The Great Synagogue, Elizabeth Street: Sydney's Mother Congregation

Walk up Elizabeth Street on the Hyde Park side of town and, squeezed in between the office towers, there's a sandstone front with two domed towers, a great round wheel window and a pair of heavy iron gates. Most Sydneysiders have walked past it a hundred times. That's the Great Synagogue, at 187a Elizabeth Street, and it runs right through the block to Castlereagh Street. It was consecrated in March 1878, and the NSW State Heritage Register calls it the earliest surviving synagogue in NSW still in use. Its own congregation, and the heritage listing, call it the Mother Congregation of Australian Jewry. The story behind it goes all the way back to the First Fleet.

The Elizabeth Street front of the Great Synagogue, facing Hyde Park, in July 2008. Photo: BobMeade, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

Jews on the First Fleet

There were Jews in the colony from the very first day, although nobody agrees exactly how many. Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple, who was senior rabbi at the Great Synagogue for over thirty years, wrote that among the 751 convicts on the First Fleet there were "at least 16 Jews". The synagogue's current website says "around sixteen". Laila Ellmoos, writing for the Dictionary of Sydney, puts it at "at least eight Jewish convicts aboard the First Fleet, and several hundred others on subsequent transports." The difference probably comes down to who you count as Jewish, but I'll leave both figures there.

According to Rabbi Apple, one of those convicts, Joseph Levy, died on 15 April 1788 and was the first Jew buried on Australian soil, though without any Jewish rites. Ellmoos points out that Jews, like Catholics, couldn't really practise their faith until the early 1820s, because everyone was made to attend Church of England services. Apple says it was about thirty years before Joseph Marcus, a German-born convict with a good Hebrew education, managed to gather 30 or so Jews together to pray on a regular basis.

Above a shop in George Street

Things picked up when free settlers started coming out in the late 1820s. Apple writes that one of them, 25-year-old Philip Joseph Cohen, arrived with recommendations from the Chief Rabbi in London and started holding services in his home in George Street. A rival group soon set up its own services. The two carried on separately until 1830, when Rabbi Aaron Levy of London, who'd come all the way out to arrange a religious divorce, made peace between them. A petition to Governor Darling for a proper house of worship had already been knocked back, but by now there were 25 free Jewish settlers, including Joseph Barrow Montefiore.

The congregation was formally set up on 2 November 1831. On 26 September 1832 the Sydney Monitor reported that "the Jews of the colony assembled at the Jews' Synagogue held over Mr Rowell's shop in George Street", which it called "elegantly fitted out". The Dictionary of Sydney identifies Mr Rowell as John Rowell, a chemist and druggist. The rules were strict. Apple quotes the old regulations: any committee member not dressed in a "decent and respectable manner" was fined a guinea, there was to be no talking during services, and the young gentlemen of the families were to "take special care they behave themselves in a manner becoming a place of Divine Worship". The first minister, Rev Michael Rose, arrived on 20 May 1835.

Bridge Street and then York Street

By 1837 there were over 300 adults in the congregation, and Apple says they leased bigger rooms at No 4 Bridge Street for £160 a year. A visitor's description from 1838 talks about a hundred seats, a reading desk, a ladies' gallery with about thirty seats, and an Ark holding a handwritten scroll of the Books of Moses on vellum. The fit-out was done by Barnett Aaron Phillips, a stage carpenter who'd worked at Drury Lane. That scroll, bought from Rabbi Aaron Levy, was the first sacred scroll in Australia. Apple believes the little Ark from Bridge Street, dating from the 1830s, is the one now kept with the synagogue's museum, and if so, he says, it would be one of the earliest pieces of ecclesiastical furniture in Australia.

The congregation wanted a purpose-built synagogue. Apple writes that Governor Bourke offered a grant of land but it was in the wrong spot, and a later site in Kent Street North granted by Governor Gipps would have cost too much to dig out. Bridge Street was given up in 1840 and services moved around rooms over members' shops. In the end the congregation bought land in York Street, near where the Town Hall stands today. James Hume designed the building and the foundation stone went down in 1842, with both Jews and Christians chipping in. It was consecrated on 2 April 1844, and the music was arranged by Isaac Nathan, who's often called the father of Australian music. The State Library of NSW and the synagogue's website both call York Street Australia's first purpose-built synagogue. It sat about 500 people, and its exterior was described as being in the Egyptian style.

