William Cooper

By Anne Sarzin and Lisa Miranda Sarzin

It is not an uncommon part of the human experience for casual conversations and chance encounters to launch us in a new direction or to begin an extraordinary journey. This is particularly pertinent in the realm of Jewish and Indigenous relationships, in which many exciting initiatives have their genesis in simple but meaningful conversations.

Genuine dialogue between people can produce transformative outcomes and although the journey may be completely unexpected—that is almost the point. We cannot anticipate what can flow from just sitting down together and talking, sharing ideas and knowledge. Simple conversations can break down barriers, as we discover points of commonality and difference, and jettison our reliance on stereotypes. Through exchange comes understanding and, in some cases, this translates into inspiring action and deep connection.

We, Dr Anne Sarzin and Lisa Miranda Sarzin, a mother and daughter team based in Sydney, have written a book called Hand in Hand: Jewish and Indigenous people working together, in which we tell stories that we believe are journeys worth sharing. We record some of the collaborative initiatives between Jewish and Indigenous Australians, stories that emerged from in-depth interviews with 80 people.

As the book was commissioned by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, its focus is on New South Wales in particular; however, there are many stories that may have begun in that State but have had an expansive reach into other parts of the country. Some exceptional stories of national significance are also featured. For example, after the horrors of Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, the remarkable 1938 Melbourne protest against the persecution of the Jews in Germany—spearheaded by the late William Cooper, founder of the Australian Aborigines’ League—is an event that has significant reverberations, undiminished by time. William Cooper’s refusal to be silent in the face of injustice is a pertinent message that speaks even more loudly today.

The book includes excerpts from an unpublished memoir written by the late Emil Witton, who with his wife, Hannah, fled Hitler’s Germany in 1939 for Australia and settled in Sydney, where they were active in the battle for Indigenous rights.  We relate the story of the participation of the current Chief Justice of New South Wales, James Spigelman, in the 1965 Freedom Ride. He was a key organiser of the University of Sydney’s student bus tour, which sought to investigate and expose racism and discrimination against Indigenous people in NSW country towns. Also featured in the book is the work of the late Ron Castan, who led the successful Mabo case in the High Court, which overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius and gave legal recognition to native title.

The title of the book, Hand in Hand, addresses a question posed in 1997 by Professor Mick Dodson, then the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. He said:

“We have extended our hand to other Australians. Those Australians who take our hand are those who dare to dream of an Australia that could be. In true reconciliation, through the remembering, the grieving and the healing, we become as one in the dreaming of this Land. This is about us and our Country, not about petty deliberations of politics. We must join hands and forge our future. Will you take our hand? Will you dare to share our dream?”

Dr Anne Sarzin is a journalist and editor, with a PhD in English Literature. Her daughter, Lisa Miranda, is a lawyer, who is also a doctoral student at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Hand in Hand: Jewish and Indigenous people working together, by Anne Sarzin and Lisa Miranda Sarzin, is published by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. Copies can be ordered from here.

Anne and Lisa will be speaking on the book at the Sydney Jewish Writers’ Festival on Sunday 29 August

David Solomon. Image source: www.InOneHour.net

By Emma Schwarcz

If you take all of Jewish history – all 5000-odd years of it – and whittle it down so that it can fit on four large stretches of butcher paper, and you stick that paper to four walls, and place what is either a genius or a madman (or possibly both) within those four walls and you furnish that man with two permanent markers and a decent hit of caffeine, you will get what most Jewish day-school graduates could only dream of. A kind of madness that takes over a room for an hour, a passion for all that has transpired to this little nation – the covenants, the onslaughts, the exiles and returns, the kings and pharaohs and Caesars, the prophets and warriors and teachers – everything summed up and argued and scribbled in febrile hieroglyphics on this paper, while the students in the centre of the room swivel their chairs to follow his path.

And swivel they did. People were crowded on desks or cross-legged on the floor. The room became humid because of the number of people crammed into David Solomon’s talk, but no one complained. No one even yawned in the hour it took to deconstruct Jewish history – I looked around the room at one point and most people were smiling, in the same way you might unconsciously mimic an actor’s expression while watching TV. Everyone was hooked. If David Solomon chose to establish a cult of some sort, we would all be in trouble.

