Category: Life Experiences

Some Thoughts on Learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two types of hunger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When You Can’t Write

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

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

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

The Wall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Music past

personby Gillian Polack
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This evening I’ve been exploring music past. I wanted to hear the music I knew in the 60s and 70s. Someone put up a list of top Australian hits in 1974 and I looked at it and realised that it’s quite different to the music generally associated with that year. We hear about music from the USA, you see, and from the UK.

I listened to some of the tunes on that list first, but one of the top ten struck me as getting my mood exactly right when it was first released: Helen Reddy’s “Leave Me Alone” was perfect for a proto-teenager.

I moved onto orchestral music. When I was in primary school and early high school, we went to Melbourne Town Hall and were taught to understand orchestral music. In primary school we were taught the instruments of the orchestra, how the orchestra worked, Peter and the Wolf, Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker, mainly), Beethoven and… that’s all I remember. I watched a Bernstein recording and he taught children very different stuff. More the stuff I discovered when I was a teenager. As a teenager I fell in love with Schubert, played in a regional orchestra and the school orchestra (second violin in one, first in the other), and I went to concerts every fortnight. I came from a musical family and went to a standard state school… which happened to have free music education. I once did a lot of music, and the Bernstein brought the formal education aspect flooding back. My top moment of music learning was when Felix Werder taught me to care for Mahler and when my father’s first cousin taught me how to listen. Linda was a composer and a music judge and a critic, and her random remarks taught me so much. Since that moment, everything has gone downhill… but… my evening of music didn’t stop with memories of Mahler and Linda. I was very privileged musically in my childhood, not so much as an adult.

I sang, of course, some songs I learned from Alfred Deller and also the King’s Singers. They were my personal favourite musicians when I was a teen, and both really annoyed my family. Everyone else was singing ABBA and the bay City Rollers and I was listening to a counter-tenor who sang folk songs. I was informed by my family how very bad my singing is

Then moved to my final music for the evening. I’m writing to it now. Tom Lehrer. This sentence is being typed to the rhythm of The Vienna Schnitzel Waltz. The final note of the night was either going to be Lehrer or Flanders and Swann. The news makes me sarcastic right now, so of course it’s Lehrer.

And now, of course, I’m very curious about the music of your childhoods. Of course I am.

Of books and migraines and dancing

personby Gillian Polack
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I am drinking a triumphal cup of tea. A very weak and immensely huge triumphal cup of tea. There is a story behind this cup of tea, and the triumph. A tiny story, but a story.

I’m in the middle of one of my longer migraines. This one is in its fourth day. As migraines go, it’s very mild. I find it hard to see things and almost impossible to sleep, I’m sensitive to sound and my emotional peace fractures easily. I’ve had worse. Much worse. The low pain levels (for a migraine) are due to the wonder of becoming older. Some things improve with age, oddly.

None of this is the story of my triumph. It’s the backstory.

I have lost so much worktime to this migraine that I had begun fretting about deadlines. I have a thesis to finish: the biggest chapter was supposed to be in a complete draft by Monday, and where I am it’s Tuesday. I need to get some edits to an editor (who else would one send edits to?) urgently, and can’t find a bio to go with the edits. I have a really cool piece to write in the next two days. And I have a short story to finish. I need to deal with 100 emails by bedtime tonight. Plus, as soon as I finish that chapter, I’m onto the next one. This PhD is in its final months and deadlines aren’t as porous as they once were.

Now you have most of the backstory. I’ve brought you to 4 am today, when I finally admitted that the migraine would not go away and that I had to find a way to deal.

The triumph is perfectly simple. Skip most of today, and let’s move to ten minutes ago.

I have a section of a bookshelf. It holds maybe 80 books and is ¼ of the whole (very large) bookshelf. This section is my working shelf for any research. It had gaps and space because I had not yet returned all the books for this chapter. I have finished with all but one book and the shelves are very full. One day I’ll have to return the books I won’t need again for this project to their real homes on other shelves, but right now I only have one book to return and two tiny sections of the chapter to write up and lo, I’m caught up with one big deadline.

I needed something to take the edge of the migraine before I delve into the last two thousand words, and the triumphal cuppa is that something. Small things matter. So do the simple tasks that enable one to work through this lesser-stage of such a long migraine.

