Tag: Australia

Travelling from Australia

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

People are asking me “Are you going to Belfast next year?” and “Are you going to Seattle?” and “Will you return to Germany?” and “Do we get to see you in person in Baltimore?” I always explain to European friends and North American friends that the airfares are large and more and more often they reply, “Well, it’s difficult for me, too.” And it is.

Yet the obstacles appear, to me, higher than they were.

I wondered if I was shouting about fire when it was merely a match that was burning. I know that my recent trip was difficult because I needed more physical help than I could afford. Several friends stepped up and made it happen, but there were too many times when I was nearly stranded with no recourse, simply because of the health issues. I still have nightmares about 5 moments that were well-nigh impossible.

For any future trip that takes more than 8 hours, I will need help at the other end and along the way. I have to accept that I cannot do things alone easily, even things that look perfectly straightforward to other people.

Shouting at me, “Get a scooter” when I’m struggling at a science fiction conference does not help, and (what happened a lot in Germany) someone walking by stopping to pick up my bag and get it over the hump or up the steps helps immensely. Neither of these are standard for any trip, but they’re what I experienced. Five times in one day in Glasgow I was told to get a scooter or a wheelchair, when, in fact, if I’d done that I’d have been unable to walk at all long term (or even a few days after).

This is not the first time that strangers and friends alike wanted to treat me in the way they thought chronically ill and disabled people should be treated and not consider (or even ask about) my actual circumstances. Because I can walk a little, most friends would say, “Come with me” and leave me at the other end with no thought that, since I had not planned to get to that place, I had no way of getting back in time for programme or for transport: I have to plan.

All this means is that I have to plan more when I travel. I need to be able to see what I can do and then achieve it.

I had to cancel visits to key sites in Germany because the world and my health simply did not permit it.

I had to cancel a half day at Glasgow because there were problems with a room for the panel I was on. All I needed to do to make everything work, was to sit. Not to sit and move and sit and move and sit and move – just to sit. Standing had fewer after-effects, so I stood and awaiting until the re-assigned room could be replaced with something else and the missing computer could also be replaced. All this happened, and was a miracle of reorganisation, but I had not sat when I had planned to. I could have done it on a panel or in a lounge chair, but intermittent movement with that particular pain meant that after that panel, I missed everything that didn’t take place in a single comfortable chair. I was not even able to walk back to the hotel and lie down. I was very lucky that afternoon because a friend stayed with me and we had a lovely evening and she got drinks and found mutual friends and… listened and paid attention to what I was saying about what I could do. She also made sure I got safely back to the hotel at the end of the evening, which was not a given because my direction sense fails when I am at that point of pain. Also, she did not treat me as a charity case, but as a delightful friend and who she was happy to spend time with. This friend resulted in there being no sour taste in my mouth from my incapacity. She’s wonderful. I did miss 8 hours of programming I had intended to enjoy, however.

All these are reasons for being careful how I travel, not avoiding long-distance travel entirely.However, I’ve now acquitted all the grants I was given to get to Europe. I took a moment to do some calculations after the last form went through.

In future, I don’t think I can get further than New Zealand without financial help. The recent trip cost the equivalent of 45% of my annual income. That was without adding enough assistance to make the trip at all comfortable, (which is what I was unable to do this time) and I’m still paying physically for the return journey. I could only pay that amount with help from the friends I stayed with and from the bodies that gave me grants, and, if I wanted an equivalent trip to anywhere in Europe or North America for a conference or for research without as many problems, it would cost me 60% of my annual income.

Without grants it’s just not possible. That’s easy to explain. What is not easy to explain is that many non-academic programmes and some academic programmes are pulled together at the last minute in these days of everyone working with too much pressure. If I’m not giving an academic paper or on programme, I cannot claim that amount on taxes. If I do not know about programme early enough, that adds $1,000-3,000 to the total cost of the trip because airlines play games with last minute travellers who need to arrange things carefully so that they don’t hurt for weeks. That brings the cost potentially to over 55% of my income if I go the route that hurts, and over 70% if I plan to hurt much less.

I will miss everyone, but I can’t travel long distances under these circumstances, however much I adore being with people and researching and discovering amazing things and listening to brilliant people. Also, the next person from Europe or North America who claims the same experience will be sympathised with, because over 45-70% of one’s income for one journey is quite scary.

