If anyone values tradition, it's the Fiddler*

by Harold Zwier

Do you believe in God?

Let’s not beat about the burning bush here. Do you believe there is a creator of the universe who responds to each of us personally, runs the universe justly, will ultimately raise the dead, requires all of us to follow a set of immutable rules of behaviour, and requires us to acknowledge our belief in worship, prayer and praise?

If the idea of answering this question with a single two or three letter word makes you uncomfortable in any way, these thoughts may be of interest.

Religions encompass a good deal more than God. Anti-religionists probably agree, pointing to appalling acts of destruction, desecration, intolerance, indoctrination, massacre, misogyny, abuse, xenophobia, hatred and a host of other failures that have occurred in the name of religions over millennia.

In his book, “The Persistence of Faith”, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote that “the history of most religious groups at most times when they held political power” was the use of faith “to deny rights to others on the grounds of faith”. That criticism is as valid today as it ever was.

The perceived failures of religions provide ammunition for those who want to argue that we are better off without them, but there is another contrary perspective.

Although some might be tempted to argue that the defining characteristics of religions are represented by God, Revelation and Truth, there is a much more ordinary aspect to religions that is also much more important.

Religions have provided a mechanism for guarding and transmitting collective memories. Not the dry history of our school days, but the living essence of a community that educates and integrates each new generation into the community, connects us to a shared past, provides communal structures with values, rules, responsibilities and a path to nurture the next generation.

Religions are not the only guardians of collective memory. Politics, academia, television and consumerism are also examples of sub-cultures in which shared memory and experience shape individuals and communities. But since we describe Australian society as having been founded on Judeo-Christian principles, we are essentially affirming the success of religions in transmitting collective memory over millennia. That success is intimately bound to the idea of God.

If each generation finds its sense of transcendence in the mysteries it perceives as being beyond explanation, then the shape of God changes as past mysteries are explained and new mysteries are revealed. The biblical image of an all knowing and all powerful guide was very human in shape. With much better understanding of the origin of our universe, our solar system, our planet and the way life has developed, the shape of God has now changed. The mysteries beyond the explanation of our generation are on the other side of the Big Bang, and the shape of those mysteries is not very human.

But regardless of our concept of the transcendent, we stand on the shoulders of past generations. From them we acquire depth through the collective memory of tradition, culture, language, music, myth, ritual, moral and ethical behaviour, dignity, responsibility, wisdom, beauty, good, evil and a host of other elements that help define us individually and communally.

Many of us consciously belong to a religion in which rituals, traditions and rules form part of the communal environment. To reject the divine origin of the laws and rituals, yet remain engaged, is irrational. But if we act rationally and reject the laws and rituals, then we are essentially rejecting the collective memory on which our community is built. And if we attempt to reconcile our dilemma by reshaping God then we are heretics.

Of course, this is only a problem if the question posed at the beginning of this article can’t be comfortably answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. And if religions were the only area of our lives where we abandon rationality, then this problem might be a real dilemma, but everything from love to politics and the deeply held beliefs of sport manifest irrationality. Irrationality is after all a feature of being human.

Pamela Bone, for many years a columnist in The Age newspaper, died in April 2008. She described herself as an atheist, but chose to have her funeral in a church. She wrote this for her funeral program:

“It may seem hypocritical, after I have spent many years of my life in journalism writing columns about the harm done by religion, to want to have a funeral in a church. I go to my death without any sense that God exists or that there is an afterlife. However, I love old hymns, religious poetry, church spires … I am a cultural Christian.”

If religious fundamentalists have an unhealthy fixation on the past, and those who have abandoned religion see the past as having little relevance, we need another path for those who are uncomfortable with the certainties of religious belief but who recognise that religions, through their collective memory, provide valuable structures that span the past, present and future.

With the process of social globalisation having a major effect on our communal landscape, the one constant is our fundamental humanity; the petty, the heroic and everything in-between. Our collective memory provides a prism through which we can judge the value of change and how we can adapt to it, how we can ensure continuity and still retain or advance the core values that transcend generations.

Perhaps it’s time to put aside questions of belief in God, heaven and hell, whether there is an afterlife (or for that matter, a beforelife), whether the origin myths of religions have any basis in fact, why bad things happen to good people, and instead concentrate on the heritage of the collective memory left to us by each of our traditions, strive to understand why the values we have inherited are important to us and recognise that for many people adherence to those values is not motivated by the fear of heaven.

