Month: February 2024

Victory Garden 2.0

personby Madeleine Robins
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During the early days of Covid (y’all remember the early days of Covid, right?) I realized that if I didn’t do something I would get…a little frantic. I have a well managed tendency to anxiety, counterbalanced by the belief that running in circles flapping my arms and squealing does nothing to improve the situation. If I can do something–even a small something–to ameliorate an anxietous situation, I feel better. I think of this as tending a Victory Garden*, after the WW1 and WW2 practice of home gardening to reduce the strain on supply chains during the war.

During first couple of years of Covid I sewed masks for donation; hooked up with a group that provided materials and found recipients (health and day-care workers, etc.) and distributed them. And spending a few hours every week had the wonderful benefit of making me feel calmer about getting through the pandemic.

We are, as you may have noticed, in an election year.  And the world is a mess. At the state and local levels, not to mention the national levels, the stakes feel almost unbearably high. And my tendency toward anxiety (see above) has been ratcheting higher and higher. This is something that no amount of sewing is going to help. So what can I do to do something? I’m  not a good debater–for someone who works with words, when I’m confronted with the opportunity to discuss politics with someone of differing opinions I tend to get incoherent and arm-wavy and anxious, which convinces no one of my deeply-held feelings in the matter. I am conflict averse (read: I’m a big coward) and actually rather shy about approaching people. But there’s that ratcheting anxiety thing, which is only going to get worse.

Fortunately, during the last couple of elections I’ve found a way of helping that is A) within my skill set, B) does, I think, a good deal of good, and C) makes me feel better. I write postcards. Working with a group called Reclaim Our Vote, I hand-write postcards to voters who may be in danger of missing their opportunity to vote, either through lack of information or outright attempts to mislead them. What I like about these postcards is that they don’t endorse a candidate or espouse a particular platform. They’re simple and informational: “The election (or primary) is on X date. Your state rules say you can vote in the following ways. If anyone tells you you aren’t registered/aren’t allowed to vote, here is what you do. Your vote and your voice are important.” It’s about making sure that every voice is heard.

Writing out the full script (which varies according to the state the recipient lives in)–using multicolored pens (for impact) and my best handwriting–is hard on my increasingly antique wrists–I can do maybe 20 in an evening. So I start small, with a list of maybe 100 recipients. When I get those done, I order another set of postcards and addresses. It’s not exactly rocket surgery, but Center for Common Ground has evidence that post carding gets people to the polls, especially in areas where redistricting or other shenanigans has left many potential voters confused about where, how, and when to vote.

During the last Presidential election my brother, whose politics are, shall we say, entirely opposite to mine, was concerned about election integrity. So he and his wife did a smart thing: they volunteered as poll workers. Not only did they help the process, but they were able to report to their friends that they saw zero evidence of vote tampering, but considerable evidence that everything had been done to ensure that the vote was aboveboard. They felt less anxious about the process. I think sometimes that it’s the ground-level stuff that is most important: convincing people one at a time that the system can work.

So in and among all the other things I’m doing this spring, if you want me I’ll be writing postcards. Or icing my wrists.

If you’d like to get involved in post carding, check out the Center for Common Ground’s page.

__________

*the irony here, of course, is that no one in their right mind wants me to actually garden. Plants see me coming and recoil in terror. In this case the pen, and the needle, are my wheelhouses, and I stay in them.

Yesterday and Tomorrow

personby Gillian Polack
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When I need a break from the very bad news that wants to control my life and eat my brain, I watch old TV. The series I’m watching right now is the original The Tomorrow People. There is a reason for this. Not a very sensible reason. I’m not watching it because it’s primary fodder for my research (though if something comes up, I keep that something in mind): I’m watching it because it is the TV series that matched my age and interests when I was a teen. I needed to discover some parts of my past. Re-visiting the past is particularly useful when the present isn’t as easy as it could be.

Australia was a lot less USA-like in the 1970s, and The Tomorrow People is a classic science fiction show targeted at teens, and I was a classic SF tragic when I was a teen, and… let me get back to the beginning.