I have to stop myself here and ask if perhaps I’m exaggerating. Was I just caught up in the moment? Am I even now still caught up in the idea of the talk, of the exuberance and the charisma and the absolute commitment to his subject? But no, the looks on people’s faces said it all – if this is Jewish education, why don’t we study more often?

As I settled in for another of David’s sessions, this time on the Talmud, I wished I could capture the essence of it and simply play it back to my family. When I mentioned I was going to Limmud Oz, they were supportive but a little inquisitive. ‘So why are you going again? It’s for research, right?’ It was for research, but it was also just because. Education for education’s sake. Something to remind me of all the things I’d like to know. My father seemed to be anticipating some sort of announcement, that I was heading to the mikveh or blow-torching the kitchen. We’re not frum, so why would I want to go to this thing? And I think it’s because his contact with Jewish education was with the antithesis of the David Solomons and Mark Bakers and Paul Forgaszes; it came less from a place of enthusiasm and more from one of necessity.

I tried to explain that actually, it was really interesting and dynamic and, yes, even fun. He looked puzzled but accepting, as if I’d just said that I quite like sci-fi conventions and would be speaking in Klingon for the next few days. The only way to convey it to those who’ve experienced the dry, didactic Jewish education, I suppose, is to show them an alternative. And for one weekend in June, at least, we had that alternative in spades.

Happily and unexpectedly, Limmud Oz took me far away from Monash Caulfield and deep into Eastern Europe; on Sunday 13 June, I rode a train with Sholem Aleichem through turn-of-the-century Ukraine with Professor Jeremy Dauber kindly acting as conductor, pointing out sights along the way and explaining the inexplicable and uncanny sights which flashed the window in my mind as Aleichem’s too-short story ‘On Account of a Hat’ flashed by.

I’ve a confession to make: before Limmud I’d never read Sholem Aleichem, and in fact had always dismissed him as irrelevant and clichéd, peddling Fiddler-on-the-Roof kitsch which was all the more unbearable for its humorously and playfully evoking a world whose loss I, though a member of the third generation, feel achingly. It was only chance – a late registration, a total lack of competence with maps – that led me to Professor Dauber’s classroom,, but I’ve come to think it was fate that pulled me there, like some ignorant street-kid from Aleichem’s Poland who stumbles upon a wise man capable of elucidating the most profound and necessary truths.

Professor Dauber’s reading of ‘On Account of a Hat’, a strange, implacable story about mistaken identity and the tragedy of Jewish Europe’s lost self, introduced me to an Aleichem I never knew existed – a dark, wickedly funny, stunningly modern writer whose work seems to me to belong with the revered oeuvres of Bruno Schulz and Franz Kafka, at once evoking a now-vanished world and prophetically, unknowingly foreshadowing the coming annihilation.

In the protagonist, Sholem Shachnah, I saw my own generation prefigured – torn between tradition and modernity. Like Shachnah we are hoping to make it home in time for Passover but losing ourselves along the way, uncomfortable with the possibilities inherent in Australian modernity. Sometimes we too are held back by memories of a world long since disappeared; for us it is not one that rests at train stations but rather in another kind of building standing alongside train-tracks throughout Europe.

In bringing to the fore the horrendous absurdity of Jewish-European civilization, Aleichem, like Kafka, speaks to us from the grave of the absurdity of our own Jewish-Australian civilization. He also reminds us that home, the warm place where we hope to arrive in time for Passover, does not and cannot exist. We might never really get off those trains which in our collective conscience keep chugging on to Auschwitz forever; but even if, like Sholem Shachnah, we manage to find the way to our front doors, the memory of that journey will be retold to us endlessly – by our spouses, the village children, our schools, Limmud Oz – and we will feel shame, longing and jealousy for a death we never did die. We will, like Sholem Shachnah, return endlessly to try, probably unsuccessfully, to wake ourselves from the deep slumber we enjoy by the side of the railway tracks, which causes us always to miss the train onwards.

At least we have Sholem Aleichem to keep us company while we wait.