A version of this article was originally published on ABC Unleashed. The present article was published here on the author’s request.

Harold Zwier is on the executive of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society and is a member of a Modern Orthodox synagogue.

*Image source: Arc-Theatre

Life is Beautiful - the award winning film by Roberto Benigni, a Shoah story that used elements of comedy - way back in 1997!

This article by Talia Katz is the second of a two-part series on new and sometimes controversial forms of Shoah commemoration.  Part 1 can be seen here.

There seems to be a distinctly anti-Generation-Y movement which undercuts the question of Shoah re-commemoration. For years there has been a stable, rigidly enforced method of interacting with the history of Holocaust, and an especially enforced standard of commemoration of that history. It involves extreme reverence, highly emotive triggers and a heaviness of the soul that most Jewish youth associate with any Holocaust-related public conversation.

Then, after upwards of 50 years of silent, sombre and most sincere reflection, young Jewish people have begun to do with the Holocaust what young Jewish people have done with Shabbat, Zionism and other sacred cows – they have turned it on its head.

That is not to say today’s young Jews don’t appreciate the gravity of the Holocaust. Rather, they over-appreciate it. They are saturated in understanding. Like the children of Holocaust survivors who were drowning in the silence of their parents, these third-generation Jews are likewise drowning in the over-exposure their parents are kindly facilitating.

Is visiting a death camp at sixteen an age-appropriate experience? Indeed, can one ask eleven year-olds to comprehend or relate to the number one million, let alone light a candle to remember one million children killed in the Shoah? How do you explain hatred for hatred’s sake, without condescending, or killing for ethnicity’s sake, without terrifying?

Would it surprise you that even our nightmares are Shoah related? I challenge any Jewish person to deny that they have had at least one Holocaust-themed dream. Mine involved abattoir-like slaughterhouses, with loved ones forced like cattle through the turnstiles, awaiting their death, with nothing to be done. And for a long time, there was nothing to be done but tread water in the overwhelming tide that threatened to overpower our connection to our history altogether.

As time separated the generations from the immediacy of the tragedy and threatened to disconnect them from its meaning, humour became the bridge that allowed Jews to take back the power and stubbornly refused to submit to the magnitude of victimhood. Suddenly there was a means to process this massive influence in our lives – a method to understand the madness. What started with the Ghetto reinterpretations of Hitler’s masterpiece Mein Krampf (My Cramp) and the naming of dogs and pigs ‘Adolf’, became an essential communal and individual coping mechanism for those traumatised by Nazi policies. Survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl said in Man’s Search for Meaning:

“We knew that we had nothing to lose except our ridiculously naked lives. When the showers started to run, we all tried very hard to make fun, both about ourselves and about each other. After all, real water did flow from the sprays!”

Half a century later this tradition continues, to the chagrin and horror of the PC police and inflated egos that cannot understand that Heeb Magazine’s mockery of Holocaust memoirs stems from a moral disgust that the once noble premise of documenting history has become a moneymaking industry. Why not write your own Holocaust memoir? How better to destroy Hitler’s power than to belittle his memory and mock his self-righteousness character with a series of YouTube videos here, here and here? And here. And there. And here too.

People like Rosanne Barr hit the nail on the head: sure it’s sick and twisted to don a moustache and bake Burnt Jew Cookies in an oven, but how can we be so blinded by our pride and self-importance that we cannot see the irony and power of the inversion? When someone like Barr suggests such a photo shoot -a woman whose life has been dedicated to offending as many people as possible with her brand of take-no-prisoners humour – everything is fair game. As she herself told Heeb:

“He killed my whole family, it is true, but he is also dead, and I, a Jewish woman am still alive to make fun of him, and I will continue to make fun of the little runt for the rest of my life! He, and his ideas need to be laughed at even more these days, picked apart and analyzed up and down, as there are more and more people denying his crimes, and more and more despots trying to copy them.”

This peculiar cultural revenge is replicated again and again, from the infamous character actor Sacha Baron Cohen playing an anti-Semitic Kazakh in Borat, to the faux-terror of Seinfeld’s dreaded ’Soup Nazi’ - turning the stereotype on its head, and in so doing, fulfilling the hopes of the millions of victims encapsulated in the Talmudic verse: “The best revenge is to live”.

Call it revenge porn, but Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds could be the best antidote to the evils of the Nazi regime since Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Tellingly, after the screening of Tarantino’s film, I bumped into a Jewish couple in their mid-sixties who could not fathom how such a film was even produced, let alone enjoyed – such was their disgust for the film’s subversion of the traditional power-relationship of the Shoah.