The Tomorrow People was shown from 1973 until 1979.

If I were to ask you to to take a wild guess as to when I began high school I hope that you would say ‘1973’ without hesitation. I was eleven-going-on-twelve. I was a science nerd and a history nerd but we had no words to describe that. The science didn’t need a term to help it fit into my life, because my mother was a science teacher. The history I had to argue for and persuade people that museums were worth visiting.

“You have half an hour” I was told when we went caravanning. Five minutes if it was a monument, half an hour if it was a museum. I found ways of spinning out that half hour. When I found a display of diamonds that had been found in streams (it was the goldfields, of course diamonds were found in streams, though in my case I found a few minuscule rubies and garnets, some gold and a vast amount of cassiterite) the whole family came in to investigate them. We understood rocks. All of us. Rocks and food. And, for me, baby clothes and irons from a century ago, and anything written or printed from before I was born and…

I’ve wanted to understand the whole world around me since I was about two. I was told “It will get boring” and it never has. A friend gave me an Australian cookbook from 1968 just this week, as an early birthday present (when things are difficult friends give early birthday presents, I suspect) and I cannot put it away until it has been thoroughly explored and my relationship with each and every recipe has been re-established… I knew this book when it first came out, you see. I was seven. I loved it then and, now, at 62, I have my own copy and life is suddenly so happy I needed to rewatch The Tomorrow People.

I am quite possibly, a failure, but I’m a failure who developed an early love of science fiction. SF and food are two of my happy places.

When I was heading for my teens, I read SF magazines from the US and watched a few TV series from the US but mostly, in the 70s, it was Doctor Who and Blake’s Seven and The Tomorrow People. For me it was, anyhow. The Tomorrow People was the one with children like me, who didn’t fit in. I couldn’t do telepathy, but I liked the TV series so very much that an aunt gave me Franklin’s ESP (a board game for incipient telepaths) for my birthday. I could try to be a Tomorrow Person. I could write stories about it. That need to write stories stuck, but my need to teleport did not.

My favourite actor on the series was Elizabeth Adare. I discovered today that this was because her acting style channels my inner teacher. I wanted to meet her. The actress, not the character. I probably still do. She was the right public person when I was the right age to pay attention. The series of The Tomorrow People where she was absent felt a little bereft. Why is this so? (A totally misplaced quote from an Australian science TV show, also from my childhood.) It’s because The Tomorrow People finished just when I left school and went to university. It lasted just the right amount of time. There was an adult woman on the television who was permitted to be intent and interesting and intelligent and when the actress was interviewed she was even more interesting and intelligent. We all need role models: I was very lucky to have that one at that precise and difficult time.

And now, if you’ll kindly excuse me, I have books to see and TV to meet.

Do We Need “Rough Men”?

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I came across this quote the other day on social media:

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand read to do violence on their behalf.

It was attributed to George Orwell, but it probably won’t surprise readers to learn that it was actually said by a right-wing cultural columnist named Richard Grenier. A look at a Wikipedia page on misquotations and a site called Quote Investigator suggests that it is a paraphrase of some ideas Orwell expressed.

Regardless of who actually said those words, I think the general sentiment is widely shared by a large number of people. I recall it being an underlying point in the many spy thrillers I read back when I was in high school (Len Deighton, John Le Carre, and even Ian Fleming, plus others who were big in the 1960s and later).

It’s also something you hear from police officers and people in the military. I think it has a strong following, particularly – but not exclusively – among men, regardless of their political opinions.

Back when I was in my early 20s, I had a discussion with a good friend who was a Vietnam War vet. I stated my strong opinion that the fact that the draft only applied to men led to increased sexism and that women could and should serve in combat if military action was necessary.

To my surprise – I didn’t expect a lot of push back from my friends for my radical opinions in those days – he disagreed vehemently.

Twenty years later, he explained to me that one of the things that he held onto for a long time that let him tolerate his miserable war experience was that at least he was protecting others from having to do it. He had by then thought the subject through more deeply.

