Laws and Rules of the Sydney Synagogue “Beth Yisrael”.

(AUSTRALIA).

D.L. Welch at the Atlas Office

Sydney

1845

Personal Copy of Chief Rabbi Dr. N. M. Adler and Signed by him on front wrapper.

Sydney’s Great Synagogue (known in Hebrew as Beth Yisrael) is a congregation that has a history going back to the 1820’s and remains of active significance to this day. When New South Wales was founded as a penal colony in 1788, among the 751 First Fleet convicts were at least 16 Jews. Later, a petition to the British Colonial Governor Sir Ralph Darling for a Jewish house of worship was refused. However by 1832, with the presence of 25 free Jewish settler families, the formal establishment of a congregation arrived. The congregation was punctillious over rules of respectable synagogue conduct. The order of service and religious principles of the congregation were those laid down by the Chief Rabbi of London. The present Rules is exceptionally rare, OCLC lists just one copy.