Category: Life

More on living Jewishly in Australia

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I don’t normally share here what I’ve posted elsewhere, but I wrote something quickly for Facebook and realised that it meant more than I realised and so I’m sharing it. I suddenly saw that what I thought was unique and personal, told a story about Australia and Australians and the different places Jews hold in this country. It’s not a full picture, or even close to a full picture. It’s how much of Jewishness is out of sight in Australia and how some of us handle this.

In other places I am still the person I always was, in Canberra no-one wants me to give talks to to be seen in public. Most people don’t hate me, but folks who have known me for years and even decades have recently started demonstrating a whole bunch of reactions to my being Jewish. For some, I’m hurting others simply by being myself: a couple of people have recently informed me of how privileged and white I am and how much of the cause of problems (both in Australia and elsewhere) can be blamed on me. For others, I’m a low priority in their life where previously I was a close friend, and when these old friends cluster or when a group of those who think along these lines get together, if I say something it will be instantly contradicted before anyone stops to consider what I actually said.

A part of this is because I’m forever-unwell and Australia does not handle illness with much style. Most of the change has, however, happened since COVID (which taught so many of us to not be our best selves) and especially since October 7. There are whole social groups and work-related groups I’m now simply not reminded of or invited to because I’m Jewish, and there are others I may share as long as I do not assert myself too much. The most amusing part of the whole shebang (and it really is amusing) is that I am not considered an expert on much at all in the circles that do not want me round. Given that I have two PhDs and another one about to be submitted and all kinds of books written and conference papers delivered and research done and talks delivered and… I am an expert in those topics, this is a very peculiar kind of wilful blinkering.

All of this is local. It has led to big lifestyle changes and those led to some thoughts on Facebook. Those thoughts (with amendments) are the rest of this post.

I’ve talked before about being a giraffe. My giraffehood comes from being the first Jew many Australians have met.

“Oh, I’ve never met a Jew before,” a person informs me, and looks at me as if I am in a zoo. This is why I call it being a giraffe. I’m willing to talk openly about my Jewishness, so I’m a giraffe who answers questions. The questions and comments used to be mostly kind and fair. They are less so right now. At the moment, after the surprise that I’m actually Jewish, I’m informed who I am and what I think and how horrid I am if I don’t use the words they tell me to use and announce my self-hate at once. Once a week, without fail, I’m told that either I worship Satan or murder children. (For anyone wondering, I have not done or ever have wanted to do either of these things.) These questions and comments, when experienced several times a week, make me feel as if I’m on show.

Today something provoked a very different memory.

In the days before COVID and before the current rise in antisemitism (so any time until the end of 2019) I gave talks and was on panels at a couple of larger functions a year on average. Every single time, it being (mostly) in Australia people would chat with me in the foyer or over coffee afterwards. Australians chat over drinks. It’s a part of who we are. Mostly the discussion leads with comments like “I didn’t know Australia had any Jews before” or, on one very special day “Do you really have horns?” When I was much, much younger, children would actually feel my head for those horns.

Every second chat (again, on average) someone would look around to make sure that everyone else was out of earshot. They would confide in me. Sometimes they had Jewish parents but were brought up Christian “for safety”. Sometimes they were happily non-religious, but knew that their parents had been Jewish and were curious. I have enjoyed many conversations about how OK atheism for different branches of Judaism with this group of interesting people and even more conversations about why parents would choose to leave the Judaism behind and even to hide it. Sometimes those who confided in me were practising Jewish but didn’t know anyone outside their family because it was safer to be not-Jewish when out in the world. Most of these individuals had parents who were Holocaust survivors. Some were from other backgrounds but their families had also memories of persecution, often very recent. The real discussion began when they discovered we could talk about these things but that it wasn’t the whole story. I was brought up to understand that the persecution is a part of our history but (sorry Cecil Roth) the lachrymose version of Jewish history hides so much more than it explains. My history self is working on this reinterpretation of Jewish pasts for the next little while, and that’s partly because it was so important to the individuals who came to me and talked about Jewishness in secret.

I was a different kind of giraffe for these folks. I was the Jew they could talk to safely. I never tell enough about them for anyone to be able to identify them. I have many conversations after panels and after giving talks or keynotes, and these people were among the many. Their privacy is important. No-one hides such a large part of themselves without very good reason. I use my not-very-good memory to forget their names and where they live. I would have to work hard to remember those details and I simply don’t try to remember. This has led to me being very forgetful of names and addresses and friends have to always remind me, over and again. This is not a large price to pay for the safety of others.

Occasionally (like now) I will mention their existence. I’m often and usually the first person they have every spoken to outside their immediate family about anything Jewish.

The number of people who shared their confidences with me diminished somewhat when the Australian census changed its collection style. The number of people who admitted to being Jewish in Australia also dropped dramatically. It was no longer possible to guarantee addresses and names would be detached from information collected and so identifying as Jewish carried different baggage to earlier. I suspect there are many Jewish Australians whose background is not known to the Bureau of Statistics any more. I once estimated that there were around 200,000 of these people, but there is no real way of knowing. Since I don’t think those who let me know they’re Jewish are more than the tiniest % of those who don’t talk about being Jewish Australian, I know the thoughts of a few dozen people, not of everyone who hides their Jewishness in Australia.

