With over five million inhabitants, Melbourne is in terms of population size the second largest of Australia's cities, closely trailing Sydney. It has a Jewish population of around 60,000, about 50 synagogues and 9 day schools. It has produced many leading Australian public figures in cultural and business life. Unlike Sydney – and the surrounding colony of New South Wales – Melbourne and the resulting colony of Victoria, which gained independence from New South Wales in 1852, did not begin as a convict settlement. Melbourne originated in 1835 with the arrival of a group of traders and pastoralists from Tasmania (then called Van Diemen's Land) known as the Port Phillip Association, and Jews were among the original pioneers. Melbourne experienced remarkable growth, particularly in the decade 1881–91, which has become known as the era of ‘Marvellous Melbourne’, and Jews fully participated in the development of the city's commercial and political life.

A Networked Community is based upon its author's University of Melbourne doctoral dissertation. Although not explicitly stated in the book, it builds upon foundations laid by other historians, notably Rabbi L.M. Goldman in his The Jews in Victoria in the Nineteenth Century (1954) and the present reviewer in my The Jews in Victoria, 1835–1985 (1986) and The Jews in Australia, 1788–1945 (1990). As may be observed of the book in general, many readers familiar with the pre-existing scholarship may have a sense of watching the reinvention of the wheel, but the author does brings interesting new material to bear on the topic. The book consists of six chapters. The first, ‘Jewish space and place’, describes Jewish tradition and culture, the socio-economic status of Jews over the centuries in both the Christian and Islamic worlds, their position following the European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century and their increased participation in urban economies following industrialization as well as the removal of restrictions on their rights of residence in certain cities of continental Europe, including venues subsequently regarded as quintessentially Jewish. A brief look at the Readmission of Jews to England in the seventeenth century leads to a discussion of Jews in the economic life of London and other English cities, especially naval ports – though in claiming that the oldest post-Readmission Jewish community outside London was that of Plymouth Dr Silberberg is surely confusing Plymouth with Portsmouth – as well as in the West Indies and Australia. It is now that she mentions many of the Jews of English, German and Caribbean birth who migrated to Melbourne before the Gold Rush of the 1850s that increased the number of Jews in Victoria.

Chapter 2, ‘Jewish identity in a new land’, describes the establishment of organizations and institutions necessary to Jewish communal life in Melbourne, pre-eminently synagogues, and the development of an Australian Jewish outlook and ethos. Previous scholars have passed this way before, some in specialist detail, and Dr Silberberg offers more examples that illuminate what pathfinders have written. Chapter 3, ‘Family identity’, and chapter 4, ‘Migration and connection’, develop the concept of network migration – that is, what is known as ‘chain migration’, which has been discussed in previous works on Australian Jewry but is here set out in detail, incorporating many examples that augment our knowledge of this mode of immigration. (On the other hand, the author may push the concept of network immigration too far, given that many Jewish immigrants, especially during the Gold Rush and the land boom period do not appear to have come as part of an identifiable chain.) Chapter 5, ‘Building a city’, is the book's best. Reflecting the author's background as an architect, it makes a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the built environment of Melbourne, and the part Jews, architects as well as clients, made to the urban landscape, with some of the most prominent nineteenth-century Jewish retail premises and many of the most iconic homes built for successful Jewish merchants remaining standing today. Chapter 6, ‘In public life’, highlights a few of the Melbourne Jews who achieved civic office in nineteenth-century Melbourne and in the parliament of Victoria (there was no national parliament until 1901).