Daniel Ari Baker is a fourth year LLB/BA student at the University of Melbourne.

by Robyn Bavati

When I was in my teens, the book industry in Australia wasn’t the thriving one it is today. Almost all the books I read were imports from England – even American books rarely made it to Australian shores. I grew up thinking that characters in books must live either in London or the English countryside, unless the book was a fantasy novel, in which case the characters may inhabit a made-up land. If the people that populated these books were religious, they had to be Christian. Black was the colour to be worn at funerals, and weddings were inevitably held in churches.

Harbouring thoughts of becoming a writer, I wondered how I could ever accomplish it, never having set foot inside a church, or seen floral wreaths in a house of mourning.

I had never heard of young adult literature. At the age of thirteen, I’d read D.H. Lawrence one day, Enid Blyton the next. I wasn’t alone in this. As children grew older, they simply read fewer and fewer children’s books, and more and more adult ones. I’m not sure why teenagers were so neglected by the book industry, when they were so badly in need of books addressing their concerns.

Teenagers commonly grapple with issues of identity, individuality, family, loyalty and community. In the process of developing independence, forging a sense of self, and working out their place in the world, they seek self-expression while also craving acceptance and a sense of belonging. As they leave behind the child’s black-and-white concept of morality to embrace an awareness of shades of grey, they question more, accept less. They challenge authority – parents, religion, the prevailing culture and the status quo. And they need books that challenge these things too – or at the very least raise them as issues for discussion.

I was in my very late teens when I first discovered the books of Chaim Potok, and what a revelation that was! Potok had the courage to examine the clash between Jewish values and secular ones, and between moderate values and extremist ones. He portrayed characters torn between irreconcilable cultures, experiencing great inner conflict as a result.

Here, at last, were books with teenage heroes who did not live in England, were Jewish, not Christian, and were possessed of an intellectual curiosity about the world beyond their own sheltered existence. What’s more, these heroes were struggling to reconcile their own identity with their sense of responsibility to family and community. Finally, I’d found characters with whom I could really identify, and on so many levels.

Since the late seventies, the number of books for readers aged 12-18 has been steadily rising and today, young adult literature is thriving. And yet – Holocaust literature aside – I’d not, since my encounter with Potok, come across any young adult books with Jewish protagonists and religious themes.

When it came to writing Dancing in the Dark, I believed I had tapped into an area that would resonate with teens. I wrote the kind of book that I, as a teenager, would have loved to read. And having discovered that today’s youth regard Potok’s style as dated, I was careful to use a simple, accessible style that would be easy to read.

Dancing in the Dark has been described as ‘contemporary Potok for teenage girls.’ It tells the story of Ditty Cohen, a girl from an ultra-orthodox Jewish home who is forbidden to learn ballet, but does so in secret. Set in contemporary Melbourne, it portrays her struggle to discover what she really wants, what she truly believes, and what she must sacrifice to achieve her dreams.

Robyn Bavati is the author of Dancing in the Dark, published by Penguin Australia. She will be appearing in conversation with Michelle Prawer (teacher, librarian and book reviewer) as they discuss fundamentalism and related themes in young adult literature, and in her book in particular. Join them at Limmud Oz, Session 110: Fundamentalism in YA Literature on Sunday 13^th June at 12.00 pm.

Australia by indigenous language group

By Ghil’ad Zuckermann

‘I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.’

- John Adams, 1735–1826, second president of the United States

‘Language is power; let us have ours’, wrote Aboriginal politician Aden Ridgeway perspicaciously on 26 November 2009 in the Sydney Morning Herald. But most Australian revival efforts have been unsuccessful because they were not supported by a sound theoretical understanding of how successful language revival works. Decisions about the appropriate target for language maintenance programmes are too often driven by structural linguistics, where the supposed ideal is inter-generational transmission of the language with all its original structural complexity retained.

But as Israeli (a.k.a. Modern Hebrew) demonstrates, some language components are more revivable than others. Words and verbal conjugations, for example, are easier to reclaim than intonation, discourse, associations and connotations. Australian revivalists and Aboriginal leaders should be encouraged to be realistic rather than puristic, and not to chastise English loanwords and pronunciation, for example, within the emergent language.