An early Sydney synagogue, catalogued on Commons as the York Street Synagogue (consecrated 1844), painted by Frederick Garling. Painting: Frederick Garling jnr (1806–1873), via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The York Street Synagogue in November 1870, a few years before the congregation moved to Elizabeth Street. Photo: John Sharkey, Royal Australian Historical Society, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

The split and the Macquarie Street synagogue

In the late 1850s the congregation split right down the middle. Apple describes it carefully: the minister refused to carry out a particular religious ritual because it wasn't permitted in the circumstances. The State Library of NSW is more specific, saying that in 1859 the argument was over the circumcision of the son of a non-Jewish mother. A number of the wealthier, established members walked out and started the Sydney New Synagogue in a former Baptist chapel in Macquarie Street. Ellmoos describes it as being opposite Parliament House.

A 1975 article in the Australian Jewish Times, digitised on Trove, says the Rev M. R. Cohen was "the main protagonist in the Macquarie Street secession". According to Apple, York Street stayed well attended while Macquarie Street struggled with money troubles and arguments of its own. The State Library says both sides eventually saw there was no point in carrying on separately.

Rev A. B. Davis brings them back together

The man who did the most to heal the split was Alexander Barnard Davis. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says he was born in London on 15 August 1828, orphaned at 12, and had served congregations at Portsmouth and at Kingston, Jamaica, before taking up the ministry at York Street. He arrived in Sydney on 17 August 1862. Apple says the congregation had been after "an Englishman of Education and character", and Davis also had "a very beautiful voice", which mattered when the minister chanted most of the service. He set up a permanent choir of six men and thirteen women. The ADB says he's credited with the first mixed choir in any synagogue in the British Empire, and he was the first to admit girls to religious classes. Interestingly, the ADB notes that Davis never claimed the title "Rabbi", although people gave it to him freely.

By the early 1870s a reunion was on the cards, but there was nowhere to put everyone. Apple says Macquarie Street was too small and York Street couldn't be extended because the neighbour wouldn't sell. The heritage register says the first moves towards a bigger site were made in 1864. In 1871 a builder named John Solomon bought land in Elizabeth Street at auction for £2,000 and held it until the congregation could pay. The State Library adds that the Jewish Synagogue and Schools Act of 1872 let the congregation sell land it had been granted, including a school site on Church Hill. The register says the money came from selling the Kent Street land and later the York and Macquarie Street properties. Bequests from congregation members Simon Lear and M. L. Jonas helped too.

The new synagogue on Elizabeth Street around 1880, from an album that belonged to Edward Hungerford. Australian National Maritime Museum, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Thomas Rowe's design

The architect was Thomas Rowe. The ADB says he was born in Penzance, Cornwall, in 1829, came out with his family in 1848, tried his luck on the goldfields at Sofala, where his partner ran off with their gold, and went on to run one of the biggest practices in NSW. It was said in 1890 that you could walk down Pitt Street and always be opposite one of his buildings. Sydney Hospital in Macquarie Street is his too.

Thomas Rowe (1829–1899), the Cornish-born architect who designed the Great Synagogue. Photographer unknown, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

According to the heritage register, Rowe won a limited competition in 1872 against G. A. Mansfield and Benjamin Backhouse, and he also managed the construction. The Australian Jewish Historical Society, in a piece about the gates, says Rowe won the competition in 1874, so the sources don't quite agree on the year. When the congregation launched its building appeal, it sent out a photograph of a new London synagogue as the model for the Sydney building. The register calls it the "New London Synagogue" and says it was later destroyed by bombing in 1941. The register also says the design is "reputed" to draw on the Princes Road Synagogue in Liverpool and the New West End Synagogue in London, and that the architect W. L. Vernon, then in private practice, is "reputed" to have partly supervised Rowe on the design.

Apple says Rowe called his original plan "Transition French Gothic", and that it had to be scaled back for money reasons, so as ornate as the place is, Rowe had hoped for something even grander. Ellmoos agrees his plans weren't completely carried through.