This tale of Jews reclaiming their honour and lives from the Nazi regime that had tried to destroy them was a “once upon a time” fable that reverberated in cinemas across the world.  It reformed those Shoah nightmares into Shoah fantasies, littered with scalps and bullets and relief. Far from offensive, Inglourious Basterds gave young Jews the chance to divert the course of their people’s tragic history, even for only a couple of hours, in a recliner seat in a cinema in Sydney or Toronto or London.

So let’s not misread young Jewish attempts to re-imagine, re-define and re-tell the story of the Holocaust as out-of-touch, inappropriate, disrespectful or ignorant. Perhaps it is time to step out of the stranglehold of ‘traditional’ Holocaust commemoration and recognise that the light of satire does not diminish any of the truth of history. Rather, allow it to light the way to a better understanding and clearer picture of what the Holocaust means for Jews today.

This article was originally published at Jewin’ the Fat.

Speaking of whack re-interpretations: In Jane Yolen's 1988 novel, 12-year-old Hannah is transported through time from present-day America to Auschwitz when she opens the door for Elijah at her family's pesach seder.

by Talia Katz

Part 1 of 2

My earliest memory of the ‘Holocaust’ is the living history project I was asked to create with the help of Olga, a kindly seventy year-old Polish woman.  I was eleven.  She told us her life story and we dutifully recorded it on cassette (yep! cassette tapes) and transcribed it all: the childhood sweetheart, lost in the deportations, the persecution, the daring escape from the horrors of death camps, the starvation, and the… -

Wait.  Hang on.  Wrong story. No, Olga’s story was about immigration, having children, moving to Australia and learning English… in the 1920s. In fact, with one exception, none of the ‘Holocaust Survivors’ we met lived in Nazi Occupied Europe during the war. I felt… in a word… cheated.  Here I was, aged eleven and ready for the shock, inspiration and awe that would come with the vividness of the stories of the Holocaust.  The legacy of my people. Except it wasn’t like the black and white Spielberg movie we watched before the projects began. At least not the story we recorded.

So began my Holocaust education. I came to understand that every experience of the Shoah was different. Some were daring, some devastating, but all decidedly unique.  At that age, it was all one sweeping movie set – complete with language, plot lines, backdrops and scores.  I couldn’t tell you what the ‘real’ Holocaust was like, because all I had was Anne Frank’s journal, Spielberg’s vision, Escape from Sobibor, Elie Wiesel, Number the Stars, Exodus and Mila 18.  My bookshelf was full but I was no closer to the truth.

It wasn’t until I had the opportunity to go to Poland and walk through the gates of Auschwitz and inside the synagogues of Krakow that I appreciated the magnitude of the Shoah.  I was so appreciative that I decided not to go.  I could not bring myself to walk the paths of millions, stand in the places where they died, observe where thousands slept and where many never woke in the morning.  And afterwards eat lunch next to a bus outside the gates, wearing scarves and jackets, complaining about the weather and the food?  It seemed a cruel but honest reminder that no amount of tears or diary entries could really bring my understanding to a point where I could make sense of it. So I stayed home and enjoyed the summer of a normal sixteen year-old, content in my ignorance for a few more years.

My peers returned from Europe, shell-shocked and overwhelmed by the journey and the history. They had been hit in the head with a reality that they never saw coming.  Some never really came back.

* * * * *

Ten years later I find myself in a world where the connection to this culture-changing event seems to have suddenly shifted momentously. There is a distinct sub-culture emerging, and it is well documented. Phrases like ‘transgenerational trauma’ are a fancy contemporary way to describe the emotional suffering of the generations descended from Holocaust survivors, or indeed any people where an entire generation suffered. It even extends to those with no familial connection to the trauma.

Within these families, where repression and silence have replaced honesty and communication, the strange and politically incorrect phenomenon of ‘Holocaust Humour’ emerges. From the sardonic humour of the ghettos to the suburbs where survivors live today*, the jokes take on a melancholy, twisted quality, where the only way to relate to the tragedy of the Shoah is to laugh about it.

Like laughing at a funeral, this easing of tension by the younger generations is just as likely to inspire a giggle as cause offence. Even Shakespeare knew about the power of jest and its cautious relationship with the truth.  Yet rather than laughing at the victim as with all great comedy, this kind of humour is about laughing with the victim, at the perpetrator.

