Category: Life

On Handling Hate with Fairy Tales

personby Gillian Polack
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Yesterday was Tu B’Shvat, which I have a very bad tendency to call the birthday of trees. I’ve been talking about its history all over the place because, right now, I really want bigots to know that they don’t actually understand Judaism or most Jews. How I’m doing this is by being a bit more publicly myself. I was brought up traditionally for Australian Modern Orthodox, which is nothing at all like traditionally for many other branches of Judaism. My Australian accent is completely and utterly Jewish… because we don’t have our own dialect in Australia.

This is not the first time I’ve confused people by existing and, in the process, let them discover Judaism and Jews. I still get conversations from last time. Last time I had to deal with Molotov cocktails and the like and, because it was a less-harsh moment, I wrote gentle articles and shared recipes and began writing Jewish fantasy novels. The novels are still in print. The ones that directly emerged from that flurry of hate were The Wizardry of Jewish Women and The Time of the Ghosts.

I’m attaching one of the articles here. It was first published in Fables and Reflections in 2005. I didn’t feel like 20+ years ago was an easier time, but it was. I’ve learned a lot more about dealing with hate, but also a lot more about fairy tales and Jewishness since I wrote this piece.

I’ve included it to show you how I translated my life into something others could understand, to help them diminish hate. This kind of writing worked back then because there wasn’t such a fury of hate. I wish life were that simple now. Back then there wasn’t nearly as much work by haters to create a whole new language of hate, using old language and old hate.

I like this essay. It’s my mind in a time capsule from 20 years ago. I want to thank Lily for publishing it, but we’ve lost track of each other.

Jewish Fairy Tales

Part One

There are as many interpretations of Jewish fairy tales and folk stories as there are Jews. There are as many interpretations of fairy stories and folk stories as there are people in the world. This is mine.

Ask an Australian Jewish child about their favourite fairy tale. You might be told the story of Yankel and his donkey from a popular children’s book or an anecdote from Fiddler on the Roof. If you’re very lucky, you might get a Yiddish story. Yiddish is the language of the Jews of Eastern Europe, so the Yiddish story might have had its roots anywhere from a village in the middle of nowhere, to a large centre such as Bialystock or Warsaw. Asking that child for a tale may not produce evidence of Bialystocker roots, because you’re just as likely to be informed about Snow White or Puss in Boots or the Little Mermaid: Australian Jews are a tiny minority group, and Australian Jewish children live as part of a wider society and share their tales with that wider society.

I was brought up on all the usual fare – Mother Goose and Aladdin, Little Red Riding Hood, Little Bo Beep, the Three Billy Goats Gruff. Some of these were tales of wonder written by adults for children, like those told by Hans Christian Andersen; some of them were spun for an elegant court like the traceries of Madame d’Aulnoy; and some of them were collected as part of an enthusiasm to preserve oral tradition, like the stories penned by the Brothers Grimm. Some were bowdlerized and some were brutal. Some rang clear as a bell and some were tangled and confused. I heard them through TV and books, through recitations by friends, through bad playground jokes.

Sometimes the stories gained a Jewish twist. Cinderella became Cinder-Esther one Purim* when the story of the ill-done-by girl and her Prince Charming was fretworked into the tale of Esther and transformed into a satirical musical. Mostly, however, we heard the same tales as others – we shared our fairy stories the way we shared most other things in our culture. “Cindereller dressed in yeller” is far more realistically part of my tradition than Cinder-Esther.

When I was a pre-teen I discovered Ginzburg’s magisterial The Legends of the Jews. This book is a compilation of many of the older stories that have become part of the tapestry of our religion.

Reading Ginzburg led me to the astonishing discovery that the most boring murmurs in synagogue during services actually hid fun stuff: the Torah** became a source of tales. It turned out I actually knew the tales, too: Moses and the Exodus, Adam and Eve. And then I found a wealth of tales spun around these core stories. Like fanfiction, the core became a stable centre for a kaleidoscope of stories.

Micha Joseph Bin Gorion collected and translated a volume of these in Mimekor Yisrael, which mocks me from my bookshelf whenever I want to write a short story. It has tales ranging from Genesis to eighteenth century Poland, from human dramas to beast fables. “Everything has already been written,” these tales announce to me, very firmly. “All good tales were told a thousand, two thousand years before you were born.”

Sometimes the tales in Mimekor Yisrael are good stories well told and leave me exhausted with envy: sometimes they’re so moral and drenched in mind patterns that are long gone that I look at them and wonder if I should be writing fairy stories, as Jane Yolen does, and preserve the way we think now as these tales preserve past thoughts. These tales are the old Jewish teaching. They are the fairy tales that make the Law achievable and understandable.

Discovering all this was a miracle for me, but not of great import to anyone else.

Ginzburg alerted me to a mystery. My almost-teen self was a bit puzzled. How were so many key Jewish tales rolled into mainstream culture with no-one remarking? I was faced with Jacob and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and “Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho”. Our tales had the same status as Gilbert and Sullivan in my life and about as much Jewish content.

As a child, I wanted a little sticker that said, “This story started off Jewish.” It would have given me a positive Jewish identity outside the home, rather than an identity which grew in the schoolyard from responding to comments that I was a “dirty Jew”, or the unfunniness of Jewish jokes, or to accusations of having personally killed Jesus. I had to keep my awareness of the Jewish origins of popular culture quiet. I had to minimise damage.

As an adult I found out I had been missing the wood for the trees. Stories from the Five Books of Moses led the way to many more tales in the overwhelmingly huge written version of our oral law, the Talmud. It appeared that Jewish law was a fabric woven from lore – tales told us how to be and led us into deep thought about life and about religion.

This illumination leached some of the happiness from stories I had thought of as charming folk tales. As they gained more Jewishness in my mind, they lost their folk status. It was like the first time I went to a class taught by an Ultra-Orthodox rabbi. This rabbi encouraged us through using stories to join the far right of Jewish belief. I found my mind losing the joy in those tales through trying to understand the law.

Bin Gorion wrote down those teaching stories as “Classic Jewish Folktales”. I thought back to the Brothers Grimm and Madame d’Aulnoy and rebelled against the traditional rabbinical teaching method.

It’s only recently that I have realised that the tales in Torah and Talmud and the teaching tales from Torah and Talmud can be both folk and fable. These stories have survived partly because they encourage learning.

Fairy stories are key to Jewish survival. This disturbed me as a teenager, but really appeals to me as an adult.

I have to admit, having learned that lesson I gave up on the legal side of Judaism: my interests are less elevated.

Jewish history is fraught with forgetfulness. We remember the murders and the pogroms and the persecutions and the expulsions with the greatest sorrow and regret. Each time we suffer, our folk culture bends and twists to help us survive. We lose some folk culture, we gain some – we get through.

We lost most of the folk stories of the Medieval English and French Jews when they were expelled from their homelands. The people mostly survived. They went on to create new lives. Their culture changed so much, however, that it’s hard to recognise today.

I started to ponder: what tales of wonder did my family lose when some of my ancestors fled to Australia? I belong to mainstream Australia; the family arrived between the 1850s and 1918. The folkstuff my Bialystocker grandfather taught me were the first words of the Volga Boat Song and a few steps of Cossack dancing. That song and those dance steps were as close to Judaism as “Cindereller dressed in yeller”.

The Moldavian, Bielarus and other Polish branches of the family taught me even less. The only parts of me that have fairy tales to match my origins are the English and the German. My folk patchwork is patchy.

My life since that emotional enlightenment has become a very, very slow voyage of discovery.

Learning about lost fairylands carries particular burdens and limits. It’s like a fairytale where the heroine is forbidden from doing this or that, with no apparent reason behind the forbidding. I reclaim recipes by asking friends, acquaintances and even strangers, but I find it emotionally trying to ask the same friends, acquaintances and strangers for folk stories to replenish my faded past.

