AJHS is pleased to share digitised records from the Hobart Synagogue, made possible with special thanks to the Hobart Hebrew Congregation. It’s a valuable resource for researching Jewish history in Australia, and the highlight is meeting minutes which run from 1841 to 1958. That’s over a century of decisions, debates and milestones, capturing how a community built and sustained Jewish life in what was, at the time, a fairly remote part of the world.
Every page of those minutes has been scanned from the original, and — thanks to volunteers who took on the project during the 2020 lockdown — transcribed too, making them more accessible for searching and reading.
The minutes are just part of the collection. It also includes:
- Correspondence between congregation members and the wider Jewish world
- Reports documenting the congregation’s growth and challenges over time
- Birth records, useful for family history researchers
- Catalogued links to newspaper articles in Trove, capturing how the community was reported on through the decades
Hobart Synagogue’s records are an important resource — whether you’re tracing your own family tree, researching Jewish life in Tasmania, or interested in how a small community maintained its traditions through several decades.
Link to view the Hobart Synagogue records
Please note: the original physical records remain in the care of the Tasmanian Archives, and you can find their catalogue listing here.
Thank you to the Hobart Hebrew Congregation for allowing AJHS to share these digitised records.
Sample Records:
