In memoriam

ACJC Obituary

Professor Bernard Rechter, 25 December 1924 – 11 February 2024

By Emeritus Professor Andrew Markus

Bernard Rechter was born in 1924 in a small town in Eastern Galicia, then part of Poland, the eldest of three children.  His father, Wolf Rechter, was a renowned cantor, who obtained a position in a Warsaw synagogue in 1930. In 1933 Wolf was offered a position in Melbourne by a visitor from the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation; he accepted to escape the antisemitism, which was rife in Poland, moving from what Bernard later described as La Scala or Covent Garden to a place that he knew nothing about. Wolf travelled first, with his family following the next year. Bernard remembered the frightening train journey through Germany. The family members who stayed behind were all killed in the Holocaust, rounded up on one day for deportation to a death camp.

Although not knowing a word of English when he arrived, Wolf was giving sermons in English within twelve months and was attracting a large following of Jewish residents in Carlton. Bernard received a broad education, of a depth unusual in the Australia of today. He started learning Hebrew and Yiddish at the age of three, he also knew Polish, and he mastered English within months of arrival. Within six months he very proudly won the spelling competition in his class. He continued regularly attending synagogue into his twenties, at one time attending daily, kept kosher, and observed the Sabbath.

He first attended Yarra Park State School, then Hawthorn West Central, and in 1939 entered third form in the selective entry Melbourne High School. An outstanding student, his father arranged for him to be taught by a private tutor.

In the 1930s Melbourne High was the leading state school, with a progressive headmaster and wonderful teachers. Class placement was on the basis of academic achievement and very high demands were placed on those in the top class, of which Bernard was one. Among the high achieving students, some of whom became household names, leaders in their chosen fields, there was a lively intellectual life.

Bernard was interested in every branch of knowledge. In his final years he studied mathematics, sciences, languages, English literature, and British history. He won a scholarship to Melbourne University where he majored in chemistry, alongside physics, applied mathematics, pure mathematics, engineering, French, and German.

After completion of his Bachelor degree in science he obtained a scholarship for further study in the Department of Pharmacology and on completion of his Master’s degree was offered entry into the doctoral program, which was just being established.

Alongside his postgraduate studies, he enrolled for two years in the Department of Semitic Studies, where he took subjects in Hebrew, Arabic, Ethiopic and several other languages, taught by the genius Professor Maurice Goldman, renowned for his ability to speak thirty languages and understand more.

By 1949, however, he had enough of university. In 1943, his first university year, he had joined the Communist Party and was active in left politics. In 1949 he travelled to Hungary to attend the pro-Soviet World Federation of Democratic Youth Festival as a delegate of the Melbourne Jewish Youth Council. He spent six months in London, where he obtained work as a science teacher, then lived for short periods in Paris and Berlin, and then in the oppressive atmosphere of Stalinist Poland, where he got into difficulties by raising the extent of antisemitism in the Soviet bloc in a meeting with a Deputy Minister. He narrowly escaped arrest, afterwards travelling to Paris by himself. Later in life he could ‘still remember the wonderful feeling of freedom ... the sheer oppressive feeling of being in communist Poland ... the sudden release in Paris where there were no constraints.’

He remained a member of the Communist Party, but became increasingly disenchanted, coming to recognise the ‘importance of democracy and democratic right.’ In the context of the Kruschev and Gromyko revelations and the Hungarian uprising, he ended his active involvement by 1956.

On his return to Melbourne in 1950 he unsuccessfully sought employment in the scientific field. Although the best qualified applicant at a time when there were few with graduate qualifications, he failed in applications for positions with the State Health Department, the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation, and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He later learned that ASIO had kept him under surveillance and blocked his applications on security grounds.

With no prospect of obtaining a government position, he worked for five years in the private sector, as chief scientist for the Kiwi Polish Company – which resisted pressure from ASIO to fire him – and subsequently a second company, Warpo.

Deciding to pursue his interest in teaching, in 1954 he obtained a teaching position at Sandringham Technical College where he was given the worst classes, then Essendon Grammar, where he obtained his first teaching qualification. Hearing of a vacancy for a science teacher at the Anglican Caulfield Grammar School, he succeeded in his application and remained from 1957 to 1966, rising to the position of senior science master and being sent by the school to America for three months to study developments in science education. The visa for America was obtained only with considerable difficulty, given his communist background. Although not required by the school, he completed a Diploma of Education, then a Bachelor of Education. His experience in the private school was positive beyond expectations, as he received acknowledgement of his great talent and more independence to shape his teaching.

