In a letter to Rabbinical Council of Victoria (RCV) President Rabbi Yaakov Glasman, Council of Orthodox Synagogues of Victoria (COSV) President Paul Korbl has called on the Rabbis of the RCV to issue a statement endorsing free market competition.  He has also advised that such a statement “should make no reference to or cast any aspersions on any particular Rabbi.”

Korbl also stated that he believes that:

“The general consensus is that multi Hashgochos may be beneficial as competition is potentially a good thing and would lead to a reduction of prices. It is a fact that different Kashrut standards exist and are frequently based on the perceived piety and the level of stringency of the particular rabbi. For this reason it seems to me that any adverse comments on any particular rabbi would in no way be beneficial. It is impractical for one level of Kashrut to be imposed because a minimum level for one person may be too stringent for another.”

However, Korbl’s message to the RCV has fallen on deaf ears, with the RCV releasing a statement by email that could be the described as the very opposite of the statement Korbl called for.  COSV has since removed the RCV statement from their website on advice that it is potentially defamatory. At the time of writing, the statement was similarly absent from the RCV website.

The RCV’s chosen course of action has prompted a follow up email from Korbl scolding the RCV for failing to heed his advice that Korbl says has caused the RCV to lose public credibility.

Sunset in Nahariya. Image source: viewfromgalilee.blogspot.com

By Paul Brown

It is just a month short of a year since Galus Australis published ‘It’s Aliyah all over Again.’ We left Terra Australis one month after that. So how have we found our Aliyah experience thus far?

Israel is not the same country we visited just over 40 years ago, nor is it the country to which we first made aliyah 30 years ago. It is no longer a land of pioneers. It remains a land of immigrants, but these hail from North Africa, Ethiopia, and Russia, much more than from Europe or North America. While the Eurozone languishes, while North America dismantles its leadership role in the world, and while Russia again seeks to abrogate it, Israel unexpectedly finds itself as a very stable democracy. To be sure there is poverty, but no one starves. To be sure, there are enemies. To be sure, there are ever-newer versions of Israeli chutzpah. But there is also brotherhood and forgiveness.

When I first set up my clinic in Jerusalem in 1980, American style medicine was on the way in. But by the mid-1990s, medicine in Israel had become free for all via the four private health funds.  A massive influx of Russian physicians carried the system into the 21^st century. Israeli digital-electronic know-how ensured that the system was served by a computerised infrastructure that would be the envy of most modern countries. The shortfall of doctors is being met by building a fifth medical school ~ in Zefat ~ and a sixth will be needed to meet demographic requirements.

Sadly, psychiatry (my own specialty) is languishing. It is perhaps the most cost-intensive of all the medical specialities, and the health funds have been reluctant to absorb the costs of transfer from the public to the private sector. Thus mental health remains an orphan. Large stand-alone mental hospitals, a thing of the past in most of the developed world, persist here. The funds have not been made available to ensure an efficient or effective shift. If the government were to be true to their word, and were to order the transfer by fiat, then the funds would cut services by at least one half.

That said, many wonderful things are happening in the field of mental health, and some of these wonderful things are the very things that we are enjoying during our re-absorption into Israel. We had always wanted to give more, and to infuse our giving with Yiddishkeit. Two opportunities immediately presented themselves, and half a year on, we are having a ball.

In Nahariya, where we currently live, (we shortly move a few miles out of town to Kfar Veradim) we contribute to a club for street kids, children from Russian immigrant families.  We meet informally with the young people, and we provide counselling supervision for their madrichim.’ (supervisors)  Also, one day a week, we visit a local prison. There we run a counselling group for violent offenders, under the aegis of the ‘Agaf Ha-Dati’ (the religious branch of the prison service).  Our approach is a combination of the more conventional ‘bottom-up’, psychological therapy, and a (for us) a novel ‘top-down’ more spiritual therapy. We open each session with a Divrei Torah, on the Torah approach to such key themes as anger, trust and authenticity. There are plenty of opportunities for jokes and for Hasidic tales. Quite unexpected for us, especially since this is one of the few voluntary activities in the prison, the group participants have been more than willing to bare their souls. And so too have we, in a truly uplifting experience for all.

To pay the bills we are setting up a private practice in the centre of Nahariya. Such private practice is rare north of Haifa, and yet, the local people seem to be ready for it. Naturally, our constituency is different, both demographically and clinically, from Melbourne. Stress, and particularly war trauma, is a baseline-given in everyone that attends our clinic, and the experience of living under siege conditions in Israel must equally be taken into account when treating even the most serious psychopathology. We are learning how to do this. Life is, as ever, full of surprises, and we are enjoying every moment of it.

Dr Paul Brown is a psychiatrist who had been living in Melbourne for two decades, prior to making Aliyah for the second time.

The uniform of a gay inmate of a Nazi concentration camp

By Mark Baker

In the centre of Berlin not far from the Brandenburg gates there is a memorial to the Holocaust made up of thousands of slab tombstones. The group of students I am guiding through Europe on a study tour of the Holocaust disperse inside this abstract cemetery, lost in the labyrinthine structure of stones and questions.

One of the questions leads us to an adjacent park where a solitary tombstone has been erected. It wasn’t there the last time I visited Berlin, in which an invisible city of memory has rapidly sprung up, of plaques, signposts and stumbling blocks that ambush you at every corner with a personalised story of terror.

The isolated tombstone on the margins of Eisenmann’s Denkmal has a window slit built into its surface. It lures you to look into the stone, like a voyeur at a peep show. The image that is projected into the void of the stone is unexpected. It is of two young men, locked in a passionate kiss in the park where we ourselves stand.

I ask one of the students in our group to read the inscription near the tombstone. His voice quivers as he reads about the laws that prohibited same sex contact. A kiss between two men was a ticket to Auschwitz. In another time, this student would have had two triangles stitched onto his uniform, a pink and a yellow one, both core elements of his identity today.

The story of the persecution and gassing of gays in Auschwitz is part of the Holocaust. Yet where it differs is that the legislation that allowed for gays to be incarcerated was not a Nazi law but based on a criminal code that extend back a century. Paragraph 175, which forbad homosexual contact, survived the murder of about 15,000 gays in Auschwitz. It remained on the statue books of Germany and other European countries, including many states in Australia, for decades after the genocidal actions against homosexuals.

When I was a student at the University of Melbourne in the late 70s, my teacher John Foster, who published his memoir before his death, faced the class at the end of a lecture on the persecution of homosexuals and with stern eyes challenged us: Is the world of Auschwitz totally disconnected from our own world?

I thought of my teacher and also my student when I learned that our new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is opposed to legalising same sex marriage. My reaction is perhaps inflationary given my current journey in the footsteps of the Holocaust but I would like to take her to that marginalised tombstone and ask her to peer inside the stone and face the questions it asks of us.  Whether it is for electoral gain or a personal opinion, the message she is communicating to the Australian public says something about gays, their loves and their identities that carry on the remaining vestiges of Paragraph 175.

I would like to come away from this journey by teaching my students that to commemorate means to take the stones of our invisible cities and transfer them to our contemporary lives. Many of the monuments demonstrate the power of a single individual to redirect the seemingly inexorable path of history before it has been written.  For this reason, we must speak out on behalf of those growing number of people who are privileged to live in a time when they, and their relationships, are no longer prohibited, yet suspicions about the sanctity of their love persist .The questions must be asked not only of the state, but of our own faith systems – our churches, synagogues and mosques. In my own Jewish religion, a respected Orthodox gay rabbi, Steven Greenberg, has written about how the prohibitive texts in Leviticus should be understood against the grain of its own historical context in which gay behaviour was associated with pagan worship. Today, our sexualised culture of homo- and hetero- sexuality has pagan elements, but the act of love between two people is nothing more than love. It is not for us to legislate on how these commitments should be expressed. Our religions and states would honour those who were murdered in Auschwitz by thinking about the ruptures and continuities between the past and present, and how our thoughts continue to incarcerate gays in a world of our own prejudices. It is time to eradicate the legacy of Paragraph 175, and to narrow the space that separates that solitary tombstone from all the others.

Mark Baker is Director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University.

Am Yisrael Chai (The People of Israel Live!)

By Ittay Flescher

Simon Green recently posed a challenging question on Galus Australis entitled “Jewish Continuity – What’s the point?” In it, he argued that too many people are asking the wrong question by focusing on ”How do we keep the kids Jewish?” rather than asking “Why should we keep the kids Jewish?”