The number of confidences diminished to zero after October 7, but this is partly because I’m no longer invited to give many talks. I’m the wrong kind of Jew for Canberra or East Coast Australia, or my expertise is no longer valued, or people want to avoid problems, so I’m not invited to the sort of meetings where someone can seek me out quietly and find out more about their heritage.

What I miss most about those conversations is the recipe-swapping. I have two really wonderful Crypto-Jewish recipes that I’ve dated to the 17th century from a person who identified publicly as Latin American Catholic. I gave them information about books and websites where they could place their heritage and understand it better without having to break their public face. This was a win-win. Once a year I cook a 17th century Jewish recipe from that hidden tradition, to celebrate how much this person knew (and still knows!) and how amazing it was to hear about it. (I also cook these dishes to honour those who were murdered at the command of the Inquisition, and this is my normal public reason for cooking: today is not normal.) At moments like that I understand why I might be a safe person to talk to about things.

Since October 7 and the diminution in places in Australia that want to hear me, there has, as I’ve said been no-one sharing these secrets. This means that there are fewer people who touch base with those who are isolated and scared. Those who found comfort in me chatting about how to write family stories or how to teach cultural differences respectfully or how to interpret foodways or all those stories about the Middle Ages are not going to talk to a rabbi or visit a community centre when hateful slogans are painted on the walls or there was a fire bomb or anywhere where there is a crowd chanting Jewhate slogans outside.

Australia has always been somewhat antisemitic. It was also one of the important places where Shoah refugees came. It’s always had a Jewish population that feels safer unseen. Moments when strangers can reach out and share their identity are so very important, given all of this.

I think one of the reasons I was considered safe might have been because it’s not been wise to wear a magen david in Canberra for about 20 years, so I wasn’t flamboyantly Jewish… I was just Jewish. Or it may be for another reason. Thinking back, I had my first conversations along these lines when I was pre-teen, so it may be something about the way I hold myself. I honestly don’t know. Several people have said it’s because I talk so much, so maybe it’s that.

When I first started having those conversations I used to feel so guilty, because I couldn’t understand why these people hid their identity. I always kept everything secret because someone had asked it and because I respected them.

These days, life in Jewish Australia is far more problematic. I can see the wisdom in being a hidden Jew.

Deadlines

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I have many files open on my computer today. By tomorrow night, if all goes well, most of them will be closed and in my past. I am, you see, in the final throes of the PhD. I submit my thesis on Thursday.

The thesis is around 75,000 words long and will, like most Australian PhDs, be examined as a written text. There is no oral component, just as there was no major field component. All the skills training and short courses I took, I took along the way, and part of the PhD (though not part of the 75,000 words) is to sum my training and presentations and new skills up. This is not part of the examination. It’s part of the paperwork that accompanies it. I have four forms to fill in today and two tomorrow. This, also, is part of the system.

This PhD is different to all other PhDs that I have done in one important way. I was quite ill the whole way through. I keep finding bits of my brain spattered on the page and then spend however-long-it-takes working out what stupidities I’ve said and how to fix them. Also, I am looking for corruption from the word processors and sharing a document over and over. The footnotes were a mess and are now sorted. That’s something. Most of my time today and tomorrow will be spent the same way as most of my time yesterday: working through the document, one sentence at a time, and making sure it makes sense.

What’s something else entirely is repeated text where the memory of an earlier version has crept through. I first encountered this corruption as a problem when I worked on much larger books when I was in the public service. It’s never a problem with short stories or novellas (for me, anyhow) but the moment something has more than, say, 20 drafts and is over about 60,000 words, I need to be aware and do a re-read. I have already copied and pasted to reduce the memory of umpteen versions in a single file, but that is no longer the magic cure it was with older word processors.

I never have this problem when I only work on something for six months, and when I don’t write as many drafts. Books are more easily written using the Mozart method, where everything is perfect from the very beginning, I suspect. I cannot write that way at all these days – illness intervenes.

In fact, I’ve never been able to write academic prose that way. Three supervisors scolded me when I wrote my very first PhD. One complained about wanting to turn the pages. The others merely said it was too readable and not scholarly enough. All the rewrites for that thesis were an attempt to make it, as I was instructed “Less discursive and less interesting.” I’m more scholarly these days, because I’m around forty years older and my brain is now officially turgid, but I still write fiction more easily than any of the academic disciplines I work in.

Each PhD is in a different discipline and each discipline has a different style. I like the referencing system for this one the best, but ethnohistory is so much easier for me to write than literary studies, for instance. My brain is not configured correctly for literary studies.

What happens on Thursday? I submit the thesis, a bunch of forms and reports and then I wait. The earliest I’m likely to hear about results is 10 weeks from submission. The longest I’ve ever had to wait for results was three years. Three years is not typical of Australian examinations! Most people know within three months. Those three years cost me my first career… no-one wants to employ someone who has no idea what the examiners think about their research.

What will I do with all the time I have after Thursday? I have a vampire novel that needs finishing. I am so tempted to add footnotes and a bibliography to it. Or maybe recipes. How many vampire novels contain recipes? I will ponder this important thought while I work through 75,000 words, gradually and gently.

 

PS Australia is still counting votes. This is the most interesting election in years, and I wish I had time to talk about it. My electorate still doesn’t have a final result.

Australian elections are never what we expect

personby Gillian Polack
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Three years ago on April 10, I wrote:

Australia’s much-awaited (by us, anyhow) election was called yesterday. This is not just any election. It’s our last opportunity to move away from rabid and corrupt politics.