Instead, I look at books. My inner self doesn’t forbid me books.

My favourite collections of folk traditions – the ones I’ve brought into my writing and into my life – all have strong links with the Middle Ages. My intellectual reasoning is that I’m more likely to understand the traditions I discover if they fit something I know. My historian self helps darn the holes in the patchwork left by my refugee family.

The stories in Part Two instantly touched my soul and connected me to that Jewish past that had been replaced by “Cindereller dressed in yeller” and Christmas tales. These are the ones that, for me, at this precise moment, need remembering.

Part Two:

Dream of a lament. A mournful melody slowly threading its way through your mind and haunting your life.

This lament was my introduction to the folk stories of the Sephardim. The Sephardim are the descendants of Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492.

The song of Ximena is the cry of a wronged woman. Ximena, standing before the king, calls for justice. The most powerful line of melody is where she sings “Justisia, señor, justisia.”

It’s not a tale of Judaism, since the characters are all Christian. It’s based on a true story: El Cid’s wife was Ximena, and, as far as I know, he did indeed kill her father. El Cid was the great epic hero of Spain, a Medieval giant. The language, however, is not Spanish. It’s Ladino, the language of Jews of Spanish descent in every country except Spain. Spanish Jews were expelled in 1492, the same year

that Columbus went on his epic voyage. 1492 was the end of one world and the beginning of another.

That Ximena’s plaint has lasted hundreds of years of Jewish life outside Spain is a mystery. It’s a tune that haunts on all levels – one of the most beautiful melodies imaginable, one of the great historical love stories, and a tale of non-Jews preserved in Spanish Jewish culture through generations and generations and generations away from its land of origin. I had to investigate the Spanish Jewish tradition.

It’s a vast folk tradition. Many folk stories and fairy stories have survived, some set to music, some not. El Cid is not the only Medieval epic hero who appears – Roland does also. My favourite collections are by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, because, like me, he was a Medievalist who didn’t limit himself to the Middle Ages. He’s one of the leading scholars in bringing this tradition to the outside world. In his collection and the collections of Samuel Armistead I discovered Jewish folk stories in song and ballad.

Ximena had a happy ending, of sorts. She married El Cid.

And these folk stories have a happy ending, of sorts, too. They’re spun into song, so we listen to them and even hum along. Most of us don’t know that we’re singing the folk tales of the High Middle Ages in Spain.

These folk tales entrance me, but they’re Sephardi, the tales of Old Spain. Most of me is Ashkenaz, from the rest of Europe.

Ashkenazim also have our bits of our Medieval heritage preserved in fairy stories. Some speculative fiction writers have written them into short fiction, some teachers use them as educational tools.

I read them in translation and wonder that the relationship between my favourite volume and the seventeenth century is the same as my own relationship with the twentieth and twenty-first. Jews lived in a wider cultural world and the folk stories partly reflect our particular tradition and partly link to that outside world. Even stories with medieval origins show the outside world being seamlessly lined to the inner one.

One story says it all.

A famous Medieval tale is that of Bisclavret. Marie de France told it in the twelfth century. Marie is renowned for her courtly lais – elegant poems. She claimed she told the stories of the Bretons. When I read Bisclavret I feel the darkness of the forests of Brittany as her werewolf-knight is trapped in his wolf form by his faithless wife.

The Jewish Publication Society has printed two little volumes, edited and translated by Moses Gaster. They’re called the “Ma’aseh Book.” The Ma’aseh Book contains the very best of the fairy stories alongside the most educational rabbinical tales. We read of the spectacular beauty of Rabbi Johanan, who shines with light when he uncovers his arm during a visit to a sick friend. We hear the story of the Jewish Pope. We’re told how Rabbi Samuel Hasid saved the Jews of Speyer from yet another outbreak of antisemitism, and we find out the precise reason why you have to untie a bunch of vegetables before eating them.

For me the gem is story number 228, in volume two: “The rabbi whose wife turned him into a werewolf.” Bisclavret in Jewish clothes.

The rabbi had renown and wealth and enormous education and lived in the land of Uz. His wife, however, was bad tempered. The story doesn’t actually call her a bitch, but, considering her husband became a werewolf, it may be the right description.

When the rabbi lost his wealth, he and his students travelled and lived on the generosity of others. All of this is very Jewish. It has nothing in common with Marie de France.

The rabbi – at a stage in his travels when things feel desperate – finds a magic ring and so becomes wealthy again. He comes home, rejoicing. His wife wants to know where he found his money.

From there the story unfolds as a fairy story should: he tells her and she uses the ring against him. He runs to the forest for safety and she bars the door to all his students. Travellers cannot stay and the poor are not fed. She is mean and stingy where a good Jew ought to be generous and giving.

A knight decides to show his prowess in killing the wolf, but is prevented by a charcoal burner. Third time this happens is the charm and the knight tells the wolf he will not kill him. The wolfrabbi promptly embarrasses the knight by acting just like a lapdog and eventually, with the help of the king and a large chunk of deception, the magic ring is stolen from the evil wife and the wolf is returned to full rabbinical glory. The wife is turned into a donkey and proves no nicer as an ass than as a human being.

The knightly and court sections of this tale are pure Marie and show just how strongly the Jewish fairy tales belong with other fairy tales from the same places and times. The tale as a whole though, has its own character, far removed from tales told in the Medieval courts of England and France: instead of adultery, an unhealthy amount of misogynism.

Most of the tales in the Ma’aseh Book are for men or by men, and only occasionally are they comfortable reading for a modern woman. The eternal teenager in me will visit Rabbi Johanan’s tomb one day and mourn the loss of such great male beauty, but the even more eternal feminist in me never ever wants to meet that werewolf rabbi. I keep wondering what the rabbi did to his wife to make her so angry and if some of his amazing virtue and generosity had not been demonstrated at her expense. After all, she was left behind penniless when he spent all their money and took himself off to live in the houses of others.

So in rediscovering some of my own cultural inheritance, I find I don’t like it all. I adore the high romance of Ximena, and feel that, however evil the wife was, a divorce would have shown the rabbi’s nobility better than him giving her tit for tat.

Which brings me full circle. I won’t refuse the ambivalence of the Ma’ase Book, or the sweet melodies of Sepharad. They’re part of who I am: they are Jewish fairy tales.

On reflection, though, I’ll keep Snow White and Cinderella as well. And Yankel and his donkey, the stories of Sholom Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Snow White, Puss in Boots, the Little

Mermaid and Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. I nearly forgot Mother Goose and Aladdin, Little Red Riding Hood, Little Bo Beep, the Three Billy Goats Gruff: I want them all.

* Purim, Feast of Esther, round about March each year

** Torah – the Five Books of Moses, central to Judaism

*** raised section in a synagogue, the place where the Torah is read out to the congregation

This article first appeared in Fables & Reflections #7, April 2005 pp.56-61, ed. Lily Chrywenstrom. It has been edited to make it more web-readable.

Reprint: The Joy of Mindful Reading

personby Deborah J. Ross
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Deep reading can boost your critical thinking and help you resist misinformation – here’s how to build the skill

Just slowing down gives you time to question and reflect.
Morsa Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images

JT Torres, Washington and Lee University and Jeff Saerys-Foy, Quinnipiac University

The average American checks their phone over 140 times a day, clocking an average of 4.5 hours of daily use, with 57% of people admitting they’re “addicted” to their phone. Tech companies, influencers and other content creators compete for all that attention, which has incentivized the rise of misinformation.

Considering this challenging information landscape, strong critical reading skills are as relevant and necessary as they’ve ever been.

Unfortunately, literacy continues to be a serious concern. Reading comprehension scores have continued to decline. The majority of Gen Z parents are not reading aloud to their young children because they view it as a chore. Many college students cannot make it through an entire book.

