Judah Waten (1911-1985) was born in Odessa Russia/now Ukraine, oldest child of Solomon Waten and Nechama Press. The family first migrated to Palestine and then to Australia, arriving in 1914 in Perth.
In 1925 the Watens moved to the vibrant Jewish community in Carlton where my mother, Judah’s first cousin on the Press side, lived. Judah attended University High, where the school magazine described him as our red, roaring, radical revolutionary. He joined the Australian Communist Party-CPA while still studying.
In 1927 Waten was a student teacher but was fired, so he made speeches at Yarra Bank and at factory meetings. Travelling to New Zealand in 1929, he became editor of NZ Communist Party’s journal, Red Worker.
By 1931 Waten left for Europe with Bertha Laidler, daughter of socialist bookshop manager Percy Laidler. In Paris Waten published articles in avant-garde magazines, and in London he was co-editor of Unemployed Special newspaper. Note Waten was not a Depression Communist; his interest in radical politics preceded the 1930s crises that drew others. Nonetheless he was arrested for speaking at a London rally and served 3 months in Wormwood Scrubs Prison.
Waten returned to Australia in June 1933 and resumed both political work and bohemian lifestyle. He was a regular at the Swanston Family Hotel, a meeting place for young artists, writers and radicals. His friend and fellow author Alan Marshall, even more famous than Waten, also wrote about the unemployed and battlers. In 1935-6 he travelled with revolutionary artist Noel Counihan from Melbourne northwards to Brisbane, living off Counihan’s portraits of local identities.
Judah Waten (left), Russian guest writer (centre), Alan Marshall (right),
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Alien Son (1952)![]()
Distant Land (1964)![]()
Time of Conflict (1961)
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This case was shocking. The resulting novel, The Unbending (1954), was published by the union-centred Australasian Book Society/ABS, covering Jewish migrant stories, with a political story of WW1 conscription debates and industrial disputes. The book was praised by the major critics, but elsewhere the novel’s politics produced outraged critiques.
Just when many intellectuals were leaving the CPA after Soviet intervention in Hungary, Waten rejoined and began writing regularly in the communist press on cultural matters. While on good terms with mainstream literary figures eg Vance and Nettie Palmer, he conflicted with others over the Soviet Union.
In 1958 Waten joined Manning Clark on a Fellowship of Australian Writers tour of the Soviet Union. He criticised Clark’s subsequent book Meeting Soviet Man(1960) for being too critical of the Soviet Union, but they remained close friends.
Waten returned to the theme of Jewish immigration with Distant Land (1964). Season of Youth (1966) was a portrait of the young artist, while So Far No Further (1971) focused on second-generation migrant children of Jewish and Italian families. Time of Conflict (1961) told political tales. Most problem for Waten was his denial of Russian anti-Semitism.
In 1965 Waten visited his birthplace, inspiring his book From Odessa to Odessa (1969), an auto-biographical travel book. Subsequent books included a photographic history The Depression Years (1971); children’s book Bottle-O! (1973); Classic Australian Short Stories (1974) edited with his close friend Stephen Murray-Smith; short stories, Love and Rebellion (1978); and lastly Scenes of Revolutionary Life (1982).
Murray-Smith had married communist fellow-student in a civil ceremony, Nita Bluthal. Nita’s family from Russia/now Ukraine arrived in Princes Hill pre-war, the same Melbourne suburb and school as my mother! Both sets of parents disapproved of the match so the newlyweds escaped to Europe, to see the new democracies of eastern Europe.
In 1966 Waten became a reviewer-critic for the Melbourne Age and in 1970 for the Sydney Morning Herald. He was awarded an Australia Council writer’s fellowship (1975) and later the Patrick White award, and served (1973-4) on the Literature Board of the Australia Council. His novels published in English were translated into 10+ languages.
When Judah died in 1985, Manning Clark and Geoffrey Blainey spoke at his memorial service at the Victorian Arts Centre. See David Carter (ed), Judah Waten: Fiction, Memoirs, Criticism (UQP 1998).
at a writers' gathering in Australia.
Uni Melbourne
Back in Melbourne Waten met leftwing schoolteacher Hyrell Ross. Judah and Hyrell were expelled from the CPA in 1942, for promoting a government of national unity to defeat Fascism. And from 1942-5 he worked in two Commonwealth Departments! Despite family disapproval, he married Hyrell in 1945 in a civil ceremony.
He had earlier met the painter Yosl Bergner and the Yiddish writer Pinchas Goldhar, whose works he translated and published through Dolphin Publications (1945-4), a firm he shared with artist Vic O’Connor. They co-edited Twenty Great Australian Stories (1946).
After WW2 Waten joined the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism & Anti-Semitism. This Council became controversial because of its perceived communist sympathies and was unbelievably disaffiliated by the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies in 1952. Although he remained vocal on Jewish matters and was still writing his Jewish family history, Waten left the Council after he was awarded a Commonwealth Literary Fund/CLF grant for 1952.
