Galus Australis’ correspondent, Malki Rose, is currently in Jerusalem attending the ROI Summit. This article is the first of a series that Malki is writing on identity and homelessness.

It is two days before Pesach…and I meet up with Amira.

Amira was born in Israel. Amira calls herself Palestinian…but does not say she was born in ‘Palestine’. She calls it Israel. She does not call it Israel for my benefit.  She does not know what I call it, nor does she care. She says she was born in Israel as a Palestinian and devout Muslim, to a family longing for a sense of home. ‘This home…”, she tells me, “…is a place which does not yet exist”.

Amira explains that her family have lived in this land for many, many generations and whatever she or anyone calls it, it is her home. Their home.

“Who are ‘we’…”, she explains, “… ‘we’ are a people on the brink of existence.

We have always lived in this land, my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents – we have always been Palestinian”.

She stops and looks up, scanning her memory with the pleasant smile of nostalgia and relates to me a story her 104 year old great-grandmother , Nabala, had related to her, of her own childhood in 19^th century Israel.  Great grandmother Nabala recalls stories when she was a child and she lived side by side with Jewish people, who also called themselves ‘Palestinians’.

“My great grandmother Nabala was part of a large and proud family who worked hard on their beautiful green farm with many olive trees, and some milk goats. Her father would spend spring afternoons sitting in the back of the field sipping tea under the shade of the largest olive tree. She remembered the neighbours, a Jewish Sephardi family who had also been living in Israel for several generations. The two fathers would often share a laugh and a smoke and the children would play together in the afternoons.

At the end of the week the two families would go their separate ways, as the Jewish neighbours would retreat into their home to celebrate the Sabbath.  A distinct singing in Arabic could be heard from their home, the tunes long and melodious.  These told of a joy in ritual and a delight in a day spent in celebration and reflection amongst another proud, but different, large family.”

But one spring evening stood bold and clear in my great grandmothers memory all her days. Although a girl of only 8 years old, she remembered that she had not seen her Jewish neighbours for some days. She had heard them next door, coming and going and busying themselves with something that seemed terribly urgent and important.

As the sun set that evening, a sense of foreboding filled the orange sky and for several hours all seemed quiet from the neighbours next door. Until suddenly came the sound of an unfamiliar song from our neighbour’s father. It was not in Arabic. For a moment she felt that she no longer knew the family living on the next property and wondered why the father was speaking in another language.

She heard the children call out loudly in Arabic, “You there with your pack, where are you coming from?”

They then heard the father answer, “I am coming from Egypt!!!”

To which the children exclaimed, “And to where are you going?”

“I am going home to Yerushalayim”, came the father’s proud response.

At which a beautiful song poured from their neighbour’s home.”

Even as a young girl, Nabala had found this incident strange but warming.  Amira explained, “Towards the end of her life, my great- grandmother would refer to this story over and over, struggling to process it. When she passed away it seemed unresolved. She was a special woman who wore a sad, incompleteness about where she belonged”.

Amira sees both Israelis and Palestinians as ‘wanderers’.

“But”, says the young Political Science student, “as goes the phrase…not all who wander are lost, the Jews are a people with a strong ritualised memory of where they have come from and where they are going to.  My people are lost, and my great grandmother felt this on that night. The night which I came to realise, only after my great grandmother’s death, was your people’s night of commemorating the Exodus from Egypt.”

I stop and reflect on a moment shared between a Jew and Muslim; a sobering reminder of the homelessness and sense of identity which every soul yearns to cure. I ask her how she came to be in Australia, so far from the farm her family called home.

“Were you refugees?” I ask her, “or did you already have family here?”

“No, we are alone; we were not refugees, but we had no choice, because we were forgotten people; invisible to our brothers.”

I pause and for a moment am overcome with a sense of irregular Jewish guilt. Of needing to take ownership of the actions of wayward Israeli Soldiers overwhelmed with a sense of their own power, and of shame at some of the military actions which may have caused her family to feel abandoned and invisible. A feeling I know all too well.

“We tried to go to Egypt. But they blocked the crossing and would not let us in. We tried to go to Lebanon but they did not want us. My father applied to Jordan and Syria and we were rejected there too. Not a single Muslim country would take us.  Australia was difficult but accepted us”.

I am confused, “But why did you want to leave? Wasn’t it your home? Your family’s land? Could you not fight to stay?”