During this period, he developed a research interest in the measurement of educational performance, which was to lead to a teaching fellowship at Monash University. Within a year, in 1967, he was offered a position by ACER, the Australian Council of Educational Research, where he rose to the position of Chief Research Officer, also lecturing at Melbourne University in Educational Measurement. At a time when few education faculties did research, the ACER ‘was a very interesting place to be. It was really a major centre’, a point of call for overseas researchers visiting Australia.

Wherever he was employed, Bernard was active in organising his colleagues and involved in efforts to improve their rights. Thus, during his undergraduate years he was treasurer and editor of the University Labor Club’s magazine and was involved in the formation of the first Australian Jewish student society. While at Caulfield Grammar, he became federal secretary of the Australian Science Teachers Association. In 1973-74, during his brief stay in the Education Faculty at Monash University, he served on the Faculty Board, was elected the faculty representative on the University Council, and was a member of the Council’s Student Services Committee.

The 1970s were years of major expansion of the tertiary education sector and, freed of the restrictions which had limited his prospects in the McCarthyist Cold War years, Bernard’s talents were in great demand.

In 1974 the Lincoln Institute of Health Sciences was a newly established college. Bernard was asked to apply for the Directorship and with a majority of the institute’s council favouring a person with an educational rather than medical background Bernard was appointed. Over more than a decade he worked to develop the institute and by the mid-1980s had come to the realisation that to overcome the isolation of the students, amalgamation with a university was required. After unsuccessful negotiations with Melbourne and Monash universities, a merger with La Trobe University was approved, where Lincoln was incorporated within the university as the Faculty of Health Sciences, with Bernard appointed to the professorial position of Dean. Now no longer with the responsibility of the directorship, he saw his role as ‘just a cog’ in the vast university bureaucracy, competing for funding and making decisions on allocations, ‘something [he] hated totally.’ His solution was to take a redundancy two years short of retirement age, and a part-time position lecturing in the La Trobe University Education Faculty, which he held for three years until 1991.

During the Lincoln years, Bernard held several concurrent positions. His ongoing interest in educational measurement led to his appointment from 1983 to 1987 as chairman of VISE, the Victorian Institute of Secondary Education, the state body in charge of examinations. He took leave from Lincoln for a year to take up the position of General Manager Policy Coordination of the Ministry of Education, one of the three senior positions in the Education Department overseeing a budget of $3 billion – and the requirement to devote what he recalled as ‘an enormous amount of time on committees.’

Bernard maintained his involvement in the Jewish community, teaching Sunday School classes at Temple Beth Israel and holding regular meetings and discussions with Jewish youth. Invited to join the Jewish service organisation B’nai B’rith, a far step from his left political activities, in 1990 he took on the demanding role of chairman of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League, which monitored racist and antisemitic activities and fed information to journalists and politicians.

While at Lincoln, which was located close to Melbourne University, he found time to complete a Preliminary Master’s degree in the Department of Middle Eastern studies, focusing on Judaeo-Christian thought and advanced Hebrew. His plan to start a Master’s degree in Jewish studies ended when appointed to VISE. He was later to comment that he ‘kept retiring from the age of 60 onwards,’ but found too many new challenges.

In the mid-1980s he joined a committee of academics and potential funders which worked to establish a Jewish studies program within the universities. This initiative led to the establishment of a Monash University advisory committee under the leadership of Professor Louis Waller, former Dean of the Law Faculty, Professor of Law and Law Reform Commissioner. Bernard played a prominent role on the committee, writing the prospectus for the proposed centre. Prior to Professor Waller’s leave of absence in 1993, Bernard was persuaded by Waller and Vice-Chancellor Mal Logan to take on a consultancy and the part-time position of Acting Director of the ambitiously named Australian Centre of Jewish Civilisation, which was being established.