But why should attempts to revive Aboriginal languages such as Kaurna (spoken in Adelaide) be supported in the first place? Reversing language shift is of great social benefit. Here are two of the reasons. Firstly – and in my view most importantly – a deontological reason (a principle): Aboriginal tongues deserve to be revived for historical and humanistic justice, inter alia addressing inequality. We hear again and again ‘native title rights’ but where is the ‘native tongue title rights’? Is land more important than language and cultural lens? And in case land and language are one entity, then why only claim land without reclaiming language?

Secondly, a utilitarian reason: Revival of sleeping Aboriginal languages can result in personal, educational and economic empowerment, sense of pride and higher self-esteem of people who have lost their heritage and purpose in life.

Although they too encountered hostility and animosity, the Hebrew revivalists had several advantages compared with Australian revivalists. For example: (1) Documentation: extensive – consider, for example, the Hebrew Bible and the Mishnah. Jews have been exposed to literary Hebrew throughout the generations, e.g. when praying in the synagogue.

(2) Prestige: Hebrew was considered a prestigious language (as opposed to Yiddish, for instance).

(3) Uniqueness: Jews from all over the globe only had Hebrew in common (Aramaic was not as prominent), whereas there are dozens of ‘sleeping’ Aboriginal languages and it would be hard to choose only one unifying tongue, unless one resorts to Aboriginal English. The revival of a single language is much more manageable that that of numerous tongues in varying states of disrepair.

(4) National self-determination: revived Hebrew was aimed to be the language of an envisioned state.

(5) Lack of ownership: Unlike in the case of Aboriginal languages, anybody has the right to speak Hebrew without getting permission from the Jews.

(6) Easy borrowing: Loanwords and foreign words are not considered theft. In fact, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda loved borrowing from Arabic, Aramaic and other Semitic languages.

(7) Lack of place restriction: Hebrew could be and was revived all over the globe – consider Haim Leib Hazan’s coinage mishkafáim ‘glasses’ in 1890 in Grodno.

Applying precious conclusions from Hebrew will closely assist Australian revivalists in being more efficient, urging them not to waste time and resources on Sisyphean efforts to resuscitate linguistic components that are unlikely to be revivable. While the results of such endeavors have considerable value as a research enterprise, one can also consider them in terms of a cost-benefit analysis: Language revitalization contributes to social reconciliation, cultural tourism, capacity building, and improved community health for Indigenous peoples.

The process may be more important here than the actual goal. In the process of language revival, many Aboriginal people will experience a marked increase in well-being and optimism. The benefits to the wider community and to Australian society are immense. Stop, revive, survive!

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, D.Phil. (Oxford), Ph.D. (Cambridge), M.A. (summa cum laude) (Tel Aviv), is Associate Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow in Linguistics at The University of Queensland, Brisbane. His most recent revolutionary book ‘Israeli – A Beautiful Language’ was published by Am Oved (Tel Aviv) and became a bestseller. His website is www.zuckermann.org .

Prof. Zuckermann will lecture in Adelaide on Wednesday 9 June at 19:30 – at Hines Hall, Adelaide Hebrew Congregation, 13 Flemington Street, Glenside SA 5065; as well as at Limmud Oz Melbourne at Monash Caulfield on Sunday 13 June at 13:15 and on Monday 14 June at 12:00.

Church windowsby Marc Chagall in St Stephan. Image Source: travelphoto.net

By Aaron Rosen

When Father Marie-Alain Couturier invited Jacques Lipchitz to contribute a baptismal font for a new Church in Assy, France in 1946, the artist was puzzled.  Perhaps, the sculptor delicately responded, the priest was unaware that he, Lipchitz, was a Jew.

Far from a misunderstanding, however, Lipchitz’s Jewish identity was central to Couturier’s aesthetic and theological wager that the best modern art, regardless of the artist’s religious persuasion, could successfully function in a Christian sacred space.  If the great artist was an inherently “great spiritual being,” and the Roman Catholic Church drew from the same spiritual wellspring, so Couturier’s syllogism went, then the artist could not help expressing realities consonant with Christian truths.

While emphasizing the “sacramental” character of the creative act has enabled churches to draw upon a wider pool of artistic talent, commissioning works from non-Christians may still raise potential problems for church, worshipper, and artist alike.  Even for artists who accept a broadly “spiritual” reading of their work, an ecclesial setting situates their creations within an unavoidably specific religious context. What does it mean, then, for a Jewish artist not only to accept a commission for a church, but to have his or her work immersed in the hum of Christian ritual?  What happens when the particularity of an artist’s religious and cultural identity brushes up against the particularities of the Church?