With their endless scrolling and easy reposting and sharing of content, social media platforms are designed to encourage passive engagement that people use to relieve boredom and escape stress.

As a cognitive scientist and a literacy expert, we research the ways people process information through reading. Based on our work, we believe that deep reading can be an effective way to counter misinformation as well as reduce stress and loneliness. It can be tough to go deeper than a speedy skim, but there are strategies you can use to strengthen important reading skills.

woman sits on end of bed holding head in hand while looking at phone
Counterintuitively, social media can make you feel more bored and lonely.
Dmitrii Marchenko/Moment via Getty Images
Deep reading versus doomscrolling

People use smartphones and social media for a variety of reasons, such as to relieve boredom, seek attention, make connections and share news. The infinite amount of information available at your fingertips can lead to information overload, interfering with how you pay attention and make decisions. Research from cognitive science helps to explain how scrolling trains your brain to think passively.

To keep people engaged, social media algorithms feed people content similar to what they’ve already engaged with, reinforcing users’ beliefs with similar posts. Repeated exposure to information increases its believability, especially if different sources repeat the information, an effect known as illusory truth.

Deep reading, on the other hand, refers to the intentional process of engaging with information in critical, analytical and empathetic ways. It involves making inferences, drawing connections, engaging with different perspectives and questioning possible interpretations.

Deep reading does require effort. It can trigger negative feelings like irritation or confusion, and it can very often feel unpleasant. The important question, then: Why would anyone choose the hard work of deep reading when they can just scroll and skim?

Motivating mental effort

Mindless scrolling may come with unintended consequences. Smartphone and social media use is associated with increased boredom and loneliness. And doomscrolling is related to higher levels of existential anxiety and misanthropy.

In contrast, attention and effort, despite being exhausting, can deepen your sense of purpose and strengthen social connection. People also feel motivated to complete tasks that help them pursue personal goals, especially when these tasks are recognized by others. For these reasons, sharing books may be one tool to promote deep reading.

One example is a teacher who guides students through longer texts, like novels, paired with active discussions about the books to reinforce comprehension and interpretation. While the debate over the ongoing practice of assigning excerpts over full books in schools continues, evidence does suggest that sustained reading in social settings can promote lifelong enjoyment in reading.

With social connection in mind, social media can actually be used as a positive tool. BookTok is a popular online community of people who use TikTok to discuss and recommend books. Fans post in-depth analyses of “K-Pop Demon Hunters” and other movies or shows, demonstrating that close analysis still has a place in the endless scroll of social media.

three people laughing together at a table, with books open in front of them
Talking about what you’ve read can add a social dimension to what can be a solitary activity.
Alfonso Soler/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Slowing yourself down to read deeply

There are steps you can take to meaningfully engage with the constant stream of information you encounter. Of course, this process can be taxing, and people only have so much effort and attention to expend. It’s important to both recognize your limited cognitive resources and be intentional about how you direct those resources.

Simply being aware of how digital reading practices shape your brain can encourage new attitudes and habits toward how you consume information. Just pausing can reduce susceptibility to misinformation. Taking a few extra seconds to consciously judge information can counteract illusory truth, indicating that intentionally slowing down even just a bit can be beneficial.

Reading deeply means being able to intentionally choose when to read at different speeds, slowing down as needed to wrestle with difficult passages, savor striking prose, critically evaluate information, and reflect on the meaning of a text. It involves entering into a dialogue with the text rather than gleaning information.

Awareness does not mean that you never doomscroll at the end of a long day. But it does mean becoming conscious of the need to also stick with a single text more frequently and to engage with different perspectives.

You can start small, perhaps with poems, short stories or essays, before moving up to longer texts. Partner with a friend or family member and set a goal to read a full-length novel or nonfiction book. Accomplish that goal in small chunks, such as reading one chapter a day and discussing what you read with your reading buddy. Practicing deep reading, such as reading novels, can open you up to new perspectives and ideas that you can explore in conversation with others, in person or even on TikTok.The Conversation

JT Torres, Director of the Harte Center for Teaching and Learning, Washington and Lee University and Jeff Saerys-Foy, Associate Professor of Psychology, Quinnipiac University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Golden threads and weirdness and Australia.

personby Gillian Polack
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I haven’t forgotten that I was going to introduce tsedakah last week. Stuff happens. And then more stuff happens. Much of the stuff has links to matters Jewish.

First we had the Bondi murders, and then a major literary conference fell to bits largely because of internal clashes about ethics. These internal clashes became a national mess. And now, Parliament’s back early and we had so many kind words about those lost at Bondi, and a national day of mourning later in the week and I think the whole country is confused. The latest political opinion poll suggests this. A far right party is coming out of the shadows and making one of the two largest parties in the country scared. The far left has most of its old vote, but not all. And our prime minister has lost most of his personal support: if Labor want a safe election next time, they might need to change their leadership. Or not. Labor is stubborn and full of factions.

All this pales compared with what’s happening in the Middle East, in Iran, in the US, and even in the UK. But it’s our mess, and we must handle it. One thing I would like to see us return to is civil society. Discussions and analyses rather than street marches.

Why? The big Sydney Harbour Bridge march last year had a lot of wonderful people doing what they thought was the right thing. Marching alongside them in support of Gazans were the Bondi shooters, and the rather antisemitic writer who upset the applecart in Adelaide and led to one of the most important writers’ festivals in the country being cancelled. Marching alongside this writer was almost everyone I’ve seen who is loudly and opinionatedly antisemitic. Many of these individuals were grouped near a guy holding a picture of Khomeini. I don’t know if it was a photo op, or if all these people actually work together, but the cluster of them in the most famous photo of the march indicates a cluster of problems.

It’s going to be difficult to roll back the performative and to return to the Aussie politics I used to know. I’m not connected in the way I used to be. I was pushed out of the behind-the-scenes stuff through being too Jewish and too ill. Australia admires health. It also has this really stupid habit of sweeping people who belong but should not be heard under the front stairs.

Why am I thinking of front stairs?

I’m back in the Middle Ages this week and ought to be talking about foodways, but have been focused on trying to understand our current very strange politics. What happens when the Middle Ages is there and I try to pretend it isn’t? Literary references happen, most frequently.

The boy under the stairs was Saint Alexis being holy. I’m probably under the stairs, but being sarcastic. The sarcasm means that old friends and new sneak in to join me, and we watch the goings on and are surprised at how people we know to be intelligent get caught up in performance and leave a goodly portion of their intellect behind.

Tsedekah is much nicer, but must wait until life is less exciting.

Just for the record, I could have gone to Parliament House and heard all the sorrowful speeches today. Instead, I watched the second last season of Stranger Things and I did some work and filled in all kinds of questionnaires. I decided it was not wise to hear those who ought to have sorted out the hate when it was straightforward being terribly sorry at all the murders. All those people should still be alive. Synagogues and mosques should not be burning. And all the time we spend trying to find that bolted horse could have been spent in doing so many things that Australia needed.

It will be Purim soon and gifts to two charities are traditional for this festival. I’ve chosen two that are important to me. It’s early, but all this thought led me to think what I could do. One charity gives reading to children. Those children are very rural and living on the land of their ancestors. They do so much better when they have books that concern themselves and are written by people they know in the language they speak. The other is for OzHarvest, which helped me out when I was under the poverty line. It rescues food and makes sure that food reaches people who don’t have the money to buy it.

Maybe around Purim will be an appropriate time to explain why the books are more Jewish as a gift than the food. Not more Jewish. I’m explaining badly. Ranked more highly as a type of gift. You’ll have to wait until March for the explanation.