“Malki, you are an idealist. My parents worked very hard to keep us there, on our family’s land, selling olives from the same trees as my great, great grandparents. My sisters and I did well in our studies, my father waited at Israeli checkpoints every morning from 4am till 8am. It took him nearly 6 hours to get to work every day – his whole truck needed to be inspected.”

Again I feel bad.

“What’s wrong?” she asks me sensing my self- blame. “This is what happens when idiots sneak weapons into Israeli towns under crates of medicine or in the backs of Ambulances; it ruins it for the rest of us who just want to work and live” – she pauses – “and travel!!! You have the same thing here in Australia at customs. You wait in a queue to be processed, the sniffer dogs come and check for drugs and illegal substances, most people are just wanting to come and go, but the idiots ruin it for everyone. People have to protect their borders, Israel is no different.”

This 25 year old girl speaks with the wisdom of an 80 year old. Like a woman who sees the world not with the bitter cynicism of blame but through the tip-of-her-nose-poised spectacles of a grandmother who has watched, listened and learned for a long, long time.

“So what happened to your farm?” I ask her.

“They took it from us. First they blackmailed my father. He had to pay them everything he had. Then they told us that they would be back in the morning because they ‘needed the house for storage’.  She pauses.

“The IDF?” I ask.

“No, the Hamas. They were bringing in materials from a tunnel in the south of Israel near the Rafah Crossing and after they had my father’s money they told us they would be using our farm as a base.  We are expendable to them; they care about the fight, not the people they claim to be fighting for, these are the people in power, and these are the morons the UN wants to lead our people, the Hamas? Where are our Muslim brothers? Why have they not spoken up?”. Amira pauses in frustration, and shakes her head.  “These people claim to be our brothers? The Israeli government at least protects its own people. We do not have such a thing. There was nothing left for us; so we left in the middle of the night…”

She trails off. Amira drops her head, clutches at her chest and begins to sob. But not like a child. Her tears bear the pain of a deep, long held memory.

“…Exodus”, I hear her beneath the sobbing.

“I understand”, I try and comfort her, “this was your family’s exodus.”

“No, you don’t understand… It was Pesach”, she surprises me with her knowledge of its Hebrew name. She sits up and affirms, “It was YOUR people’s Exodus, it was your night of commemoration that we left; and it was US being oppressed and cast out by our own people. We were in ‘no man’s land’, a land we thought was ours. It had always been our family’s home and the farm our family’s pride and joy and livelihood, for almost 200 years. How can we have an ‘Exodus’? we may know where we have come from, but we do not leave with purpose because we don’t know where we are going. We wander BECAUSE we are lost. Even if tomorrow you once again did not have the state of Israel, your people would always have an identity and a clear sense of why you wander and to where, at least to the idea of Israel.”

I think for a moment of our commonality; that my ancestors were also not welcome in so many lands; of their being expelled from Spain, Magyarized in Hungary, pogrommed in Poland, libelled in Slovakia, then burned in ovens in Auschwitz and labelled ‘stateless’ in Germany only 30 years after my great grandfather had served proudly in its army in world war one.

Amira’s strong words interrupt my thoughts.

“Malki, your family were strangers in a strange land.  But we were strangers in our own land… my great- grandmother could feel this on that Pesach night, and I felt it on the Pesach night we left”.

We are both silent for a few moments.

“Be proud of your people, they have built their dream. Your identity is strong as are your people.”

She wipes back her tears and laughs. “It’s funny that both our families have ended up here in Australia. Like so many other wandering people; immigrants, refugees, again on someone else’s land. On the back of another people’s ‘Dreamtime’.

I ask her if she ever dreams of home.

“Not yet, Malki.  It is not yet built to dream of. But when my people finally unite and instead of taking your people’s dream, take responsibility for building one of our own, I will dream of it and yearn for it always… as you dream of yours every Pesach when you say “ L’shanah Habah B’Yerushalayim”.

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.

Source: abc.net.au

Live, from 9.30pm tonight!

Tune your TV to ABC1 and your internet browser to GalusAustralis.com.

The story so far:

John Safran Gets Busy with Cross-Cultural Love.

Pasty bespectacled comic John Safran is coming back to ABC TV with an eight-part comedy-documentary, and it’s his most daring and personal adventure yet. It’s about cross-cultural, interracial and interfaith love.