Lipchitz’s response to Couturier exposes precisely this tension.  Rather than ignoring or eliding this friction, however, Lipchitz utilizes it as inspiration.  On the base of his monumental Notre Dame de Liesse (1949-55), the artist carefully stipulates:  “Jacques Lipchitz, Jew, faithful to the religion of his ancestors, has made this Virgin to foster understanding between men on earth that the life of the spirit may prevail.”  On the one hand, there is a palpable strain in Lipchitz’s language, an anxiety about betraying his heritage made even more acute for the Lithuanian-born sculptor in the aftermath of the Shoah.  On the other hand, Lipchitz’s words reveal an equally sharp sense of obligation to nourish the tenuous “life of the spirit.”  For an artist “faithful to the religion of his ancestors,” the act of sculpting the Virgin Mary testifies powerfully to the ability, and importance, of speaking a common language, however inflected by difference.  While Lipchitz casts Madonna in her traditional role as divine intercessor, his inscription encourages the viewer to perceive in Mary not only an intermediary between the individual and God, but between “men on earth.”  The Virgin’s open arms are a welcome to the believer, but also an incitement to welcome, to open oneself to the Other.

Couturier also approached Marc Chagall, whose stained-glass windows for Assy, completed in 1957, marked his first completed pieces in the medium.  While Chagall went on to complete a host of other works in stained glass, an under-appreciated masterpiece is his work for All Saints’ Church in Tudeley, Kent, the only church to possess a complete set of stained-glass windows by the artist.  The windows were commissioned from Chagall by Lady d’Avigdor Goldsmid and her husband Sir Henry in 1967, in memory of their daughter Sarah who had died four years earlier in a boating accident.  On the east window of the church, Chagall depicts Sarah caught in the churning waters of the ocean, her splayed arms linking her to Christ, who serenely surveys the scene from the cross.  The two halves of the window, the tumult below and the crucifixion above are connected by a ladder, on which a risen Sarah ascends towards Christ.  In Chagall’s richly intertextual imagination, the ladder—an almost constant presence in his crucifixion images—is never simply the implement of the deposition, it is also Jacob’s ladder.  Reversing the familiar flow of Christian typology, in Chagall’s hands the New Testament can predict and anticipate the Old.  Like the angels in Jacob’s dream, Chagall’s ladder can be travelled in either direction.  Neither the promise signalled by the Crucifixion, nor the promise made to Jacob—“I am with you and will keep you wherever you go” (Gen. 28.15)—need eclipse the other.

Beyond these works, we might also look to Jacob Epstein, Mark Rothko, and Louise Nevelson for other prominent modern Jewish artists who created works for Christian spaces.  While these artists negotiate their Jewish identities differently, against distinctive Christian backdrops, the tensions that emerge from such engagements have tended to yield fecund results, both artistically and theologically.  For Christian viewers, such inter-religious commissions can provide an opportunity to see some of their traditions unexpectedly resurrected, re-envisioned by artists free to see them from new angles.  Meanwhile, for Jewish artists, and for Jewish viewers, perhaps it is useful to be reminded that sometimes Jewishness can be found in unlikely places—even in church.

Dr. Aaron Rosen is Albert and Rachel Lehmann Junior Research Fellow in Jewish History and Culture at the University of Oxford.  He is the author of Imagining Jewish Art:  Encounters with the Masters in Chagall, Guston, and Kitaj (Legenda, 2009).  He is currently at work on a second book entitled, The Hospitality of Images:  Modern Art and Interfaith Dialogue.  He will be giving four lectures for Limmud Oz, beginning with “Art in the Grey Zone: Imaging Auschwitz” on Saturday, 12 June at 20:45, and ending with “Jews in Abstraction: Mark Rothko & the Abstract Expressionists” on Monday, June 14 at 15:45.
This is an abbreviated version of an original that first appeared in Common Ground, June 2010; the journal of the Council of Christians and Jews in the UK. www.ccj.org.uk

In the story of Purim, Haman is a clear descendant of Amalek and the ‘bad guy’. The mission conducted by Esther and Mordechai to expose Haman and save the Jews is completely successful and ultimately Haman and his ten sons are hung from the gallows that was intended for the Jews.

