The decade that was

TEN years ago, the eyes of the world turned towards Australia. TV screens across the globe broadcast images of the magnificent fireworks display over Sydney Harbour, heralding a new millennium.

Save for the seers of doom who prophesied Armageddon and the soon-to-be dispelled fears surrounding the Y2K bug -– which we were told would cripple entire economies -– a sense of unbounded optimism filled the air.

The birth of a brave new world, it seemed, had already begun in the closing years of the 20th century -– the collapse of communism in the eastern bloc, the shift to centrist governments in the West, and even in the Middle East, a sense that in his final few months as president, Bill Clinton might forge a lasting settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

And yet, our hopes for the millennium were short-lived, shattered by the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. That event would shape the years that followed. Despite the affectionate name by which the decade would be known -– the noughties -– this would be a decade defined by terror.

In the wake of the al-Qaeda strike on the United States, more attacks followed, in Madrid, in London and in Bali, to name just three.

And the West responded, waging war in Afghanistan and then Iraq. Today, our troops are still committed on those two fronts. The war on terror, unimaginable 10 years ago, continues.

For the Australian-Jewish community, it has been a transformative decade. Terrorism cast its shadow over us in 2001, when 15-year-old Malki Roth, a Melbourne girl who had made aliyah with her family, was murdered in a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem during the Second Intifada.

Around the same time, the infamous United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa -– commandeered by countries among the world’s worst human-rights violators -– condemned Israel.

Together with Malki’s slaying, Durban seemed to portend the events of 9/11 a few weeks later, when the world felt the impact of Islamist fanaticism.

Even then, some Australians remained sceptical that global terrorism had anything to do with us -– until October 2002, and the Bali massacre.

The long fight to protect the memories of the six million victims of the Holocaust from the libels of revisionists -– and to ensure their fate and the lessons from it will be remembered by generations who will live without survivors -– yielded a landmark 2002 judgement from the Federal Court.

Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben’s material was ruled beyond the pale and he was ordered to remove it from his website. He persistently refused, and was briefly jailed this year. Now released, he vows to continue his calumnies.

Internal dissension racked the community when the Sydney Peace Foundation awarded its 2003 peace prize to Palestinian activist Dr Hanan Ashrawi. How we responded as a community resulted in some intense navel gazing.

We closely followed the dispute between Australian expat and communal giant Isi Leibler and the World Jewish Congress (WJC) regarding the organisation’s alleged financial misdealings, and Australia pulled out of the WJC as a consequence.

Many agonised over the fate of Sydney judge Marcus Einfeld, a distinguished human-rights champion, jailed for perjury and perverting justice over a speeding ticket.

The saga of Rabbi Yossi Engel –- the former rabbi of the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation, who, along with his wife, has been charged with dishonestly dealing with documents over a government funding application for his Jewish school -– will continue to unfold next year.

We saw the findings of a landmark population survey that revealed a wealth of statistics and trends about where we stand as a Jewish community at the end of the decade. The Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation’s Jewish Population Study profiled a community with a strong sense of identity, but grappling with the integration of newcomers from the former Soviet Union, Israel and South Africa.

We experienced a growth of anti-Semitism, and Menachem Vorchheimer’s celebrated legal fight was a landmark.

During the past 10 years, we found ourselves running out of burial space. The Melbourne Chevra Kadisha opened a new Jewish cemetery at Lyndhurst on the metropolitan fringe.

Long-term problems that began in previous decades continue to bedevil us. Do we have too many Jewish schools and should these be more cost-effectively resourced?

Hopefully, in the next decade, Melbourne’s Jewish community will adopt the streamlined Jewish Communal Appeal model that has benefited Sydney for so long.

We look forward to 2010 and the “teens” decade with confidence. At least there will be no Y2K scare on January 1.