Goldhar encouraged him to write stories based on his own experience as an immigrant, published as Alien Son (1952), the ?first Australian novel from a non-Anglo migrant. Because Alien Son was a set text in many Matriculation English classes then, cousin Judah came to my school to address the students. But he was the heaviest, tallest man in Melbourne; and scared me. [My mother said he was the biggest baby ever born in Russia - 7.25 ks!]
Unforgettably re-created in Waten’s story Mother (1950), mum’s aunt Nechama had a profound influence on Judah. Family was central. In 1951, Waten was awarded a CLF grant for a novel about the integration of a Jewish migrant family, but the award provoked infamous attacks in federal parliament in Aug 1952. The anti-communists charged that the Commonwealth Literary Fund was being used to fund communist writers. Prime Minister Menzies defended the CLF but instructed that all future fundees should be investigated by Security.
Back in Melbourne Waten met leftwing schoolteacher Hyrell Ross. Judah and Hyrell were expelled from the CPA in 1942, for promoting a government of national unity to defeat Fascism. And from 1942-5 he worked in two Commonwealth Departments! Despite family disapproval, he married Hyrell in 1945 in a civil ceremony.
He had earlier met the painter Yosl Bergner and the Yiddish writer Pinchas Goldhar, whose works he translated and published through Dolphin Publications (1945-4), a firm he shared with artist Vic O’Connor. They co-edited Twenty Great Australian Stories (1946).
After WW2 Waten joined the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism & Anti-Semitism. This Council became controversial because of its perceived communist sympathies and was unbelievably disaffiliated by the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies in 1952. Although he remained vocal on Jewish matters and was still writing his Jewish family history, Waten left the Council after he was awarded a Commonwealth Literary Fund/CLF grant for 1952.
Goldhar encouraged him to write stories based on his own experience as an immigrant, published as Alien Son (1952), the ?first Australian novel from a non-Anglo migrant. Because Alien Son was a set text in many Matriculation English classes then, cousin Judah came to my school to address the students. But he was the heaviest, tallest man in Melbourne; and scared me. [My mother said he was the biggest baby ever born in Russia - 7.25 ks!]
Unforgettably re-created in Waten’s story Mother (1950), mum’s aunt Nechama had a profound influence on Judah. Family was central. In 1951, Waten was awarded a CLF grant for a novel about the integration of a Jewish migrant family, but the award provoked infamous attacks in federal parliament in Aug 1952. The anti-communists charged that the Commonwealth Literary Fund was being used to fund communist writers. Prime Minister Menzies defended the CLF but instructed that all future fundees should be investigated by Security.
So Far No Further (1971)
This case was shocking. The resulting novel, The Unbending (1954), was published by the union-centred Australasian Book Society/ABS, covering Jewish migrant stories, with a political story of WW1 conscription debates and industrial disputes. The book was praised by the major critics, but elsewhere the novel’s politics produced outraged critiques.
Just when many intellectuals were leaving the CPA after Soviet intervention in Hungary, Waten rejoined and began writing regularly in the communist press on cultural matters. While on good terms with mainstream literary figures eg Vance and Nettie Palmer, he conflicted with others over the Soviet Union.
In 1958 Waten joined Manning Clark on a Fellowship of Australian Writers tour of the Soviet Union. He criticised Clark’s subsequent book Meeting Soviet Man(1960) for being too critical of the Soviet Union, but they remained close friends.
Waten returned to the theme of Jewish immigration with Distant Land (1964). Season of Youth (1966) was a portrait of the young artist, while So Far No Further (1971) focused on second-generation migrant children of Jewish and Italian families. Time of Conflict (1961) told political tales. Most problem for Waten was his denial of Russian anti-Semitism.
In 1965 Waten visited his birthplace, inspiring his book From Odessa to Odessa (1969), an auto-biographical travel book. Subsequent books included a photographic history The Depression Years (1971); children’s book Bottle-O! (1973); Classic Australian Short Stories (1974) edited with his close friend Stephen Murray-Smith; short stories, Love and Rebellion (1978); and lastly Scenes of Revolutionary Life (1982).
Murray-Smith had married communist fellow-student in a civil ceremony, Nita Bluthal. Nita’s family from Russia/now Ukraine arrived in Princes Hill pre-war, the same Melbourne suburb and school as my mother! Both sets of parents disapproved of the match so the newlyweds escaped to Europe, to see the new democracies of eastern Europe.
In 1966 Waten became a reviewer-critic for the Melbourne Age and in 1970 for the Sydney Morning Herald. He was awarded an Australia Council writer’s fellowship (1975) and later the Patrick White award, and served (1973-4) on the Literature Board of the Australia Council. His novels published in English were translated into 10+ languages.
When Judah died in 1985, Manning Clark and Geoffrey Blainey spoke at his memorial service at the Victorian Arts Centre. See David Carter (ed), Judah Waten: Fiction, Memoirs, Criticism (UQP 1998).