Torn between his Jewish upbringing and his inclination to hit on Eurasians, Safran comes up with some of the craziest television ever. Safran’s insane globetrotting takes him to Israel, Palestine, Togo, Japan, The Philippines, Thailand, The UK, The Netherlands and the United States. He turns black and goes undercover in Chicago, talks to his dead mother, becomes a ladyboy and an Elephant Man, all in an attempt to make sense of cross-cultural love.

Safran might be figuratively crucified for this series – but seeing he is literally crucified in the climax, he’s not too worried. You see, John Safran just needs to know: when it comes to love, should you stick with your tribe or escape your tribe?

Source: ABC press release

John Safran’s Race Relations starts Wednesday October 21 at 9.30pm on ABC1.

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9.29pm – Waiting. Brief promo. Hope this thing works.

9.29pm – Oh yes, of course the internet is down.

9.30pm – Back up. Yeehaa.

9.32pm – C’mon ABC

9:33pm – Yay!

9:35pm – Rabbi Groner back from the grave? Oooh, ouch. Oh well, Yeshiva’s probably disowned Safran already. Justin Heazlewood’s khet pronunciation is commendable! And tefillin will never seem not-kinky ever again.

9:37pm – Carlisle St is the beating heart of Melbourne, OF COURSE, but I didn’t know it had an international airport.

9:38pm – “Cogolese”? Oy! She must be thinking something along the lines of, “When the hell is this moron going to start asking the real questions? I have women’s rights to champion!” Oh yeah, that little sideways eyeroll says it all.

9:39pm – “What about me?” Yep. It always comes down to this. At least he’s honest about being self-absorbed, unlike the rest of us pseudo-humanitarians.

9:39pm – Did you catch that headline from the Women’s Weekly mag article about Michiko’s parents wedding?! “The Bride Wore a Kimono”!

9:40pm – Really hope this letter to ex-GF bit isn’t true.

9:42pm – UNDERGARMENT TEST?!!!! HAAA HAAA. This bit is GOLD.

9:43pm – OH YVETTE NO

9:45pm – Is he seriously stealing Pussycat Doll undies? They’ve gotta be fake. No way.

9:45pm – So that’s why Dools and Linda on JJJ is now just Dools. (This whole collecting things in plastic baggies is very reminiscent of Jonathan Safran Foer’s character in the film adaptation of Everything is Illuminated.)

9:45pm – “So Penny won’t return my calls, she thinks she’s too good for me?!” Exactly. She knows what’s good for her. Or her publicist does.

9:46pm – “One Eurasian underpants short” – Been waiting my whole life to hear those words in a sentence together. Look at how he’s inhaling those puppies. Argh.

9:50pm – JELLYSTINIAN?! (Am I spelling it right?)

9:51pm – “How long do people take in there?” Puh-leeze.

9:51pm – Even the dedicated masturbation room gets a mezuzah.

9:52pm – John looks like a kid in a lolly shop. Fakest masturbation scene ever…. at least I hope that was fake… Hmm. Now even John looks kind of uncomfortable.

9:55pm – I’ve always admired Yasser Arafat too! He IS a great guy.

9:58pm – “He’ll be throwing rocks at himself” – THAT’S THE MONEY SHOT, RIGHT THERE

You know, despite (or perhaps because of?) the tasteless humour, this episode in general is actually quite a nuanced take on racial tensions – the whole bit about John’s Baha’i girlfriend feeling it’s OK for her to mock Muslims; the skin-shade tensions in Bolivia (no better place to discuss racial tension than Caulfield park, right?); the joke about Palestinians making their own Schindler’s List... This is what good satire does – it enables the viewer to both relate to the non-PC views s/he shares with Safran (but in a guilt-free, “I’m in on the joke” way), and also see them for what they are – hypocritical/racist/rude, etc.

10:00pm – Well. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

FURTHER READING: Here, there, everywhere.

Andrew Harris

After his stellar Australian debut with Y-Love earlier this year, Diwon’s been a busy, busy boy. Apart from his unenviable, gruelling tour schedule, and keeping up with Y-Love and his roster of Shemspeed artists, the DJ of diverse influences has been working on two very different projects – the cinematic Serene Poetic as Dreams in Static, with guitarist co-conspirator Dugans, and the super-cool Sabra Sessions, the sort of mixtape that plays in Diwon’s head.

ELSEWHERE: Serene Poetic is a major departure from your previous work – it’s more loungey, it’s relaxed and ethereal – but it still retains an essential Diwon sort of a beat: what have you and Dugans achieved with the record?

