"Lone voice – The wars of Isi Leibler"
Author: Suzanne Rutland
Communal leaders who take on establishment bodies and challenge accepted wisdoms are not the norm. Leadership is no route to a quiet life and can all too easily impact on personal relationships. Accommodation comes more easily than confrontation to many who have climbed the greasy pole of politics, and communal politics are no exception. But Isi Leibler is no ordinary leader. His career and record marks him out as an exceptionally resourceful fighter for Jewish rights. He is no less demanding in his insistence for transparency and probity from communal leadership bodies. Leibler's turbulent life is chronicled in this work by Australian Jewish historian Suzanne Rutland. It portrays him as a lone voice at times and he certainly had no shortage of battles, most of which he chose to enter. Drawing on his extensive archive and with material from countless interviews and contemporary sources, Rutland has given us a substantial picture of Leibler's life and 'wars'. At 642 pages it is largely uncritical, yet very readable, but it is not a short read. Rather than be deterred by its length, one can skip the detail. For others, it is the detail that supplies veracity and color.
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Born in 1934 in Antwerp, Leibler's family reached safe haven in Australia just three months before the outbreak of World War II. Australia was something of a Jewish outpost as he grew up, but the establishment of the Jewish State in 1948 while he was in his bar mitzvah year marked him for life. He was brought up within a religious Zionist family and has never wavered from that path. From an early age, he was a communal activist. He saw, far earlier than most, that the significant Jewish community in Soviet Russia was in a desperate plight that demanded international attention. This developed into what the author aptly terms a magnificent obsession. As early as 1959 Leibler began campaigning for Soviet Jews, working with a small international network that included Emanuel Litvinoff and Arieh Handler in London. It cannily identified Leibler as an effective mover and shaker, even though he was still in his 20s. He began a press and lobbying campaign that resulted in Australia becoming the first country to raise Soviet Jewry as a human rights issue in parliament and subsequently at the United Nations. It alarmed the Soviet government so much that its official representatives – including General Secretary Khrushchev himself – felt the need to publish rebuttals. Years were to pass before campaigns like Leibler's were to be emulated to any degree by major Jewish communities such as the in the US and Great Britain. This was no small achievement for Leibler, not least as he was operating from the far smaller and geographically distant community of Australia.
In a sad comment on communal politics (some things never change!) that the prominence of the Soviet Jewry campaign caused deep resentment within the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the equivalent of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which felt its authority to speak for the community had been undermined. However, a far more significant issue of principle arose with none other than the legendary Nahum Goldmann, one of the founders of the World Jewish Congress and its controlling figure from 1948 until 1977. Goldmann was in effect world Jewry's foreign minister (if not president). He is rightly credited with leading the negotiations with West Germany that led to German reparations to Jewish individuals and Israel. On Soviet Jewry Goldmann's policy was of quiet diplomacy behind the scenes. It was the antithesis of Leibler's robust and loud approach. By the mid-1960s Leibler's campaign had made him a player on the international Jewish stage, and a clash with Goldmann was inevitable.
Leibler remained a frontline campaigner for Soviet Jewry throughout the next 20 years, when the campaign formed a major preoccupation for Jewish individuals and communities. It inspired generations of young Jews like me to throw everything they could into active involvement under the motivating banner of "Let My People Go." Risking my degree and the ire of my parents and tutors, I took part in the second World Conference on Soviet Jewry in Brussels in 1976, where Leibler was, to me, an iconic figure. In his business life he was building Jetset Tours into the largest retail travel organization in the southern hemisphere. He was formidably active and influential in political life in Australia. He battled for Israel and against anti-Semitism, and often against communal opponents, all charted in detail in the book. He rose to be president of the Executive Council for Australian Jewry in 1978-1980, again in 1982-1985, for a third term in 1987-1989 and a final term in 1992-1995.
Leibler's role in the campaign for Soviet Jewry was nothing short of titanic. Leibler enjoyed a long friendship with Bob Hawke, Australia's prime minister from 1983 to 1991. Until Hawke turned against Israel, he was a philo-Semite who was utterly committed to the welfare of Soviet Jews. He visited refuseniks in Moscow and swung Australia's international diplomacy behind the campaign for their freedom. Hawke succeeded Malcolm Fraser, who had also championed the cause. As the pre-eminent leader of Australian Jewry the part played by Leibler's advocacy and determination cannot be understated.
Leibler's role in achieving the freedom of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel, and equally to live as Jews in the USSR, was nothing less than titanic. It is impossible to do justice to it in a book review, but reading this work will convey more than a flavor of Leibler's leadership, strength of purpose, and drive during the long years of campaigning at home and abroad. He endured no shortage of battles, but it is not difficult to reach the conclusion that he was a peerless Jewish leader. The battle for Soviet Jews' freedom was not fully won until the early 1990s, but Leibler was able to see the impossible dream that he had harbored since the 1960s come to reality. Perhaps no single individual contributed more to a stunning victory that changed the Jewish world. For this reviewer, it stands as his most exceptional and lasting achievement.
In 1998 Leibler and his wife Naomi made aliyah and Jerusalem has been their home ever since. The disposal of his business interests in Australia allowed time to focus on major preoccupations including life and politics in Israel, Diaspora-Israel relations and combatting assimilation. It also brought him back into active involvement with the World Jewish Congress, the umbrella body for national Jewish communities.
When Leibler wrote articles lambasting the Board of Deputies for what he thought was timidity and misplaced quiet diplomacy, I took issue with him and demonstrated that he had been misinformed. He courteously listened to my responses to his criticisms and was big enough to accept that he did not have all the information needed to make a judgment. Out of our initial tense exchanges, a friendship grew that lasts to this day. The strong leadership he brought to communal and international Jewish life deserves respect and admiration. This book stands as a comprehensive record of the life and battles of a central participant in modern Jewish history.
Lone Voice, The Wars of Isi Leibler, by Suzanne Rutland, is published by Gefen Books.
Jonathan Arkush was president of the Board of Deputies from 2015-2018.
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