Australian Jewish News (Melbourne, Vic. : 1935 - 1999), Friday 27 April 1962, page 4
SAMUEL OCHERT -TYRES AND TALMUD
The death in Jerusalem, on April 2, is announced of Samuel Ochert, formerly of Sydney. He was born near Kiev, Russia, 80 years ago, and studied at Yeshivot in Kiev and Odessa, becoming a learned Talmudist and Hebraist.
He was a Zionist collaborator of the famed Hebrew poet, the late Chaim Nach; man Bialik and, for his Zionist activities, was sent to a prison camo in Siberia, for this was a crime under the Czarist regime.
He escaped, and after a hazardous trek through Manchuria and China, finally reached Sydney, about 1908. Samuel had no trade, no English and no money.
However, he had a capacity for hard work, and turned to an arduous trade which was then In Its infancy — the retreading of tyres — first as a labourer, then as foreman.
He went to Akron, U.S.A., and intensively studied rubber chemistry and the associated engineering processes.
On his return to Sydney, he founded the General Rubber Co., which grew to be one of Australia’s largest retail tyre merchandising and retreading houses.
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| No title (1933, August 12). The Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 - 1947), p. 11 (LAST RACE). Retrieved May 6, 2024, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article180572837 |
Not long after his arrival, he met Rachel Chayes; whose family had arrived from Harbin, China. They were both active in the Yiddish amateur musical and dramatic theatre.
They married, had three sons and a daughter, but Rachel and her daughter both died in the world-wide postwar influenza epidemic, in early 1920. Subsequently Samuel remarried, and two daughters and a son were born of this marriage.
In the years up to his departure from Australia, Samuel Ochert was most active in many fields of Jewish endeavour, religious, educational, philanthropic, social and Zionistic.
He was a foundation officer of the Union of Sydney Zionists (which later became the Zionist Federation); a foundation Committeeman of the Central Synagogue at Bondi Junction; a foundation member of the Maccabean Institute and a founder of a Talmudic study group.
His Talmudic Library was unique for the rarity of many of its volumes. In Talmud Torah work he was for many years Honorary Inspector of all Hebrew Schools functioning under the N.S.W. Jewish Board of Education. He worked tirelessly in the efforts to settle, house and employ the various waves of Immigrants who arrived from Russia, Poland, and later from Nazi Germany.
In 1938, responding to . the inspiration gained from his years with Bialik, he decided to live in Palestine.
SAMUEL OCHERT -TYRES AND TALMUD (1962, April 27). The Australian Jewish News (Melbourne, Vic. : 1935 - 1999), p. 4. Retrieved May 6, 2024, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article262366535