As one rabbi has put it, ‘the Book of Esther immortalizes the dream of the Exiled Jew, as it says in verse 9:1 ‘and it shall be turned to the contrary, so that the Jews shall conquer their enemies’.

So the story of Purim in this sense might be understood as a model for Jewish communities to aspire to in the Diaspora when confronted with anti-Semitism and genocidal tyrants. It’s an inspiring story where a brave Jewish girl confronts evil and saves the entire Jewish people without a single life being lost. And then the bad guy gets hung with his sons. As a Jewish revenge fantasy, it pre-dated Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds by a long way.

Many people today draw parallels between the Shoah and the story of Purim. Within this context, Haman and Hitler share not only a philosophy but even somewhat similar names. Furthermore, in the Nuremberg Trials 10 men were hanged, reminiscent of the hanging of Haman’s ten sons.

Even the fact they were all hanged on a simple wooden gallows is surprising, given that most executions in the 20^th century tended to be a somewhat more modern matter of death by firing squad. However, even this detail echoed the executions of Purim.

Not only that, but the parallels become even more apparent when it is considered that in both cases there was an 11^th person scheduled to be hanged (Haman’s daughter and Hermann Goering) who committed suicide right beforehand.

And then, to take things well over into the zone of eerie, it was documented in newspapers around the world that the last words of Julius Streicher, editor of the violently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Sturmer, were ‘Purim Fest 1946’.

But unfortunately, as we all know, there is a major difference between Purim and the Shoah. While Esther’s acts saved all the Jews of Shushan, 6 million Jews perished in the Shoah.

Which is what brings us to the success of movies like Inglourious Basterds.

Does this movie cynically exploit our ‘Dream of the Exiled Jew, where the Jews conquer their enemies’? If we look closely, it seems that the movie deliberately reframes the tragedy of the Shoah as a Purim story.

Shoshana is clearly Esther. Like Queen Esther she masks her Jewish identity, posing as Emmanuelle Mimieux. She is chosen on account of her beauty to be the mistress (or ‘queen’) of Frederick Zoller, a young German military hero who is rather apolitical and neutral – in other words, an Ahashverosh figure.

However, he hangs out with some serious Amalekites – his boss Colonel Landa is known as ‘the Jew Hunter’, counts himself as a key architect of wiping out the Jews, and is bringing Hitler and other top Nazi officials to France for a night to celebrate their victories in WWII and their genocidal plans.

But brave Shoshana devises a plot, disguising herself as a French collaborator and turning the tables on the Nazis. At the last moment, the plot is reversed, and Hitler is trapped in a burning theatre where Shoshana reveals on a giant screen that she is in fact a Jew.

The plot of Inglourious Basterds seems to be so blatantly like the story of Purim that it almost conjures up an image of Tarantino reading the megillah, then growling, ‘Purim, I’ll raise you. How about Purim plus Brad Pitt and some scalpings?’

Maybe it’s that type of insight that makes an acclaimed director… knowing when a story that has been told for generations and generations just isn’t quite enough. Tarantino would seem to think that it’s good, but it needs some updating and some Basterds….

Chag sameach.

Kiss of Judas (fresco in the Scrovegni Chapel) by Giotto di Bondone*

By Almoni

For the past ten years I’ve had an increasing interest with Renaissance Art: Duccio, Giotto, the Lippis, Martini, della Francesca and many others. For all of them – and for earlier wonderful painters like Cimabue – Christian iconography is central to their extraordinary art.

But for most of my life, I could not bear to look at icons, frescoes, crucifixes, diptychs, triptychs or Byzantine mosaics. It was as if, by looking at the traditionally forbidden and hated graven images, the worship of the golden calves and idols of Art, I would be instantly Christianized and become some sort of fervid, rosary-waving, anti-Semitic Catholic: everything our tradition has taught us not to be. In reality, as the frescoes in the Synagogue at Dura-Europos on the Euphrates tell us, old time Jews loved a good narrative painting (the equivalent of a blockbuster movie) as much as anyone else and aberrant tendencies also appear in Jewish Palestinian mosaics.