Our next election is on Saturday and we live in a different country. Three years ago, we were ruled by a queen, and now we’re ruled by a king. For some reason, we are far more prone to jokes under Charles than we were under Elizabeth. Technically, most of the parties are still similar, but this is another pivotal election, and not because of Charles. This was our position three years ago https://treehousewriters.com/wp53/2022/04/10/why-the-aussie-elections-are-so-important-this-year-an-introduction-for-the-unwary

We still have Mr Dutton, currently Leader of the Opposition, who has an apparent and possibly heartfelt desire to be Trump-lite. He replaced Scott Morrison when we decided we didn’t want more Trump-lite three years ago, which makes it a mystery to me why he’s choosing this path right now. Maybe he knows something about Australia that I do not know? I suspect his party would have won the election if he had not made that decision. Why do I think this? Dutton was doing very nicely in the polls until his aim to copy Trump was clear.

Independent of his policies, are his nicknames. I suspect he’s in the running for the most nicknames in history of any senior Australian politician. The one that trumps all (sorry, I could not resist the pun) is “Mr Potato Head.” Australians seldom give nice nicknames. Our current prime minister is nicknamed “Albo” which looks innocuous until you allow for the Australian accent. Our accent means that we call our PM “Elbow.” Intentionally.

Back to the parties. Now, there are other parties (minor ones) who also desire to copy Trump. One has even renamed themselves “Trumpet of Patriots.” No-one speaks kindly of them, but speaking kindly of people is not common in this election. The longest debate I’ve heard about them was which nickname is the best. The one that sticks in my mind (not the most common, just the silliest) is “Strumpet.” In and of itself, this will not affect their votes. Their policies, however, are not compatible with the left, or anyone who votes sort of centralish. Most of us vote sort of centralish, which, in comparison to the US, is slightly left wing. Sometimes quite left wing. This means that the Strumpets are the closest Australia comes to a Trump-like party. They’re not that, though. They’re right wing modified by some current causes. Current causes are a big thing right now.

Back to logic and commonsense. Three years ago I explained that the LNP (which we call the “Coalition,” mostly) were in power and that they were right wing. They are still right wing. They’ve lost a lot of their reputation and are in the middle of a generational change. The vote three years ago caused that, in a way, as did their wipeout in the biggest state in the country. Many of the new candidates for this elections (especially in electorates like my own where not a single LNP person won a seat in either house) are shiny new people about whom we know… not much. (If I were writing this for Aussies, I would use ‘bugger all’ instead of ‘…not much’, but I am aware of US sensibilities about what is everyday English in Australia. Not so aware that I refuse to tease you about it, but aware.)

Labor is now in power, and have the Elbow as leader. Albo is not much loved right now (and neither is Penny Wong, who, three years ago, we all adored), but I suspect Labor still represents more than 50% of Australians. It is a party strongly linked to unions and ought to be quite far left (and once was further left) but now it’s the centrist party. Since I’m in the mood to point things out, the party has US spelling and not Aussie spelling because it was named by a teetotaller US founder. Australia being Australia, we named a pub after him, just as we named a swimming pool after a prime minister who drowned. (I wrote about some of this three years ago. Good historical jokes are worth repeating.) I firmly believe that Australia is everyone’s ratbag cousin who is very charming but gets up to much mischief.

Three years ago I talked about the Greens. This year, I want them at the bottom of everyone’s vote. This won’t happen. They have set up a whole branch of the left (including many people who used to be my friends) and those people exclude Jews and hate Jews and blame Jews and do not listen to Jews and… you can imagine the rest. Me, I live it. They’ve put forward candidates that put the bad stuff happening in the Middle East ahead of what’s happening in Australia. If they get as much power as the latest polls suggest (14% of the vote) then quite a few Australian Jews will either have to hide (many are doing this already) or leave (and some have already left).

The party has always been left wing, but now they’re closer to Communist than to the environmental activists they once were. I am often scolded for saying these things. I answer the scolds with the labels placed in Jewish Australians by their supporters.

Some of the new Left don’t even believe there are Jewish Australians. I had that discussion with someone just yesterday. They now believe I exist, but it took two hours to convince them. We’ve been here since the first long term European settlement in 1788 (one of the First Fleet babies was the first Jewish free settler), so many of us are descendants of colonists. Most of us are descendants of refugees. And every day someone scolds me for personally having colonised Israel and murdered Palestinian children.

The hate is carefully targeted. Most of the rest of Australia has no idea. It’s a bit like domestic violence. “That very good person can’t have caused that black eye. You must’ve walked into a door.” This is being Jewish in Australia right now. It’s why the bottom of both my ballots is already populated by the Green candidates.

There is a new environmental party (Sustainable Australia) which won’t be down the bottom of my ballot. They’re not going to gain power, but if they can increase their influence a bit maybe we can talk about what needs to be done to deal with climate change rather than about the problem of antisemitism. The antisemitism isn’t just the Greens, you see. ASIO (our CIA equivalent) gave its annual assessment publicly this year. They said that antisemitism is Australia’s #1 security threat. Media ignored it. The Greens ignored it. All the other major parties factored it into their policies, but are talking about housing and jobs and the like because we have a housing crisis. I am still dealing with the notion that the new Australia can’t keep more than two ideas in its head at once.

Everyone else belongs to small parties or independents. Lots of those already in Parliament or the Senate are being challenged. Some will get second terms, others will not.