The sentiment makes sense, in our violent world, but on the whole I think it’s a myth that many people, like my friend, tell themselves to deal with the trauma of the horrors of war or other violent actions.

In truth, one of the key things that makes us safe is that some people – and sometimes enough of them – stand up against various kinds of injustice. Continue reading “Do We Need “Rough Men”?”…

Friendships

personby Gillian Polack
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I am a bit late today because I met a baby on my Monday. Not just any baby. The baby of a student who has, over the years, stopped being a student and became a friend. T is her second child and is so curious and intelligent. Not even four months, and responding to everyone and laughing when I teased him and happy to be held by me.

While I and T were being happy together, his mother and I chatted. We spoke about a lot of personal things, and about the cultural differences between Indonesian women over 60 and Australian women over 60.

She’d been to a lecture recently and so we also chatted about the bias that means that much research into early trade between SE Asia and northern Australia has been under-reported. The talk was by a scholar whose papers I read. We would both like to see more written about the pre-1600 non-European engagement with the people of the far North of Australia.

By pre-European, I’ve seen more papers about Christian voyages to the north, especially Dutch, Portuguese and British (the British ones were more recent) than about those from all the other cultures that are close, or who have settled or converted land that’s close to Australia. Given that much of Indonesia and Malaysia are now Muslim and given the large influence of Indian cultures on that whole region, this lack of public reporting has led to a vast, vast gap in popular knowledge and understanding.

Also given that the people of far Northern Australia know Muslims and Buddhists and Chinese traders with quite different religion still and they have incorporated this knowledge into their own cultural traditions rather than converting to any of those religions, it’s important in other ways. We talk about different cultures working together or living alongside each other and yet we don’t understand this for not-so-modern Australia.

The conversation moved (of course) to the particular culture of Sulawesi and how it has connected with the Australian continent. This led to beef rendang which, as my friend knows very well, is one of my favourite foods. Decades ago I made kosher beef rendang, just to prove that it could be done. It’s easy to make rendang kosher because it contains no dairy products, but I had to adjust the cooking slightly and the ingredients slightly to allow for the differences in the meat texture and salt levels.

From this we returned to talking about the children. Of course we did. My friend has two utterly gorgeous children and they’re a joy to talk about. Although we did spatter the conversation with why some childless women adore children and why some do not. I think we concluded that everything depends on who the woman is and what our life experiences are, but I’m not certain about this. I don’t think the conversation is done. We are certain that I like children of all ages and am keeping my role as an honorary aunt.

It’s going to be a month or so before we can chat again. As a mother of young children she won’t have time until after Ramadan. After Ramadan and before Pesach: perfect.

Some Thoughts on Learning

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I’ve been taking a drawing class this winter and it got me to thinking about learning. It dawned on me that it’s really difficult to teach yourself something with books or online videos unless you already know the basics.

For example, if you’ve trained in Tai Chi and know not just a form, but why you move certain ways, you can watch a video of a master instructor and get some insight. You can probably even teach yourself a new form that way.

But until you have a good grounding in the basics, videos are not going to make sense. You need to learn the basics from someone who knows them and can guide you past the errors that most beginners make.

Until your body has integrated those basics, you aren’t going to know how to interpret the things you see in a video.

In a lot of cases — particularly if you are learning to do something physical — such classes need to be in person with hands-on instruction.

In drawing class this week we were working on drawing negative space, because you need to understand negative space to see things the way an artist does. I was trying to do it, but the teacher came by and said, “You’re drawing the chair, not the negative space.” She showed me a couple of things and I was able to shift what I was doing.

I can’t exactly explain what shifted, either, because some of what I am learning is not the sort of thing that is easily put into words. It is instead the sort of thing you learn by watching and trying and getting just the right kind of correction.

When it comes to drawing — and we won’t even get into painting or sculpture or other visual arts — I don’t have enough grammar and vocabulary and comprehension of the basics to figure out what else I need to know. Having a good teacher is gradually giving me those basics.