I knew something was special about Renaissance Christian art when I first saw Giotto in Florence 36 years ago – I still have the postcards next to my bed.  But I couldn’t handle the ‘really’ Christian stuff that featured not just kind St Francis, but Jesus, Mary and angels.  That is at least, not until more recently.  I’ve grown fond of looking at Maestàs (an enthroned Madonna and Child) and spend hours appreciating subtle differences between artistic masters in Florence or Siena, without a shred of fear.  I can spend hours on trains going to museums in Italy to see another masterwork, to come home with aching legs and a mind overwhelmed.

So what is it about my obsession with Renaissance masterworks?  I think that they represent our Western ideal of beauty: everyone now knows Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and his angels—but Botticelli is a secular copout compared with the real religious stuff.  This magical art did not come out of the blue.  It is rooted in an ancient tradition that was hidden for about 1000 years during the period of a more formalized Byzantine Art (which has its own splendours: just go to Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Ravenna, or the island of Burano near Venice).

What makes Renaissance work so wonderful is its astounding and audacious development and technique. Renaissance artists knew how to capture a moment in time and milk the ‘psychological moment’ for all its worth. That moment can be one of serenity, of contemplation, suffering, love, the moment of death, adoration, resurrection, budding youth. You name it, they could paint it or sculpt it, with a few deft strokes on wet plaster, or in infinite detail, with minute brush strokes or moulding of clay, as fresh as day they were created, half a millennia or more ago.  There is something eternal in their art, and that was certainly their intention, as many of these works were painted for public display to a largely illiterate audience that ‘learned’ its religion from pictures, rather than print.

It is not as if each of these works was meant to be a stand alone item either: there are thousands of examples of Madonnas and Child, manufactured for anyone with money to spare for a church or private devotion by artists and their schools and guilds – an early example of mass-reproduction of art, albeit of a very high quality.  Their secular art, of Doges and Duchesses, or beautiful young men and women is equally astounding.  Della Robbia’s terracottas are the most beautiful sculptures of young women as you will ever see.

Consequently, because Renaissance artists hit the magic spot with their art, it is inherently enjoyable.  There are no intellectual games here. Their art is as crisp as the latest large-screen TV, only better because it is real.   This is despite the fact  that the ghetto is usually just down the street and even though the Jews are gone, you can still see where the mezuzot were.

And there are signs of the connection with Judaism.  On the wall of the Palazzo Bocchi in Bologna is a long, beautifully engraved Hebrew inscription. In the Bologna Medieval museum there are Jewish gravestones with inscriptions that have to be from the same stonecutter.  I’ve seen chapels with Hebrew inscriptions coming out of the mouths of saints, bits of Hebrew on other works of art, and the Ten Commandments in Hebrew on the side of a prelates’ huge gold throne in Venice.

So even if you are still a bit scared of the art, you can treat it as a detective story and look for connections.

* Image source: The Art Wolf

Street in Liliw, Philippines. Photo by Sibella Stern.

by Sibella Stern

I beat John Safran to the Filipino punch. I just want everyone to know that. (And I didn’t need a Spielberg-style budget or cast of thousands to get my kicks at the cost of someone else’s religious practice.) Yes. That’s right, John. I’m more hardcore than you, and I’m a Jewish girl.

I arrived in Manila bang smack in the middle of Christmas. In November. You heard correctly. Christmas, in the land colonialism sadly didn’t forget, begins in the “ber” months, and ends in late January. (At which point, all of the kris-kringle-krud merch is replaced by Valentine’s Day cards of dubious quality.) In the spirit of festivity, even evil corporations had rolled out a plethora of Santa inspired attempts to sell their wares.

a)    Coca-cola: It’s Christmas lunch, and dad (divorced) arrives to pick up his daughter. Mum, however, has the perfect idea to re-unite the family at this cheery time. She pours dad a glass of Coca-Cola, he announces “sarap!” (delicious) and sits down at the family table, gazing at mum meaningfully.

b)    Nescafe: A lonely girl sits gazing at a snowy landscape. (In Manila? Where it’s 35 degrees in the shade?) Soon she is joined by her friends, who smile and celebrate their reunion, flashing pearly whites that must have enjoyed American orthodontic work. But she notices another sad soul, alone on his balcony…not for long! In a moment she and her beautiful friends are beside him, sharing his cup of coffee and smiling even harder. Cue the lyrics: “A cup in hand makes me feel so right! Let’s sit, let’s talk…one moment, one nescafe…”

c)    Chow-King: This is my favourite! A young boy forlornly decorates his Christmas tree, while singing a Filipino Christmas carol about his lost love. Dad touches down on an airplane, all the way from Saudi (very topical), but he knows not to come home empty handed… It is a bag of Chow-King delights (a crappy Chinese take-out chain) that will really make the night special!

