jewish community, but Dr. Fanny included the Zionist ideal in Council’s aims and was a delegate at the XIV Zionist Congress in Vienna in 1925. Council began fundraising for Jewish nation building in its first year, 1923. It instituted the Rose Mandelbaum Scholarship for a woman student at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and helped build day nurseries, children’s homes, an infant welfare centre in Tel Aviv and a maternity ward in the Rothschild Hadassah University Hospital. The National body coordinated fundraising with the Sections and also ran tours to the land of Israel from the 1920s until 2013. This activity has now been revived with a tour planned for 2025.
Dr Fanny lobbied the British Government before, during, and after World War 2 “that the gates of Palestine be opened for unrestricted Jewish immigration as an urgent necessity for the saving of Jewish lives.” She also lobbied for Jewish refugees to be allowed to settle in Australia.
Council established WW2 Savings Certificate Groups, raised over £300,000 for Commonwealth War Loans and £18,000 for the Australian Comforts Fund. It donated two transport trucks for service overseas and three mobile canteens: in Palestine, London and in Sydney, where members served in it. It equipped 72 beds in Red Cross Convalescent Homes in Sydney and Melbourne, gave £3,100 towards building the Monash Recreation Hut and a Mobile Library for Servicemen in Sydney, and established the British Hospitality Centre for Jewish Servicemen and women.
Council members sewed a quarter of a million garments for Australian servicemen, visited sick soldiers in hospitals and convalescent homes, and ran First Aid and Air Raid classes in every Section. After the war Council's Local Charities Committee raised large sums for local hospitals, T.B. settlements, soldiers’ dependents’ homes, children’s homes, and other local organisations.
Council assisted the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration by contributing thousands of garments, and contributed large sums to Polish and German Jewish refugee associations, Rescue the Children Fund, and the United Jewish Overseas Relief Appeals. NSW Section members arranged canteens, meals, outings, and accommodation for the lately-released Jewish and non-Jewish survivors of concentration camps in Europe and the Far East.
The 'Council of Jewish Women of NSW'
was founded in Sydney in 1923 by Dr Fanny Reading MBE.
Its initial purpose was to bring Jewish women together to do community service and philanthropic work, and the first activities were aimed at alleviating local poverty and unemployment.
By the end of its first year the Sydney-based Council had 377 members, and was growing steadily across the country. In 1927 additional and interstate Sections were formed in Newcastle, Brisbane, Melbourne, Ballarat, Geelong, Perth, Kalgoorlie and South Australia.
In 1925 the Council affiliated with the International Council of Jewish Women, and in 1926 launched its national journal, the Council Bulletin. The first National Conference was held in Sydney in May 1929, and a new name was adopted: the National Council of Jewish Women.
Dr Fanny inspired with her example and her words at that conference: “The best of all impressions to take back from this Conference to your states, your cities, and your homes, is that [the Council ... stands above all things, for the law of Loving-Kindness.” National Council has stood since then for outreach and building bridges.
In the early twentieth century millions of Jewish people sought to escape despotism, institutionalised antisemitism and economic hardship across the Russian Empire. With hundreds of thousands of Jewish boys and men forcibly conscripted into the Czar's army and disappeared or murdered, the majority of those seeking refuge were women and children.
After America, Australia was one of the most sought-after destinations. Poverty stricken, with no education and no means of support, these people found themselves in dire need. Recognising this, Dr Fanny and her Council women assisted young female Jewish immigrants and families as they disembarked from ships.
1920s
1960s and 1970s
Council House and other Council
buildings across Australia became hubs of social service and philanthropy. Through the later 1960s and 70s as feminism and Women's Liberation arrived, they became hubs of women's empowerment, too. Since 1923 Council had been the voice of Jewish women in what was definitively a man's world. Now it encouraged Jewish women to take up leadership roles across the Jewish and wider communities, and this remains a focus.
One of the areas in which Council women took the lead was the lobbying of Australian politicians on the burning international issues of concern to Jewish people. One such issue was the UN's disgraceful 1975 resolution that Zionism was racism. Another was the plight of Soviet Jewish refuseniks. Council continued its work in both these areas until Russian Jews were able to leave after the fall of communism in 1989 and the UN Resolution was rescinded in 1991, many say due in part to the strong pressure from Australia.