This humour pokes fun at the ritual and infrastructure of the tragedy: the tattooed numbers, the ovens, the yellow stars.  It does so not because the suffering is funny, but because if we can’t laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at?  Some think this post-Holocaust generation is too far removed from the horrors, mocks the tragedy too easily and is too quick to decontextualise then recontextualise the suffering. Such arguments say that re-imagining the Shoah destroys its integrity or stains its truth.

But isn’t the power of re-telling an integral part of the Jewish experience? We have a written law, and an oral interpretation of that law. We also have entire festivals dedicated to reminding our children: “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat”. Chaggim [festivals] like Purim and Hannukah were also probably once sacred events, placed on a pedestal and bequeathed to the younger generations with their own version of “never again”.  Nowadays Purim is about alcohol, costume parties and making a hell of a noise during the reading of Megillat Esther.  Chanuka is about commemorating another one of God’s miracles, eating donuts, lighting candles and even putting the conservationist message out there.

Even the great biblical pilgrim festival of Pesach has been manipulated by postmodernity. Last year I attended a Pesach Seder where instead of the traditional phrase “Tell your children that we were slaves in Egypt, and the Lord our God took me out of the bond of slavery”, the Haggadah read, “Tell your children that we were persecuted, tortured, starved and killed in Europe, but now we are free.” And now we are.

So why does this phenomena scare us so much when it comes to Shoah?

* * * * *

* Australia is home to the largest per capita Holocaust survivor community, outside of Israel.

Part 2 will be published next week.

This article was originally published at Jewin’ the Fat.

When reading a recent New York Times magazine article by James Traub about the emergence of a left-of centre ‘Israel Lobby’, I was particularly struck by how completely different the situation is in this country, and how we are still more or less mired in a quite elitist form of political lobbying, based on wealth and privileged political links with the major parties.

Alternative Jewish-identified voices ranging from what might be characterised as left Zionist (Australian Jewish Democratic Society) to anti-Zionist (Antony Loewenstein, John Docker, Ned Curthoys) are ignored, criticised or stigmatised to varying degrees. It is not contentious  to state that even the views of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society (AJDS), which often parallel those of the anti-occupation Israel left, are never invited to share a level playing field with the ‘official’ suits.

It’s worth recounting what’s going on (at least according to Traub), in the US.

Over the past year, a new organisation called J Street has stormed Washington with the help of a number of young enthusiasts, some liberal-minded philanthropists, and contemporary web 2.0 connecting and lobbying. J Street has shocked the Jewish establishment (AIPAC, the ADL) by being invited to meet Obama, and being heard by Cabinet secretaries and officials. Traub’s article agitated AIPAC so much that the Times had to issue a ‘clarification’, stating  AIPAC’s views were not sought for the article.

One sentence in Traub’s article is particularly notable: “J Street specializes in mounting campaigns that may appeal to the 92 percent [of Jews] who care about other causes more than they do about Israel.” Many American Jews identify as Americans first, and J Street attempts to cater to those who do not feel Israel should be made ‘a special case’ when it comes to such issues as the Occupation. If, as Americans, they could not accept certain behaviour from the US government; they cannot make a special exception for Israel, particularly because the Israel is such a massive recipient of foreign aid. Thus J Street has been pushing a ‘pro peace, pro Israel’ line on Capitol Hill, particularly since about eight percent of Members of Congress are Jewish.

Now, contrast J Street with the traditional and exclusive club of ECAJ-State Community Councils-Zionist Councils-AIJAC, and its effective monopoly of Jewish opinion in Canberra. The leadership of this group of organisations is self-referential. Organisations such as AIJAC are financially independent (including paid, professional staff), and there is a cross over of board membership between AIJAC and Federal Parliament — Mark Dreyfus (MP for Isaacs) was on its National Editorial Board, and Michael Danby (Member for Melbourne Ports) is former employee of AIJAC.   Danby is well known for his vocal positions on Israel.

The newest player on the leadership front, the Australian Israel Cultural Exchange (AICE), lead by Albert Dadon, appears to have gazumped the traditionalists by achieving the controversial Joint Declaration between the Australian and Israeli Governments (read this article in The Age for background). Dadon takes a less aggressive approach to the Israel question, focusing on fostering cultural exchange with Israel — and thus confronting the boycott Israel campaign. It is clear that Labour is somewhat enamoured of Dadon, and a more critical approach to Middle Eastern affairs will not necessarily be forthcoming (witness Julia Gillard’s statements regarding the Gaza War, or quietness over the Goldstone Report).

