About The Australian Jewish News

The Australian Jewish News

The Australian Jewish News (the AJN) is the weekly national newspaper of the Australian Jewish community — published weekly in print and online, with editions serving Melbourne and Sydney. Descended from The Hebrew Standard of Australasia, first published on 1 November 1895, it is one of the oldest community newspapers in Australia. Owned by publisher Robert Magid and edited by Gareth Narunsky, it has been a local partner of The Times of Israel since October 2019.

Overview

The Australian Jewish News is the premier national newspaper serving the Jewish community across Australia. Established in 1895, it provides comprehensive coverage of local, national, and international news, along with analysis of Israeli politics and cultural events relevant to the Jewish diaspora in Melbourne, Sydney, and beyond.

The paper's heartland is Melbourne — home to Australia's largest Jewish community, centred on Caulfield, St Kilda East, Balaclava, and Elsternwick — and Sydney's eastern suburbs and North Shore. It is the community's paper of record: the weekly chronicle of the schools, synagogues, communal organisations, and cultural life of Australian Jewry — the 130-year record of the community's growth from the gold-rush congregations to the postwar metropolis.

Melbourne's Jewish community is the AJN's core readership: the postwar migrants and their descendants who built the community's institutions — the synagogues of Caulfield and St Kilda East, Mount Scopus Memorial College, the Jewish Museum of Australia, the communal bodies from the Jewish Community Council of Victoria to the United Israel Appeal. The paper is the thread that connects them: the weekly record of the school fetes and the synagogue anniversaries, the communal debates and the cultural calendar.

History

The AJN is descended from The Hebrew Standard of Australasia, first published on 1 November 1895 in Sydney by founding editor Alfred Harris — the 130-year lineage that makes it one of the oldest community newspapers in the country. In 1953, John Shaiak purchased the newspaper and changed its name to The Australian Jewish Times. In 1987, Richard Pratt bought the Australian Jewish Times and merged it with the Melbourne-based Australian Jewish News. From 1990, the newspaper has been published weekly nationally as The Australian Jewish News — the Sydney and Melbourne lines joined in a single national weekly.

The Melbourne lineage runs deep. Melbourne's Jewish press began with the Jewish Herald — first published in December 1879 as a monthly magazine edited by Rev. Elias Blaubaum of the St Kilda Hebrew Congregation, published fortnightly from June 1880, and weekly from 1935 to 1968 as the Australian Jewish Herald. In 1933 the Herald joined with Australian Leben (Australia's first Yiddish newspaper, founded 1931 by printer David Altshul) and the Jewish Weekly News; the merger was short-lived, and in 1935 the Jewish Weekly News became the Australian Jewish News — the Melbourne paper that Richard Pratt would merge with the Sydney title in 1987.

The Yiddish thread runs through the whole history: David Altshul's Oistralier Leben (1931), acquired by Leslie Rubinstein in 1933; the Yiddish supplements — Di Yiddishe Voch, Die Oistralisheh Yiddisheh Nayess — that served the Yiddish-speaking migrants; the postwar revival of the Yiddish section for the second influx of Yiddish-speaking migrants after 1949. Like the Melbourne Chronicle's companion Yiddish edition, the AJN's Yiddish material eventually succumbed to the dwindling Yiddish-speaking market — but the bilingual history is the story of the migrant community itself.

The newspaper celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1995 and launched an online edition in 2001. In July 2007, Robert Magid became the paper's new publisher. In October 2019, the AJN became the seventh "local partner" of The Times of Israel — only the second local partner outside the United States, after the UK's Jewish News. The newspaper's digital presence is now integrated with The Times of Israel and the other local partners: the AJN's website draws on the Times of Israel's global Jewish newsroom while contributing Australian Jewish journalism to the partnership.

The paper has played a role in backing Abraham Accords relations between Arab countries and Israel, regularly featuring pro-Israel Arab figures such as Emirati influencer Amjad Taha — the AJN as a voice in the diaspora's engagement with the Middle East's changing alignments. Its weekly print edition and website serve a community that also sustains a long history of boutique publications and zines — from the Melbourne Chronicle of the 1980s to the online Galus Australis (2009–2015) — but the AJN remains the community's flagship.

Content

The Australian Jewish News provides comprehensive coverage of the Australian Jewish community. Its journalism spans:

• Community news: the schools, synagogues, communal organisations, and cultural institutions of Melbourne and Sydney Jewry — the weekly record of the community's institutional life, from the school announcements to the synagogue milestones.
• Israel and diaspora: analysis of Israeli politics, the Abraham Accords, and the global Jewish world — integrated with The Times of Israel partnership, the diaspora's window on the Jewish state.
• Opinion: the community's debates — religious, political, and cultural — in the paper's opinion pages, the forum where Australian Jewry argues with itself, in print and online.
• Culture: Jewish arts, literature, food, and the community's cultural calendar — the festivals, the exhibitions, the performances, and the community's creative life, from the classical to the contemporary.
• National coverage: the weekly national edition serving the community across Australia — the Melbourne and Sydney editions and the national readership, the community's paper from coast to coast.

Coverage & Audience

The Australian Jewish News is a weekly newspaper published nationally, serving the Jewish communities of Melbourne, Sydney, and across Australia, in print and online. The weekly rhythm is the community's heartbeat: the paper that arrives with the week's news — the communal calendar, the Israel analysis, the opinion debates — the national Jewish weekly, in print and on screen. Its audience is the Australian Jewish community — the families of Caulfield and the eastern suburbs, the communal organisations, the schools and synagogues — who rely on the paper for the community news, Israeli coverage, and cultural journalism that connects the diaspora. In a community where the weekly paper has been the record since 1895, the AJN is the family album and the debating chamber: the births and the obituaries, the school prizes and the communal controversies, the Israel news and the local council.

Ownership

The Australian Jewish News is owned by publisher Robert Magid (since July 2007) and edited by Gareth Narunsky. Since October 2019 it has been a local partner of The Times of Israel, with its digital presence integrated with the Times of Israel platform — the Australian community paper in the global Jewish newsroom.

Digital Presence

The Australian Jewish News operates online at australianjewishnews.com — its official website, launched in 2001 — now integrated with The Times of Israel and its local partners. The site extends the weekly's reach across Australia and the diaspora, carrying the AJN's community journalism online — the 1895 masthead in the digital age, the community's paper on every screen.

For Australian Jewry, the AJN remains what it has been since 1895: the community's own paper — the weekly record of the schools and synagogues, the debates and celebrations, from the Hebrew Standard of 1895 to the Times of Israel partner of today, still publishing weekly for the community, still the flagship of the Australian Jewish press, week after week, since 1895.