History of the Jews in New Zealand

The Jewish community in New Zealand is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews. Other Jewish ethnic divisions are also represented and include Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and Bene Israel. A number of converts to Judaism make up the New Zealand Jewish community, which manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions and the full spectrum of Jewish religious observance. Though they are a small minority, they have had an open presence in the country since the first Jewish immigrants began arriving in 1829. New Zealand has had three Jewish prime ministers or premiers: Julius Vogel (1873–1875), Francis Bell (1925) and John Key (2008–2016).

The first Jewish settlers in New Zealand were Anglo-Jewish traders. Small numbers of Anglo-Jewish immigrants followed, some subsidized by a Jewish charity in London which had a mission of caring for the poor and orphaned young people in the community. These "subsidised" Jewish immigrants were also intended by their benefactors to be devout members of the fledgling Jewish community in Wellington, to which the respected English business leader Abraham Hort, Senior, was sent from London to organise along London religious lines. The difficulties of life in early colonial New Zealand, together with historically high rates of intermarriage, made it hard to maintain strict religious observation in any of the new congregations.

Following news of gold rushes, Jewish immigrants poured in from new lands such as Germany, and then moved on when the boom was over. These immigrants, and others from Eastern Europe, faced an increasingly stringent immigration policy throughout the end of the 19th and mid 20th century, but Jewish New Zealanders and their descendants have continued to contribute in business, medicine, politics, and other areas of New Zealand life, at the highest levels, and the spectrum of Jewish religious observance continues in communities throughout the country.

The New Zealand Jewish Council, established in 1981, acts as a representative body of Jewish communities in New Zealand. It responds to antisemitism in New Zealand and the New Zealand government's foreign policy and attitudes towards the State of Israel and the Middle East. A 2022 survey of antisemitism in New Zealand focused attention on several areas of concern such as Holocaust denial and left-wing antisemitism. In 2020, a new organisation, Alternative Jewish Voices, was formed by Jewish New Zealanders who distinguish Judaism from Zionism and do not equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

Settlement (1829–1849)

Anglo-Jewish traders were among the early immigrants from the 1830s onwards.

Joel Samuel Polack, the best known and most influential of them, arrived in New Zealand in 1831. Polack, an English-born Jew, opened a general store at Kororāreka in the Bay of Islands, where, following the tradition of centuries of European "Port Jews", his respect for the Māori people's culture earned him unique access and insights as a trader.

John Israel Montefiore, also an English-born Jew, left Sydney, Australia for New Zealand in October 1831. He became a merchant in Tauranga and Kororareka, and later, Auckland, where he featured prominently in civic affairs.

Returning briefly to England in 1837, Polack wrote two popular books about his 1831–37 travels in New Zealand. In addition to being entertaining travel guides to new tastes (hearts of palm, for example), sights and sounds (Māori tattoos, exotic birds), etc., his books were a rallying cry for commercial development, specifically for flax production which he believed was possible on a lucrative scale.

In 1838, in testimony to a House of Lords inquiry into the state of the islands of New Zealand, Polack warned that unorganised European settlement would destroy Māori culture, and advocated planned colonisation. With the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840, the way was cleared for colonisation and the first legitimate immigrants. The British government and the speculative New Zealand Company, among whose financial backers was the wealthy Anglo-Jewish Goldsmid family anticipated (wrongly, as it turned out, at least in the next few decades) that land would increase in value, and encouraged a flood of subsidised mostly English and Scottish emigrants.

Abraham Hort, Jr, related by family and business ties to the Mocatta & Goldsmid bank, arrived in Wellington on the barque Oriental on 31 January 1840 accompanied by two brothers he employed as cabinet makers, Solomon and Benjamin Levy. These were the first recognisably Jewish names in this early wave of post-Treaty settlement.

Hort's business and civic leadership was quickly recognised in the new colony. Within months of his arrival he was elected one of the two constables for Wellington's fledgling police force. Hort was a promoter of early Wellington civic affairs, Jewish and non-Jewish.

David Nathan was an important Auckland businessman and benefactor, who is perhaps best known for establishing the firm L.D. Nathan and Company. He left Sydney for the Bay of Islands on the Achilles on 21 February 1840.

Nathaniel William Levin was another early immigrant, who became a notable merchant in Wellington and a politician. He arrived in Wellington on 30 May 1841 on the Arachne.

Economic and religious factors in early Anglo-Jewish emigration

Hort's father, Abraham Hort Senior saw New Zealand as a possible haven for impoverished English Jews and a potential refuge for oppressed Jews of eastern Europe and elsewhere. The Jews' Hospital (Neveh zedak), which was largely funded by the Goldsmid family, sponsored two Jewish women to emigrate in 1841 on the barque Birman: Elizabeth Levy, (sister of the Levy brothers), and Esther Solomon, who was being sent to marry one of the brothers.

Bills allowing Jews more civil rights in England had been introduced and repeatedly voted down, and Jews in the 19th century continued to be portrayed with racist stereotypes. Among the promises of emigration for Jews was that the lack of manpower would level the ethnic playing field

Early Jewish ceremonies

The first Jewish ceremony in New Zealand was the marriage of businessman David Nathan to Rosetta Aarons, the widow of Captain Michael Aarons, on 31 October 1841. Their daughter, Sarah Nathan, born 10 January 1843, was the first known Jewish birth in New Zealand. The second ceremony, the marriage of Esther Solomon and Benjamin Levy was on 1 June 1842 in Wellington, according to the ketubah contract in Hebrew, witnessed by Alfred Hort (another of Abraham Hort Senior's sons) and another early Jewish emigrant Nathaniel William Levin. Levin, for whom the town of Levin was later named, soon married Hort Senior's daughter, Jessy, further connecting the small group of early Wellington Jews.

In early 1843, Abraham Hort, Sr. arrived in Wellington, where he organised and promoted the Jewish community, with the approval of London's Chief Rabbi. Hort brought with him David Isaacs, also an alumnus of the Jews' Hospital. Isaacs served as Mohel (to perform circumcisions), shochet (kosher butcher) and chazan (Cantor/lay leader for services). The first religious service was performed soon after, on 7 January 1843. A few months later, the new community celebrated the birth of Benjamin's and Esther's first child, Henry Emanuel Levy, which Hort documented in a series of letters sent to The Jewish Chronicle (the premier London Jewish newspaper of the time).

Acting on behalf of the community, Hort requested a plot of land for a synagogue and a plot of land for Jewish burials, offering himself as one of the trustees. The request was originally denied, the government responding that it didn't have the authority.

The death of the Levy's second son, aged 8 months in 1845 was, Hort wrote to the Chronicle, "our first Jewish corpse" and the "first Jewish burial" in the new Jewish cemetery. Throughout the early 1840s, Hort's letters to the London Jewish Chronicle and the Voice of Jacob reveal the difficulty of maintaining a Jewish community that could barely muster a minyan, owing to the demands of making a living, and complaining how few Jewish shopkeepers respected the sabbath by closing their doors, let alone celebrating Jewish holidays properly. A Māori massacre, the threat of forced militia service for all, and the extreme difficulty of making a living, took their toll on the small community. Isolation rapidly gave way to intermarriage. Solomon Levy quickly married Jane Harvey, the 14-year-old Christian shipmate of Esther Solomon and Elizabeth Levy. Although only one of his eight surviving children chose Judaism as a religion, Levy helped found the first Wellington synagogue and taught Hebrew to Jewish children for many years.