I’d suggest that the traditional elitist/oligarchical characteristic of Jewish political organisations has been a continuing feature of Australian Jewish life ever since the establishment of the first Anglo-Jewish organisations. Despite the change in the ethnic background of Australian Jews, the need for independent wealth or substantial subsidy, coupled with free time, means that very few people can afford a commitment to community leadership. This model, combined with a highly parochial Jewish press, means that alternatives have not been forthcoming.

Furthermore, we know of an increasing conservative political trend in the Australian Jewish community, which contrasts with the much broader, liberal social agenda of the American Jewish community. Increasing affluence and connection to Israel seems to have led to increased introversion and strengthening of cultural and religious life, without a concomitant expression in commitment to non-Jewish liberal/left causes. And those who are “alienated” ― perhaps those who identify as secular or non-Zionist ― represent the ‘outliers’ who end up not connecting at all; while  in the US, this group is probably at the core of the politically progressive Jewish community.

The only liberal trend in Australia appears to be in the emergence of religious alternatives, but this reflects a turn to personal ‘liberation’ rather than political activism (and again, this may be due to experience of alternatives in Israel). This can be contrasted with the spiritual renewal movement associated with Michael Lerner and Tikkun Magazine in the US that has been going on for about twenty years now. We have seen nothing from clergy here about the link between Jewish belief and progressive political action, including an acceptance of, and outreach, to disaffected members of the Jewish community on issues of common concern. But I suspect it’s part of their contracts to be quiet.

Given the strength of the political establishment, is there any way that web 2.0, which has become such an important campaigning and informational tool in the US, could be adopted here for Jewish-related political causes? It’s still a bit thin, and perhaps early in the peace.

What can we expect from the local Jewish social media then, as a way of putting out alternatives? Not much in the way of direct, critical politics on either a local or international front, at least for the moment. The concerns of the Jewish News online and J-wire are parochial (business and entertainment), and non-threatening reportage or press releases about Israel.

Sites such as The Sensible Jew and even Galus Australis, reflective of a tiny ‘let a hundred flowers bloom’ period, are culturally focussed, oecumenical, and essentially non-political: without a specific cause except the cause of print and oneness. The explicitly political AJDS website is the product of an equally small group of people (which is not to detract from the importance of the messages, and I declare a conflict of interest here as a content developer for the AJDS website).

This issue of broadcasting an alternate message in a new media is a problem facing many small groups and organisations.  One alternative I have thought of is for a number of organisations to pool their electronic resources, despite differences around the margins, and share substantial amounts of content while pushing their particular editorial line.

Unfortunately, no one has been able to locate a rich sugar daddy or mamma to support a liberal political message like J Street’s, with its many thousands of  (probably younger) American Jewish supporters.

Perhaps one hundred baby boomers need to each contribute $1000 to support alternative voices through an independent foundation that supports the new media with all its opportunities for creativity, and, as we used to say, ‘let it all hang out’ for the sake of a politically and culturally progressive Jewish Australian presence that can bypass the lugubrious and self-interested group at the top. There certainly is a core of talented younger people who could take up the challenge, and I suspect many of them are not part of existing networks and structures, but would thrive with the new media.

A hundred other intelligent and creative voices are certainly better than the usual dozen (ageing) voices (and I am one of the older guys now).

Larry Stillman is an executive member of the Australian Jewish Democratic Society.

References:

Jews and Australian politics, eds Geoffrey Brahm 
Levey and Philip Mendes, Sussex Academic 
Press, 2004.

Power And Powerlessness in Jewish History, David Biale, Schocken Books, 1986.

The News About the Internet, Michael Massing, New York Review of Books, Volume 56, Number 13 · August 13, 2009

By Alex Kats

Last week I was privileged to see the controversial film about Rebiya Kadeer at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).

In the lead up to the festival, English director, Ken Loach, who had previously premiered a number of his films at the festival, announced that he would pull out of the festival if the festival continued to take support from the Israeli embassy. Luckily for the sake of sanity and morality, MIFF director, Richard Moore, called Loach’s bluff and announced that he would rather have Israeli films than Loach’s, and thus Loach pulled himself and his film out of the festival.

When another controversy reared its head, this time concerning China, Moore again stood up for what was right.

More than seven years ago, Jeff Daniels, an American (now living in Melbourne) teacher turned filmmaker, visited a friend in Beijing and came across the name of a people he had never heard of. The Uyghur people come from East Turkestan. Their province borders Tibet, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and China, and about 60 years ago, China invaded and annexed the land.