DIWON: The Diwon element is the consistency of layered drums and percussion, which finds its way through most of my work. The idea was to compose instrumental music that stands strong without sung melody lines, and release that as its own cinematic instrumental masterpiece and get the music placed in movies and such, but all along we wanted to also record the songs, reconstructed or as is, depending on which song, with various singers that we love and have this great melodic song with music underneath that is more layered and complex than what would normally be played with a singer, but also have the music be catchy and not too experimental…

ELSEWHERE: Could you tell us a bit about Dugans, like where you know him from, what else he does apart from Dreams in Static?

DIWON: Dugans is an amazing guitarist who comes from Austin, Texas, where the rock scene is really big. He played there for ten years, mostly every night in different groups. He also had a band called ‘Raliss’, which he was making some noise with in the rock scene. Now he lives down the block from me in Crown Heights, New York. We have a production team called ‘Dreams in Static’, we also produced Shir HaShirim, mixing heartfelt Moroccan song with hypnotic hip-hop, rock, and Middle Eastern beats, and next up is a project called ‘Levi Mordechai’, which is reminiscent of early Israeli records such as Shalom Chanoch and is very live, but also has some beat elements to it.

ELSEWHERE: What pushed you in the direction of Dreams in Static?

DIWON: I had started making these really cinematic beats, playin’ keys and synths over beats I was putting together and thought it would be great to send to Dugans to lay some guitar, and cut that up as if it were sampled and just keep cutting it up and rearranging it so that it would be a mix of a live band, a hip-hop producer, but beyond the loop-driven hip-hop that’s played on the radio. Something that big music enthusiasts could really listen to on repeat and find new elements with each listen…

ELSEWHERE: How did you arrive at the duo name and the album name?

DIWON: ‘Dreams in Static’ just came to me. It sounded cool and seemed the perfect name for such a project. The album name, ‘Serene Poetic’ came from back in college when I was really into poetry and spoken word, I was going to put together my work and call it ‘Serene Poetic Cacophony’ I remember telling [poet, hip-hop artist and actor] Saul Williams about it and he seemed stoked on the name – fast forward a slew of years and I just cut off the cacophonous part, even the music, at times, probably warrants the adjective.

ELSEWHERE: Most people might not know, but you do a lot of your own artwork – what’s the story behind the two latest covers in your catalogue?

DIWON: I direct everything for my label [Shemspeed] and I do seventy-five percent of the designing. The Dreams cover was something I always had in my head, and then, once, stumbled on this French artist who was creating work similar to what I had in mind. Just very surreal situations, scenes that look real and could be possible, but at the same time visually don’t make sense. I collaborated on the cover with a designer who does work for the ultra-ortho[dox] labels in Brooklyn. He is great at extraction, something I am really bad at. Anyway, we finally got all the elements and he layered ’em in as per what I saw in my head. It was pretty fun. The Sabra Sessions is basically a play on designs I have been messing with for a while. Sort of the collage, cut and paste; retro, but new-school, fresh style; I wanted it to look like it could be a record cover from the 60s or from right now. I put the cover in a Polaroid-simulator-type thing to get the edges to look like that, and bam!

ELSEWHERE: What other side projects are you working on?

DIWON: my Others album which is a bunch of my different style songs with singers from around the world as well as this Diwon Riddim, record which is where singers in all languages get down to one of my Riddims, making club music in French, Jamaican English, Hebrew, German, Russian, English and so on. On the side of that, I am producing for a bunch of the Shemspeed artists, including Y-Love and DeScribe.

ELSEWHERE: Can we look forward to more Yemenite action from Diwon?

DIWON: The Yemeniteness will always be in some of my music. I still haven’t found a Yemenite singer or rapper to fit what I am going for, but I will always sneak Arabic and Yemenite styles into my hip hop beats.

ELSEWHERE: Are you and Dugans going to tour Serene Poetic?

DIWON: I doubt it. I want to be home in case Tarantino calls us to score his next film! We are workin’ on the vocal version next and a kids’ album as well, with [singer-songwriter] Jill Sobule.

ELSEWHERE: The Sabra Sessions is a little closer to what most listeners would know you for – it sounds like a funky Tel Aviv rooftop party – how did you end up putting it together?

DIWON: It’s sort of music that I have been enjoying, but the mix is how it’s always been played in my head, remixed, chopped, sped up. Sort of the style of Baltimore and Miami club music, which I haven’t found in Israel, so I tried my best to mix it up in a way that the Hebrew songs fit the style and tempo. I threw in some throwback tunes like ‘Funky Town’ because no-one ever DJs that in a hi- hop set for some reason, but it’s the most amazing track!

