History of the Jews in Australia

The history of Jews in Australia traces the history of Australian Jews from the British settlement of Australia commencing in 1788. Though Europeans had visited Australia before 1788, there is no evidence of any Jewish sailors among the crew. The first Jews known to have come to Australia came as convicts transported to Botany Bay in 1788 aboard the First Fleet that established the first European settlement on the continent, on the site of present-day Sydney.^[1]

There were 97,335 Australians who identified themselves as Jewish in the 2011 census,^[2] but the actual number is estimated to be 112,000.^[3] (An answer to the question on the census was optional.) The majority are Ashkenazi Jews, many of them Jewish refugees, including Holocaust survivors^[4] who arrived during and after World War II, and their descendants. Jews make up about 0.5% of the Australian population.^[2]