David Pocock is one of the bellwethers. He was voted to replace Zed, who was right wing (LNP) and wildly unpopular as a person. Pocock won partly because he used to be a very famous sportsperson and partly because so many preference votes flowed to him. He was the third in primary votes, and won on preferences. (This is a very Australian thing, and I can explain the voting system again to anyone who has forgotten or would like to be able to follow our vote on Saturday night.) The thing is… he voted leftish for most of his time in the Senate. Frequently, he voted alongside the Greens. He replaced a right wing party in that Senate place. What will that do to his preferences next Saturday?

How many independents and small parties will get through in a strange election where the main left wing party expresses bigotry? It depends on how far we veer left as a country. It depends on how loyal we are to individuals in both Houses. It depends on how personal everything is, in a year when I’m hearing so many people talk about their vote as personal.

I see two big options. One is that a lot of these independents lose their seats. This would return control (in the Senate in particular) to the party with the most seats in the Senate. The other option is that Australians vote a lot of these people into Parliament and the Senate and make everything very, very complex. I’m hoping that this is unlikely, given that many of the independents or small party representatives care only about one issue or are cults of personality, or are “We are not Greens – we just vote with them” people.

We don’t know how many independents or representatives of small parties will get through. The nature of advance polls is to focus on the major parties, so we really do not know how much support these legions of political individuals have in any given region.

Part of this rests on the nature of preferential voting. In the electorate of Blaxland, for instance, which has possibly the highest number of Muslim voters in the country, will the Labor candidate be returned to power, or will Omar Sakr (the Greens candidate) be voted in, or will an independent specifically representing Muslims (the one suggested by the Muslim Vote) get in? The Muslim Vote focuses on Muslim voters and assumes that their main political desire is not about housing or education, but about creating a Palestinian state. I chatted with a friend today, who is also Muslim, but from Indonesia, and she had no idea that this group even existed. The public talk about Muslim votes assume that most Muslims who vote are either Palestinian or support Gazans. And yet… we have many Muslim Australians from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkey, Malaysia and various African countries. I do not know if there is a voting pattern for all these people from all these backgrounds. Some are fully integrated into Australian society, some maintain boundaries and stay largely within their own communities.

My guide to the elections three years ago was a lot simpler. Right now, it feels as if life was a lot simpler three years ago.

PS Just in case you want to know what advice Jewish voters have been given, it’s “Make up your own minds, you’re adults.” We have, however, been given a guide to making up our own minds. 2025 federal election – ECAJ

A Week in the Life…

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I’m in the final throes of the thesis-writing. In five weeks, my thesis will be submitted for examination. This means the complete thing needs to be done by this Friday. Sounds fine? Except… this Saturday is Passover. Some friends helped me with some of the shopping and I’ve ordered everything else for delivery plus the fresh stuff at the market), but I need to have the flat clean (since I will be hosting) and the kitchen made as proper as I can. I come from a family that had special dishes for the festival, but my health makes a whole bunch of things not possible and complete kashruth is one of them. I do a best-I-can version, which is not at all suitable for anyone religious.

I do some thesis, do some Passover prep, meet another deadline, deal with the latest panic (my mouse died over the weekend, for instance and my printer is currently sulking), do some thesis, do a little work on my tax, do some of my exercises, wonder if I’ll get any sleep, worry about my mother (who has COVID, as do two of my close friends), do some thesis, do a little work on my tax, and so on until I can sleep. It will all be sorted by Sunday, and then I will quite possibly not wake up for 36 hours.

Tomorrow I have coffee with a neighbour. Normally I would ask to not do anything extra this week, because I’m already doing 18 hour days, but he’s very seriously ill and can be quite difficult even when he’s well and I cannot leave it long. So… tomorrow.

I will have to send someone a note about a Wednesday meeting. It’s with a local candidate. We have elections on 3 May, you see. I really need to talk to him and I’ve tried and tried and failed and failed and finally he comes to the Jewish Community Centre and it’s the Wednesday before my thesis has to be sent and before Passover. His timing is so bad.

He should have asked to see us last week, or left it until the week before the election. The timing suggests that he really doesn’t see antisemitism (or us, as the local Jewish community) as a high priority. Also, his office gave me the run around when I offered to talk to someone about why things are the way they are at the moment – and this is part of my academic expertise and I can be really useful… The staff of two politicians have given me the run around. I so miss my previous self, who was asked about things! Anyhow, I’ve decided not to offer my knowledge and understanding to politicians any more. I’d rather meet my deadlines and enjoy cooking for Passover.

Other people are asking me about things, which is a bit of a relief. My big insight for today is that it’s actually very easy to identify who is marching for hate and who is marching with hope that they can improve the wrongs of the world. It’s not what side people take (the good side of history that so many people claim right now… not actually how most of the world operates).

The way people march tells us so much. Look at the body language and listen to the slogans. Do the slogans provide methods to effect change, or are they declamations that lead nowhere. Does the group prevent others from passing, or block access to anywhere? How angry are the people, and what reasons do the slogans give for any anger? Do marchers stop and talk and listen, or do they simply shout, or do they accuse strangers of… almost anything. Telling strangers who the strangers are and shouting in their face is the issue here: actual change agents talk and listen, because change happens when people can see they’re a potential part of solutions. Those marches that breathe fire and brimstone and don’t take a moment to stop being angry, those marches where (as happened this week) a group surround a single stranger and bullies them – they’re the marching equivalent of Nazis in the 1930s. This doesn’t mean their cause is terrible: it means that these particular people are bullies.

