I promised to introduce my work, then got bowled over by my own urgent need to understand one small aspect of our current world. That aspect has changed my life in some important ways, and I suddenly realise that not many people know much about everyday life in Jewish Australia. This is not the first time I have suddenly realised this thing. Last time, I wrote a novel with magic and feminism and much discovery of lost culture and foodways. It also contains prophecy. In fact, I wrote The Wizardry of Jewish Women.
There are three different sets of Jewish life in the novel.
One is like quite a few friends in my Jewish circles, with a mild religious sensitivity and a vast desire for community and understanding and service. Belinda in Canberra could easily have been part of my Jewish community, twenty years ago, before I was too ill to do everything. I asked permission from a friend to use her garden in the novel. She had a spectacular garden. We knew each other through dancing and through a women’s group, mainly. Belinda has the gardening and the cooking and the care. She’s someone everyone should meet.
The second drew on the knowledge and experience of a group of Jewish (but not practising) friends who I did women’s stuff with. Judith in Sydney is my readers’ favourite character. Her politics and the deep wish to improve the world were core to my life 25 years ago, though she’s a bit more left than I was. I can’t do these things now because, simply, most of the women who used to love working with me have dumped me for being too Jewish.
It’s all post October 7. They would have dumped Judith, too. She would have failed their purity test by being too Jewish. Judith would have waxed delightfully sarcastic and been very upset. She would have been especially upset because no-one would have asked her what her views were. She would simply have been left out of everything. Now is not then, and Judith is way political in Wizardry.
The third is what happens to an Australian with Jewish ancestry who has retained key aspects of the culture but not the religion or the family. What does Rhonda share with me? She’s an historian.
Each of the three women inherit something that was considered very standard for Jewish women in medieval France: magic. Each of them does quite different things with this inheritance. I wrote their stories because I wanted to meet them. I still do.