As someone who has taught in several Jewish schools in Melbourne, I would like to praise Simon for raising a question that is rarely discussed by leaders and educators. Too often, Jewish continuity is measured by responses to questions such as:

1. Do you attend a Jewish school, youth movement or synagogue?

2. How often do you visit Israel?

3. Do you give regularly to Jewish charities?

4. When you watch or read something in the media, do you ask yourself, “is it good for the Jews?”

And finally, the holy grail of ‘continuity’ questions,

5. Is your partner Jewish?

What the answers to these questions fail to identify are the reasons for answering yes or no to each of these questions. Simon suggests that if youth are only answering yes to these questions because of “unquestioned guilt and compulsion to be Jewish in a prescribed way,” than we have a major problem ahead of us.

Haim Watzman wrote an excellent piece about the trend of people choosing Judaism despite something (rather than because of something) in a blog post entitled “Jews, Despite the Holocaust.” In it, he writes, “I don’t want my children to be Jews who are Jews because they are victims. I don’t want my children to be Israelis because the world hates them. Our history, tradition and culture are rich and powerful and provide adequate reason to want to be a Jew and an Israeli even if Hitler had never been born and the swastika never had reigned.”

Watzman argues that we must have new reasons for engaging with Judaism.  “Why not say “I’m a Jew because the Jewish people produced the Bible, whose stories and poetry have become the common heritage of mankind?” Why not: “I’m a Jew because of my people’s ethos of learning, argument and dialogue, because of the Talmud, midrashim, and thinkers ranging from Maimonides to Spinoza to Soleveitchik?” Why not: “I’m a Jew because my people preserved its language and culture through centuries of dispersion and reestablished and recreated them in the modern State of Israel?”

I agree with Watzman that the answer to the question “Why should we keep the kids Jewish?” must be answered in the positive. I would add three other personal reasons to his argument about why engagement with Judaism is worthwhile:

A. It gives meaning to my life

This was the answer that Austrian psychiatrist Victor Frankl came up with after several years in Theresienstadt and Dachau. He wrote that whilst “the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour, what matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” It is vital that Judaism be meaningful to young people, no matter how eccentric a way they wish to interpret their faith, tradition and culture.

B. It inspires me to be a better person

Almost everyone I know thinks of themselves as a good person most of the time.  These same people are also always looking for ways to be better. Better students, better employees, better environmentalists, better friends and better lovers. It would be wonderful if each person had one teaching, idea or historical lesson from Judaism that they could interpret it in a way that makes them a better person.

C. It is a worthwhile endeavour

Everyone has something that they like to do to fill their spare time. It may be following the news or football obsessively, embracing all forms of art, surfing the net, or thinking about God. It is vital that Judaism enters this mix as a culture, ethnicity of religion that is desirous of endeavour.

In order to have a Jewish community less concerned with Jewish continuity and more with Jewish engagement, here are some questions that could provide a much better measure of the health of our community:

1. Do you find any Jewish rituals or festivals meaningful? Why/how do you make them meaningful?

2. Are you able to have well reasoned discussions with your Jewish and non-Jewish friends about Israel?

3. When you see injustice in the world, do you speak out?

4.  When you read or watch something in the media, do you think about whether similar events have happened in Jewish history before you respond?

5. Does your family share quality time together doing Jewish activities?

To quote Victor Frankl again, “A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He who knows the “why” for his existence will be able to bear almost any “how”.”

I wish you all behatzlacah in finding your “why.”

Ittay Flescher is a Jewish Educator in Melbourne. He also blogs for Makom/Haaretz.

Image source: filmup.leonardo.it/posters

By Simon Holloway

As some readers may be aware, the St Ives Jewish community has been petitioning the construction of an eruv for over two years now. A symbolic perimeter around an area, the building of eruvim dates back at least to the early third century, when their construction and maintenance was detailed in the Mishna. By allowing a public domain to be construed as a private domain (even if only in a purely symbolic fashion), the carrying of objects on Shabbat from one’s home into the street, and vice versa, ceases to be problematic.

The many and complex laws that pertain to these prohibitions, and the many and complex laws that pertain to the construction and maintenance of eruvim, have been such that many religious Jews continue to refrain from carrying on Shabbat, despite the presence of an eruv. Nonetheless, for many Jews in St Ives, the construction of a symbolic perimeter would be of tremendous benefit. Kuring-gai Council has been slow to approve it.

