I had plans for today. Mainly I intended to tell you about books, including the ones I’m reading now. A confluence of circumstances undermined that. That’s my words masking the fact that I’m living one of the books I was going to tell you about. Do not live a book, it’s not nearly as much fun as novels suggest.
The book I’m living is a group of essays, Ruptured, edited by Lee Hofman and Tamar Paluch. Thirty-six Australians write about their lives in Australia since October 7. In every essay there’s something that also belongs in my life, even though most of them come from very different abckgrounds to me. We’re all Jewish. We’re all women. We’re all Australian. Most of us are in the Arts. And we are so very different.
How am I living this book right now?
There’s always a rise in antisemitism just before big Jewish festivals. At least there is in Australia. And by ‘always’ I mean the last decade. October 7 put the rise on strange drugs and made it bigger and nastier, but it’s been happening for a while. And Rosh Hashanah has always been difficult in other respects. There was the year I wasn’t even allowed to take a single day off for it, even though the union had negotiated for moments exactly like that. The Federal public service let me know back then, in 1989, that being Jewish was not acceptable and that microaggressions would be the norm and punishment for wanting to take a day off for my new year was acceptable. I was on flextime back then. I had heaps of hours on my flextime, but had not even been allowed to take two hours off using those hours, in the morning. I did what every Gillian should do at moments like these. I brought a great deal of honeycake into work and everyone kept dropping by my desk to be fed. I worked the fewest hours I could, with the latest start and the longest lunch. I was on the computer maybe for 10 minutes, to sign in and out and check that I wasn’t missing anything urgent (I wasn’t going to let my sulk actually hurt anyone) and … I made my point. I was allowed to take Yom Kippur off, when it arrived. These days I am not allowed in places to begin with and feel like a child who has been sent to their room and can hear the other children play. I am lucky. I’m not banned from some things – in fact, I’m a welcome friend. This means I lose Rosh Hashanah this year for some things, but still get Yom Kippur and even Sukkot. Ironically, I first discovered this problem when someone destroyed my Yom Kippur a couple of years ago. I am alert this time of year these days. Always.
This year is better and worse. I have friends watching out for me. I’m not alone. Some years I have been very alone. The worse is that the public ferment is already worse and is going to get worse still.
The amount of work I have to do is immense, but VICFA (the organisation running a conference just before) has made sure that everything will be done several hours before Rosh Hashanah begins. And I have deadlines galore, but I’m used to that. This early in third term in Australia and the rest of the country does a lot of work in September and October so that things can be finished for the big shutdown from December. Rosh Hashanah was not planned with Christmas in mind, nor the Australian summer.
Why does this feel as if I’m in Ruptured? The essays show women having to do everything to the schedules and needs of the non-Jewish community, while fielding antisemitism, and having to be Jewish and do family stuff and remember that ordinary life still exists.
I spend a lot of my time thinking about what this means for Gaza. In fact, I just typed a very long paragraph on the politics and my concern about following slogans rather than seeking the human needs that the slogans are supposed to address. But even saying what I have just said may enough – in this ungentle year – to provoke anger and threats if the right person reads it. Free speech is not part of my new year. Not free speech for me, anyhow. I’m too Jewish. And that is something every woman who wrote an essay documented. A silencing. Even if our opinions are similar to the person speaking, we can’t speak safely unless we use the right words. And the right words are terrifying. My secret historical linguist (historical linguistics is a part of being an ethnohistorian, but I’m not a specialist in the field) analyses how words are shifting and… the new meanings of some of the words and phrases we’re told we must use imply that Jews are evil, by nature, and that a country with no Jews is an improved country. My secret historical linguist wants someone other than me to do a really, really good study into changing political language and protest language in 2025. I want to be proven wrong.
This new year, when I dip apple in honey and say “To a Good and Sweet Year” I will mean it fervently, for all of us.