Julia Rachel Rapke

Julia Rapke OBE (11 February 1886 – 9 October 1959) was an Australian, Jewish women's rights activist and Justice of the Peace, who held numerous roles in women's organisations regionally, nationally and internationally, including presidency of the Australian chapter of the Women's International Zionist Organization.

Education and family

Julia Rachel Levoi was born on 11 February 1886 in Christchurch in New Zealand; her parents were Ralph and Miriam. She attended Wellington Girls' High School for a time, until the family emigrated to Melbourne, Australia. She married Abraham Rapke on 28 November 1906 at the synagogue in St Kilda, Melbourne. They went on to have two sons and a daughter. One son, Trevor Rapke, went on to become a judge and a Rear Admiral. Abraham died in 1940. Their daughter Betty died in 1954. Active in the suffrage movement, she was convenor of the National Council of Women of Victoria's rights of citizenship committee. In 1936 Rapke was elected President of the Victorian Women Citizens' Movement, and also vice-president of Australian Federation of Women Voters, a role she held until 1957. The League of Women Voters of Victoria was established on 8 August 1945, and Rapke was its first president. It was formed out of a coalition of the Victorian Women Citizens' Movement, the Women for Canberra Movement and the League of Women Electors.

In 1946 she founded a women's model parliament, based on the format of the Parliamentary Debaters Society, that she had participated in at a Constitutional Club. The same year she led a women's anti-nuclear protest.

Later life and death In 1957 Rapke was awarded an OBE for "raising the profile of women". She died in Melbourne on 9 October 1959. She was buried in Springvale Botanical Cemetery. Part of the Ida Wynn Children's Centre at Mount Carmel in Haifa is named in Rapke's honour.