Tomorrow is research-for-writing. I am interviewing a group of Jewish teenagers for a novel. A rather special novel, and one that I was not expecting to write. It’s not a guaranteed publication, but it’s a guaranteed “I’d love to see this if you’d consider writing it.” It’s the kind of book I’ve been saying we need for the last 20 years, one where Jewish Australia is shown as the driver of a story about Jewish Australians. The US has many YA novels that do just this for Jewish readers, but Australia, far less so.

I’m also finishing a short story where the King of Demons meets a very English vampire in Sydney. I have other fiction happening, including a novel emerging later in the year, but this week everything is Jewish.

The more hate there is, the more I write Jewish stories and Jewish history. Hate has reinforced my Jewishness ever since I was a child. When I was accused of eating baby’s blood in unleavened bread (in primary school), I taught the accusers basic kashruth. These are the type of stories I always tell.

What I don’t always tell is the reason I learned the Grace After Meals (the long one, all in Hebrew). I was so annoyed with several bigots and I decided I would say it every single lunchtime until the haters stopped bugging me. I kept saying it even after they stopped bugging me. Also they would have stopped bugging me anyhow, but I didn’t know this until it happened.

They didn’t stop because I could babble in Hebrew. They stopped because I became the high school student everyone else needed to ask questions of, especially in the lead up to exams. I could teach and I remembered everything teachers’ said and I understood it all. This gave me a place to belong, a role that was so very much mine. After I put the siddur away, someone would sit next to me and ask “Gillian, do you remember the calculus from yesterday?” or, a couple of years later, “Gillian, tell me about this piece of Chaucer.”

What most Jewish Australians have been pushed out of are those places we belong in the wider community. Since Australia is so secular, this is rather more important than it looks. Changing definitions, not listening to our voices, not publishing our books, telling us we have to leave our home country because we’re Jewish, accusing us of all kinds of impossible crimes… this all smudges together and makes an everyday that’s very difficult to handle.

Every single Australian organisation that still accepts me as Gillian (right now, my professional Medieval one, the Tolkien folks, and the Perth science fiction convention) gives me a golden thread to hold and to guide me through this labyrinth. Every single one that cuts off that thread (more than one writers’ organisation), leaves me stumbling. I find my balance within Jewish Australian culture, because that’s the place where my identity is not questioned.

As has been said so many times about Australia, we’re a weird mob. This is just another facet of that weirdness.

Making and Tools

personby Madeleine Robins
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8 inch three tier chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, decorated with torn gold paper in the center of the top.
Birthday cake made for Chaz Brenchley. Chocolate cake with black-cocoa frosting.

I like to make things. In particular, I like to cook (in very particular, I like to bake). There are other things I do when the spirit takes me: bead, sew, very occasionally, knit. And write. And for all of these things making is rendered easier, not to say better, with the right tools. 

I began to think about this after seeing a clip on the internet where someone was asking “what is your favorite kitchen utensil.” And at least one of the people who was asked the question drew a total blank. “Who has a favorite kitchen utensil? Like, a spoon or something?” I can only assume that this person doesn’t cook, and regards the kitchen as a sinister place where wine glasses and bottled water are kept.

My initial problem with the question was kind of the opposite. Choose my favorite utensil? Outrageous: they’re all my favorites (and I don’t want to hurt my round Dutch oven’s feelings by preferring the oval Dutch oven, clearly). But as I was working in the kitchen this weekend I realized that, for certain purposes, I do have favorites, and they’re not unreasonable.

This weekend I made a cake for Chaz Brenchley’s birthday. Chaz, if you don’t already know, is a wonderful British writer of mysteries and fantasy (also writing as Ben Macallan and Daniel Fox), who married the lovely Karen Williams (now Brenchley) here in California and moved to the States. Usually when I visit Chaz and Karen I bring some baked goods, because it’s an excuse to bake without having the products in my own house. But a birthday requires something special and cake-like. And Chaz (unlike the man I married) does not turn up his nose at chocolate. So a chocolate cake it was, with dark chocolate frosting.

Rectangular stainless steel electronic scale, and folded instant-read thermometer.It was as I was making the cake that I realized I do have some very favorite kitchen tools: my instant-read thermometer, my kitchen scale, my decorating turntable, and my cake lifter. The utility of the instant-read thermometer is pretty obvious: no matter if you’re making fudge or rib roast, being able to  know what the temperature of the object is can be crucial. When I bake bread I can be misled as to the doneness by the golden color of the loaf, but my instant-read thermometer will tell me the truth about the interior. If I’m making filling for a cake, the instant read thermometer will keep me from turning the it into something stodgy and unlovely. I use my instant read thermometer daily.

Same goes with my kitchen scale. Particularly for baking. When I was a young, enthusiastic baker, I thought the point was to jam as much ingredients into a measuring cup as possible. More is better, right? Except that the variation between jamming all the flour you can into a measure, and sprinkling flour into the measure and wiping off the extra with the edge of a knife (the preferred method for bakers in the know) can make an actual difference in the finished quality of the baked good. This matters particularly when you’re following a recipe: to ensure success, you want the amount of flour or baking powder you’re using to match what the recipe developer is using*. It’s not that long ago (the late 1800s, I believe) when there was no standardization in measurements: “take a good knob of butter and add to it a spoonful of sugar” where no specification of what either measurement means? Waaaaaay too loosey-goosey.   Precision is a lovely thing. 

As I was making Chaz’s cake I thought about how comforting that precision is: I may screw things up, but it won’t be by putting in the wrong amount of stuff (it might be by omitting a step, but that’s another essay).

Cake lifter resting on my cake decorating turntable.

Once the cake was baked and ready to be frosted, I got to use two other of my very favorite kitchen tools: my decorating turntable and my cake lifter. Look: did I decorate cakes for years before I even knew these objects existed? You bet. But these are tools that make life easier, and isn’t that a good thing? This weekend I did not, aft first, deploy the turntable: after all, I wasn’t going for a highly finished cake. And the turntable lives in the basement along with a lot of my other cake-making paraphernalia (yes, I have that much. My husband still has his model trains in the basement. Don’t judge me). For a moment I didn’t feel like going downstairs to get the turntable. But as I started applying frosting to the cake I remembered how frustrating it is to have to turn the cake while it’s sitting on the counter, and how messy. I yielded to common sense and brought up the turntable, as well as my cake carrier (yet another indispensable tool for the cake maker). The base of the cake carrier is roughly the same size as the turntable, but if I tried to use it as a cake platter… 1) it would slip right off the turntable, with predictably distressing results, and 2) it would look awful. So I put the cake on the turntable and frosted it. Once all the frosting was in place I could rotate the turntable while scraping the sides, so they look nice and straight and smooth. The right tool for the project, right?

Finally, when I was happy with the cake, I used the cake lifter to lift it off the turntable without damaging the bottom edge of the cake, and deposited it on a platter which could then go in the cake carrier. For years I did the same thing using several standard spatulas, and it just… never worked properly. Fully frosted cakes are heavy, and tend to want to slide off smaller spatulas and… please don’t make me explain further. Things sometimes got ugly

So those are (some) of my favorite kitchen utensils. When I get a new one I frequently have a honeymoon period where every time I use it I am just tickled that I have such a thing. I really am a simple soul. Eventually it just becomes another object in my armamentarium of kitchen tools. But I still appreciate it.

For other things–Oh, I could sing you a paean of praise for my thread burner (for beading) or my Oxford Compact English Dictionary (for writing–also an excellent weight when cheddaring cheese). It is an excellent thing to have a tool that helps you do what you want to do.

So what’s your favorite tool? Or tools? 

 

__________

*Even now, when recipes on the internet can come from all over the world, the astute baker keeps track of whether a recipe is written in Imperial measurements, grams, etc. It’s all well and good to measure vanilla “with your heart;” baking soda, not so much.

 

More Context

personby Gillian Polack
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Last week I gave some of the contexts for current antisemitism in Australia.