The foundation stone, 26 January 1875

The State Library of NSW gives the date as 26 January 1875. The foundation stone for the central arches was laid by the Hon. Saul Samuel, then Postmaster-General, who buried a time capsule with it. The heritage register calls Samuel "later to be the first Jewish minister of the Crown in the British Empire". In his speech, reported in The Empire the next day, Samuel told the crowd the building should be "an ornament to the city in which we live". He also told them the money wasn't all there yet: "The cost, it is estimated, will be nearly £20,000 — a sum, I believe, that will be admitted to be very large to be raised by a community not numbering more than 3000 in the whole of New South Wales, and not one-third of that number resident in the city of Sydney." He finished by hoping the new building would unite them "as one family, burying in oblivion any differences of the past."

Saul Samuel, who laid the foundation stone on 26 January 1875, photographed in London in 1883. Photo: John Jabez Edwin Mayall, State Library of NSW, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The same Empire report described the plans in detail: a block 64 feet wide and 140 feet deep, running from street to street; an Elizabeth Street front "Byzantine, freely treated with the introduction of Gothic forms"; two square towers with octagonal turrets and domed tops; a porch under two arches; and "a large wheel window of beautiful design". Inside there was to be a nave with aisles six bays long, columns 27 feet 3 inches high, a clerestory of 36 arched windows and a gallery set apart for the women. The Castlereagh Street end was to hold a school and the beadle's residence, with a playground under the synagogue. The paper said "the synagogue will seat 1000 adults."

The ladies' bazaar

The money still had to be found. In December 1875 the women of the congregation held a huge "fancy fair", which the State Library calls one of the greatest contributions to the building fund. Apple says it ran for six days and nights in what's now Martin Place, with support from outside the community too, including the Governor, Sir Hercules Robinson. It raised £5,000, which he says was nearly a fifth of the total cost.

Consecration, 4 March 1878

The synagogue was consecrated on 4 March 1878. The ADB says Davis consecrated it and became its first minister, and Apple adds that a choir and orchestra under Sydney Moss "contributed most impressively". A 1975 Australian Jewish Times piece notes that the long-serving reader, Rev Aaron Alexander Levi, also took part in the ceremony. The heritage register says the decoration wasn't finished until 1883.

The final cost depends on who you read. Samuel's estimate in 1875 was "nearly £20,000". Apple's figure for the bazaar, £5,000 being "nearly one fifth" of the total, would put the final cost somewhere around £25,000 or a bit more, though he doesn't give an exact total. I couldn't find a firm final figure in a source I could check.

The Illustrated Sydney News of 1878, quoted by Apple, didn't hold back. It called it "a place of worship which, for lavish adornment and superb finish, has no equal in the city of Sydney", built of "freestone from the Pyrmont quarries", with a wheel window "which strikes every eye". Inside, it said, was "a sense of ornate embellishment approaching the profuse."

The Great Synagogue, Elizabeth Street, around 1900. Glass plate negative from the Tyrrell Photographic Collection. Powerhouse Museum Collection, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

What to look for inside

The heritage register describes the style as Victorian Free Gothic, though at the consecration it was called Byzantine with Gothic touches. Today the synagogue's own site describes Rowe's design as a blend of Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic and Moorish influences. The Elizabeth Street front and towers are Pyrmont stone, and the rest is brick with cast-iron columns, timber floors and a slate roof. Inside, the register says, the moulded plaster, carved timber and stained glass are "embellished with abstract patterns to avoid representation of living forms", which is in keeping with Jewish tradition.

The arched entrance porch on Elizabeth Street. Photo: Jason7825, 2008, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

One of the carved capitals on the porch columns. Photo: PhiliponeLdrew, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The register lists the firms who worked on it, and it's a who's who of the period. Aaron Loveridge, founder of what became Loveridge & Hudson, did the stonework. William Coleman did the carpentry and joinery, Fletcher Brothers the decorative cast iron, Lewis and Steel the plaster, Cornelius and Co of Philadelphia the gas fittings, and Minton Hollins & Co the tiles. P. N. Russell & Co made the cast-iron columns, and Lyon & Cottier did the stained and etched glass. George Proudman, a former master mason with the NSW Public Works Department, is quoted in the register as saying the synagogue has some of the finest stone carving in all of Sydney.