I was going to tell you about a cousin of mine today. A folk dance teacher who taught people to deal with problems of right and left foot by wearing different coloured socks and shoes. On the day I heard he died, I watched Easter Parade with a friend. The “I do not know my right from my left” made its appearance there, hours before I heard the sad news. I haven’t seen Robin for years, but as soon as this migraine is past, I shall dance something in his honour: it will be a short and simple dance because dancing is difficult for me these days, but it will be joyous. We talked about death many years ago, you see, and Robin wanted people to dance joyously when he died. I told him that same day, that I wanted to be remembered with stories. I wanted friends to get together and talk and eat and laugh and tell stories. I shall miss him.

Competition

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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My favorite sports story (myth? metaphor?) is the one where two competitors fight to the bitter end in very close competition and then fall into each other’s arms. One has won, one has lost, but in the moment it doesn’t really matter which one did which, because the whole thing was about the fight or the game or the process — the doing with each other.

I wrote a story about that once: “Blindsided by Venus in the House of Mars.” It’s sort of a love story, but it’s also about how winning isn’t what anything’s about, even when everything is on the line. It was published quite a few years back in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

Maybe I should send it out to reprint markets.

I’m not particularly competitive. I like to succeed, don’t get me wrong. I want to be read, to be listened to, for others to admire my work, to get accepted by magazines and publishers, and I realize that when I get accepted someone else gets rejected, as a rule.

But I don’t do it for the joy of beating someone else. I do it for the joy of doing. If I succeed, I am not thinking about all those people who lost when I “won”; I’m just thinking about the fact that someone liked what I did.

I’d feel something similar if I was competing in karate or tennis or road races or something, though it would spoil some of my pleasure if a person beat me and then engaged in taunting.

(I really don’t like taunting.)

I want to be good and I want to be recognized as good, but I’m not doing it so that I can call someone else a loser.

I mean, some artists, athletes, musicians and so forth do transcend the rest of us — sometimes just once, sometimes over a long period of time — but that doesn’t mean the others are losers. Continue reading “Competition”…

Happy New Year…and other thoughts

personby Gillian Polack
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I’m running late with my blogpost because exciting things keep happening. The only one I can talk about at this point is the fridge repair that will happen on Friday. And that’s boring to most people… so I won’t. All I can say is that more good things have happened in my new year so far than happened in a month of last year. If I pick and choose the month carefully, then I can say “More than in two months.” I hope this is a harbinger for all of us – we all need a good year after the last one.

I know, as the Treehouse member who gets to blog on New Year’s Day (which is my 2nd January, which never ceases to amuse me) I feel I ought to say something inspirational.

Except… 2023 was a difficult year and many of us (the lucky ones) are merely tired and a little unsafe, many of us (me) are beyond tired, and many of us (too many people I care about) are living through very difficult times with much care and caution. I could say something winsome and hopeful, but it would feel a bit hypocritical.

What’s on my mind a lot right now is how many people don’t identify their own prejudices, but they do act on them. “I don’t hate this” they say. Often it’s Jews, which is, of course the bit that I experience directly. When a “No Jews allowed” sticker is put on a window of a place family members work, I feel it. When a synagogue is evacuated because of a pro-Palestinian protest I might (and, in fact did) have family there, and they had to thread their way through an antisemitic throng to get home on a Friday night. Ironically, that particular Friday night was also the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

All kinds of human beings are suffering from various kinds of hate (disguised and not disguised, recognised and not recognised) and all of us are hurting. If you have the wrong religion, the wrong nationality, the wrong race, the wrong skin colour, the wrong gender, the wrong view of sex, the wrong way of walking down the street, the wrong clothing, the wrong hair colour… almost anything that this person identifies as problematic, then it doesn’t matter how much a person says “I don’t hate” they are bigoted and that bigotry hurts.

I wish this were a luxury moment when general hate was low and I could say “Look, Roger Waters does this thing and is not as bigotry-free as he thinks he is” and step back and hold my peace because everything was explained. But this kind of despite that’s invisible to the person expressing it is infectious.

The people who go on massive demonstrations and say “Look, we’re peaceful. We’re safe” see only the friends around them that they demonstrate with and don’t look at the people who have to hide, or try to hide any differences that could cause them to be focal points of hate or (more uncomfortably for me) have to walk in the march shouting louder than anyone else to prove they’re acceptable.

