From political stoushes and glamourous balls, to heroic welfare efforts and a bold new theatre company, the pages of the Kadimah’s Annual Reports reveal a treasure trove of fascinating stories and human drama over the past 110 years. Newly digitised and now freely available, the Kadimah Annual Reports uncover the social, cultural and political history of a flourishing migrant community. They reflect the evolution of the Kadimah from a Jewish library with the lofty aim of “doing great work for the progress of Judaism … and setting a good example to other Jewish communities of the Commonwealth” (AR 1912) to taking active roles in pre- and post-war Jewish settlement.
On Thursday October 7, 2021, we were joined by historian Dr Margaret Taft as she launched our new digital archive and explored how we can utilise more than a century of Annual Reports to paint a bigger picture of a particular time and place and the people who inhabited that space. In a talk followed by Q&A, Dr Taft discussed how our invaluable records can help open the door to a past world and offer forensic insight into an evolving community.
Dr Margaret Taft is a research associate at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. Her work has focused on the reconstruction of Jewish immigrant life in pre- and post-war 20th Century Australia, with a particular interest in Yiddish speakers from Eastern Europe whose personal agency, leadership and cultural identity transformed what had been a predominately Anglo Jewish community.