I’d travelled to the Catholic heart of the South China Sea, to work with street children, and it somehow fell to me (a Moriah graduate, no less) to provide them with the festive spirit of family on Christmas Eve. Being a balabusta in training, I was, of course, at pains to offer the kind of merriment that could only be described as the mongrel child of Succot dinner at the Stern Household and A Very Brady Christmas.

Finally we get to midnight mass. At 10pm.Throughout the mass I coolly pretend to know exactly what’s going on. I even attempt to sing along to the only carol I know, and find myself excelling in the accompanying hand actions. Toward the end, the adults line up for Holy Communion, and the kids take turns pushing me out toward the front. There’s no use explaining that I’m more likely to be accused of desecrating the host than of eating it, or calmly asserting that if I ate the body of Jesus tonight my parents would need immediate cardiac surgery. So I step forward.

As I suck the wafer – and thank the lord I’ve recently watched a movie in which I’ve learnt that etiquette dictates sucking, rather than chewing the host – there passes a moment in which I think, “Why do I feel compelled to fit in with this dominant religion? Why can’t I be comfortable to openly and honestly declare myself a proud member of Christ’s original faith?” (Here I share with you something creepy: some Filipinos, on hearing of my religion, ask me to bless them. Eventually I learn to offer them some bread and invite them to say ha’motzi with me.) And here I share with you that I’m not sure of the answer. Maybe we all feel eager to keep our friends in the dominant religious culture comfortable that we Jews pose no threat. Maybe I just really like having a long weekend at Easter.

In any case, the test is not over. When the parishioners begin handing around a box for donations, I grow very red indeed. I’ve left my room with only my door key, ala a shabbos trip to shule, so I have nothing to put in the box. By the look on Sister Bernadette’s face, I can see I’ve fallen from grace.

A scene from "A Matter of Size"

By ariel

In March this year, I returned from a nine month spell in Israel.  While there, I stayed with some family friends in Ramat Aviv where the lady of the house is an avid Israeli and Jewish film buff.

I remarked to her on a number of occasions that I had not watched more than a couple of recent Israeli films because I don’t like when art comes with a political agenda. Whatever happened to lovely films like Salah Shabati, Kazablan, Eskimo Limon, or the exceptional Ushpizin? Why does every Israeli film have to be made through the prism of the Arab-Israel conflict or the Holocaust? Sure, all films in all cultures reflect the nature of that society, but not to such a political, soul-searching extent. I lamented the lack of Israeli filmmakers who are willing to produce a simple love story or comedy without all the political and emotional baggage.

How pleased I was to discover that the opening night screening at the Festival of Jewish Cinema in Sydney would be of the new Israeli comedy, A Matter of Size (in Hebrew, Sippur Gadol – literally, A Big Story). I immediately purchased tickets to what would promise to be a light hearted comedy about a group of obese Israelis who – led by a shy chef named Herzl – give up on the ideal physical image and embrace their size to form a sumo wrestling club. (For details see here).

Fluent Hebrew speakers will have much more fun with this film as they revel in the uniqueness of modern Israeli slang. When it comes to foreign films, I am usually sceptical of subtitles, often finding that slang and idioms are not translated effectively. However, in this case (as with another film I saw at the Festival), the translators do a near exemplary job in conveying the nuances of the dialogue. Very satisfying for a language stickler like myself.

If you see one film at the festival this year, make it A Matter of Size. For those like me, who are frankly sick of the recent trend of political cinema emerging from Israel, this will be a pleasant night out, guaranteed to leave you in stitches. As the festival website states, this film is “[a] declaration of personal pride and feeling good about oneself, this is a touching and life-affirming film”. I can’t wait for the DVD release!