If anyone has solutions and would like to see me in person, I would love to talk. In the interim, please just say “I’m sorry – I wish you could do these things” rather than telling me “I suffer just as much as you” while planning your next trip.

When Events Collide

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

This is the year of many confluences. I want to note just three, because those earlier in the year were more confluences of grief and do not need revisiting.

The first one is tomorrow, that is to say, November 5.

First, there is the US election. I am hoping that the US turns out and votes in massive numbers and that the outcome is one of the better ones. This is not an easy election and I’m very glad I don’t have to deal with some of the issues everyone’s handling right now. I hope things improve and that clever voting opens the door to US lives being significantly better. I also hope that the idiots learn to listen and understand what rampant fools they can be, but this is probably a pipe dream.

The election is, obviously, the biggest thing tomorrow. The second biggest is a rather fraught historical memory. Australia mostly doesn’t celebrate Guy Fawkes Night any more, but I found out yesterday that New Zealand does. We never burned figures, even when we had bonfires and fireworks and for this I am so very grateful. I have to admit that it’s kinda appropriate that there is a history memory on the same day that the US is busy creating its own history memory.

The third thing tomorrow is a race. Not the same type of race as the US one, but a horse race. Victoria (the Australian state, not the city a long way from me) gets a public holiday and most of Australia stops to watch. Tomorrow I won’t, because the friends I usually drink with (because it’s a drinking festival, really) are busy and I have a lot to do and…

I feel as if I’m betraying my childhood with no race and no fireworks, but at least I don’t have to worry about supporting something that really is not kind to horses or an historical event that, in the way it’s celebrated, isn’t that kind to Catholics.

That’s tomorrow’s confluence: the election, Bonfire Night, and the Melbourne Cup.

The next one is on November 11. I might leave it until next week and tell you about it then. Let me just say that only one of the events that collide is celebrated in the US and the UK. Watch this space…

The other collision is a bit longer. December 25 is Christmas this year (as it always is) and, for a wonder, it’s also the start of Chanukah, thanks to a handy leap month last Jewish year. New Year is also Chanukah. So are all the days between the two. I feel it’s a bit of a cheat to call this a confluence, but it’s a fun one because it’s going to tangle all the folks who were finally accepting that Chanukah and Christmas are not on the same dates. The Christian calendar is solar and fixed to the sun. The Jewish calendar is lunar/solar, that is fixed to the moon with solar adjustments. This explains the leap month – the adjustments are a bit bigger because, really, the Moon and the Sun don’t talk to each other and make everything work in harmony.

The shape of the year gives you something to think about if you really, really don’t want to spend more thoughts on the election. The fact that I’m supposed to be frying food in midsummer (for Chanukah) is another useful distraction.

Good luck with your Tuesday confluence!

Returning Home

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

My everyday was so much easier in Germany. Antisemitism didn’t play silly buggers with the ground I walked on there, as it does in Australia. Australian antisemitism is mostly gentle and kind, but no less troublesome for that. Until I went to Germany I had no idea of its place in the general scheme of things, but now I understand that, too. Five weeks where I could literally be myself taught me that I am not the heart of the problem. Nor is me being Jewish. I know about what is wrong with Australia and why bigotry triumphs right now. Around me, many people are raging about Nazis, but doing nothing about the gentler and more insidious racism. Whatever I do to handle this will be uncomfortable, and if I don’t do anything I will also be uncomfortable.

How did Germany teach me these things?

It still has all the history that cause the Shoah. It’s dealt with some of it supremely well, and other parts not at all. My research project concerned how Germany handles its Jewish past, especially the past up to 1700. I explained I wasn’t a German historian, but a French/English one. I was entirely open about my Jewishness, but also about the parts my family played in the war. There were no closed doors. In fact, it was quite the opposite. People wanted to talk to me and tell me their views and hear what I had to say. They were excited by my questions and chased things up for me: we all know a lot more about Jews in the Saarland, about the relationship between lebuchen and honeycake, about the Jews who never returned to Germany, about medieval expulsions and why they were not always as they seemed, about Roman Jews in Germania… and a whole lot more. There will be a book. In fact, nearly half the book is already written (and needs a publisher!) but this post is not about that book.