A friend of mine recommended some online video classes, but she’s been doing art of various kinds for some time. I don’t think I know enough yet to pick up much that way. Once I have more grounding, I’ll look into that. Continue reading “Some Thoughts on Learning”…

Building A Village

personby Madeleine Robins
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the future. Not the future. My future.

My aunt turned 98 on Thursday, and I went down to spend a couple of days with her. I am often awed, not just by the devotion her primary caregiver shows (a woman who was her housekeeper for 30 years and took caregiving certification courses so she could be there for my aunt) but at the network of care that surrounds her. My uncle’s nephew manages the finances and coordinates her home care. Her medical care is overseen by UCLA’s Geriatrics department (which coordinates with all the medical visitors–primary care doctor, PT, nurse supervisor, meds management, etc.). Her wonderful primary caregiver is there for several days at a time (and her younger daughter, who is a PhD candidate at UCLA, subs in on occasion), and there are several respite caregivers that my aunt knows and likes, who come in so that Maria can have some time off. The guy who manages the building and takes care that everything is working properly. And family: my daughter lives in the garage apartment of the building and has dinner with my aunt a couple of times a week. I am planning to visit for a few days every couple of weeks for the foreseeable. So that’s more than a dozen people.

My aunt wanted to stay in her own home, and is fortunate that a lifetime of work and saving has made that possible–and that her sweetness, and the love everyone has for her and my uncle, ensures that she’s surrounded by kindness and affection.

On the other hand, my father, and my in-laws, both chose to go to continuing care residences. My father did so because he went blind, and living in a rural community meant that all of his time was spent arranging rides to shop and visit doctors, and… Dad was ferociously independent and deeply social. It was a better fit for him to move–on his own initiative–to a place where things like rides, and shopping, and a social life, were part of the of the package. He lived there for about a dozen years, and loved the place. And my in-laws sold their home and moved into a similar continuous-care place while they were still hale enough to make it their home: they made friends, got involved in politics and other things, traveled widely, and were always happy to come back to their new home. In both cases, moving in long before they needed assistance (medical assistance anyway) or heightened care, meant that they had a community and a sense of belonging. They did not mourn, as some elderly folks do, for the home they left when they were put into nursing care. They were home, and the care came to them.

Because I write SF and so many of my friends are writers (with all the colorful personalities and imaginations that implies) the subject of how to handle our own futures sometimes comes up. Every few years someone says “what we should do is pool our money and buy an apartment building/subdivision/whole town and live there.” Continue reading “Building A Village”…

Two types of hunger

personby Gillian Polack
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Way back when I did more things that were political and public, friends and I learned that it’s possible to get through life without hating, without accusations based on little or no evidence, and without destroying the lives of others. We learned, quite simply, how to learn before judging. We talked about folk dance and folk music (in fact, some of us danced and some of us sang), we learned much history to advance our understanding. I can still do some of the dancing (although these days it hurts, physically, which is ironic) and sing some of my favourite songs to myself (not to others beachhead really, I have no voice) and I still learn the history. What I’ve never stopped doing and what I can still do well is cooking. Hunger for food helps feed the equally-important hunger for understanding. Let me introduce you today, then, to four cookbooks that have served me well when I need to remember how complex and wonderful different cultures are and how there are many paths to avoiding hate.

The first book is Christiane Dabdoub Nasser’s Classic Palestinian Cuisine. A friend who is Palestinian Australian said I was missing her cultural background from my book collection, even though I was cooking food that was very similar to her own cuisine. She was right. I had not even begun to understand where her food and foodways were like mine. We talked a lot, and we ate each other’s cooking, which helped, but my library didn’t reflect this at all.

I couldn’t find a Palestinian Australian cookbook. Nasser’s was published in London, though, so it’s close enough for now. By ‘for now’ I mean I need more. One cookbook is not even close to a whole culture. The first cookbook is to open a window and to begin to see through that open window. I begin learning where I make non-rational judgements and where I lack knowledge and understanding, and then the recipes I cook help me break down my issues and to stop applying them to someone else’s culture. It helps me see people, and to stop hiding behind my own biases. It helps me look for what we share and to avoid hate.

