From Australia’s Jewish Past: Abraham Isaac Rabinovitch
Abraham Isaac Rabinovitch – businessman, property investor, and well-respected pioneer of the Sydney Modern Orthodox Jewish Community
Abraham Rabbinovitch
Abraham was born on 5 November 1889 at Tiraspol, near Odessa, Russia, the third of five children of Yacob Zvi Rabinovitch, a teacher of Hebrew, and his wife Lea. He attended school until the age of thirteen and began working as a crockery salesman. Within two years, together with the help of a business partner, he was buying fruit at Odessa and selling it as far away as Warsaw. He married his first cousin Chaya (Hake) in 1910 and served for three years in the Imperial Russian Army.
Issac left Russia in 1914 for Australia, briefly stopping in Harbin, China, to visit his brother Zalic. He arrived on 2 February 1915 and joined his brother Nuchem in Brisbane. The following year, his wife Hake arrived in Brisbane and worked as a dressmaker.
The couple moved and settled in Sydney in 1921 and were naturalised in November of that year. Abraham opened a successful army disposal store in Pitt Street close to Central Railway Station. He had an excellent eye for property and was soon buying and developing real estate properties in Sydney’s central business district as well as Bondi and Bondi Junction. In 1935, Abraham and Hake moved from Bondi to a large house on Vivian Street Bellevue Hill. At that time, his properties included the Bondi Pacific Hotel which was requisitioned from 1942 to 1946 for accommodation for armed services personnel.
Abraham devoted himself to activities within the Jewish community and was unstinting in his endeavours to assist orthodox institutions. He became honorary treasurer in the 1930s of the Central Synagogue, served on the Chevra Kadisha Board, and supported the Zionist movement. During World War II he befriended Rabbi Hans Elchanan Blumenthal, one of the Dunera internees who arrived in Sydney in 1942. Rabbi Blumenthal was shocked that there was no mikvah, nor a Jewish school and that the Central Synagogue had a mixed choir. With financial support, Abraham organised for a mikvah to be built in Glenayr Avenue Bondi which was opened in April 1942. Abraham then bought the property next door where the North Bondi Hebrew School and Kindergarten was built and was opened in September of that year. Rabbi Blumenthal became its principal with Abraham becoming the school’s treasurer and then served as its president from 1943 to 1964.
Rabbi Blumenthal sought to recruit students from the broader Jewish community, which was largely non-practising Orthodox, but he failed to find support from the school’s lay leadership. This caused conflict with Abraham over the leadership of the school and kindergarten. This led to the breakup of the partnership and within a year, Rabbi Blumenthal resigned as principal. In his letter of resignation, he stated, “I feel that I have exhausted the scope of my abilities in Sydney being unable to develop things further under the prevailing conditions.” Even though he offered to teach for a further term, until a replacement principal was found, his resignation was accepted immediately by the board. When Rabinovitch was elected board president of the new school, he envisaged a Jewish school in Sydney to rival any in the wider community. It would be a school where every child, regardless of academic aptitude or financial standing, would have access to both an excellent general and comprehensive Jewish education.
In June 1952, Abraham bought, for the sum of £30,500, the home of Mark Foy, founder of the Mark Foys department store in Liverpool Street. The home was on Victoria Road Bellevue Hill and bordered on to Vivian Street. This was to be the first stage of Moriah War Memorial College. Classrooms were built on the Vivian Street side and completed in 1960 with the Foy’s home being demolished in 1963 when a double-storey block of classrooms was built. The building was named in honour of Abraham in 1965.
Amongst other organisations to be established by Abraham was the Adath Yisroel Congregation in 1942 and he sponsored Rabbi Shmuel Bernath from Budapest to come to Sydney as its minister in 1948. After a falling out with the Adath, he founded the Sydney Talmudical College, under Rabbi Gedaliah Herc in 1955 and bought a property for it in Flood Street Bondi which would be the site of the Harry Seidler-designed Yeshiva College. In February 1964 Abraham endowed a second kindergarten for Moriah College, this being the Mount Zion campus in Bondi Junction.
Abraham was not one to be idle and, in addition to helping many newcomers to settle in Sydney, he contributed to improvements in the supply of kosher meat, as well as to a more committed religious lifestyle. His vision, persistence, and kindness, led to the provision of a range of Jewish institutions in Sydney. Whilst he devoted energy and funding to causes he embraced, there were problems with his leadership in that he was quite dictatorial, appointed his board of directors to the organisations he was involved with, argued with them and pressure was put on those who did not agree with him to resign. Tensions between the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies led to the establishment of a second Jewish Day School – King David – in 1960. The two schools were amalgamated after Abraham passed away. Moriah College continues to grow and, if Abraham had been alive today, the campus would most probably have exceeded even his expectations.
Abraham passed away on 26 July 1964 at his Bellevue Hill home. He was survived by his wife Hake. The couple had no children. A portrait of Abraham, painted by well-known Australian artist Joseph Wolinski, hangs in the Moriah College, Queens Park Campus. Quoted from the Australia Jewish News: ‘’He certainly was an extraordinary man with an extraordinary dream’’.
The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:
Australian Dictionary of Biography – Susanne Rutland; Wikipedia; National Library of Australia – If You Will It, it is No Dream – The Moriah Story 1943 – 2003 – Suzanne Rutland; askART Joseph Wolinski artist; Australian Jewish News – 14 September 2023; Orizmah – Centre for Jewish Day Schools
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