Look at how people march and what specific goals they aim to achieve with the march, and whether not even a small part of those marching bully anyone watching or anyone trying to get past and you get a good notion of whether they really care about others… or whether they are informed by hate. If you don’t want to carry that hate with you, you need a way of winding down.

My way is often thinking about food. I have learned a whole new bread-making method in the last few weeks, entirely to handle the antisemitic hate I encounter. This week is not about that bread, however: now that I’ve sorted out how I will obtain all the things for cooking, I have most of a menu for Saturday night.

We begin, of course, with the ritual things. I have horseradish (it cost an arm and a leg, but I have some – it’s simply not in season in autumn) and matzah. I will serve the matzah with charoseth. My father’s charoseth recipe is wonderful: apples and almonds and sweet wine made from Concord grapes and enormous amounts of cinnamon.

After the charoseth, there will be the traditional eggs and potatoes, to be dipped in salt water. I have organic free range hen’s eggs from my local egg farmer ($25 for 60 large eggs, for those tracking the prices of eggs), and also a little packet of quail eggs. There will be no chopped liver – I have the ingredients (the liver is in the freezer) but intend to eat it on Friday week.

After that, of course, chicken soup with kneidlach (matzah dumplings) both of which I make according to old family recipes. The main course is roast chicken (with lemon and garlic) and vegetables. The roasted vegetables will be potato and lotus root. I haven’t decided all the side dishes yet, but there are two types of pickled cucumber, and the same kind of ancient olives that grew near Jerusalem around the time the Temple fell. There is a story behind why these olives grow in Australia, and that story has family connections.

I was going to make cakes (an orange-almond one and a choc-nut one) for dessert, but I think we’re skipping dessert and going straight to afters. The Passover meal I grew up with is far, far too large for modern Australia. A friend found me chocolate macaroons and I have dark chocolate, and the best organic dried muscatels from a local farm. I will have fresh figs with this, and maybe some other autumn fruit. I may make one of the cakes during the week… or I may not.

Tomorrow, to give me time away from my computer on such a busy day, I shall make bagels. That’s the last of the flour and yeast. Tomorrow lunch is the last of the rice and the last of the nori. Step by step I sort my world, and then I cook the big dinner on Saturday.

II live such a simple, slow life.

A Taste of the Everyday

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I’m writing this very early on my Monday. It will be Sunday in the rest of the world for a very long time yet.

Most of my Sunday was supposed to be spent meeting many deadlines. Instead, I and my body came to uneasy truce: if I didn’t do much work, it wouldn’t give me much pain. When I wake up, later this Monday, I have all that back work to catch up on. It struck me just now that I don’t talk about all the types of work I do. If I tell you Monday’s work, then I have to finish it all, right?

I am working on a developmental edit for someone. I’ve done all the thinking, and just have to write up and send the comments.

I have to go to the Copyright Agency website and do my annual update of publications. Also, for an entirely different purpose I need to start my list of workshops and talks given in the last year. I have a reading of one of my short stories to send to an organisations that makes them available to blind people (I’m losing my eyesight, so it makes me very happy to share my work this way) and someone else has asked for an excerpt from a novel.

I have to send (very belatedly) my Patreon newsletter. Then there’s an article to write, a table of contents to put into some sort of draft order for an editor to consider, and some of my old non-fiction is needed for an entirely new purpose. I have about 20 urgent emails to answer. Even with my bad day, I dealt with 18 urgent emails today. I am hoping there won’t be a rush of emails tomorrow and that all will be fine.

Add as many hours of dissertation to this as I can do (which depends both on what comments I receive and whether my eyes are up to close scrutiny), and that’s a fairly typical day’s work. What people never tell us as writers is the amount of administrative stuff that creeps into the day and makes life complicated when there is less energy than time. Add editing and copy-editing to the pile and everything can really add up.

If I get all this done by early evening, my reward is to meet up with a friend online, about 5 hours before this post goes live. In other words, if tomorrow behaves itself, everything you’ve just read about is in my past.

The wild wind that was keeping me awake and in pain has finally died down. Even the birds are silent. Also, it’s cool outside. I shall sleep and dream that, when I wake up again, I can do all the things I’ve planned.

Seeing things Jewishly

personby Gillian Polack
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So many strangers are telling me right now that I’m not Australian and that none of my relatives are Australian and… my mind keeps returning to what this means for the Arts in Australia. Certainly it’s much more difficult for anyone Jewish to earn money in the Arts here: there are some places I won’t even fill in the forms until I see that things have changed. I don’t have much physical capacity and when something is obviously a waste of my time, I do something else with that precious time. However… it struck me that I see the world through my upbringing. I talk about books from non-Jewish Australia a great deal, but my own view of the world is shaped by my family and their friends and the stories I was told as a child.

We all see the world from our own eyes. If someone were to ask me how I see the arts in Jewish Australia, I’d only give a partial answer, because there is so much stuff I forget. The first thing I think of, in fact, is what has impacted me and when and why. I thought, this week, then, I’d give you a little list. The list is little but it contains many words, because I annotated it. Welcome to the Arts in Australia seen Jewishly, through my life.

Let me begin with family and friends.