Those who wish to view a recent article in the North Shore Times about this eruv can find it here. The comments are, for the most part, appalling. Unable to draw a distinction between supporting local Jews and funding “Israel’s holocaust against the Palestinians”, several individuals (many of whom have wisely, if not cheekily, opted for anonymity) have decried the barbarous religious practises of rabbinic fanatics, and vociferously condemned the usage of public space for the construction of a ghetto.

Let me make this very clear. The eruv will not be noticeable. The eruv will not drive away people who are not Orthodox Jews. The eruv will not even attract additional religious Jewish people into St Ives. Orthodox Jews move to an area on the basis of the density of its community, the location and number of its synagogues, the availability of kosher food and mikva’ot, and the presence of a Jewish school. The existence of an eruv, while a bonus feature (and one that makes life better for those religious Jews who already live there), is not in itself a drawcard. To suggest that Jews will move to St Ives in greater numbers if the eruv is constructed, implies that they might otherwise favour an alternative suburb on the North Shore.

At the end of the day, this should never have been made public. Most of the decisions that the council makes get made without recourse to the knee-jerk opinions of the broader community. I emphatically do not watch TV, but my opinion was never sought as regards the construction of Foxtel cables throughout my neighbourhood. They are an eyesore and they required both the trimming of trees and disruptive construction work. It is absurd that the constituency of Kuring-gai needs to be heard as regards whether or not these cables may now serve a dual purpose. Shame on Kuring-gai council for their insensitivity, and shame on the North Shore Times for their deplorable “moderation” of comments.

Generation politics. Image source: Blog.aarp.org

By Simon Green

Recently on Galus Australis, Samara Hersch wrote about the “Missing Generation of Limmud Oz”. She expressed disappointment that she was part of only a handful of under-30s at the three-day festival of Jewish culture, and then asked one of the most important questions facing diaspora Jewry: How do we get the youth engaged?

The issue of why so few young people are involved in community events such as Limmud Oz was explored at Limmud Oz, in a nicely self-referential session. I found myself, one of the youngest at the seminar, sitting in a lecture theatre with all the caricatures of the Melbourne Jewish community – the holocaust surviving grandfather, the community leader (in fact, the editor of the Jewish News), the Jewish school teacher, the worried mother, the “wise son,” the “wicked son” – discussing by inference what they all thought I felt and should feel. It was classic generation politics and, beneath all the panic about negative findings from studies on intermarriage and assimilation, it reached the heart of the problem – that is, that we are too often asking the wrong question. It is not, “How do we keep the kids Jewish?” it is, “Why should we keep the kids Jewish?”

The difference between these two approaches is critical. The first question assumes, as parents, community leaders and teachers invariably do, that Jewish continuity is the upmost goal, maybe because it would give Hitler a posthumous victory. The second question aims to throw Jewish continuity off its pedestal, as do many secular Jewish youth. That is not to say that under 30s resent their cultural heritage and wish they had been born goyim, but they resent the unquestioned guilt and compulsion to be Jewish in a prescribed way.

The argument goes something like this. The “wicked son” (in this case one of the two co-hosts of the session) presents a controversial new model. He argues that we should stop measuring youth engagement by the numbers at B’nei Brith. There are almost limitless ways, he says, to express Judaism, and those that fall outside the framework are just as valid as those that lie within it. He puts forward the idea that Israeli movie nights, Shabbat dinners with friends, unofficial sporting groups, etc., can be as meaningful to individuals as youth movements and synagogues. He sees the future of the Jewish community as a network of small, interconnected but still independent, ephemeral interest groups.

The older generation hit back, calling the “wicked son” selfish. You may get meaning now from your transient and fragile groups, but what about Generation Z? They argue that to preserve Judaism, which is the ultimate aim, you need structure. They claim that we should be using every method we know – for example, alcohol – to bring kids back to the tried and tested organisations like AUJS, Young UIA, or any other of the many acronyms. They do not believe that there is a trade-off between quality of Jewish experience and quantity attending Jewish institutions.

I do not claim to know how to get more young people to Limmud Oz, apart from making it cheaper and not scheduling it during the university exam period. What I do believe, however, is that ultimately, the approach of trying to get kids to come with “a little force,” as one audience member suggested, or a little bribery, will not work. The Jewish youth must understand why being Jewish is valuable, and this means breaking down the myth that Jewish continuity is an objective good.