This week, so many of the Left are arguing that we don’t need a Royal Commission and so many others are arguing that we do need a Royal Commission, but very few of them are talking about the path Australia had taken to reach the point where Jews were murdered on Bondi. For some (especially on the right) it fits a bunch of their conceptions of the Labor Government, and on the Left, they are being very careful to disassociate the shooters from any demonstrations and other hate and very slow to admit the government cutback on investigations of what ASIO had determined was the #1 threat to Australia. In other words, the government may well have seen this coming.

If they didn’t, then they missed the picture of the shooters marching across Sydney Harbour Bridge. My view is (since I had friends marching) that we can’t assume hate on the part of all marchers, but we need to know how much hate was on the Bridge at that time. We also can’t assume that the march itself didn’t (whether intentional or not) support hate towards Jewish Australians. A group of senior people at the head of that march have been very public with their negative thoughts about Jewish Australia. I follow them on X, because I feel I need to understand them, but I always have to clear my mouth from the bad taste of their thoughts.

If you want to follow these people on social media, begin with the Australian Union Movement (Doug Cameron is a good path into that) – not all unionists are such bigots, but some of the leading unionist are. This is not new.

The historical context is that there was a strong Jewish component in the Australian Left. This was especially true in the 1950s and maybe 60s. In the 70s, more and more Jews hid their identities or turned to being a performative “Good Jew” in order to stay in the Left. I’m not that good at being performative, whatever branch of politics we’re talking about, in case you were wondering (which you were not!) This have reached a curious point since the 70s. Now, the further left someone travels, the more likely they are to be in a nest of joyous antisemites. I wait to see what anyone says about who I am and what assumptions they hold about my existence before I know I’m safe with them. This is not only unionists, but, for family reasons, the union aspect contains certain ironies. I can identify how safe I am with the far right (mostly not, but easy to spot) more easily than with the left.

What I thought might be useful today is not a list of those who hate and claim not to, however, but links to places that open the subject in different ways. I don’t agree with everyone and all the things said, but these citations will enable anyone who also needs to understand to explore further. To cross boundaries and begin to understand modern Australia, rather than being fixated on a narrow view,

I want to begin with something that doesn’t even mention Jewish Australia. Let me link to someone who says this better than I can and then I’ll try to explain anyhow: https://x.com/MatthewNouriel/status/2007975770342506846
The subject is performative politics, directly speaking about this week. When are we helping someone, and when are we failing even to listen?

First thing first (and why I talk about Jewish Australia rather than the people of Gaza) listen to those who are being hurt to determine the nature of the hurt. I cannot speak for the people of Gaza. I can speak for myself.

When we listen, we can help more effectively. And the best help is often in ways that support multiple voices of those under attack. I can attest that most performative people will tell me what to think rather than ask what I’m dealing with. I began to post some of my experiences on my Facebook page to address that a little. For the status of this, see the note below.
Just to make it clear that I’m not talking about extremists, a kind soul put some social media screenshots of more extreme thinking. I have not looked into it (I’m not that well right now and everything’s a bit difficult), and I really hope it’s fake. https://x.com/l3v1at4an/status/2007847171723505810

Next is a bit of background about Labor’s relationship with Islamic preaching in Australia. At the time of the Hilaly furor (1980s, when I was working on a PhD in Sydney), I was treated quite unkindly by performative supporters (‘performative’ is my work of the week) and those who kept me safe were Pakistani Australian, Lebanese Christian Australian, and Palestinian Australian friends. In the early 2000s there were places in Sydney I already I had to hide my Jewishness and spend as little time as possible there, but there was far less spitting hate. It was just as difficult to be a woman in those streets as a Jew. And the streets to avoid weren’t many.
Due to my experience over time, I am always going to look for the views of informed individuals. Those who act on the preaching of extremists need to learn to live in a shared society. Those who do not, are getting blamed for the hate of others. This applies to the Jewish community too, but in a different way. All Jews who are not “Good Jews” are in the wrong, I’m told, and be deported from Australia (for existing, I assume) but are not allowed to go to Israel because the same people want it not to exist.

In other words, hate is not shared equally. Rhetoric counts more than checking things through and understanding. The rhetoric is strong in this one, but at the heart of his clamour there is some really interesting (and worrying) Australian history. https://x.com/MarkWRowley/status/2007965362776945037

So what is the Jewish community thinking right now? So many different things, but this article by Adam Slonim in The Australian, shared by the president of the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia sums some of it: https://www.facebook.com/lynda.benmenashe/posts/pfbid0S4dFspFfPFJLSinvEewo17cq1pJQNMhnQZ3qLaLci35Qj8ehwcB8skKuHWoM7Bffl?__cft__[0]=AZYKbgPaM44VBpGF3-7O3tHeBoRT__5gkXWnjvplaV9F7Hrx_z9Xqy80jfFTeg-g64wTEiH6KLvvOKD71r6YQJpQWKzlaWruEbYwGgdEpX1yK1afdv_QmsObJ0_dAlkf770&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R

And this is some of what it boils down to https://www.facebook.com/adam.klein.7399/ which links to this https://www.commentary.org/articles/eli-lake/asajew-brief-history/

As I said earlier, I don’t agree with everything. This is purely to help those who need to understand things from other (Jewish Diaspora) directions. I cannot speak for Israel, partly because I’m Diaspora and partly because I don’t know enough. I do however, as my historian self, see that most people shouting at Israel are doing it from emotional pedestals and without sufficient evidence. This may be pushed as propaganda, or it may come from deep cultural antisemitism… either way, I need to learn more.

I had intended to give you something more balanced and also some idea of the definitions of Zionism that are used to connect people and t push hate (9 definitions so far and– we can’t talk on common ground without agreed definitions, which doesn’t help at all. What I’ve shared today is an emotional rollercoaster, so I shall stop there. If anyone wants me to talk about definitions and how they help us find what we share and where we disagree on heartland matters, and why some of the defintions contribute so directly to violent hate, say so in the comments and that will be your post next week.

Small update: I have been thrown off Facebook (no reason given, nor any apparent way of sorting things out, though I’m still trying.). I am considering what I can do to keep in touch with everyone.
In case you need to contact me directly and I’m still (or forever) banned from FB, ping me in the comments, please, and when I work something out, I’ll let you know.

Meanwhile, in Australia’s disconcerting summer…

personby Gillian Polack
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So many posts and thoughts online talk about 2025 and what happened and what a good year it was. So many of my friends have written me cheerful season’s greetings saying “Happy Chanukah” after Chanukah is over (this happens every year) and hoping I had a really good Chanukah and… I’m Jewish, so of course I get these greetings and these thoughts. I’m Australian and it’s a hot summer and most people are very cheerful. I’m Jewish Australian and every single friend who sends me happy notes and telling me I am enjoying the season is ignoring the elephant in the room: antisemitism.

I only knew one person who was killed at Bondi. I know many people who were on that beach, however. I have family who live in Bondi. No-one expected me to be cheerful during the summer holidays that followed the massacre in Israel. Yet this year they stick to happy thoughts and tell me Chanukah is a time of cheer.

What is happening here?

First, Jewish pain in Australia doesn’t count for much, and Jewish problems in Australia are often pushed to the side. This is how Australia reached the events of December 14. The police are more willing to send officers to monitor protests than to send officers for a Jewish beach party when there are known threats against the party. While most Australians disagree with this, there are far too many who have said publicly these last two weeks that Jewish events should not take place in public and that Jews should handle every bit of risk ourselves.
This is familiar turf for bigots of most kinds. It’s pretty standard where there is race bigotry, class bigotry, bigotry due to skin colour, against new immigrants. It’s pretty nasty, whoever is told “It’s your fault, keep us out of it.” School bullies win when the class president says “Sort it out yourself.”
When the non-violent equivalent happened to me in the public service, I lost my career. “You can sort it out between yourselves,” my branch head told me. I couldn’t. Also, it took me far too long to realise that the work community that pranked me and left me out of things because I’m Jewish was part of a wider community that kept telling me that English was not my native language, and that both these things are part of a bigger picture that paints Jews as different and not people to support. Not all Australians… but enough Australians so that one of my friends went to twelve funerals in a week. And back then, we dealt with Molotov cocktails, not guns. Back then, no-one was hurt.

