Lanchidi, P. A Kabbalistic Lithograph in Australia: Rabbi A.B. Davis’s Lectures on the Origin of the Rites and Worship of the Hebrews. Australian Journal of Jewish Studies XXXIV (2021): 188-223 188 A Kabbalistic Lithograph in Australia: Rabbi A. B. Davis’s Lectures on the Origin of the Rites and Worship of the Hebrews Peter Lanchidi Abstract Alexander Barnard Davis, the esteemed leader of the Sydney Jewish community between 1862 and 1913, gave a series of lectures on the origin of the rites and worship of the Hebrews. A fascinating story emerges from the history of these lectures: They were given on a large Kabbalistic lithograph. The paper will trace the circuitous route of the artwork, which will shed light on the hitherto unknown affiliation of Davis with Freemasonry, and will elaborate on the content and the socio-cultural context of the lectures delivered for a multi-denominational audience in Sydney and Melbourne. Keywords Alexander Barnard Davis, Max Wolff, Julius Bien, David Rosenberg, Kabbalah, Freemasonry, Lithography Introduction Alexander Barnard Davis (1828–1913), the renowned religious leader of the Sydney Jewish community for more than four decades was a sought-after orator. Of the many lectures he delivered on various aspects of Judaism, those on the origin of the rites and worship of the Hebrews, at first, would not stand out as something unusual and noteworthy and with a story attached to them that sets them apart from all his other lectures. However, this is exactly the case and this paper is to present the history of these lectures of Davis— delivered between 1863 and 1894 in Sydney and Melbourne—which in fact were addressing a large (960 × 605 mm) Kabbalistic lithograph that started its life in Paris in 1841, embarked on a journey to London and then to the United States, before reaching Jamaica where Davis acquired a copy of it just before moving to Australia in the beginning of the 1860s. Interestingly, the artwork had a Masonic career as well, which played a key role in the story how Davis got acquainted with the print. In what follows, first I will provide a short overview of the Kabbalistic lithograph together with its Masonic reading, and its history in France, England, and the United States until it arrived at Jamaica. Then, I will discuss Davis’s early career in London and Kingston, including his involvement in Freemasonry and his encounter with the lithograph. In the rest of the paper, we will turn our attention to the lectures Davis delivered on the artwork in Australia and their multifaceted embeddedness in the social and historical contexts of Jewish history in Sydney in the second half of the nineteenth century.