I make a variant of Nasser’s potato with rosemary dish for Passover. It’s wonderful. Sadly, there are never leftovers. For dinner tonight, I’m choosing between two different eggplant (aubergine) salads. I’m hungry just thinking about it.

I chose the second book because I needed a cup of coffee. I’ve just finished my cup, and I feel almost awake. Given I’m writing on a hot summer’s day, this is a good thing. Antony Wild’s Coffee: A Dark History is not my favourite history of coffee volume. It was the first I saw when I looked at my shelves. It is, however appropriate for today.

We all carry a lot of half-understood history with us. All our foodstuffs and foodways have their own history and sometimes we know things and we think we know things and… it helps to find works that debunk and reconsider and don’t shy away from the less-good elements of the past.

The history of coffee walks hand-in-hand with empire-building and slavery if you want to focus on one side of its history. Coffee offers so much more than this, however, and I’d not use Wild’s book alone. Coffee helped European political blokes talk to each other through coffee houses from the seventeenth century. It changed the shape of discourse, in fact, in those countries. It shaped that discourse in part of the Middle East. Opening the door to coffee history is to open the door to understanding how even the history of a single type of bean carries with it cultural complexities and is worth understanding.

The last two books are, in my library, a pair. I use them a lot. They’re both by Claudia Roden. Roden does all the things I’ve talked about. She breaks food and foodways down into specific cultures: her volume The Book of Jewish Food is a masterpiece in this way. It doesn’t contain my foodways (there’s a story in that) but it’s given me a basic understanding of how Jewish food and foodways can be interpreted and understood in a wider sense. I can integrate this with my own historical knowledge (and it helps being an ethnohistorian, I admit) and I can talk Jewish food with most people. I have favourite Jewish foodways, and I explore them separately, but I always begin with Roden’s work.

The same thing applies to my learning about the different food and foodways of the Middle East. Her A Book of Middle Eastern Food is the book that began me on this wonderful journey, when I was a teenager. I owned my own copy from the moment I left home. My little paperback is from 1982. Without it, I would not have known enough to ask friends “What should I look for in a cookbook that takes into account your background.” I have hundreds of cookbooks now, but this was one of my first, and I still love it. My copy is battered and much used.

Each note Roden makes about this cuisine or that has sparked research at my end. I find more recipes, look into the culture that owns them, begin to understand the food customs and rules… and remind myself that doing this help me remember, every day, that respect and understanding trump hate. This means, of course, that I need another cookbook. It’s been a very difficult year so far for me as an Australian Jew. My obligation from that (according to the way I see the world) is to understand better other people who are also hurting. I shall watch for cookbooks and recipe websites. This is not the only way I try to understand, but it’s definitely the most fun.

Workarounds, With Belts and Suspenders

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Modern life requires workarounds. Under the principle of Murphy’s law – whatever can go wrong will – there are many situations where having more than one way to do something will save your butt.

This is also an argument for redundancy, or, as I like to put it, using both a belt and suspenders. That may be an outdated metaphor – I’m not sure anyone uses suspenders to hold up their pants these days – but I’ve always liked it.

Both workarounds and belts and suspenders are at the heart of the way I deal with tech, but they can also apply to other things. I use workarounds when I cook, for example — if we’re out of one thing, I use something else.

Earlier this week, I needed to make granola. I like an easy cold cereal for breakfast, but it’s hard to find ones made from whole grains with very little sugar and a lot of nuts, so I make my own. My preference is to make it with mixed rolled grains — wheat, barley, oats, rye — but I have been known to make it with just barley.

We can usually get one or the other in bulk at a health food store, but my backup is Bob’s Red Mill 5-Grain hot cereal. However, we haven’t been to the health food store lately and our local store’s been out of the 5-Grain for two weeks.

So this week I made it with rolled oats. (No one is ever out of rolled oats, near as I can tell.) It makes very little difference in taste, though it doesn’t give me the perfect mix of grains I want for good health (barley is very good for you). Still, it will do and it’s still way better than the commercial brands.