A key selling point of Monash was that it was one of only two universities named in honour of a national figure of the Jewish faith, with a large number of Jewish students.  Commenting on the vision, Bernard observed that ‘what we’re trying to do is to develop a centre which eventually will have a full-time director who will hold a chair in Jewish civilisation and there’ll be postgraduate work to doctoral standard, research, and major studies leading to an Arts degree in Jewish Civilisation.’

Initial external funding was provided by Richard Pratt, who made possible the search for a full-time Director; the teaching of Hebrew was supported by Henry Krongold and the Lipkies family, and the development of a Judaica Collection in the main library was funded by Israel and Laura Kipen, which was housed alongside the Giligich Yiddish Collection, established with the donation of books from the community.

When he accepted the Acting Directorship, Bernard found that the ‘place was an awful mess.’  There was a plan to offer classes beginning in 1994, but there had been no faculty approval of subjects, no listing in the faculty handbook, no publicity. His administrative skills and contacts were to prove vital for the development of the program, which was located in the Department of History, where Bernard knew the three founding professors and which he found to be a congenial and stimulating environment.

Over a period of years, with his appointment upgraded to Director in 1996, Bernard developed a comprehensive program, at a time when the Monash University environment was conducive to new initiatives, with proposals for new subjects evaluated more on their intellectual value than capacity to attract large enrolments.

By the time Bernard stepped down following the appointment of a full-time Director in 2002, within Jewish Studies seven subjects were offered at first year, 11 at second, and 12 at third. These included a major in Hebrew Language and Literature over three years, Yiddish Language, Culture and Literature at first year, together with the introductory subject Discovering Judaism: Belief, Practice and Social Structure. Second and third year subjects included Jewish Law, Jewish Ethics and Philosophy, Reading Gender in Judaism, Literature of Destruction and Redemption, Israel in Late Antiquity, Judaism and Modernity, Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Mysticism, Contemporary Italian Jewish Writers in Translation. Within the Department of History, subjects included The Jewish Middle Ages, Jews, God and History, The Middle East in the Twentieth Century, The Holocaust, History and Film: Nazi Germany and the Jewish Holocaust, Modern Israel, Alexandria-Jerusalem-Rome, and Jewish Encounters with the Modern World. Almost none of these subjects were available before 1990.

The ambitious subject offerings were supported by the university’s History Department, which established a full-time position in Modern Jewish History, with Dr Evan Zuesse the first appointment, and subjects also taught by History academics. Most of the Jewish studies subjects were taught by part-time lecturers, including Paul Forgasz, Dr Rachel Birati, Danielle Charak, Victor New, Dr Shimon Cowen, Dr Lionel Sharpe, and Dr Rodney Goutman. In this period of development, the Australian Jewish Music Archive was established by Professor Margaret Kartomi and Bronia Kornhauser, and an option to take a unit on Jewish Studies teaching methods as part of a Diploma of Education was taught by Dr Manny Kingsley.

Bernard was a gentle soul, unfailingly respectful, with a rare capacity to listen, persuade, and win cooperation. With his broad knowledge across the field of Jewish studies and passion for the pursuit of knowledge, he worked to establish a broad ranging Jewish studies program, with a foundation in the Hebrew and Yiddish languages.

Sources:

Bernard Rechter, recorded interview by Ann Turner, 9, 10 May 1994, Oral History Section, National Library of Australia

Philip Mendes, ‘Vale Bernard Rechter’, Recorder: Official newsletter of the Melbourne Labour History Society, Issue no. 308, March 2024

Philip Mendes, ‘Jewish involvement in the Communist Party of Australia: Bernard Rechter’, Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, 1994, 12(3), 596-598

‘Professor Maurice Goldman, Foundation Professor of Semitic Studies’, University of Melbourne, Faculty of Arts, https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/school-of-historical-and-philosophical-studies/discipline-areas/jewish-culture-and-society/history-and-community

‘Bernard Rechter’, Who’s Who in Australia, 2006

“Brains – it’s all in the family, The Age, 9 October 2006

https://www.theage.com.au/education/brains-its-all-in-the-family-20061009-ge3ad6.html

Monash University 1974 Calendar

https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/2560792/1974-calendar-part-1.pdf

Monash University, 2003 Handbooks, Faculty of Arts, units indexed by code [JWC and HSY codes]

https://www3.monash.edu/pubs/2003handbooks/units/index-byCode-J.html