There is a wider context for this.

Jewish Australians have been around since 1788. One of the very first free settlers in Australia was Jewish. Her name was Roseanna or Rosanna. Her mother was Esther Abrahams, who was a very young convict. I am part of a colonialist-settler society and am one of the settlers. That country is Australia. Indigenous Australians are still fighting for equality and safety.
When I compare what happens on a daily basis to my Indigenous Australian friends and myself and my Jewish friends in the present (after the attempts by at genocide and ethnic cleansing in colonial Australia), it strikes me that an important difference between us historically is that Jews can ‘pass.’ This is why public Jewish events are so wrong for some: Jews don’t try to pass and are guilty of being visible. We’re seen. In public. As Jews. That’s why synagogues and Jewish schools and cars that announce “Happy Chanukah” have been targeted recently. Chanukah by the Beach was publicly Jewish. If we went into hiding, I’m told, we’d be fine.

Australia is developing new cultural structures and the prejudices and hate show what those structures are. Too many politicians (especially on the Left) and far, far too many people at the glittering end of the Arts are passive bigots. They are led by active bigots. Those active bigots spoke up loudly and publicly against the shooting, but almost none of them got in touch with Jewish colleagues to check we were OK. I say this as one of their Jewish colleagues. None of the Greens I know and only a small number of my writer and artist friends got in touch with me. Other Australians did. Non-Australian friends did.
Every friend who contacted me is a treasure. Everyone who did not, has made it clear who they are. In some circles, there’s public virtue but not private.
This is shaping Australia: some writers can have books in bookshops, some artists can get grants. Too much Jewishness or the wrong kind of Jewishness and you are, regretfully, pushed to the end of a queue. I’ve been told I’m privileged and White and should step aside and let others who have suffered discrimination take my place in this event or that conversation. This has been going on for about 15 years. More historical context.

It’s not obvious hatred. These people are otherwise good and charming and often witty. They just don’t want Jew cooties and, in the not wanting, create new layers to Australian society to protect themselves from said Jew cooties. It’s fine to have a Jewish friend, but you should not engage in private conversation with them when bad things happen. If a Jew is banned from certain circles, you don’t protest it.
Most Jews are currently lesser beings and our company can contaminate. We aren’t the only ones, but I experience the Jewish side every day, so the antisemitism is something I can talk about.  I speak from personal experience.
It began, years ago, with Jewish writers and historians having to be the Ginger Rogers in our society. We had to do everything everyone else did, but better, on subjects others approved of, as if we were dancing backwards and in heels.

This Gentlemen’s Agreement approach to Jewish Australians has been around since Federation. And earlier, but Federation and the infamous White Australia Policy contain clear issues that apply today. Under White Australia, only special Jews were White. Sir Isaac Isaacs, the first Australian Governor-General, was Honorary White. Sir John Monash, who was rather important in World War I… was not. The official war correspondent (Mr Bean) did all he could to make sure Monash didn’t get the job. Even today, military and ex-military will (for the most part) treat Jewish Australians like any other Australian, due to Monash. But my electorate was named after Bean, and the far left and the far right now both shout that Jews need to be deported. The left is too busy hating Israel to come to the aid of Jewish Australians, and I am mostly banned from conversations with politically active old friends and colleagues because I don’t pass their purity tests. (I don’t pass because I refuse to do them, to be fair.)
These Australians are not even close to the whole of Australia. This is a limited number of Australians in a limited number of power blocks. If they weren’t building on the old hates that led – in Germany – to Holocaust, I wouldn’t be so worried. If Chanukah by the Beach had not been one of the worst mass murders in this country in the last fifty years, I would not be so worried.

While I can see where the passive bigotry is leading, it would take 10,000 words to explain. How about just two observations?
The first, is that it’s like frogs in a saucepan. The Left and the Literati and the politicians presenting that passive bigotry are enjoying a bath in the saucepan and we’re telling them the fire has been lit underneath it. Because we’re Jewish, some tell us “You’re the boy who cried wolf” and ignore what we say. These folks also ignored our concerns right up to the moment the shooters started to fire at Bondi.
The second is, if you factor in the history of antisemitism DownUnder, and if you add the history of treatment of others who’ve dealt with bigotry, right now, it looks like we’re heading for a society structured by bigotry.
This is canary in coalmine stuff. Every time antisemitism is rampant here, historically, we develop concerns about people from this background or that: non-English speakers, recent migrants, those from other religions, women. Indigenous Australians have never been let off that particular hook, and the Indigenous Australians I know and who I listen to are divided between those who support Jew-hate and those who fight alongside the Jewish community. I’m pretty sure (since I know some of the hate-supporters) that they have no idea they are antisemites. At least three I know believe they’re supporting people on the other side of the world by putting us in our place.
Some bigots think they’re doing the right thing. So did the guys who designed White Australia, which is the last time we had a divide this big and this dangerous (skipping World War II, because I am reaching my limits on the subject of hate, and these last few weeks have reminded me of how my European family disappeared). World War I and all the Australian soldiers (especially those who came from the various demeaned groups) broke that to pieces. World War I didn’t get rid of it, though. The social structure still hurt Indigenous Australians in appalling ways… and that aspect didn’t even begin to be addressed until the 1960s. It still hurts far too many.

One of the reasons the antisemitism brings down the whole of Australia: it’s never been only about Jew cooties.
Many Australians have always fought the hate and the fear and the cooties. Some Indigenous Australians are so much more capable than I am, and work for their own communities and for others who hurt. One of my heroes is William Cooper, a Yorta Yorta elder, who, when he and his family and friends were all not-quite-citizens marched to the German consulate in Melbourne after Kristallnacht and let Germany know what they were doing to their Jews was evil.
If you read his biography, you get a sense of what he had to handle in an almost-impossible everyday and how extraordinary he was… and why it’s so problematic that Australia is returning to this particular outlook.
I see so many otherwise intelligent people saying “The shooting was over two weeks ago – let’s spend the next 20 minutes on another crisis” when this crisis is linked to the other they then describe. I hear others saying “It’s the Jews’ fault,” and yet others explaining, “Jews are liars and shot themselves at Bondi. Look to Mossad.” There is passive hate, active hate, aggressive hate – every single bit of hate that’s shared, adds to the Jew cooties and changes the country.
This is why I couldn’t post last week. Getting through this is a full-time job because we don’t have enough words for it because those who have words are part of the problem. It’s a very Australian antisemitism. Like Australian Christmasses, it happens upside down to the rest of the world and is connected to the lives of so many people on our continent. I’m scared for myself and my family and my Jewish friends, but I’m also worried for Australia. My metaphors are still inept, but when a society changes this much it’s really, really bad.

Books

personby Gillian Polack
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I have 2 posts for you in the same day because this week is suddenly impossibly different. I wrote the prior post before the massacre and am spending my whole Chanukah dealing with consequences for myself and friends. My Baltimore nephew just checked in on me and I never would have thought that, with US shootings, it would be he who had to check in on me.