They called it Xinjiang, which means ‘new territory’ and although it was intended to be an autonomous region, it has become one of the most oppressed regions in all of China. The Uyghur people have their own language, culture, heritage, religion and land, but all of these have been taken away or diluted since Chinese rule. Many thousands of people in the region have been murdered simply for their opinions; let alone for their actions.

On that journey, the curious filmmaker decided to make a documentary about the Uyghur people and in particular, about their charismatic and very vibrant leader, Rebiya Kadeer.

Kadeer became an activist for the rights of her people as a teenager. Over the years, she has also become one of the wealthiest women in China, but not without a lot of hardship. Her children were taken away from her and she was imprisoned for more than five years, spending most of that time in solitary confinement.

Now in exile in Washington, she is the president of the international Uyghur association.

Daniels, a Jew from the Bronx, had previously made small documentaries about Jewish identity and the struggle of minorities. For the past seven years he has been documenting the plight of the Uyghurs and the unadulterated drive of Kadeer.

The name of the film, The 10 Conditions of Love, comes from the conditions that Kadeer set herself when she went in search of a husband who would also be a partner in her work. (She found him and they are still together.) The title, however, also alludes to China’s 10 conditions for the transition to Communism.

Part of the story follows Kadeer’s advocacy in Washington on behalf of her people. When making representations to government, one of her strongest allies for a number of years was the late Tom Lantos. He was the only Congressman to have also been a Holocaust survivor, and as a Jew, like the filmmaker, he felt strongly about the passion of this minority leader.

What lessons could one draw from the Hebrew revival in the Promised Land to current revival attempts of no-longer spoken Aboriginal languages in the Lucky Country? Heaps! While the Hebrew revivalists, who wished to speak pure Hebrew, failed in their purism, it is nevertheless hard to imagine  a more successful revival attempt –  for the following reasons: (1) the remarkable strength of the Jewish revivalists’ motivation, zealousness, Hebrew consciousness, and centuries of ‘next year in Jerusalem’ ideology, (2) the extensive documentation of Hebrew – as opposed to ‘sleeping’ Aboriginal languages, and (3) the fact that Jews from all over the world had only Hebrew in common whereas there are dozens of Aboriginal languages to be revived and it would be hard to choose only one – unless it is Aboriginal English. I propose that the revival of a clinically dead language is unlikely without cross-fertilization from the revivalists’ mother tongue(s). I therefore predict that any attempt to revive an Aboriginal language will result in a hybrid.

That is of course not to say that we should not revive dead languages and cultures. On the contrary! My research on the transition from ancient Hebrew to new Israeli should encourage Aboriginal leaders and revival linguists to be more realistic about their goals, and can share with them crucial linguistic insights about what components of language are more revivable than others. Words and conjugations, for example, are easier to revitalize than intonation, associations, connotations and semantic networkings.

For example, my research analyses the hitherto-overlooked camouflaged semantic networking being transferred from one language to another. Whereas mechanisms as calques (loan translations such as superman, from German Übermensch), phono-semantic matches (e.g. crayfish, from Old French crevice, a cognate of crab that has little to do with fish) and portmanteau blends (e.g. motel, from motor+hotel) have been studied, there is a need to uncover concealed semantic links between words in the Target Language which reflect – often subconsciously – semantic networking in the Source Language. Consider the Israeli word gakhlilít ‘firefly, glow-worm’ – coined by poet laureate H. N. Bialik (1873-1934). This word is semantically and etymologically linked to the Biblical Hebrew word gaHelet ‘burning coal, glowing ember’. Morphologically, Israeli gakhlilít derives from Hebrew gaHelet plus the reduplication of its third radical [l]. However, no Israeli dictionary reveals the crucial semantic networking aspect, namely that the Israeli concoction, gakhlilít, in fact replicates a European mindset, apparent, for example in Yiddish גליווארעם glivórem ‘firefly’, lit. ‘glow’ (cf. gaHelet) + ‘worm’, or in German Glühwürmchen.

Some Aboriginal people distinguish between usership and ownership. I even have a friend who claimed that he owned a language although he only knew one single word in it, namely its name. Consequently, one could find indigenous Australians who do not find it necessary or important to revive their ’sleeping’/comatose tongue. I, on the other hand, have always believed in Australia’s very own roadside dictum: ‘Stop, revive, survive!‘

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, D.Phil. (Oxford), Ph.D. (titular) (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. His most recent iconoclastic book Israelit Safa Yafa “Israeli – A Beautiful Language. Hebrew as Myth” was published by Am Oved (Tel Aviv) and became a controversial bestseller. His website is www.zuckermann.org .