My mother’s family arrived in Australia before World War II or died in that war (save one person, who is not part of today’s story because he was not an artist, musician or writer). Mum’s immediate family was all here by 1918. It was a big family in Europe and is not the smallest family in Australia. Of all my mother’s cousins there are two who were well-known as writers. Very well-known, in fact.

Morris Lurie was Naomi’s brother. Naomi was so much a forever part of my life that even now she’s gone, I still think of one of Australia’s better known writers of plays through the fact that his sister was Naomi. Every time Naomi was in Melbourne, she’d shout “Sonya,” across the street to my mother, because they were very close. Mum hates loud voices and Naomi thought that Mum hating the noise and the laughter was hilarious.

I know about Morrie, and I collected his plays when I was a teenager. One of the lesser known facts of Gillian’s life is that, for twenty years, she collected plays. I still have my collection, but most of it needs a new home. I never met Morrie. He wasn’t much into meeting our side of the family. Even if we had met, I suspect we wouldn’t have had a lot in common. Naomi, on the other hand, was someone I would spend any amount of time with. She was my bridge to the Yiddish-speaking side of the family, and is the main reason why I don’t use that in my fiction: it’s her culture, not mine. My cultural self is from my father’s family. Loving Naomi, though, sent me to understand klezmer and Sholom Aleichem and so much else. I need to re-read Morrie’s plays. Maybe now I’m no longer a teenager I’ll like them more. Maybe not. I’ll see.

Arnold Zable is, as my mother explains, a family connection. His refugee cousin married Mum’s refugee cousin. Arnold is Victoria’s great storyteller. He also wrote an amazing book about the family left behind: Jewels and Ashes.

My father’s side of the family is so very musical. One of my father’s best friends was an extraordinarily well-known performer… but that’s another story. This is one of the days when stories lead to stories and those stories lead to more stories. Between family and friends, I grew up with music the way I grew up with rocks. Science and music and Doctor Who kept our family together for a very long while.

The most famous musician/composer/music critic in the family (she was never just one thing, nor was she a simple person) influenced me a great deal in my youth. Linda was my father’s first cousin, and spent time with me when I was very uncertain of where I fitted and who I was. She accompanied my sister on the piano when that sister was doing more advanced music. She told me some of the stories of her life, but never the really private ones.

Linda was Linda Phillips She described her own music as “light classics.” We played them on the piano at home… but never well. Her music was a lot more than ‘light classics’ as was Linda herself. Her daughter, Bettine, also wore her talents lightly. I knew that she had acted on stage with Barry Humphreys as an undergraduate, but I had no idea that she was a famous radio actor back when radio was the centre of so many people’s entertainment. They were both quiet about their achievements.

Here I need to explain that, not only were they modest and exceptionally fun to be with, but they were nothing close to my age. Linda was my father’s first cousin, to be sure, but she was born in the nineteenth century: she was sixty years older than me. Linda lived until the twenty-first century, and we lost Bettine to COVID. They were part of an enormous change in the Arts in Australia, beginning with Linda’s early career as a pianist over a century ago. I grew up with this, taking it for granted that there was a life in the Arts and a world and so much enjoyment… but seldom enough money to live on.

There is a third family musician, my own first cousin, Jon Snyder. His life is another story. He was in a very popular band (Captain Matchbox) and became a music teacher. His professional life began in the sixties, so the age differences are still there, but not as great. So many of the friends of my schooldays also became musicians, and three of them play in the same band, in Melbourne. That’s another story, however. I am no musician. I had some talent, but words were always more fun and, to be honest, I used to be tone deaf. I love music and the artists who create and perform it, though, because until I left home, it was part of my everyday. In fact, even when I left home, music crept up on me. I kept running into friends of Linda’s. They would send messages to Linda through me. Stories breed stories…

Also, this stopped being a list almost as early as it began being a list. I’ve only talked about a third of the writing side of the family. But this post is long enough. The rest can wait.

PS I have not at all forgotten the questions I promised to answer. There are only two questions, but the answers require a lot of thought. My everyday is a bit over the top at the moment. When things calm down, I will answer those questions. I promise.

Intermission

personby Gillian Polack
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I am barely in the US Monday as I type. By the time this post goes up, it will be your Tuesday. I meant to write something 24 hours ago, but everything became too complicated, and I needed to breathe. I took medicine and I breathed, then I went to sleep.

This morning, my body told me to go back to sleep. It does this from time to time. I’m chronically ill, and there are times when bedrest prevents a whole host of problems. I listened and I slept. Since then, I’ve been catching up with everything and finally, finally in the early evening of my Tuesday and the cusp of Monday and Tuesday in the US, I can write my post. In that intervening time, I have left the questions my readers asked in such a safe place that I can’t find them… and I don’t want to talk about which bits of my body hurt and why, or the fact that this summer is never-ending.

Summer is always never-ending in February in my part of Australia. Then autumn hits with storms and leaves and arbitrary weather and it is as if summer never was. Only some parts of Canberra have the leaves, and there is a moment when pretty colours seem very exotic and Canberrans go driving around admiring these foreign trees and watch them shed their leaves. Last year I took some spectacular photographs from a local park. It’s too early this year for spectacular photographs. We’re still at the period of spectacular fatigue.

That we actively have to look for leaves in certain suburbs is why so many Australians subdue a chuckle when someone from the US talks about Fall. Not only is our autumn at a different time of year, but you need to be in very particular parts of Australia for there to be autumn leaves at all.

