Ted Friedlander
Ted Friedlander
Amongst his many achievements, Ted Friedlander was for over 50 years, the CEO of leading clothing retailer, Hallensteins.
A successful businessman and a respected member of Dunedin's public sector earned him an OBE and a place in New Zealand's Business Hall of Fame. A tireless campaigner and advocate for Dunedin's development as a tourist destination proud of its significant heritage, Ted's contribution to the wider Dunedin community was to support the publicly owned Olveston House, (bequeathed to the City of Dunedin by Dorothy Theomin in 1966), and to direct his significant energies into helping to create the scenic and historically significant Taieri Gorge Railway which runs from Dunedin Railway Station up into the spectacular Tairei Gorge with its one hundred year old tunnels and wrought iron railway bridges.
Freidlander was born in 1922 in Auckland. His father was a farmer and during the depression Ted was sent to Dunedin to live with his grandmother. He remembers these times as ‘a good life’ and recalls living an observant and Kosher Jewish lifestyle. In his early years at school in Dunedin, he recounts having his Bar Mitzvah in 1935 and that ‘being Jewish certainly made him feel in the minority’.
Ted's ongoing contribution to the Dunedin Jewish community from its early days included over 50 years of service as Secretary of the Dunedin Jewish Community. This made him, in both his own and in the eyes of the congregation, ‘the patriarch’ of the small but active Jewish community in the New Zealand's most southern city. In a 2013 interview, Ted discussed the significant changes and challenges that the community had faced over so many years, including the adaptations that the Jewish community had undergone in order to survive and function as an organisational entity with a voice. Ted Friedlander died in January 2018 at the age of 95. He was the last member of the early Jewish Dunedin Community.
Header image: reproduced here with the permission of Ted Friedlander. Photograph by Keren Cook.
This article first appeared on the Jewish Online Museum, our founding website.
©Jewish Lives 2021