Workarounds are often imperfect, but in a lot of cases, perfection isn’t worth all the extra effort.

A typical workaround in tech is saving documents as rtf if you need to be able to open them in different word processing programs. Or emailing them to yourself in addition to saving them. Or even printing things out just to be on the safe side. I save my taxes on the computer, but I also keep a print copy.

Another is having multiple browsers available because one of them won’t work for some things you try to do. For some reason, I can’t pay one of my health insurance bills in Firefox, but I can in Safari. That’s the sort of thing I mean.

Making extra copies and having multiple browsers are both redundant, but that’s where the belt and suspenders point comes in. It’s a lot easier than spending hours trying to find something that should be saved online but isn’t or even more hours figuring out what’s causing the problem. Redundancy can be very useful. Continue reading “Workarounds, With Belts and Suspenders”…

When You Can’t Write

personby Deborah J. Ross
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For a long time, I used to joke that I couldn’t afford writer’s block. I began writing professionally when my first child was a baby and I learned to use very small amounts of time. This involved “pre-writing,” going over the next scene in my mind (while doing stuff like washing the dishes) until I knew exactly how I wanted it to go; when I’d get a few minutes at the typewriter (no home computers yet), I’d write like mad. I always had a backlog of scenes and stories and whole books, screaming at me to be written. The bottleneck was the time in which to work on them.

I kept writing through all sorts of life events, some happy, others really awful and traumatic. Like many other writers, I used my work as escape, as solace, as a way of working through difficult situations and complex feelings. I shrouded myself with a sense of invulnerability: I could write my way through anything life threw at me!

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

I hit an immovable wall during a PTSD meltdown following the first parole hearing of the man who raped and murdered my mother. For weeks at a time, I battled flashbacks and nightmares. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t stop crying. Also, I couldn’t write. That creative paralysis added another dimension to the crisis. If I couldn’t write, who was I? Where were my secret worlds, my journeys of spirit and heart where people healed and things got better? Gone…and I didn’t know if I’d ever get them back.

I was fortunate to have a lot of help, professional and friendly, during those dark weeks and months, some of it from fellow writers. No pep talks, just friendship, constant and true. Eventually, as I recovered, I was able to return to fiction writing as well, although by then, I found myself a single working mom and had a new set of demands on my time.

Writers stop writing for all kinds of reasons. In my case, it was personal and emotional, part of a larger crisis. Other times, however, the well runs dry when the rest of life is going smoothly. Quite a few years ago, I ran into a writer I greatly admired (at an ABA convention), and I’d not seen anything from this writer in quite a few years. I introduced myself and asked when the next book would be coming out. Only when I saw the change in the writer’s expression did I realize how difficult the subject was. I was probably the hundredth person that weekend to ask. (Eventually, this writer came out with several new books; I wonder now if the appearance at the ABA wasn’t a way of trying to get the head back into writerly-space.)

Sometimes, a writer feels they’ve said everything they have to say. Or that one book or one series is it; there are no new worlds begging to be explored. They can rest on their laurels with a feeling of satisfaction and closure. For the rest of us, though, not writing is anywhere from excruciating to devastating.

I  think it’s not at all helpful to try to “cheer up” a writer in the middle of a dry period. The specific reasons–creative paralysis, personal crisis, discouragement–vary so much. I think it’s safe to say that each of us has to find our own way through. For me, it’s helped immensely to know I’m not the only one to go through it–and that’s the operational term “go through it.” Come out the other side. Talk about what happened, in the hopes of being the light in the darkness for someone else.

The Wall

personby Gillian Polack
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Left-of centre Jews in countries like  Australia, the US and the UK face a wall. We try to talk to people, but instead we talk to that wall. It’s an immense and solid and stubborn wall. Its bricks are made of bigotry. The wall prevents people from talking to each other, from working together, from meeting shared goals, and, every day, makes life unsafe for more and more Jews.