If we honestly believe that there is so much worthwhile in Judaism, then we should not fear this taboo topic. No matter whether we sit on one of the executive councils or are a fanatical Jewish community blogger, our kids will by and large see the same treasure chest of ideas that we see, and find their own way to sift through it. If, however, we have no faith that our kids will find meaning in Judaism, then we can keep paying in excess of $20,000 per annum to send them to Jewish day schools to magically become proud Jews, even if that objective is never explicitly discussed at school or in the home. We can then watch the cycle continue: few 20-somethings will take part in the community until they have children themselves and then, only because they are driven by the same guilt as their parents were.

One of the first steps to getting young Jewish people engaged is telling the controversial truth: that Jewish continuity is only good as long as Judaism means something to those who practice it.

Simon Green is a second year university student, studying Engineering/Law. He attends Ayeka, and is the current head of the leftwing youth movement, Hashomer Hatzair.

Enough to satisfy an appetite for diversity?

By Sol Salbe

Like Melbourne’s weather, Limmud Oz provides a great deal of variety. If you don’t like something, just step in next door or wait a short while for the next session. With twelve simultaneous events at any given time, the choice was mind boggling. Even amongst Sunday’s nine time-slots, there were almost enough unique permutations for every man, woman and child on the planet!

A great variety of the bland would not be something to celebrate, but a lot of tasty fare was on offer on subjects ranging from politics to Jewish history, and from climate change to feminism, with luscious delicacies on Israelis in Australia, the “Jew media” and the Jewish community survey. There were, however, a few flies in the ointment. In this writer’s view not enough thought had gone into the programming of sessions. Program clashes are inevitable but it does not make much sense scheduling Mark Baker in conversation with a Muslim scholar at the same time as a panel discussion on interfaith dialogue, or the same Baker again to speak with Palestinian activists at the same time as a panel on the language wars of the Diaspora looking at words like Zionism . A humble, but hopefully positive, suggestion: once the preliminary program has been scheduled, ask one or more people outside the organising circle to look for such clashes in the same way as one gets a second pair of eyes to do the proofreading.

Another observation: in a fascinating session, Professor Andrew Markus pointed to the skewed age distribution of the Jewish community where the number of young people is comparatively low. Just as well he didn’t have to make a similar analysis of the weekend’s gathering, for the theme here was baby-boomers rule. There were just not enough younger faces around. Granted that younger people prefer to get their information online, it would still be a good idea to organise a brainstorming session of how we could entice members of generations X and Y to future sessions. Discount prices? An under-30s subcommittee to help pick suitable sessions? I don’t know, but let’s start thinking about it.

A Limmud Oz rule of thumb: do pick a few items outside the square. Get out of your comfort zone. The sessions into which you wander by accident will often turn out to be some of the best you attend. For me this year it was Raymond Scheindlin’s talk on Saadiah Gaon and the Judeo-Arabic Golden Age. I have to confess my ignorance: to me, Saadiah Gaon was the name of a street in Jerusalem. I wandered into the session because a chance conversation on the Internet required delivering a message to pass on to the speaker. But Prof Scheindlin opened a whole new world for his audience. For starters it is wrong to think of the Golden Age as been confined to Spain. Saadiah’s achievements, including a translation of the Bible into Arabic, actually took place in Baghdad. There Saadiah collaborated with Muslim and Christian scholars discussing philosophy, language, mathematics and logic. One of the rules of the group was that no one was allowed to prove anything by quoting from their own scripture. A logical proof was necessary. An absolutely fascinating session.

Scheindlin was one of 13 international speakers. It may have been the largest number ever, but their selection left something to be desired. There is no useful purpose in belabouring the point but three people belonging to the-problem-is-Islam school were not balanced by people who see the conflict differently. Maybe not Gideon Levy, who had spoken at the London Limmud, but a representation from across the political spectrum would be a good idea.