I was able to use my experience to better understand the 1930s in Germany and why so many non-Jewish Germans were silent then. Also why everyone’s favourite patriotic children’s author was murdered. The murder was death camp stuff: tragically normal that year. The silence, however, was mostly not intentional. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of non-Jewish Germans did not hate Jews and are still trying to handle what happened. Many people closed doors for emotional safety because life was too full of problems. Small lives became smaller lives. Some of them closed doors to keep out people (Jews, Roma, people with the wrong politics or sexual preferences) who might make their own lives more difficult in a chancy decade. There was fear; there was selfishness; there was small life syndrome. The actual hatred was confined to a much tinier portion of the community than we mostly think.

Those who accepted the Nazis, or got on with their lives despite the Nazis are perfectly normal people. Good people who mostly led good lives. They silenced those around them without hate (or with only a little hate, not enough to murder or throw stones) and when the worst happened were terribly shocked. I learned a lot about things from how shocked people were and how, three generations later, they are still determined to fight and ensure this does not happen again. They are still dealing with their families being a part of the horror. Good people who discovered that goodness is not enough by itself, that silencing and closing doors and leading small lives can feed terror.

Australians are doing the small life thing to most Jewish Australians. I’m largely not dealing with hate. Three people I know well clearly hate me because I’m Jewish, only three, out of hundreds. The occasional hate mail is just that – an occasional nasty piece of email from a nasty piece of work. Most of the others who make my life more and more difficult are agreeing with politics that silences or isolates (why I am so worried about the Aussie Greens – anyone who backs them without pushing them to talk to the Jewish community as a whole is helping close doors) or they are dealing with impossible situations personally and do not have energy left to find out why I’m missing from this place or that, or… there are a number of other possibilities, but they all come down to preferring small lives above shared lives.

The biggest thing I noticed in Germany was how much easier life is when one doesn’t have to do a bunch of work to be heard. In Australia, I have to run an extra mile before anyone will listen to me, because I have to prove I’m someone who deserves a little attention. I have to open closed doors. Some of the once-open doors are locked and I have to beg for a key. All attention I previously had for my books, my classes,Women’s History Month, and a truckload of other things is immaterial to the world around me. at home Bookshops do not stock my books. Reviewers won’t review my books. And this applies to the vast, vast majority of Jewish writers.  In Germany, scholars and students looked at my books and my work. My life’s work is important and interesting. I could also talk openly about my research and its impact and everyone talked openly back. Me being Gillian is sufficient.

I’m not going to spend the rest of my life contacting politicians and people I used to work with and social activists who knew me, once upon a time. I wrote to them when I could before I left, and they never answered. I am still the person who can give excellent policy advice on these things. More so now, in fact, because of my current research. I’m still the person who spent twenty odd years of her life fighting for human rights for many people, and teaching people how to fight for themselves. I am an expert they need to talk to, but their doors are closed. Those politicians and activists and most of Australia’s left have chosen small lives. If someone doesn’t bother to read my email because I’m no longer the right person or the known person, or assumes that someone else will be more acceptable, then that’s their choice. All those choices have been made. I will not write any more letters.

If someone wants to talk with me, I am still the expert I once was. I discovered this is Germany. I don’t teach what one has to do to prevent or limit the spread of bigotry: I teach how things happen and tools that can be used. Choices and paths are for the person dealing with it in their every day. I once made a living providing history and understanding and tools, and had completely forgotten about that part of my life, because of the amount that part of my life has been sidelined. Right now, just getting to see anyone and get a decent conversation that may or may not lead to changes is like running a marathon. To run marathons, one needs spoons. I’m chronically ill. Another thing I discovered in Germany is that one can lead a much better life with a chronic illness if one doesn’t have to battle to be heard.

I’m still very happy to help anyone deal with identification of bigotry, whether they are themselves unintentionally excluding, how cultural tendencies push towards how we see people. However, I’m not well, and I’m not willing to spend all my energy explaining why I can be useful (very, very useful) at this moment in Australia’s history. I tried that, and it took all my energy with no results. I left thinking that I was not the person I thought I was, and had nothing useful to give. Now I realise, thanks to the last five weeks, that it is Australia that has changed and that I am simply one of many people dealing with the downside of that change. Being Jewish is my everyday, but that everyday results in closed doors. Much of Australia is quietly and gently hiding itself from anything that might cause it emotional distress, and one of those subjects if being Australian and Jewish. Simple descriptions are applied to us and who we are and how we live our lives is not considered something worth knowing.