ELSEWHERE: What’s the next big thing in Jewish music – what’s turning you on right now?

DIWON: Middle Eastern Hip Hop in English, like Benyamin Brody (who features on Shir HaShirim) and Ephryme.

ELSEWHERE: Any parting words?

DIWON: It was such a blessing touring with you all in Melbourne, looking forward to the next thing!

No release dates as yet for Serene Poetic or The Sabra Sessions. For musical delights in the meantime, check out www.shemspeed.com, www.myspace.com/eprhyme and www.myspace.com/benyaminbrody

Annnddddd….. (drum roll!): You can download free music samples here and here.

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This interview was first published here.

Andrew Harris is a freelance scribbler and snapper and is one third of the three-headed beast that is elsewhere promotions, who brought Diwon and multilingual rapper Y-Love to Melbourne’s East Brunswick Club in June.

Walter doesn't roll on Shabbos. Change the schedule.

By ariel

Should Jewish sports clubs compete on Shabbat?

This question has confronted me since early adolescence, when I began playing competitive basketball with Maccabi NSW. It was around the time of my bar-mitzvah when I faced a dilemma which took many years to resolve. With junior competitive sports in Australia traditionally played on Saturday mornings, Maccabi has forever had to enter teams in these competitions if it wished to remain a seriously competitive club and impress upon the “seventy nations” that Jews can excel in sport.

Having had a solid Jewish education, I was always taught that Jews should not desecrate the Shabbat (at least) in public. If becoming bar/bat-mitzvah is about an adolescent accepting the yoke of the commandments – the mitzvot – then how could I in good conscience continue to participate in these basketball competitions?

So I missed basketball one week in order to have my bar-mitzvah. But the following week I was back on the court, convinced I was on my way to playing in the American NBA. I eventually advanced to the U-16s competition which was held on Friday nights. Like many “traditional” Jewish families, this posed less of an issue for us because it meant that after the match we could sit down to dinner together and the following morning I would go to shul with my father.

Sometime in Year 11, I decided that perhaps the path of shmirat Shabbat – Shabbat observance – was “the right thing to do” for me vis-à-vis world Jewry.  It helped that by this time, the U-18s and subsequent adult tournaments were played on Sunday evenings.

I began to resent Maccabi for putting young Jews in a position where they misrepresented our values, and to an extent I continue to do so, if only because I believe it is plainly wrong for a representative Jewish agency to publicly desecrate the Shabbat.

I recall that sometime during this whole period a wealthy observant Jew in Melbourne offered to sponsor all of Maccabi Victoria’s sports clubs on the condition that they cease playing on Shabbat. The organisation agreed and I felt good, proving that nothing is impossible to achieve.

Shmirat Shabbat has always been central to the Jewish people’s experience and existence, at least until the last two or three generations. There is an expression that more than the Jewish people have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jewish people.

Today, with more unaffiliated Jews discovering the beauty of our traditions and taking on Shabbat observance (based purely on my own observations of those I know), clubs like Maccabi may struggle to maintain their membership levels over the coming generations. I know many talented sportsmen who are also frum (observant), but are precluded from participating in many Maccabi events because they are held on Shabbat. Granted, there are opportunities for adult competition on Sundays, but what about the kids whose age groups primarily compete on Saturdays (there are one or two sports which are the exceptions)?

I don’t pretend to have a solution to the sport on Shabbat dilemma, but I contend that it is a communal dilemma, which should be addressed seriously. We are blessed to live in a free and fair country where all ethno-religious cultures are respected. There is no reason why the Jewish community should have to renege on its most quintessential traditions for the sake of amateur sports. I do not believe others would do the same.

I am convinced that a number of solutions to this problem will emerge, given serious consideration. None will be perfect, but one will be the best of the lot and we should run with it when it reveals itself.

Ariel is a full-time Jew with an interest in a variety of Jewish issues, and a passionate political analyst with a keen eye for hypocrisy and mismanagement. In order to pay bills, Ariel works as an electrical engineer in the Energy Supply Industry, but is not responsible for any electrical failures you may have experienced recently. Hopefully, someone will listen to what he has to say.

[column width=47% padding=6%]Almoni‘s view:

It is time to reconsider the rationale for not only Jewish schools, but all forms of private schooling in Australia which exist to support particular religious or ethnic boundaries as a guard against ‘assimilation’ or intermarriage.   This includes mainstream Protestant, Catholic, Islamic, and fundamentalist Christian schools.