The first Australian Workshop on Afro-Asiatic Linguistics (AWAAL), an international conference that Ghil‘ad is organizing, will take place in Brisbane on 11-13 September 2009, concurrently with the Brisbane Writers Festival (9-13 September) and QBE Riverfire (12 September).

QUIT = Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism

By Anthony Frosh

By now you have probably read on Galus Australis and/or the Australian Jewish News that filmmaker Ken Loach is threatening a boycott of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), unless MIFF terminates sponsorship arrangements it currently has with the State of Israel.

Now, despite the AJN’s Adam Kamien describing this individual as a “Legendary British Filmmaker,” I must confess that I had never heard of this chap before reading about the boycott.  Perhaps Kamien just meant legendary relative to other British filmmakers … now that would make sense.  I can’t help but wonder if some British ‘talent’ agents are telling clients whose celebrity is waning that the best way to revive their profile is to publicly partake in boycott action against Israel.  Think Annie Lennox.

I could go into a lengthy essay on why there is a far better moral case for boycotting Loach’s own country of Britain than there is for boycotting Israel.  Just for starters, combat operations conducted on one’s own doorstep in response to eight years of constant rocket attacks, ceteris paribus, are more justifiable than combat operations conducted continents away from the home base in order to sure up energy security.  However, with so much absurdity in Loach’s position, and life being short, I’ll have to settle for one absolute gem.

A little research reveals that Loach is a signatory to Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism.  The irony in the mere existence of this organization is almost delicious.  If there is one place in the Middle East that respects gay rights, it is Israel.  Indeed, gay rights in Israel compare favourably to even the USA.  As Alan Dershowitz points out in The Case for Israel, the Israeli defence forces do not discriminate against gay people, while the US armed forces officially ban gays from their membership.

As Dershowitz further points out, such realities have not prevented signs being seen at anti-Israel demonstrations reading “Queers for Palestine,” and yet if anyone was to display such a sign at a rally in either Hamas controlled Gaza, or the Fatah controlled territories, they would suffer a significant risk of being killed.  In fact, the only country in the Middle East where one could hold up such a sign without incurring such risk is Israel.  It is no surprise that gay Palestinians frequently seek refuge in Israel.

To give you an impression of the typical activities Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism undertakes, they protested and disrupted the screening of Israeli film Yossi and Jagger (2002) at the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.  For those unfamiliar with this film, it was the Israeli equivalent of Brokeback Mountain (2005).

Thankfully, it seems that only a tiny proportion of the gay community is actually involved in anti-Israel activity.  The existence of groups like Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism says far less about gays than it does about the absurdity of anti-Israel boycotts.

Nothing like a hot coffee, a bagel, the AJN and news of a fresh cultural boycott to start one’s day, right?

Yes, dear readers, it’s that time of year again – MIFF! As British director Ken Loach has realised (he of the literally unintelligible My Name is Joe*), there is no better vehicle for really annoying, pointless political protest than an international film festival. All the requisite ingredients are there: various films from various middle-Eastern/African/Asian countries, pontificating intellectual filmmakers and filmgoers (er, myself included), the press… and of course: ‘contentious’ funding.

Here’s an excerpt from the AJN article, which sums up the whole fiasco quite nicely:

In a letter addressed to festival director Richard Moore, a keen supporter of Israeli films, Loach cited Israel’s “illegal occupation of Palestinian land, destruction of homes and livelihoods” and “the massacres in Gaza” as his reasons for boycotting the festival, which gets underway on July 24.

The letter was co-signed by the film’s writer Paul Laverty and producer Rebecca O’Brien.

Earlier this month, an open letter from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was sent to MIFF organisers urging them not to accept funding from the Israeli government. In the letter, Loach was listed as one of the filmmakers who had expressed support for the boycott.

Earlier this year, Loach successfully lobbied the Edinburgh Film Festival to return a grant from the Israeli embassy, which was intended to help Israeli filmmaker Tali Shalow Ezer get her film shown at the prestigious festival.

Loach wrote in his letter to Moore: “This is not a boycott of independent Israeli films or filmmakers, but of the Israeli State.”