If you need to understand what happened, ask me, and I’ll post more next Monday. In the interim, I’m seeing a total lack of knowledge about Jewish Australia. Loads of generic good wishes and concern for safety, and some friends write to me directly and most put general statements on FB and don’t think that, just maybe, every single Jewish Australian is in mourning. Some people are full of theories about the role of Israel and want to share their theory without stopping to say, first, that they’re sorry that so many people were murdered and they mourn with us. Their thoughts count more than the humans caught up in this mess. This is what happened here when we heard about the Tree of Life stuff from 2018. I have a friend who goes to that shul and I was there for her then and she’s there for me now and it’s all so wrong. We should be complaining about the weather, not worried about getting safely through the week.

Even the least antisemitic non-Jewish Australians other Jews. American friends help. I wish the reasons for you understanding were not so full of hurt, but I’m grateful to every single one of you who reaches out to me.

How do we handle this? For me, books always help. I posted about this on Facebook – I thought I’d copy my post for you here. maybe books help you, too. After all, Jewish Australia is very, very different to Jewish America. For one thing, we think we’re much wittier and we like our spelling more and… Australian Rules Football. (The footie is an argument in itself – ask me why sometime)

From FB, but with more notes):

Jewish Australia is in the news for the worst possible reason and it might help some people if they know who we are. Jewish Australians may not be many, but our culture is diverse and very Australian. I thought you might like some books to understand a bit better. I’ve included one of my novels, because it’s specifically about Sydney Jews and so that you can have a novel to read if the others are too much right now. It’s safer: the protagonist merely discovered she has Jew cooties – having Jew cooties was much less scary back then.

Apple, Raymond. The Great Synagogue: A History of Sydney’s Big Shule (one of the most important synagogues in the country, and definitely the most important Modern Australian Orthodox synagogue in Sydney, often targeted by marchers who claim they’re not bigots – not yet bombed – the recently-bombed synagogues were in Melbourne)
Baker, Mark The Fiftieth Gate (Mark was an historian, just ahead of me at university. Australia has/had per capita, the biggest Holocaust survivor population outside Israel and one of these survivors was murdered on Sunday. Mark had to deal with those issues as an historian and also a child of survivors. This is that book.)
Gawenda, Michael My Life as a Jew (very recent. Michael was the editor of a major newspaper and so experienced antisemitism quite differently to most of us. He was born in a displacement camp.)
Kofman, Lee and Tamar Paluch Ruptured (a new anthology that shows the path Jewish women walked in the time after October 7.)
Polack, Gillian The Wizardry of Jewish Women (I’ve written far more Jewish things than this, but this is a novel exploring Jewish Australia from the view of someone who nearly lost all their Jewish past. What’s important about it here, is that Judith’s friends are all people from the Left who would not even talk to her now. I’m exploring this a little in short stories, which my Patreon folk have been reading. When I have enough, I’ll think about a story collection. I’m only 2 stories away from enough.)
Rutland, Suzanne The Jews in Australia (the standard history, dated but a very handy introduction)
Sackville-O’Donnell, Judith The first Fagin: the true story of Ikey Solomon (This is a fun way of discovering what’s now Tasmania’s early Jewish population. The differences between Fagin and the guy who inspired him are immense and tell a lot about antisemitism and how it warps things.)
Zable, Arnold Jewels and Ashes (And Aussie classic, all about the last days of a family in Bialystock. Arnold is one of our best story tellers and helped me understand why my grandfather wouldn’t talk about his childhood nor his lost family. His father brought him to Australia in 1917 or 1918, and 35 years later there was no family in Poland at all. Arnold was the last family connection to leave. His family was on a boat on the way here and were banned from entry because Australia had put up fences to keep jews out. Arnold’s family managed to be accepted in New Zealand and they moved here later. In the book, Feivel is the one who married my mother’s cousin. 120,000 people is not a lot, but it’s an enormous number compared with the hundreds in Australia prior to 1810 or the thousands in most of the 19th century. Older families are very interconnected, which is why I have so many links with the authors of these books. I don’t have the same links with post 1950s arrivals – we’re a complex bunch.)

If you want more, try here: Australian Jewish Writers Database | Jewish Australia It’s not updated frequently and it’s not complete, but it gives you a sense of the range of Jewish voices in Australia. You won’t hear most of those voices at Australian literary conventions. I’d love to see suggestions for other books that talk about Jewish Australia.
We’re not a big community, and we only go back to 1788, but there are lots of connections between this group or that group. Some other writers have no idea I exist, while others have known me or my family forever. Through my family, I am connected to several other writers. Some of them have met me but are unlikely to remember me. My favourite example of this is Michael Gawenda. His sister married my uncle and Michael and I sat on the same table at my cousins barmie. Arnold Zable is another example. His most famous book includes relatives of mine. And one conference of the HNSA I found myself next to one of my favourite children’s writers… who turned out to be my aunt’s best friend. Others were connected through school or university: Mark Baker was just ahead of me at university, while Raymond Apple went to Sunday school with my mother when I asked him. He was my rabbi when I lived in Sydney.
How does this play out everyday? We catch up a bit when we see each other, or we do introductions from scratch because we didn’t know each other well as it was 20 years since last time, or (and this one happened to me recently) the usual checks on “Are we related” can turn into something hurtful.
One of the reasons Jewish Australians know each other is because we have a kind of verbal code to find out connections. We talk about relatives and their experiences past and present – this also works with almost anyone with a military background and, entertainingly, with the very far left – or it used to, when they would chat with me. One New Year’s Eve I was sitting with a member of the Communist Party of Australia and we chatted happily for ages because “You’re A’s cousin!” When someone has not had a traditional upbringing, they don’t know this and much hurt can ensue. This is a more recent phenomenon, and most arises when someone from the left needs the right shibboleths said to accept that I’m an acceptable Jew to talk to.

Anyhow, if you want to read more books or want to learn specific aspects of Australian Jewishness, just ask. Books help. Questions and answers help even more.

 

History and fiction and time out from hate

personby Gillian Polack
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I found my missing post. Here it is!

I logged in, expecting to tell you how the hate in Australia (which began as antisemitism and is now extending) is so tightly focused that your best friend might be bullied and you might not see it. When I’m alone, that bullying eats up a chunk of my day each and every day. This last week, however, it was less than a minute of each day and it was not every day. I was able to talk work with colleagues. When I sat down here, it struck me that I don’t often talk about that side of my life.

I used to. I used to be the kind of irrepressible historian who got excited for everyone. I’m still that historian. I don’t get to talk about it so often, is all.

Instead of dwelling on the bad side of life, then, let me find one page of notes from one day of the conference (one in forty-five pages of notes from the conference) so that you can enjoy history with me. We all need time out from hate, after all and every single US reader here had a lot more trouble to handle in the every day.

Some of you know that one of my novels (Poison and Light) is about how future humans use the past to hide from a present they found uncomfortable. Right now, a group of Australian scholars is examining how people in Early Modern England (and elsewhere, but the papers I heard were on Early Modern England) use history to imagine the future. The discussion was wide-ranging. They talked about witches and about ghosts, about predicting disaster and about what happened when the disaster failed to occur, about pamphlets and politics and poetry. It was the perfect panel for fiction writers and an exceptionally strong example of why fiction writers should get to know Medievalists and Early Modern scholars. Every other minute I thought of a writer who should have been there, asking questions about the ghosts and about the politics. The worlds they explain and the concepts they explore help us understand what we write and help us write it the best we can.

How does this understanding work in practice? My notes have an outline describing how the chair (and the head of the research project, who of course I talked to afterwards and of course we’ve planned to meet to talk about the science fiction side of things) breaks down the concepts of Imagining the Future into categories that can be explained.

She spoke about writing that give models of temporality: utopias, dystopias, and the mundane. Think about how these categories fit modern science fiction. Poison and Light is half-dystopia and half mundane, because all of my fiction talks about the lives of individuals and so the mundane is important to them. China Mieville (to my mind) writes dystopias and so does Sheri S Tepper.