The policy of providing subsidies for the development of ethnic and faith based schools effectively  acts to water down the principles of Australian multiculturalism, and to decrease the level of social cohesion.

The long-term effect of cultural and religious separation is a degree of unnecessary ethnic, religious and class-based segregation.  Students and their families have little experience of the ‘other’, for all the well-touted cross-cultural programs that exist in the interests of ‘harmony’. Unfortunately, this reflects an increasing trend in this country to retreat into what is called the ‘private sphere’, and avoid contact with others.

There is nothing better for young people than to mix with a diversity of other young people outside of their own narrow experience.  This principle should apply as much to Jewish young people as it does with Islamic and fundamentalist Christian schools, where it appears secular studies are neglected, and doctrines such as creationism are rife.  At minimum, the shared classroom would help to prevent increasing levels of religious extremism in all communities.

There is also the question of the economic non-viability of so many Jewish schools.

A society that supports fairness and benefits for all needs to support  public education for all through supporting the equitable disbursement of personal cultural capital and tax dollars.

How do we solve the problem?

Back when I went to primary and secondary school, there were plenty of frum girls and boys with kippot at state schools, and this did not appear to be a religious problem.   W hen there were haggim, kids did not attend. Given the fact that so much education can now be online, being away from the classroom is even less of a problem.

To make the proposal work I have three core suggestions.

• First, that for those who require gender separate education, at least post-primary school, that there be more  separate boys and girls high schools.
• Second, that the state fund  separate high-quality ethno-religious educational streams in state schools.  The one problem for the Jewish community, however, is that such a religious stream  needs to be made responsive to different religious and cultural streams, but for the moment, call that a ‘political detail’.
• Third, that a charter of religious rights and responsibilities  for state education be established for the state system as there are bound to be some difficult situations. This charter could use  the Victoria’s Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities as a reference point.

For those who argue that their religious beliefs or desire for a private secular education requires entirely separate schools, I argue that they should then pay for those schools without state assistance or tax breaks. Of they can home school (which already happens and is a highly undesirable option).

Once people see they can get a high-quality ‘ethnic-religious ‘ education that preserves their identify and connections in the state system (at a cheaper price), I suspect that many will abandon the private system.

Kids don’t have to swap their hummus or ham sandwiches, but they should learn to know each other as people and friends for life, rather than as separate stereotypes.[/column]

[column width="47%" padding="0%"]David Werdiger‘s view:

As he makes very clear, Almoni’s comments about the private school system are about far more than the Jewish community. His comments are about the nature of multiculturalism in Australia. This issue has been touched on in several posts on this blog, and his perspective tackles it head-on.

He suggests that secular studies are ‘neglected’ at Islamic and fundamentalist Christian schools. Further, that some of these schools teach awful doctrines like ‘creationism’! The Education Department has standards that all schools must abide relating to literacy and numeracy, and particularly the VCE (for those who complete it). It is the function of the Education Department to set standards for all schools, public and private. As long as those standards are met, then schools should be free to teach whatever is appropriate for their market. It should not be the function of government to decide whether schools should or shouldn’t exist (or be funded).

Almoni takes a socialist, almost communist position: that people in Australia with different cultural and ethnic backgrounds should be forced to integrate and ultimately become part of the pervasive Australian culture (whatever that means).

It is quite timely that in a recent opinion piece in The Age, Lindy Edwards discusses different approaches to multiculturalism around the world. While some conjecture on what should be, she draws her inferences based on historical attempts at integration of immigrants into Australia. The attempted policy of assimilation, similar to what Almoni espouses, was shown to be a dismal failure. Governments cannot dictate or define culture. These things must be allowed to evolve in their own space and time.

Melbourne is a vibrant melting pot. Everyone is able to immerse themselves and celebrate the different cultures that happily co-exist here. I know where to get the best bagels, the best yum cha, and the best kebabs. This is achieved by allowing natural geographic movement of people into communities that share a common culture. In some countries, and to a small extent in some places in Australia, barriers have formed around some ethnic enclaves. This is not a good thing, and has been shown to lead to racial tension, which needs to be dealt with in a pro-active way on a case-by-case basis. However, the extreme alternative of government attempting to intervene and create a custom merged culture of their own is equally unviable.