Carved sandstone detail on the front. Photo: Jason7825, 2008, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Apple's guide points out the little things. The gold-leaf stars on the midnight-blue ceiling weren't there at first. The register says they've been repainted to the original design several times since. The old gas taps can still be seen on the light fittings and on the four seven-branched candelabra beside the Ark steps. If you look up at the lamps in front of the ladies' gallery from underneath, you'll see a Star of David pattern. There have never been windows in the long side walls, and Apple suggests the twelve recessed arches on the ground floor and in the gallery may be a nod to the twelve tribes of Israel.

The main sanctuary, looking towards the Ark, with the ladies' gallery on either side. Photo: Wmpearl, 2011, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

On the glass, Apple is honest. He calls the stained-glass windows at the two ends "chaste but nondescript", and says one window with Jewish symbols near the choir gallery may have been the first of a series that was never finished. The wheel window is the showpiece. He says concrete spokes were added in the 1940s to strengthen it, and the register says this was done internally with reinforced concrete. The modern stained-glass windows on the Castlereagh Street side were designed by Louis Kahan of Melbourne.

The great wheel window over the Elizabeth Street entrance. Photo: Jason7825, 2008, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Changes over the years

Originally the seats faced north and south, with an empty space down the middle and the reading platform towards the back, which was the traditional layout. Apple writes that Davis had no pulpit as such and preached from the top of the Ark steps. A brass pulpit went in towards the end of the 1890s, and then the reading platform was moved forward and combined with the pulpit on the Ark steps, which made room for seats in the centre. Here the sources give different dates. Apple says this happened in 1906, but the heritage register puts it in 1911, along with moving the choir gallery and squaring off the western apse, and it names the architects as Kent & Budden.

The bimah, or reading platform, which since the early 1900s has stood on the Ark steps. Photo: Wmpearl, 2011, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

The register lists the other changes as well. The gas lights were converted to electric in the 1910s. In 1957 the basement was deepened and rebuilt as the War Memorial Hall, designed by architect Orwell Phillips. In 1981 the Castlereagh Street end was rebuilt behind the old facade as an Education Centre, designed by Orwell Phillips and David Nathan. Apple says that during this work the old floral stencils were found under the paint on the columns, and the patterns were then used to redecorate the synagogue and the new centre. The Education Centre has five floors and a rooftop sukkah, the harvest booth used at the festival of Sukkot, with a sliding roof.

The Castlereagh Street side, where the old beadle's residence facade fronts the 1980s Education Centre. Photo: Shkuru Afshar, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The gates and the restorations

The big iron gates on Elizabeth Street weren't in Rowe's original plans. The Australian Jewish Historical Society says the board commissioned them a year or so later, that Rowe may have designed the decoration himself, and that Fletcher Bros made them. They were put in soon after the consecration at a cost of over £400. By 2020 they'd rusted badly and damaged the supporting columns. With a Federal Government grant, they were restored in 2021–22 by Scobie McIntosh of Caringbah, with architect George Bensen and heritage consultant Zoltan Kovacs preparing the heritage application.

The front with Fletcher Bros' iron gates, restored in 2021–22. Photo: Sardaka, 2018, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

That's not the first restoration. The register says the stonework was conserved in 1987, when the interiors were also stencilled and sprinklers put in. In 1988 the Bicentennial Council of NSW recommended a significant grant for work on the Elizabeth Street facade. In June 2006 the Federal Environment Minister, Senator Ian Campbell, announced more than $310,000 for work on the interior. The heritage register says that money covered restoring the interior, bringing back natural ventilation, and conserving the gasoliers.

The rabbis

Davis ministered at the Great Synagogue until he retired in 1903. The ADB says he died on 16 December 1913 and was buried at Rookwood. His successor, Rabbi Francis Lyon Cohen, is described by the Dictionary of Sydney as a "musician and army chaplain who was chief minister of Sydney's Great Synagogue for nearly thirty years". He died at Potts Point on 26 April 1934. Apple says that from 1909, when Rev Marcus Einfeld came on, the synagogue has had a professional cantor.

The next stretch was rocky. The ADB entry on Rabbi Leib Aisack Falk, who came from Latvia and was inducted as second reader in September 1922, describes the term of Rabbi E. M. Levy (1935–38) as ending in controversy, with Falk acting as chief minister until a new man arrived. Falk was a passionate Zionist, a bookbinder, a cabinetmaker, a silversmith and an army chaplain, and he was known for his Anzac Day addresses. The heritage register mentions a menorah in the synagogue's collection that Falk made himself.

