Early History of the Wellington Jewish Community, (1840 - 1900)

Abstract

The Wellington Jewish Community has grown from small beginnings to appreciable proportions and has taken a very prominent part in all phases of Wellington's civic, commercial and cultural life. Yet it is a smaller community than might have been expected. The tendency in New New Zealand for Jews to drift away from Jewish communities and Judaism, noticeable in the nineteenth century, has continued in the twentieth century. By marriage outside the Jewish faith, by deliberate aloofness, by careless indifference, and by conversion rarely, the numbers of the Wellington Jewish Community have been restricted since its foundation in 1843. The middle of the nineteenth century saw in England the removal by Parliament of all remaining political, civil and religious disabilities on Jews. There were no such disabilities imposed in New Zealand, and Jews took their rightful place among their fellow residents from the beginning. This study attempts to show the founding of the Wellington Jewish Community and to examine its growth and development in the nineteenth century.