Creating a government education system that tries to be all things to all people will end up being nothing for anyone. Any external force that attempts to push culture in a specific direction (even if that means just stirring the melting pot) will inevitably clash with that culture, and people will simply withdraw or find other options.

Going back to the Jewish community, this issue is one that has come up several times in this blog and its predecessor. Should Jews in Australia quietly blend in with ‘regular’ Aussies (whatever that means), and discard the practices of our grandparents now that we are in the ‘free world’? Or should we remain comfortable celebrating our Judaism in whatever way we please – be it dancing in the street, wearing a kippah and tzitzit, or a long black coat and fur hat on Shabbat?

I suggest that the key to the continuity of any culture is to leave it be and let it evolve in its own time, rather than to suggest radical interventions and shifts, whether internal or external.[/column]

[end_columns]

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?

The Jewish community of Australia is a strange beast, both forward-thinking and “traditional”.

Nowhere is this dichotomy more apparent than in the role and status of women: we’re simultaneously feminist and bound by conservative gender roles. It’s a strange experience, especially when you’re an idealistic teenager not quite able to ‘sit’ comfortably with contradiction. To wit: the modern-Orthodox school I attended championed the rights and achievements of women in the secular world (the academic expectations placed upon us were certainly equal to those of our male peers), yet we were virtually ignored in prayer services and religious instruction throughout our high-school years. To be blunt, I felt like a second-class citizen, as did much of my female cohort. But that’s for another post.

It does, however, provide a nice segue into into the topic du jour: women’s auxiliaries (of synagogues) and Parents’ organisations (of Jewish schools). Namely, their organisational and fund-raising habits, which – though very important financially – seem to be a complete throwback to another era. Let me be be clear – I am not in any way disparaging the women who dedicate huge chunks of time, money and effort into fund-raising activities, on top of the demands of work and family. I tip my proverbial hat to them and acknowledge how their hard work contributes positively to the Jewish community. And yet, the whole ‘scene’ – the manner in which these activities are organised and presented – gives me the irrits.

Case in point: last week I came across an invitation to the Yavneh Parents’ Organisation’s annual hostess function, to be held on Monday July 20. The event itself sounds really interesting, featuring guest-speaker Joanne Fedler – a best-selling novelist, feminist and women’s-rights activist. Brilliant, I thought. Sounds fascinating. But then, on the back of the (hot pink) invitation, I read that the event was a women’s only function.

“Hostess” function? Hot-pink invitations? Women’s only? Seriously?

What about Yavneh fathers who would also like to contribute to fundraising efforts, or at least hear Ms Fedler speak? What is with the arbitrary segregation of sexes for non-religious, social events? It’s like old-school sexism disguised by a thin veneer of women’s empowerment. One could, I think, safely assume that the women in attendance will be well-educated, open-minded, and – to varying degrees – supportive of feminism as a means of eliminating sexism and breaking-down traditional, socially-constructed gender roles. Which makes the whole thing even more bewildering, like there’s some sort of collective smothering of feminist sensibilities happening for the sake of fund-raising and maintaining ‘tradition’. It just screams Stepford Wives.

I do not mean to single out Yavneh for criticism in this area. Most other Jewish dayschools and synagogues have similar events throughout the year. I’m sure they’re equally backward and painful. (The NCJWA, however, I see as quite distinct, as its mandate is specifically women-oriented; whereas there is nothing specifically women-oriented – at least that I can discern – about a parents’ organisation or a shul.) I just happened to chance upon the Yavneh invitation, but one could easily substitute Yavneh for Scopus, King David, Mizrachi, or any other Jewish educational/religious organisation.

So, can someone please shed some light? Surely I’m not the only woman who attends these events reluctantly and with a sense of deep discomfort? Surely I’m not the only one bored to death by luncheons, gender-segregation and the reinforcement of silly stereotypes?

Speak up, sisters and brothers of Israel.

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.”

Most of us were raised to believe that you were a Jew because your mother was Jewish. That Jewish descent passes through the woman. And no doubt we have all heard the various reasons that rabbis and others have given for this over the years. My personal favourite is the one that says women are more spiritually advanced than men and hence the Jewish spiritual DNA can only be passed through them. I mean, obviously spiritual DNA can only be passed through women, why would we have ever thought otherwise?

On a more serious note, however, the idea of matrilineal descent has major ramifications for many Jewish people. In an era where more and more Jewish boys and girls are meeting people from outside of their culture, maintaining the racial and ethnic purity of the people has never been harder. And it is especially hard on the Rabbinate to try and enforce their notion of spiritual purity with very few punitive measures available to them.

