politician merchant
philanthropist
"VAN STAVEREN WON THE REGARD AND THE AFFECTION OF ALL CLASSES AND ALL CREEDS. IT WAS HIS PRIDE THAT HE ALWAYS WORKED ON THE PRINCIPLE THAT ANY OF GOD'S CHILDREN, IT DID NOT MATTER WHAT THEIR CREED, WERE BROTHERS AND SISTERS TO HIM."
© New Zealand Jewish Archives, 2021. All rights reserved.
With grateful acknowledgement of the New Zealand Electronic Text Collection, Te Puhikotuhi o Aotearoa, housed at the library of the Victoria University of Wellington, here is The History of the Jews in New Zealand—unexpurgated, chapter by chapter (at this time, without annotation), with an audio produced by nzjewisharchives.org, to be rolled out over the initial half of 2021.
Published in 1958 by A.H. & A.W. Reed—a once legendary imprint that was fiercely devoted to New Zealand non-fiction and prose; producing, in its heyday over the 1950s and 1960s, one hundred titles a year—The History of the Jews in New Zealand is a meticulous, absorbing, and occasionally fascinating volume. While several other landmark books on Aotearoa New Zealand Jewry have since been published, Jews in New Zealand remains the first, and, thus far, the only thoroughgoing study of its kind.
The History of the Jews in New Zealand ’s author of was, in fact, Australian. A one-time student at Yeshivah Etz Chaim in London, Lazarus Morris Goldman had immigrated to Melbourne in 1929: taking up, at age 21, the position of headmaster of St. Kilda Hebrew School. Three years later he had transferred to the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation to become assistant minister. He married Sarah Cohen the same year; the couple would have two children, David Goldman and Nina Krauss.