This week, in Australia, a bunch of things happened and each one of them showed me a small bit of that wall. Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it, but at least I know why a whole bunch of people I’ve known for years suddenly can’t see me and won’t listen to me. There is a fragging wall between us.

I handle the wall by not carrying every moment of hate and every ounce of despair at once. I try to take the bits I can handle and only turn to the next bit when I’m ready. This is difficult, because more hate and more hate and more hate is thrown my way. Those who do the throwing, who once were friends, are often behind that wall. They tell me I have to follow their guidelines and do everything their way, otherwise I am evil. I need to put the lives of Gazans ahead of my own. I understand that demand. People in Gaza hurt. Their lives are in constant danger, from the IDF, also from Hamas, from other militant groups. If I silence myself and join the marches, however, will it help them? If I devalue my own life, will it help them?

It won’t. I cannot change the lives of Palestinians by shouting at clouds. The best thing to do, then, is to find wise people I can learn from. I seek out people who don’t hate: they are Palestinian and Israeli and they talk to each other about the future. I cheer on the Israeli crowds demonstrating against Netanyahu’s government, because Israel is a democratic country and can change its path. Its citizens need support to make those changes, not incessant and impossible hate.

While I can’t see how exacerbating antisemitism in Australia helps Israel change its direction or saves lives in Gaza, I can see that it hurts Australian Jews. We’re not asked our views or our thoughts, or if we lost anyone on October 7, or if we receive hate mail. We are required to use old-fashioned (mostly hateful) shibboleths. If we don’t use them, then we’re accused of being part of the problem. Also of murdering children. This is fascinating from a story angle, but almost impossible to handle as part of every day. So many diaspora Jews have to watch for red flags and warnings of danger to us, personally.

In short, to reduce the impossibility of all of this I ask myself what I can do if I want justice for the most people possible. I can listen and, when it’s appropriate, talk. Not give the shibboleths. Not silence myself. Not accept hate.

I cannot talk for anyone in the Middle East: I’m Australian. I can only speak for myself. More than this, I can only speak for myself when it’s safe for me. It’s probably not entirely safe for me to write this, but it’s safer than going onto a social media site and trying to talk with anyone on the other side of that damnable wall. They won’t hear, and I will become one of their increasing number of targets. (This is literal, but now is not the time for me to go into the blockings and the lists.)

Those behind the wall of hate are mostly good-hearted people who mean well. Life would be so much less complicated if they were monsters.

So much has happened in my vicinity this week. I can handle just two incidents, of the many. To talk about everything would be to carry all the weight at once and I would collapse under the strain. These are both Australian things. Not the ‘it’s not safe to be seen in public wearing things that identify you as Jewish’ nor the watching for red flags to find out precisely which people I thought were friends are really not, right now. Not the old stuff of being accused of murdering and being told I’m privileged and being told I don’t know history or … so much old stuff. The old stuff is the foundation of the wall. The new stuff is the wall itself. Right now, the wall is growing every day.

In Australia, straight after the October 7 massacre, when most of us with friends and relatives in the region had no idea who was hurt, who was dead, who was hostage, someone in authority decided that it would be a good thing to allow Australians (mostly Jewish) with links to that border area, by lighting the Sydney Opera House with the colours of the Israeli flag. The idea was, I think, that Sydneysiders could mourn together and that this would help with an impossible situation.

On the day, the police advised Jews, “It is not safe to go to the Opera House” and that, if anyone Jewish went, we should dress to not look Jewish. No stars of David, no kippot, nothing indicative of our background. Most Jewish Sydneysiders took this to heart and stayed safe at home.

Why did the police send this advice? Because they were told that there would be a pro-Palestine demonstration. This was not like the more recent demonstrations. It was not crying for an end to war, because there was, at that point, no war. I may not think that the constant demonstrations help, but the loss of life, the pain, the torment the non-Hamas folks of Gaza are going through – that’s enough reason to demonstrate so I understand those who are part of them. I wish they’d take the time to understand me. Back then, Israel had not retaliated. It was in shock. Most of those who demonstrated were polite, but even the polite demonstrators were celebrating the murders of October 7.