But who writes utopias? I can think of earlier writers, like Sir Julius Vogel. Help me out! Who is writing now and has written a utopia that brings history into the future? We were given the theory of Star Trek, because it claims to be in a perfected future (at least for humans) but the reality of Star Trek is not utopian. Star Wars is, however, dystopian. It’s much easier to find examples when one looks to television. But I want to talk about novels!

She then moved to scales of temporality, whether the novel is set near (Earth!) or far away (Poison and Light again, since it’s in a solar system far far away – I may have attended the conference as an historian, but during this panel I felt so seen as a writer). With TV, my mind goes straight to the Jon Pertwee years of Doctor Who and compares them with (of course) Star Wars … again.

Why is the near and far important? Because so much of historical writing is used to discuss this apocalypse, or that. How far is apocalypse from our everyday? Much further, if it’s not on Earth. And here Poison and Light fails. It’s set far away, but Earth faces apocalypse while the people on New Ceres pretend they live in the eighteenth century. (I’m seeing this now with the lucky souls who are not enmired in hate – they are the people on New Ceres, while most of us are, alas, on Earth.)

I keep thinking that this whole project can help me understand my own New Ceres universe. I’m writing a second novel set on Earth next year, where the 14th century and the 17th century and how we deal with post-apocalypse join the party. My project echoes the ideas of people hundreds of years ago as humanity faces a bleak present. Where some people find refuge in fancy dress, others find refuge in explaining the world through ghosts and looking at neighbours as if they themselves are the catastrophe.

The last category asks whose future it is. Is it personal and everyday? Is it national? Is it a global future (my New Ceres again), a human one… or is it post-human.

The experts were historians and literary historians and most of the examples (by a long, long way most of the examples) belong to our past. The categories were however, really handy for questioning and understanding science fiction. And now you know why I will not give up that side of my life. I have learned so much in such a short time, and my fiction benefits.

Every time universities lose these experts, we lose the benefit of their thought and learning… and our everyday suffers.

Let me go away and think about what our lives would be like if we didn’t have these little injections of learning to help us tell better stories. No, let me not. Let me go away and write more fiction, celebrating the worlds of both historians and writers.

Talking History

personby Gillian Polack
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I spent a week in Melbourne. I learned a lot, mostly about the Middle Ages, because I was at one of my favourite conferences and so many scholars are breaking old walls and talking across disciplines and reducing bias. This is not universal. It’s Australian experts in the Middle Ages and in Early Modern history and literature. Also, it was one of those rare conferences where there was no antisemitism. There were individuals who were on the verge of saying something, but they looked up and caught themselves and found non-hateful ways of asking questions or of answering questions.

ANZAMEMS (the organisation whose conference it was) has a good history in this regard. I’ve been a member for squillions of years and, while sometimes I’ve been isolated, I’ve never experienced hate.

My most fun moment was when one of my undergraduate lecturers called on me at question time. He remembered my name… This is not always guaranteed 45 years after that degree.

My paper was about how museums tell stories of the past and how those stories can be worrying. I used one example, with a few pictures and compared it with some other museums. I played safe and the museum itself was in Germany. Several people came up to me afterwards and said that they need to read museum’s displays more critically.

What I intended to show (and what I actually showed, judging by the responses!) was that we take many of our stories from what we see and hear over our lives. When we’re not critical, we get so much bias and hate from well-intended people. I put my theory into practice at an in-service at the State Library of Victoria. The librarian was not at all impressed with me. She had claimed that the writers in some SF magazines on display were Australian, when every single one of them was American. The magazines were printed in Australia because of the really interesting politics in the US at that time, but they were still US magazines and are very famous for this. She also wasn’t entirely happy with me when I asked her why they only had Jewish ritual books and no other indication of Jewish book culture (or other Jewish cultures) when for every other ethnic or religious group on show they answered questions about books (authors, genre history, the nature of the book itself – the display using Islamic texts explained the texts, but was all about the binding and its brilliance and variation). Her excuse was “We borrowed the display objects from the Jewish Museum and this is what they gave us. I know the Jewish Museum. I used to teach the guides at the Jewish Museum. And I know their collection. That cabinet was part of a conversation between the two museums and for it to be only about the very-religious and without some of the basic explanations (why the miniature Torah was no longer able to be used was a very book-related query that was not asked nor answered) is due to the shape of that conversation. I want to know what the State Library asked for. Was it “Jewish items”? Was it ritual items? Was it book history (which was the subject of the exhibition)? There was a conversation that needed to happen before that display cabinet was filled, and it obviously didn’t happen or didn’t happen in the best way.

My conference was extraordinary in that it consistently asked the questions and discussed the answers and most topics were nicely nuanced. The SLV and the street marchers the day I arrived and the day I left were more typical of current Australia.

And I just realised I wrote you a post while I was away. It’s on my laptop and I haven’t downloaded it yet! Next week…

Who We Write About

personby Gillian Polack
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I just posted about one of my novels, Borderlanders, on Facebook. Let me share that post, and let me add to it.

Memories…
This was the book wanted by readers on FB. I noted (on FB, obviously) that my academic stuff had given me a way of writing a novel with a chronically ill protagonist where the protagonist remains the hero, is not cured, is not killed, and is not replaced. I was going to teach this method to others, but first COVID intervened and then antisemitism. I don’t get to teach much, these days. I may have to write another novel, having said this, because I learned so much in writing the novel that I could now write a much better one.
What’s very strange is, during these 5 years, more people I know have the illness my character had, due to long COVID. I’ve had it since I was in my twenties, but I’m one of the fortunate ones for whom it goes into abeyance. Right now, I’m trying to coax it back to sleep. Not everyone has that luxury, which is another reason why I should write another novel. Not yet, though. While it’s awake, every moment of every day is not straightforward, and I am behind on all my fiction.

This mysterious illness was known as chronic fatigue in Australia in the late 1980s, but these days it’s called ME and the fatigue is just a symptom. We know a lot more about it. One thing we know is why walking up the street can be so impossible. For some of us it can set the illness back, and for others it can destroy life entirely. This is why I consider myself so fortunate. I may have to not do much for a few months, but after that time I can do a little more and then a little more. This is just as well, because it’s only one of several illnesses I have and I have this daft desire not to be bedridden or die young.

For me, the most annoying symptom is when my executive function is not working. I lose time (sometimes weeks) and can’t do simple things. Oddly, I can still write books.

I always tell folks, do not assume someone can or cannot do a thing when they are ill. Ask them. And ask them each and every day if you must, because the small everyday can change. Some days I can walk up the street and back and I can write 6,000 words. Other days I can hardly get out of bed.

The illness is not just part of our everyday, it becomes part of who we are, for better or for worse.

I would like to see a superhero who has ME. It would be such a wonderful thing, watching them change the world… on days they can do more than toddle. And seeing how other people respond to the wild level of change they see when a powerful person has to watch what they do every minute would provide a great sub-text to a movie. It’s quite a different set of options than those for someone who cannot walk without assistance, or someone completely confined to bed who uses their amazing telepathic abilities to run the world.

There are so many amazing stories in the lives of the people we mostly prefer not to see. I now want to see a whole sequence of superhero movies or a TV series that focuses on those lives. There is a different sort of heroicism when one is not visible and has to fight just to get through the everyday, especially when they do astonishing things. Most of those astonishing things are attributed to someone else, because, of course, the invisible and half-seen can’t possibly be the heroes we dream of. Except, of course, they are. I get through my illnesses because of those people. Some of them are role models and some of them help when others don’t even begin to see that I might not be able to ask for help when things are bad.

One thing about this non-extent show: costumes would be far too problematic for some of the hidden heroes. So would heroic stances and being randomly interviewed by reporters. It would be such a different and fascinating set of stories.

In real life, I’ve met these invisible people in essential services. From a desk or from home they make a lot of the everyday possible for so many other folk.

One day, I will write that second book.