That new man was Rabbi Dr Israel Porush, born in Jerusalem in 1907, who'd done a doctorate in algebra in Germany before leaving because of the Nazis. The ADB says he was inducted on 6 June 1940 and served for nearly thirty-three years, becoming known as the "uncrowned chief rabbi of Australia". He founded the NSW Council of Christians and Jews in 1943 and oversaw the opening of the War Memorial Centre in 1956. The heritage register dates the basement rebuild to 1957, so the dates don't quite line up. Apple's OzTorah site notes that Wep Pidgeon's portrait of him won the 1961 Archibald Prize. Porush also wrote the synagogue's centenary history, The House of Israel, published in 1977, which the ADB lists among its sources.

Rabbi Raymond Apple himself was senior rabbi from 1972 to 2005, according to the OzTorah site that keeps his writings, and he died in January 2024, aged 88. He wrote that for many years the Great was "the antipodean bastion of Anglo-Jewry". No appointment was made without the Chief Rabbi in London signing off on it, though the formal link later lapsed. J-Wire reported in July 2015 that Rabbi Dr Benjamin Elton had been unanimously appointed Senior Rabbi, starting on 14 July 2015.

Rabbi Dr Raymond Apple, senior rabbi of the Great Synagogue from 1972 to 2005. Photo: Welcire4, 2014, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

The Falk Library, the museum and the historical society

The ADB says Falk built up "a fine library of Anglo-Judaica, Australiana Judaica and Jewish folklore" on limited means, and the Great Synagogue bought it in 1959, naming it the Rabbi L. A. Falk Memorial Library. The synagogue's own library page gives 1957 as the year it opened, so there's another small disagreement. It's a reference library and nothing can be borrowed. It holds old and rare books, some from the early 1500s, including early printed Bibles, 1667 editions of works by John Calvin, a very rare Kabbalah treatise from 1517, and Renaissance-era editions of Josephus.

The heritage register says the library sits in the basement with the A. M. Rosenblum Jewish Museum, which holds the old Arks from Bridge and York Streets. The synagogue also keeps registers of births, marriages and deaths going back to a first entry on 1 November 1826, and family historians still use them. The Australian Jewish Historical Society, founded on 21 August 1938, was started by Falk, Sydney Glass, Hirsch Munz and Percy Marks, and the society says it flourished under Rabbi Porush's stewardship. Its archives are now kept at the Sydney Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst, not at the synagogue.

Harder days

Not every chapter is a happy one. Trove holds a run of reports of threats against the building. On 30 August 1947 the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial reported that police were guarding the synagogue day and night after an anonymous caller said a bomb would go off during a special service for the 4,500 Jewish refugees sent back to Germany after being refused entry to Palestine. Guests at a wedding held there afterwards were searched at the door. There were more phone threats in January 1960 and October 1961. In 1963, swastika stickers reading "Hitler was Right" were found at the entrance. In February 1977, as the synagogue was preparing for its centenary, someone doused the door of the ladies' gallery entrance in petrol and set it alight. The Australian Jewish Times believed it was the first arson attempt on a NSW synagogue. Each time, the services carried on.

Heritage listing

The building was on the Register of the National Estate from 21 March 1978, the year of its centenary. That listing called it the "Mother congregation of Australian Jewry" and praised its "Richness and originality of decoration". It also says the interior seats 1,600 across the ground floor and gallery. That's a lot more than the 1,000 that The Empire and the Dictionary of Sydney give, so take your pick. It went onto the NSW State Heritage Register on 10 September 2004, listing number 01710. The register calls it "the only high Victorian style Synagogue in Australia", one of the most elaborately decorated Victorian buildings in Sydney, and a building that "provides a rich townscape aspect to Hyde Park".

Another early view of the synagogue, around 1900, from the Tyrrell Photographic Collection. Powerhouse Museum Collection, via Wikimedia Commons (no known copyright restrictions).

Ellmoos says its 1,000 seats were enough for about a third of Sydney's Jewish population in 1880, and that it was Sydney's only synagogue until 1913. Since then the community has spread out across the suburbs and built plenty of its own synagogues. But the Great is still there across from Hyde Park, with its towers, the wheel window and Fletcher Bros' gates. If you get the chance to go on a tour, have a look up at the gold stars on the ceiling.