This moment of perpetual summer is when school has gone back after the long break, it’s when the heat is more likely to bite, and when university begins. Everything starts up, and so many of us just want to sleep until the more comfortable weather comes. It’s one of those times when all kinds of work deadlines present and many demands are made and those of us who are sensitive to the heat suddenly dream of the northern hemisphere.

Why do I call it an intermission? I’ve been writing about Todorov and that moment he describes as a hesitation, when you don’t know what the world of the novel will bring you. Anything’s possible. There could be horses, or unicorns, or fast cars, or slow bicycles. I often stop at that point in a novel and dream my own story, the plunge in and see where the real story will take me. That’s what life feels like now. As if it could go in a thousand different directions. Only I haven’t stopped to dream my own story (it’s tempting) because it’s too darn hot.

Different places, different troubles, same times

personby Gillian Polack
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On Sunday, I put up a Facebook post. The reaction to it was a lot more positive to the one I was expecting, so I’m sharing it here… with an update.

I’ve been trying to find words to say this all day. I’ve given up trying to find decent words and I hope that what I say is clear. This post may get me a lot of people arguing, but it’s important, so it’s public. Be kind, please. None of this stuff is easy, for anyone.

For the past little while, so many people around me have blamed everyone Jewish for even the smallest thing someone else Jewish or Israeli might have done. They’ve translated antisemitism into false flags and are full of spite and opinions. I don’t know if 75% of Jewish Australians are Zionist, because I don’t know what definition of Zionism those who claim it use and I’ve never been asked as part of a survey… and nor have most Jewish Australians I know. I know I don’t worship Satan. I certainly know I’ve not killed 30,000 children. That sort of thing. Life has been… rather difficult.

Lots of folks on the left demand a shibboleth, that I publicly denounce or deny this thing or that thing before they will talk to me. I’ve just accepted that I don’t get to talk with them, and I’m sorry, but saying “OK” and giving them what they demand is adding to the bigotry around by playing the games that let people determine good Jews and bad Jews and I try not to play those games.

You know about some of this because I speak about it when I can.

This week, it has taken a turn, or even a twist. Not an unexpected twist, but one that saddens me. The sort of bigotry I’ve just described is infectious, and this is the moment I can choose to not be part of spreading that infection to other Australians. (And the medical metaphor may alert some of you of what’s to come.)

Right now, Australia’s facing the case of two nurses who I, personally, never, ever want to meet. I am not going to make the same assumptions about Muslim Australians from the example of these two, that people make about Jews from whatever examples they use. I would like the hospital at Bankstown to look closely into things and, if there is a pattern of bigotry embedded, to do something about it. I would like both nurses to be tried, fairly, with all the evidence laid out. I will not ask any Muslim Australian (whether they’re a friend or complete stranger) to give a particular opinion on what the nurses said or did before I am willing to talk to them about anything.

Things are going to be very difficult for Muslim Australians for the next few weeks and not a single one of them needs my demands on top of everything else. They don’t need any of our demands. Any questions or needs should be sent, courteously, to whichever governing body is responsible for the specific thing you need to know. If it’s a religious opinion, ask religious experts. If it’s a medical opinion relating to Bankstown Hospital, then Bankstown Hospital would have the right people to talk to. Your local dentist or wifi expert is not responsible for what those nurses said and should not be put on the spot about it. The only organisations I want to hear from, myself, are the ones linked to the two nurses and who moderate the ethical behaviour within their communities and professions. Some of them have already spoken out. I can wait for the others.

Yes, as a Jew, I will try to avoid the hospital in question … because these sorts of attitudes often belong to a community in a location and because I’ve heard other rumours. I hope they’re only rumours. Even if they’re true, the vast, vast, vast majority of Muslim Australians wouldn’t even know those two nurses. Many of them don’t even come from similar backgrounds to the two nurses.

I will not let my personal fear turn me into someone who hates a bunch of other Australians just because they share a religion with two people I do not ever want to meet. My favourite local grocer is still my favourite grocer (and owned by a Muslim family) and my favourite local butcher is still the halal butcher in Mawson, just next door.

Update:

Organisations linked to the nurses are beginning to speak up. One public statement in particular is worrying. I looked into the organisation that issued the announcement, and the announcement appears to reflect their identity (and may make them part of the same community as the nurses, with some of the same views as the nurses), in which case, they would not like me at all. They still comprise only a tiny fraction of Muslim Australia and give absolutely no excuse for treating anyone else badly.

It does mean that there are places that anyone Jewish may have to be careful (more places, I mean) and this is bad, however, I will continue to check out all the statements, and continue to not judge anyone who has not done anything in need of judging. My friends are still my friends and I am deeply disappointed that I have far too much coffee and don’t need mincemeat and my pantry is full and therefore no excuse to go to Mawson and buy favourite things. I go for coffee and mincemeat and emerge with three bags of food I love.

I often talk about food when I’m distressed, and the nurses thing has riled up even more hate than other events and… I am still determined not to hate just because others have fallen into that hole.

I am the Red Queen

personby Gillian Polack
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I am so the Red Queen this week. I am running so very hard and would love to be able to feel that I’m on top of anything. I still can’t do long posts answering questions, but I have such good reason.  Six things have happened and any one of them would be enough to demand I re-order my day and drink much coffee.

Let me explain the things in random order. All of this has happened since Friday.

