FOUNDATION STONE CEREMONY AT THE
BETH RIVKAH LADIES' COLLEGE SADIE ELLINSON
SECONDARY SCHOOL,
MELBOURNE. 12 MAY 1968
Speech by the Prime Minister, Mr. John Gorton
Mr. President, Parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen:
It is for me the second occasion in quite a short time that
I have had the pleasure and the honour of speaking to Australians who
are of Jewish descent or of the Jewish faith. Not long ago, I had a
similar opportunity in the Town Hall in Sydney, and there I said, as I
will now repeat, because your Headmistress mentioned something
concerning debts that any debts that are owed by people of the Jewish
faith to Australia, are reciprocated by debts from Australians to people
of the Jewish faith who in the First and in the Second World War, and
indeed in the present troubles which beset our nation, are taking their
full place as Australians as they should, and as they are, and Madam
Headmistress, the books are completely balanced, if indeed there is in
these things to be talk of balances.
But I am here to congratulate you on opening here today
not opening on continuing the growth here today of your independent
schools. There was a time when it was a common occurrence for me to
appear at the opening of independent schools, particularly if they had
anything to do with science blocks, but this has recently been interrupted
and it is a pleasure to come back again to have the opportunity to see the
growth taking place here in the centre of this community.
I do not need to expand upon my own beliefs concerning
the value of independent schools, and indeed in this congregation, in this
gathering, there is no need for me to do so because there is nobody who
needs to be converted. If it were not true that you all believe that it was
proper and right for those who wished to do so to graft on to the education
that is given by a State the particular beliefs and particular teachings and
particular spiritual inheritances which you wish your children to have,
then you would not have done what you have done and made this school
possible. But, of course, in schools such as this throughout the
countryside, it is necessary not only that there should be great academic
attainments, and I think you will agree when you look at the figures, that
this school has shown great academic attainments, academic attainment
in those subjects required by a State education system but also that it
should, as I know it does, inculcate those beliefs, those spiritual
sustenances about which I shall have a little more to say later on. It
teaches not only academic subjects, not only the requirements of
spiritual beliefs, but what is in fact the great strength and joy in Australia,
that whether people are of Scottish descent and the Presbyterian faith or
of Irish descent and the Roman Catholic faith, or of English descent and
adhere to the Church of England, or of Jewish descent and adhere to the
Jewish faith, yet they are all Australians in the one community, working
together for the one ultimate objective, that all of them may maintain
their faith without fear, that all of them may inculcate that which I believe
is one of the major things this faculty in this school seeks to inculcate, and
that is a faith in the individual human spirit, the individual man, a belief
that that is the cornerstone alone on which a great and enduring
civilisation can be built. / 2
2.
But what a doubly special occasion it must be for you, for
here just a short time ago, there was the celebration of the twentieth
anniversary of the re-founding, the re-establishment not the
establishment of the State of Israel. just as those others of whom I
have previously spoken can look back as Australians to the lands from
which they came, and can remember the deeds their forefathers did, and
can remember the struggles in those countries, so can you now look back
to such a land. And looking back, remember for the teaching of the young,
so that the future may be maintained in freedom, of what happened over
the 2, 000 years since Israel ceased to be a State in its own right; look
back upon a nation which being conquered kept faith, kept bright its
spiritual ideals and because of that had its holy places defiled and its
temples torn down and its peoples dispersed to the four corners of the
earth, and there being dispersed, still keeping faith, still keeping a
dream of a country which would one day be re-established, still keeping
t~ ie beliefs which to them were beliefs for which one lived or which, if
one revoked, one died either physically or spirfitually, still keepipg those
beliefs, were forced into separate communities in the countries in which
they lived, were persecuted, were massacred, had all that could be done
to destroy them done to them, at least in many of those countries in which,
homeless themselves, they sought to make their homes.
All through this period of time was kept not only this belief
in the inherent importance of the individual man, not only this belief in
the overriding importance of the spiritual existence of a man as against
his material existence, but also the seed of a dream of some day which
would come when just as others can look back to lands from which their
forefathers came as still a country, so could the people of Israel, as
they hoped, look back to the land from which they came, their forefathers
came. And this happened, and this came to pass. This has been protected,
and even though today Israel is still under the shadow of attack, under
the shadow of threat. Ihere must come a time when the whole of that
area of the Middle East will agree: " Here is a place in which there are
Arab States, in whiczh there is the State of Israel. By working together
economically, by co-operating with each other, by recognising the
inalienable existence of each other, surely we can do more for the people
living there than by living in a state of tension and of febrile argument
which now pervades the region. And I think that day will come.
The first step towards it must be a willingness for those
from the Arab States and those from the State of Israel to sit down and
talk over the problem which now exists and come to a reasonable
agreement on how this matter can be settled. It has been of some surprise
to me that for a long time I have heard, when international disputes have
broken out: " Sit down and talk about a solution of matters in Korea. Sit
down and talk about the solution of the fighting in Malaya. Sit down and
talk about the solution of the fighting in Vietnam". I haven't heard enough
about: " Sit down and talk about the threat which is now posed to the State
of Israel", and yet it is essential that this should be done, and while my
Government cannot do much towards it, it will urge it, it will support
it, it will do all it can to see it comes about.
Then you, and the children that you will educate here,
in the school you are building will have a country not one, I hope, that
will attuact first fealty, but a country in which you can have pride, will
have a country from which you can say: " Our traditions sprang", a
country in which you can say: " Our faith is centred, and you look
there, as Australians, just as 1, perhaps, as an Australian would look
to England from which my parents came. / 3
This, I think, will be helped by schools such as this. When
we walked in, we heard a choir singing " Open to us the Gates of
Righteousness". I don't think I quite understood the words. They were
translated to me, but this is what I am told they were singing. And it is
for schools such as this a major task to open to children the " Gates of
Righteousness" and to show them that the " Gates of Righteousness", as
all gates, need to be guarded without hatred of those who seek to break
them down. This is all I wish to say now. I think it was one of your
great writers who said something like this: " A miracle does not prove
that which is impossible. A miracle merely confirms that something in
fact was possible". There are many things we now think impossible.
There are many things we think it may require a miracle to change, but
it won't require a miracle, it will just require a belief that in fact things
we think are impossible are possible, and they will then be achieved,
just as this school has been achieved, as other schools will be achieved,
and as I hope and trust and pray, in the Middle East, a safe, progressive
area will be created in which the State of Israel will play its full and
proper part.