Some demonstrators said stuff. A video was circulated of the stuff. Some people claimed it said ‘Gas the Jews’ and others said it did not say this.

Last week the police reported on the video. While they thought the video said “Where’s the Jews” and “Fuck the Jews,” their expert says it did not say “Gas the Jews.” They said that there were people who heard “Gas the Jews,” but that the police didn’t have enough information to change anyone. In other words, they agreed about the level of antisemitism expressed by some of the demonstrators, but couldn’t act on it.

Those who live on the other side of the wall to me are now making a commotion about how things are, that we all made such a fuss about a false claim. Those not behind a wall are saying that the antisemitism was shocking.

The second event concerned a fire. Those who lit a fire that destroyed the Burgertory takeaway in Caulfield were arrested.

Why is this such a problem? It isn’t, in one way. Criminals arrested, proof was tendered that it was not a hate crime against the Palestinian-Australian owner of the restaurant chain, we could all move on.

Except…

There had been an anti-Jewish riot (not a large one, but not a safe one, either) the Friday after the Burgertory fire. The owner discouraged action, I believe, but a bunch of people (a very large bunch) drove from suburbs an hour away (or thereabouts) to protest the alleged Jewish burning of the restaurant. No-one knew who the arsonists were and the demonstrators decided it was a Jewish thing. Australia went from “Fuck the Jews” to “Blame the Jews”.

Caulfield is a suburb with many Jews. Also, it was one of the big round number anniversaries of Kristallnacht. The protest (with its violence) was in the park next to a synagogue.

Someone on Twitter the next day posted that they (they themselves, not people they knew) had seen creepy men in the park when they went there to demonstrate. One of their friends talked to one of the creepy men, and were told that they were synagogue security bods. The guards are nothing new. Synagogues in Australia have needed someone watching out for things all my life, and I have very unfond memories of all of us being marshalled outside in the 70s, because of bomb threats. No Jewish institution in Australia is safe right now, and the Federal government gave a big wad of cash to both the Jewish and Muslim communities to address the safety of Muslims and of Jews in this increasingly perilous world.

The guards in the park are important because of that tweet: we know that at least some of the visitors from many miles away knew there was a synagogue. I knew there was one too, because a cousin is very active in the synagogue. He was among the evacuees.

The bottom line is that, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the police closed down a Jewish service, unfinished, because people outside were feared to be violent.

The moment the actual arsonists were made public (just last week) loads of people wondered (publicly) if those who had claimed the fire was set by Jews would apologise. I didn’t see apologies. What I saw were wall-blinded people finding something else to hate in Jewish Australia. That’s another story, and too close to me for safety right now.

I’m tired of the hate. I’m tired of those who only see what they want to see. I would be less worried about my fatigue if the wall didn’t also lead to a blindness concerning the Middle East. I’d be less distressed by this if the protesters worked towards outcomes we could all live with. I wish the activists asked “How can we get people out of this mess? How do we help everyone not guilty of vile things be safe and have food and rebuild and… how do we get all the people who are committing crimes be put on trial?” If we supported Israel, then it could be persuaded to dump the government (so many Israelis already want to) and Israel could start to talk with the non-Hamas Palestinians in Gaza and work their way (however long it takes) towards an accord. If we sent more help to Gaza, though any agency that is not compromised, then people would not starve. If, instead of being exhausted on demonstrations and apparently righteous anger, that same energy were put into finding a way (lobbying? raising money?) to create a Marshall Plan equivalent, then the people of Gaza would have the option of long term help to create a solid economy and to rebuild Gaza and to bring business back to Gaza.

While the new antisemitism uses a rather compelling edifice to block their view of the world rather than spending energy working towards a just future for all parties who are not actual criminals… I cannot admire those who shelter behind it. Until they break down the wall, they are helping make Australia unsafe for Jewish Australians. They fuel the crowd at the Opera House and the crowd in Caulfield and create an atmosphere of constant hate. This is the choice of those behind the wall: I don’t have to like it.