  1. I can see! Because I have unusually problematic eyes, new glasses are not so easy. I needed 3 pairs. Two pairs came last year and it took me about a week to get used to them. The third arrived on Friday and it took until today for my eyes to be able to interpret the world without dizziness. The new specs are very smart and I like them a lot, but, for me, buying glasses is always a bit of a gamble. If I have someone with me with good taste (as I had for the first two pairs) their good taste makes me look respectable. I cannot see things for myself, and for some reason, taking pictures of my in empty frames and then looking at the pictures on the screen just makes me want to walk away. I don’t know how I look, in other words, until I have the new glasses.
    Some of my friends hear the news and say, “New glasses!” They show me their reading glasses and tell me which chemist one can buy the best $10 pair at or that they were only $3.  Mine cost a lot, lot more than this. All three of mine together, in fact, added up to $1,000, which, given my eyesight, was a bargain. When I buy in Australia, I have to go to a specialist shop. It takes about two weeks once I’ve ordered, because the lenses have to be cut in Japan. Occasionally the optometrist loses my order (this happened last year, for the first two pairs) and I have to start from scratch. The new glasses are from France, and the same price as the Australian… but the glasses are lighter and easier to wear.
  2. My computer was dying.  On a bad day, it took eight hours to boot up. I have a new computer and it’s lovely. It arrived just before lunch yesterday and… I’m still sorting things out. Because I don’t like buying new computers, the technology changes a lot in between computers. I’m still adjusting to the new one. This may take a while.
  3. This is the week of my literary review. I sent 9,000 words to my supervisor and get comments on Thursday and then have to complete it. By Monday I also have to change a bunch of other things, and the Monday after (if I’ve got the dates right) then 65,000 words ought to be ready to go. In normal times, this is not a big deal. My normal self is seriously good at this kind of thinking and writing. This month is not normal times.
  4. My email didn’t transfer over properly from my old machine. All the saved categories mysteriously disappeared. Most of the deleted mail re-appeared. I found myself with well over 90,000 emails from just one account… and they included things that need to be done this week. I’m working on it.
  5. I have had a health blip recently. Since about November, in fact. On Sunday, my body announced that it may be deciding to recover from the blip, but it’s not certain. I feel a lot better than I have been. but I need to rest… a lot. Also, I lost 3 kg on Sunday, all inflammation deciding it didn’t like me (which is a good thing). It’s a bit too exciting. Blood tests are tomorrow, which is also a bit too exciting.
  6. I now know the shape of left wing antisemitism in Australia. I made a simple statement in public and received some very interesting and mostly vile responses and matched them to a bunch of previous knowledge. If anyone needs to understand the new antisemitism better, I can now explain it. That’s the good thing. The bad thing is that most of its purveyors want to tell Jews what we are and how we think and do not stop to listen. This is where the “All Jews murder children” stuff comes from, and I can now  explain how it begins in simply not listening, to not respecting, to bullying, to turning individuals invisible, to outright hate. If anyone wants to understand how the Left does this, ask me. I already knew about the right wing stuff, and have reached the stage where I can talk sensibly with many people on the right and we can come to a bit of an understanding given time and space. The irony is, of course, that I’m of the left.
    The reason I am the historian I am is because I refuse to dismiss all bigots out of hand. Most of them are really fine human beings who can’t see where their ideas and their hero-worshipping leads them. Right now, though, we’re at an odd point and it’s rather difficult to get past the hate and talk to the fine human being. This is the moment when violence is about to begin. This is also the moment when most people who are developing this problematic stuff are both moving into self-defensive mode and into a place where their ideas are consolidating into passionate beliefs. I’m seeing more theology of hate than I’ve seen in such a long time.
    I so miss being allowed to teach these things so that people can understand themselves and their friends and make their own decisions about which direction they’re going to travel in and why. Dumping people like me from teaching is, of course, a small factor in what’s happening. None of this is cheerful… but at least I understand more.

Is this enough cause to be late in the Treehouse and still not answering my readers’ questions?

Summer and Eggs

personby Gillian Polack
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My little bit of Australia has a heat wave. This is not unexpected, given it’s summer. It does, however, mean my brain is fried. It didn’t reach 100 degrees (using US temperatures) today, so, in the measurements of my childhood, it was hot enough to fry an egg on a car bonnet, but not hot enough for the pavement to melt. In my childhood, I would have said that this is a day when I can’t go running, but I can still play and read. Alas, I am no longer a child. Also, alas, this week is full of work that has unchangeable deadlines. If I had the energy, I would sing you (badly), “Too darn hot.” I do not. Also I have 3,000 words of deathless academic prose to write before I can sleep tonight.

I had better start writing.

Maybe next week will be cooler. Maybe the week after. We’re in our last month of summer. Schools have gone back, and universities will begin again soon and life will pick up pace. Maybe then I’ll have the inner-oomph to write those answers to the serious and interesting questions my readers sent me. I hope so. Then I can complain about storms and blowsy autumn leaves. I’ll have more energy for complaint and far less interest in dreaming of frying eggs on car bonnets.

One last note to leave you with: if it were ten degrees hotter, then I could fry an egg on the pavement. I tested this when I was a child. My parents did not let me eat the egg, alas, which is why the car bonnet is now my theoretical place of choice. It’s still only theoretical because none of my friends are willing to let me destroy their car enamel. Which is just as well, because my US friends have egg problems and if I had wasted eggs in testing the heat outdoors it would be rather rude.