But if the organisers’ choice of guests was one-sided, Limmud Oz attendees have shown that at least in terms of politics, their views line up along a continuum. That point was brought to the forefront by Vivienne Porzsolt in a session on critical Jews. She asked the audience to stand and distribute themselves from the most “pro-Israel” to the most “anti-Israel”. Well, nobody wanted to describe themselves as anti-Israel so that corner remained conspicuously empty, but about half the audience distributed themselves along a line while the other half chose to remain in the centre. It was a theme that one encountered throughout the festival of learning. No more can the Jewish community be described as “speaking with one voice”. Perhaps it is the logical flow-on from the multitude of blogs, websites and Facebook pages that have sprung out since my last attendance. The good news is that we may not have to say “let a hundred flowers bloom” because everyone can see and smell them. I am told that when Tzipi Hotovely finished her address by telling Diaspora Jews that they should volunteer to assist Israel by taking up Hasbara, it was someone whose political views were a long way from those of the AJDS who challenged her to tell us what Israel should do for Diaspora Jewry. Others complained in the next session when Efraim Inbar referred to the Palestinians as “barbarians”. Quite a large audience gave a fair hearing to Samah Sabawi and Maher Mughrabi, presenting two distinct Palestinian points of view. Moderator Mark Baker, using a very light touch, managed to guide the two through some of the most difficult issues with which Israelis and Palestinians would ever have to deal. Only an occasional murmur of disagreement was heard. The panel on the “Jew media” saw a whole range of diverse views on the key issue of the Age’s coverage of the Middle East.

Limmud Oz reflected the community’s appetite for diversity.

Sol Salbe is an Israeli-born journalist who works as Australia’s only full-time monitor of the Israeli media running the Middle East News Service. He also edits the Australian Jewish Democratic Society Newsletter. Given a choice, he’d rather spend his time in the kitchen combining the best Middle Eastern and Jewish traditions with Australian ingredients.

Very few under 30s attended Limmud Oz

By Samara Hersch

Last weekend, as the Queen celebrated another year of her life, I celebrated my own Jewish life and identity at the Limmud Oz festival of Jewish learning and culture in Melbourne. I attended talks on the Middle East conflict, Jewish pluralism, Yiddish literature, Israeli films and inspiring interfaith initiatives. I danced to Israeli music, listened to friends DJ during sessions, learnt the entire Jewish history in 1 hour with David Solomon in one of the most brilliant educational experiences I’ve ever had – and this is just to name a few…

What struck me, however, was that at this dynamic and highly important celebration, no doubt like the Queen’s party, there were not many young people like myself present. This is not only disappointing but also extremely troubling. This absence was so obvious that guest speaker Daniel Landes in the panel on religious pluralism felt the need to make mention of the missing generation at the festival, posing the question: why is Limmud not seeming relevant? Where are the youth, the future leaders? Why don’t they care and more importantly how can we make them care?

In my peers’ defense, many parents spoke about university exams clashing with the Limmud weekend. To me, this seems highly problematic. I am unaware of the logistics or the tradition that allows Limmud to take place on this long weekend each year– but whatever those reasons are, it seems a terrible tragedy if this time slot is essentially discouraging young people from attending.

For me, Limmud highlights some of the rich values of Judaism that I feel so proud to have attained– those being the Jewish desire for education, debate and growth. It is these values that make so many Jews passionate, dynamic and engaged members of society. I can only hope that contrary to the Queen’s (dare I say) growing insignificance in our everyday life, the Jewish value of learning becomes ever stronger and more pertinent for all generations to enjoy and revere.

Samara Hersch has a Masters in Theatre Direction from the Victorian College of the Arts. She is currently developing a new theatre work with members of Access Inc. a Jewish disability organization for the upcoming Melbourne Fringe Festival.

Image source: www.coolstuffinc.com

By John Zeleznikow

For those holocaust survivors who were interred in concentration camps in occupied Nazi Europe between 1939 and 1945, life in post-war Melbourne was blissfully pleasant.  They had successfully escaped to what they perceived as the end of their world. For countless years, they tried to forget their experiences.  Many rarely discussed their tragedies with their family.

But for a small number of survivors, life after the Holocaust was anti-climatic. Those partisans, who had heroically fought the Nazis, now had to integrate into post-war society. Their reasons for resistance were no longer relevant.  And whilst some Jews were involved in armed conflict, fighting for a Jewish homeland in British Mandate Palestine, this was not the case in Australia.

I would like to introduce you to the experiences of Avram Zeleznikow, a survivor of the Vilno (Vilnius) Ghetto who was a member of the Jewish partisan group of Abba Kovner. Before the war, in Vilno, he had been a Bund activist and Yiddish teacher.

