Jeremy Jones was a prominent community leader, interfaith activist, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council director and past president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
In the last 40 years, few did more to define and fight for Australia as a land of tolerance and respect of people of various backgrounds, of deep faith and of none. Prayers and condolences were said in his memory across Australia and the world by rabbis, archbishops, priests, muftis, imams, lamas, other spiritual leaders and politicians in the Australian and NSW parliaments.
Born on October 29, 1958 in Melbourne, though mostly growing up in Sydney, he was one of five, the son of Justin Myles Jones, advertising executive, who modelled his looks and mannerisms on his screen hero, Danny Kaye, and Geraldine, nee Kiverstein, whose love of literature propelled her son’s interest to be curious about why people think the way they do.
After school at Sydney Grammar, he attended a few meetings of the Trotskyist Socialist Youth Alliance, just to find out why others believed what they did. He had a lifelong interest in tracking far left and far right fanatics. This proved handy, as in 2002 he represented the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) in a landmark court case against Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben.
Coming from a family steeped in Jewish culture (both parents were descendants of family from Poland who, via England, had come to Australia; on his father’s side, he was a fifth-generation Australian), he readily participated in Jewish and community affairs.
Read the obituary by Michael Easson in The Sydney Morning Herald.