PRESIDENTS
Council of Jewish Women of NSW
1923-1929 Dr Fanny Reading MBE
National Council of Jewish Women
1929-1955
Dr Fanny Reading MBE
1955-1967
Vera Leah Cohen MBE
1967-1973
Mina (Miriam) Fink MBE
1973-1979
Sylvia Gelman AM MBE
1979-1985
Ray Ginsburg AM
1985-1991
Malvina Malinek OAM
1991-1997
Lynne Davies AM
1997-2003
Dr Geula Solomon OAM
National Council of Jewish Women of Australia (from 2006)
2003-2007
Robyn Lenn OAM
2007-2011
Rysia Rozen OAM
2011-2015
Di Hirsh OAM
2015-2017
Rysia Rozen OAM
2017-2018
Sylvia Deutsch OAM and
Victoria Nadel OAM
(co-presidents)
2018-2020
Negba Weiss-Dolev
2020-2024
Melinda Jones
2024-
Lynda Ben-Menashe
1980s and 1990s
Through the 1980s and 90s,
NCJWA deepened its focus on the rights of women, including the rights of Jewish women. It established a Status of Women in Judaism and Jewish Law Committee, educating lawyers about the need for a Gett (Jewish divorce) to be received with a secular divorce.
Our Founder
Dr Fanny Reading MBE
Fanny Rubinovich was born in 1884 in Karelizt, Russia, near Minsk, and arrived in Australia at the age of six. Her family settled initially in Ballarat and during WWI, they changed their name to the more Anglicised 'Reading'. Fanny taught Hebrew to private students before entering the University of Melbourne to study music and later medicine.
Graduating as a doctor in 1922 – an almost unheard of achievement for a woman of her time – she moved to Sydney to join her brother’s medical practice. The practice was in the bohemian area of Sydney's Kings Cross, known for its illegal trading of alcohol and brothels. Dr. Fanny cared for sex workers, street children, and victims of domestic violence. “No one wants to know that there is so much heartbreak, suffering and…degradation in the Cross. I must live and work here,” she said. Her commitment to improving the lives of the marginalised led to her being called The Angel of Kings Cross, which is the title of Dr Anne Sarzin's biography of her.
In 1923, inspired by the visit of Zionist emissary Bella Pevsner, she founded the Council of Jewish Women – a Zionist organisation which was also active on a range of women’s issues. “At our first meeting, we promulgated the aims of our organisation: service to our religion, to our people and to the country in which we live.”
In 1925 Dr Reading travelled to the United States, Europe and Palestine, and helped organise a conference for the International Council of Jewish Women. In 1929 she organised a conference in Sydney at which the National Council of Jewish Women was formed. After serving as President of the Council of Jewish Women from 1923, she then served as National President from 1929 to 1955 and Life President from 1955 until her death in 1974.
Before, during, and after WW2 Dr Reading lobbied the Australian government to open the country’s doors to Jewish refugees, especially refugees from Nazi Germany. She also lobbied the British Government “that the gates of Palestine be opened for unrestricted Jewish immigration as an urgent necessity for the saving of Jewish lives” (NCJW Conference Resolution, 1943).
In 1948 she brought a libel suit against Smith’s Weekly which had alleged that Jews had raised money to buy weapons to fight the British in Palestine. She was named as a “Woman of Distinction” by Justice Herron of the NSW Supreme Court for this principled stand.
Through her life Dr Fanny was accorded multiple honours, including the George V Jubilee Medal (1935), the George VI Coronation Medal (1937) and an M.B.E. for her Welfare Services to NSW (1961).
She held numerous Board positions, including Honorary Medical Officer at St. George Hospital and Rachel Forster Hospital, Life Governor of the Benevolent Society, Dalwood Children’s Hospital and Women’s Hospital Crown Street, and Trustee of Wolper Jewish Hospital. A wing of Wolper Jewish Hospital was named after her in 1966 and a lounge there later dedicated to her as well.
In 2010 she was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.
In 1962, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, she moved into Wolper Hospital where she lived until her death in 1974.
For more extensive background on Dr. Fanny Reading MBE, visit The Australian Women’s Register.
2000s
In 2005 a new affiliate was launched
under the patronage of Mrs Jeanne Pratt AC: the Australian Jewish Women in the Arts, a database of women with careers or serious involvement in Music, Literature, Visual or Performing Arts. The group was established with the aims of sharing ideas, collaborative projects and mentoring of emerging talent.
In 2006 the organisation became known as National Council of Jewish Women of Australia. Over the two decades since, the membership model has given way to a model of focused issues-based advocacy and activism by women working full or part time in professional careers.
NCJWA continues to function as a non-profit, voluntary organisation for Jewish women in Australia, which represents their views, needs, interests and concerns to Federal and State governments, politicians, media, other organisations and civil society.
As Jewish women are impacted by local and world affairs, so NCJWA recalibrates itself to address their needs.