In the ghetto he was faced with many ethical dilemmas, including whether to cooperate or resist with the authorities; how to treat the Kapos (Jewish Police); and whether to give up their commander, Yitzhak Wittenberg.

When he escaped to the forest of Rudniki, there were daily dilemmas on whether to treat local residents like innocent bystanders or Nazi collaborators. These issues resonate today, when we deliberate how to classify individuals as resistance fighters or terrorists, and what is appropriate action.

In post-holocaust Melbourne, Abram Zeleznikow was initially a labourer who eventually ran a renowned restaurant, Café Scheherazade, and became a communal activist.

Professor John Zeleznikow is in the School of Management and Information Systems at Victoria University where he specialises in decision support for enhancing negotiation.  His negotiation support software won its heat of the ABC New Inventors program. His latest book, Information Technology for Enhanced Dispute Resolution was published by Cambridge University Press on June 1 2010.

Professor Zeleznikow will be speaking on “Life at the end of the world was an anti-climax – memories of sixty years of life of a Jewish partisan in Melbourne” at Limmud Oz on Monday June 14 at 5pm.

When one thinks of a "flotilla" in Australia, this is more what comes to mind

By Keren Tuch

Oh the irony, that so many Israelis dream of nothing else but to live in utopic Australia, whilst others, myself included, consider living in a war torn country where peace is a seemingly deluded dream.  Australia is a beautiful, peaceful country of which I am certainly privileged to be a citizen and will be proudly supporting the Socceroos in a couple of week’s time.

Yet I find this place so idyllic it can often be…well, boring.  To put it simply, one can live the dream here – beach, education, job, beach, money, security, beach.  But what often prompts me to look abroad is when my mind turns numb from reading front page newspaper articles about the misconduct of football players.  Or when the conversation at the work lunch table turns to discussing an article from a woman’s magazine on 39 ways to lose calories from an Easter egg.  Or when talk show hosts have nothing better to do but lambast the provision of new cycle ways in Sydney. Or when engaging in a discussion on refugees and asylum seekers, everyone has an opinion, yet most educated people have not had any contact with a single person from the “hordes” that are flooding our shores.   Sometimes life seems to be a succession of chai lattes – fun and enjoyable yet devoid of any substance.

But this week it would appear that Australians care about more than just Celine Dion falling pregnant at age 42. It appeared that we do care about the humanitarian plight of individuals in the Middle East.

As the drama of the flotilla unfolded, I was hooked to the cyber world, reading article after article, commentaries, opinion pieces and live video footage until it made me sick.  Sick from the hysteria and the hostile reactions it invoked worldwide.  Sick from the strategic blunder the Israeli military made.  Sick from ignorant citizens unwilling to hear how Israel could possibly have a legitimate excuse to use their firearms in self-defence.  In the cyber world, there was no escaping this mess.

At lunch at my work place, I was expecting a remark of some sort about the flotilla that has dominated the news this week.  Perhaps even a discussion where I was patiently waiting for an opportunity to hear what my colleagues had to say.  I had the link to the video footage on hand ready to disseminate if there was a hint of curiosity.   But that conversation never came to fruition.  Neither did it initiate with my non-Jewish housemate who knows my long-standing connection to Israel.  In fact, when an educated colleague saw me reading an article about the flotilla, I thought it was a good time for an open dialogue.  I received a blank stare followed by a shameful shake of the head when I asked ‘you know about the whole debacle that has erupted in the Middle East….’  Apparently not.  I had made the assumption that because it consumed much of my thoughts, everyone else cared.

It occurred to me that perhaps a lot of people at my work hadn’t heard about it.  It is quite plausible that they react no differently to the flotilla than they do to the weekly deaths of Pakistanis and Iraqis by suicide bombers, or the death of protestors in Thailand.  For every person who vehemently commented online, I wonder how many people just couldn’t give a damn, or don’t even know?

To my astonishment, this sobering thought calmed my fraught nerves from the heavy news of the week.  Although I was prepared to discuss the flotilla at work, it’s times like this that I’m truly appreciative of the light-hearted lunch conversations and the self-indulgent attitude of the average Australian to distract me from the brutal reality that exists beyond our borders.