In the everyday, some people who do the louder shouting are allying openly with bigots, not because they agree with the bigots on whether they themselves should live, but because there are some aspects of the politics they agree with (all humans deserve human rights and Palestinians are suffering a marked lack of them at the moment, for instance) and they either don’t know or don’t care that many people who see the suffering of Palestinians follow some really vile stereotyping and blame this suffering on every Jew they can find. They don’t just blame. They lash out and hurt Jews in many, many countries. As I said, it’s infectious.

I miss the days when I was allowed to teach cultural awareness and understanding. I didn’t teach the politics of it. That was for a different kind of expert. I taught people how to cross the imaginary divide between people and to see the person they were sitting next to as a human being and be able to work with them. I didn’t teach a token “Admit they’re human. Go on. Thank you. We’re done. Get back to your normal life.” I was talking about seeing people as … people. With favourite food and movies, with family, with their own unique lives and their own personal way of facing problems. Talk about issues came later. First individuals had to learn how to see and respect other individuals. This ability is sorely lacking right now.

Teaching cultural awareness is still my favourite way of combating hate. We don’t have to be like our neighbours in culture, religion or history. We do have to see them as equally human, and understand what that means.

In my perfect world, we all all taught how to identify the invisible bigotry most of us carry, and that it’s our responsibility to handle it. Also, that we’re all taught to take responsibility for accusations we make. It really scares me that so many of the stereotypes and hate are marching the streets rather than confined to the minds of the idiot minority. It scares me that I’ve started this sentence three times and dumped what I was going to say, because I’m worried that useful idiots will accuse me of supporting one country above all others and that I’m unpatriotic: what I had intended to say in this aborted sentence was about something quite different.

Years ago, a reporter explained to me that the only reportable Australian news about Jews was if we could be blamed for something (no matter how small) or if we were murdered. I put that small illumination into one of my novels, because I couldn’t shake it off. I still can’t shake it off. Someone say to me last week, “No Jews, no news” and they were not talking about someone Jewish who was being praised for anything good. Recently, most Australian media has lost interest in reporting Jews who are hurt. This focus on Jewish anything and the widespread with to blame Jews for so much is not simple antisemitism. It’s denial of guilt for others. It’s an irresponsible need to simplify a complex world.

To anyone who asks “Why are you focusing on matters Jewish – look, Palestinians are hurting.” I’m focusing on my own background here because I have learned to see myself as a human being, and that means I am allowed to talk about my own safety, which is what triggered this particular post today. If I’m not allowed to talk about my place in the world and who I am, then the person who tells me I’m wrong might want to ask if they silence themselves and their own views, or if it only applies to certain people. If it only applies to certain people and I’m one of them, then why isn’t reading someone else’s writing a good approach? Why may I not talk about these things from my own perspective? Is it because I’m female? Australian? Older than many? Have disabilities? Or because I’m Jewish? If it’s any of these reasons then maybe consider the role of invisible prejudice. You can ignore me as a Gillian without any bias at all, but telling me I can only talk about this or that is a different matter. Very few of us  have to read the work of people whose views we dislike. If people don’t like me, then surely simply not reading my work is better than silencing me? Me, I don’t march in protests, but I don’t argue that the protests should be stopped… unless they become violent , which is what happened outside that synagogue that Friday night. Rule of law – crime needs to be stopped. Trying to run over pedestrians because they are Jewish is a crime. This is why I am angry about that protest and do not speak about most of the others. Protesting is not a problem: intentionally hurting people is.

If I were talking about politics in the Middle East, trust me, I would be talking quite differently in this post. This goes back to the shouting. Do I have to shout “I hate Netanyahu” every single time I want anyone to listen to me? Or may I say Gillian things in a Gillian way?

I like rule of law. Fair and just rule of law. I like the thought of criminals in all countries to be tried fairly and punished justly. This includes war criminals from all backgrounds. The more we allow hate and bigotry to rule the streets and airwaves, the less likely this is to happen in any given country.

For all those wonderful people who, in the last three months, have chatted with me as if nothing has changed – you see me as a person. For all those people I thought nice who have been avoiding me, some have admitted that this is because they don’t know what to say. If you’re avoiding me because this difficult world has overwhelmed you, then try something simple and achievable. “Say “Hi”, say “Why don’t we meet up.” We don’t need to talk tough issues. We don’t even have to talk for more than a minute if everything’s too overwhelming. The thing is, until you say “Hi – how are you?” I don’t know if you still see me as a person. A whole bunch of people from my old leftish haunts do not. I discovered this the hard way. My Jewishness dehumanises me in their eyes, and they don’t even recognise this.