Wow, Ken! Really? The state of Israel is that much of a presence at the Melbourne International Film Festival? What next? You’ll no longer be frequenting your local Chinese restaurant because of the situation in Tibet / exploitation of children / shoddy construction standards in earthquake-prone regions? (Good. You need to lay off the MSG.) (OK. Chinese takeaway does not equal Israeli movie at MIFF. But you know what I mean.)

Enough sarcasm. I get where Ken’s coming from, even though I disagree with him. I’m crapped off about a lot of what’s happening in Israel, too. I want a country for Jews and a country for Palestinians. I want real, meaningful, lasting peace. That, in a nutshell, is a very superficial, early-morning run-down of my political proclivities.

But surely, anyone with a bit of saykhl** knows that boycotting a film (or a writer, or an acadmic) is not going to achieve anything. Even if that filmmaker’s efforts may be partially funded by a government whose practices one may find morally questionable. (Special shout out to every film about Aboriginal people ever made in Australia with Australian government funding, ever!)

Surely Ken Loach knows that the Israeli government funds films by Israelis and Palestinians; Christians, Jews and Muslims. Surely Ken Loach knows that art (films! music! visuals! writing!) is one of the most enduring and effective ways to change the way people think and understand the world, for the better. Surely Ken Loach knows that Israeli films submitted to international festivals are unlikely to be pushing an uber-right-wing agenda; but rather encouraging a more nuanced, complex understanding of contemporary Israeli life.

Ach. Why, why, why?

[Hasid claps hand to forehead in frustration]

Let’s hope that the MIFF committee and everyone else leaves Loach’s proposal well enough alone, where it belongs.

A gitn shabbes and happy weekend to all.

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* Below the belt? Perhaps. But that’s 105 minutes of my life I can NEVER GET BACK. Note to self: run for the hills when you hear the words “gritty realist Glaswegian drama”. RUN.

** saykhl = commonsense

I’m sure that it’s no coincidence that the (few) people that I know who have been victims of violent anti-Semitic attacks in Australia have all been religious. Religious Jews who dress in religious garb are more easily identified as Jews, so it makes sense that they would bear a disproportionately large brunt of anti-Jewish sentiment. A state of affairs which might leave those of us whose clothing is not obviously Jewish blissfully ignorant. I wonder whether it is really necessary to spend some time walking around with a kippa or equivalent before making any judgement about the prevalence (or otherwise) of anti-Semitism.

Of course, in all likelihood, frum Jews not only experience more anti-Semitic sentiment, but also experience a degree of anti-religious sentiment. My feeling is that a large segment of Australian society are willing to tolerate people of diverse origins but unfortunately remain hostile towards those that are perceived to be less integrated into mainstream Australian culture.

In this vein, I wonder whether those Indian-Australians who believed that Indian students were victims of violent crime because they were not integrated received more airtime because that view was shared by many other Australians.

In some cases these sentiments are masked in supposedly rational ideology. For example, sentiment against the hijab that claims to protect the rights of Muslim women. Does the convention of wearing a head-scarf (common in the Middle East) really undermine women’s rights any more than the convention of women covering their breasts?

Possibly as a consequence of an Australian predilection for integration, I wonder whether there are also some Jews who feel embarrassed by Jews who are less integrated than themselves. There are many stories about tension between anglo-Jews and post-war European Jewish immigrants, presumably due in part to cultural cringe on the part of those who were already well integrated into Australian society.

Is it possible that prejudice against frum Jews is simply another manifestation of this cultural cringe?

Just a quick post to wish you all a good Shabbos, pleasant Saturday and restful weekend.

For now, a quick plug: This Sunday is Walk for Harmony day. The event is being promoted by the Victorian government in conjunction with various religious, communal and cultural organisations, including the ADC (who have done great work promoting the event). It’s a good cause. We’ll be there!

Here are the details:

Show the world that Victoria Supports Cultural Diversity by joining the Walk For Harmony:
Gather at the Carlton Gardens and walk along La Trobe Street to Swanston Street and then continue on to Federation Square.
SUNDAY 12 JULY 2009, 1PM

From the ADC website:
ADC urges all Victorians to join us at Carlton Gardens at 1.00 pm on 12 July for the Harmony Walk. The Premier announced the Walk as a response to recent attacks on Indian students and to reaffirm our state’s tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism. ADC Chairman Tony Levy said it was important Australians from all backgrounds turned out for the walk. “Our thoughts are with the Indian students who have been attacked and with all who feel threatened at this time. They need to know that other Australians are appalled by this behaviour and will speak out strongly against racism.”