But lets examine for a moment the origin of this matrilineal descent concept. Within the 4-cubit-wide confines of rabbinic logic, the source of all Jewish laws and customs is the Torah, as interpreted by the Rabbis of the Mishnaic period (i.e 200BC-200AD). And sure enough, the Mishna is quite clear on the matter. Kiddushin 3:12 states that to be considered Jewish one must be the child of a Jewish mother or a righteous convert. For the rabbi it is simple – case closed.

But for those of us who for whatever reason see it fit to doubt the reasoning of pre-industrial scholastic logicians who were part of a nationalist populist political movement arguably responsible for the two most catastrophic wars in Jewish history up until the Holocaust, well, we have to search beyond the Mishna and its peculiar methodology of Biblical interpretation.

A straight reading of the Torah leaves one with a fairly overwhelming impression that in Biblical and pre-Biblical times, all notions of tribal descent were passed through the father. There are numerous characters in the Bible, for example Judah’s sons, Ephraim, Menashe and the children of Moses who all had non-Jewish mothers and were all considered Jewish. The rabbis conveniently explain that all of their mothers converted to Judaism but as with most rabbinic statements, they bear little relation to any literal reading of the text and require the application  of the arcane science of drash to force those meanings out.

In addition to this is the overwhelming number of references to the father’s tribe being the most important, to all descent occurring through the patrilineal line, the generation lists that only mention fathers and the constant reference to the Gods of Forefathers, implying that tribe and religion are the domain of the male.

And this makes perfect sense. We know that the Biblical and pre-Biblical society was highly patriarchal, both for the Israelites and the Hebrews and for most people around the world at that time. If a Jewish man married a non-Jewish woman what was happening in effect was that the man was taking her into his tribe, she would be absorbed in to the new people, and thus her previous identity and her previous gods would be irrelevant.

What is equally clear to all historians of this matter is that at some point this changed and matrilineal descent took over as normative practice. There are a number of arguments put forward, each with greater or lesser degrees of evidence to back them.

There is the idea that it originated with Ezra, when he forced Jewish men to banish their non-Jewish wives. There is another idea that it was instituted after the Bar Kochba revolt as a leniency to the children of women raped by the Romans, so that an entire generation of children would not be lost to Judaism. There is a further idea that in contrast to paternal descent, maternal descent is certain and provable.

But the truth and historicity of any of these reasons is not the real point. The real point is that according to the best evidence that historians can bring up:

1. Once upon a time Jews believed in patrilineal descent
2. At a later period they changed to matrilineal descent
3. No one has ever really understood exactly why this change took place

Despite the overwhelming historical evidence pointing to a tradition of patrilineal descent, the Halacha is steadfast in its exclusive acceptance of matrilineal descent.  As far as Halacha is concerned, if the Mishnaic sages interpreted a biblical verse in a certain way – then come hell or high water their interpretation will stand until the end of time.

What is important for us is the following: Why as a community do we allow ourselves to be bound by the interpretation and tradition of the Halacha? Why do we allow questions of such fundamental importance like “Who is a Jew?” to be arbitrated by a system that borders on the superstitious?

Being Jewish is not a superstition – it is a very real and powerful experience that transcends the narrow and stringent practices of Halacha. Most of us feel very comfortable being Jewish without keeping any real Halacha at all. The question of whether one can be Jewish without keeping the Halacha was answered long ago. The question now is slightly different:

Can a community claim to be Jewish without relying on the Halacha for definitions of its own Jewishness?

Even though most of us feel entirely Jewish as individuals without the need for any formal Halacha in our lives – we have left the ultimate Jewish character of the community entirely in the hands of the Halachists.

The Halachic system performed a great service to the Jewish people. Arguably it guaranteed the survival of the Jewish people for 2000 years without a homeland or a sovereign state of our own. Yet the great epoch of the Halacha is at an end. We may not be living in the era of redemption, but neither are we living in the Exile proper.

As a community we need to rethink our relationship to the Halacha. Instead of accepting it as a ruler and master, we should adopt it for what it actually is – a frame of reference. The word Torah etymologically derives from the word “hora’ah” or guidance. In the language of our most ancient forefathers the word Torah did not mean law but guidance.

If we saw the Halacha as a guide to our ancient traditions, rather than hard and fast law, we would be in a better position to fashion a Jewish experience that is congruent and consistent with the way we actually live our lives.