How to prove to someone (anyone) that you see they themselves and not a stereotype? Talk to them. Let them know you see them and not a stereotype. All this is, in real life, outside the misshapen media, can be as simple as nodding and smiling at a neighbour as you walk past each other.

My NY resolution is to remind myself every single day to remember everyone’s humanity. To remind myself to see people and smile at them and chat if it’s appropriate and not to be governed by the current world of hate.

Universal Holidays

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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City life is, by definition, noisy, and Oakland is certainly no exception. Not only that, but according to our local news source, Oaklandside, the neighborhood where I live in is the East Bay’s hot spot for going out.

But beginning in mid-afternoon on Sunday, December 24, and continuing through all day on December 25, it was so quiet around here that I kept looking outside just to see if anyone at all was around. When I went for a walk I discovered all the restaurants and bars were closed; only the drug and convenience stores stayed open and they weren’t doing much business.

Despite this being a city with an ethnically diverse population and despite the polite references to the “holiday season,” the truth is that everything shuts down for Christmas.

And while I love the idea of having occasional holidays when most everything is closed, it bothers me that the day when it is most absolute is a very distinctly Christian one. Even if you want to argue that U.S. Christmas is at heart a secular holiday – and giving the focus on shopping days and “the economy” that is not an unreasonable argument – it is still far from universal.

People who aren’t invested in Christmas accommodate themselves to the holiday in various ways, some by strictly following their own traditions, others by adopting some form of celebration that elides over the religious part. I know a lot of people who put a huge store by the holiday who are in not religious in any significant way.

Now I was raised Episcopalian in a very U.S. and Christian culture, so celebrating Christmas is in no way alien for me. But the fact that the whole city shuts down for something that is, in fact, not universal still leaves me unsettled.

If I were still religious, I might not even notice. But I am not. It is not that I am “lapsed,” but rather that I realized that I do not believe in any kind of god. And while I have quite a bit of respect for the teachings of Jesus, I don’t think he’s the “Son of God.”

My connection to Christmas, once I outgrew Santa Claus, was always religious. It was church and ritual and music – especially the music. Yes, we had family gatherings and gifts and fancy meals, but what I miss from that time is choir practice and midnight services.

For years after I left religion behind I would seek out church over Christmas just for nostalgia, but I’ve reached my limit with that. I can tell a story of something I loved in my past with the best of them, but nostalgia can lead to the slippery slope of pining for the good old days even though we all know they weren’t good for many.

I’m nostalgic for a better future, not for the experiences of the past.

The thing is, I want a holiday that means something to me, not just an excuse for a fancy meal or a family gathering. And I want that holiday to mean something – perhaps many different things – to everyone. Continue reading “Universal Holidays”…

100

personby Gillian Polack
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I’m a day ahead of most of my readers. Mostly, this doesn’t matter. Today, it matters a lot. I’m writing my Monday post and for many people who read it instantly, it’s Christmas. If this is you, I hope you have a lovely Christmas. Me, I spent the day in bed due to thunderstorms that never stopped. That kind of thunderstorm gives me a lot of pain, so I slept it off. Not a problem, except I’ve a lot of work to catch up on.

This brings us to what is, for most people, Boxing Day. My today. 26 December.

My father was born on Boxing Day, so we always celebrated his birthday then. This year, he would have been 100. He died when I was 26. The biggest grief fades with time, but I never don’t miss him. Today on Facebook I did two things – I reached out to all my other friends who miss parents, and I asked friends to share their worst jokes. I do this every year, but this year, I need more. Even though Dad didn’t even make 2/3 of the way to 100, I want to remember him today. I’m having an online get-together in his name tonight (from about 8 pm UTC+11 for about four hours). If you’d like to join me, ask for a link in the comments or email me directly, or, if you’re friends with me on Facebook, pop into Facebook and find the link there. It won’t be a big crowd – most of the world is still doing Christmas and its aftermath. And we mostly won’t be talking about my father! But bad jokes will be welcome.

I hope every one of you who has lost parents and others who are close to you have happy memories you can focus on today. For me, you see, Boxing Day is all about remembering the good time and the wonder of people I love. Not just my father. My BFF, my aunts, my uncles, my cousin David… so many people I miss. For me, today is their day.

There’s always someone who pops up and suggests that All Soul’s Day is the right day for such memories. Well, it is… for many Christians. The rest of us have other days, and my day is 26 December.