If you want to talk to me about these things, and the shape of prejudice in society and how to handle different manifestations of that prejudice, then I’m happy to help. Ask me. Don’t wait for me to find you. If you want to scold me for being Jewish or thinking Jewishly or keep me out of things until I know my (polite and submissive) place, then you’re not seeing me.

If you want to know who is pushing me aside in this way, just look at groups of people or events I have been involved with in the past. If I’m not there, ask the event people why. I am not given reasons why – I’m just excluded – so I can’t speak for them.

If I am at an event and especially if I’m talking about things that matter to me, then please celebrate, for the people organising that event are not closing doors. They’re not taking the lazy path into bigotry. Their lives are bigger than this.

 

PS For those who are curious, I was a Research Fellow at Heinrich Heine University for a month, and was doing research supported by Deakin University. I owe both universities a great deal, for helping me understand the incomprehensible.

The Wall

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

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.

Not-Christmas and not-weather (mostly, sorta)

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

At this time of year I hear a lot about snow and sleet and the need for egg nogs to get through winter cold and gloom, and it’s very tempting to counter this with stories of the flooding in Northern Queensland and the heat and the incoming storms. The incoming storms today might mean we have a tolerable weekend, which is very important for those who are having big parties over said weekend. The storms, when they’re over, will be good for me because I am not a summer heat kind of person.

I want to talk about the weather for about two hours, because I’m in the mood for it, but I shall stop here, because I’m so very kind. Also because I would like people to give me merely a paragraph on the state of winter darkness before moving on to more interesting topics in their own writings in this season. If I would like this then I should give you a mere paragraph on summer heat before moving on.

So… let me talk about the weekend. Weekends are always good to talk about.
I’ve been advised to avoid all the places where there are marches for this whole season, because there is often a component of people in those marches who are not entirely safe for anyone Jewish, so I have already done most things for the next week. I do not need to go to shops or near big streets where folks demonstrate politically.

This time of year is mostly a period of intense work for me, with a few really, really nice exceptions. 2023 is classic for me in this regard.

School and university (except for research students who don’t do Christmas) have already finished for the year. Both the calendar year and the academic year, in fact. We’re about to get the annual shutdown of most things. Everyone’s frantically preparing or on a plane to somewhere cool – I mean the latter literally. So many of my friends are heading north into winter.

This year, because I can see friends if we’re all careful (I’m COVID-vulnerable) I will have visits from friends who are on holiday but not headed north. I have chocolate to feed them, in case it’s too hot to cook. Much chocolate will be consumed. I’m thinking of getting some mint and making big jugs of iced tea (without sugar, because Australians are not so big on sweet things, on the whole) but that will have to start next week. I refuse to encounter crowds just for mint.

I celebrate Christmas for the same friends who celebrate my New Year. We’re kinda extended family for each other. I’ve already made sure that two lots of presents and some very nice port is at their place, because while they cook, I will finish a chapter. My personal race with time is that chapter – if I complete it I get the afternoon and evening of 24 December off.

That morning is the last market day in the year and I’m going to the market with one of my friends to make sure we have all the things needed both for the dinner and for the few days after. Me, I’m making sure there are lots of cherries. Cherries are so important for the whole end-of-year period. When I was in Canada for Christmas/New Year people had poinsettias, which weren’t the same at all. Mind you, they also had snow. Which was, of course, exotic.

If the weather is nice, we’ll be outside. If it’s not, we’ll be inside with air monitoring and tiny portable air purifiers. It’s perfectly possible to have nice events with the COVID-vulnerable. We proved it last year and we’re doing it again this. I’m hoping for outside for most of it, however, because a summer day with children is better outdoors. I like the years we go down to the lake and picnic and the black swans come to investigate all the presents, but this year we’re staying home. This means that when I am nicely relaxed and have eaten too much I can wander home and do some work, so that is good, too.

Unlike much of the US, Canberra does a pretty thorough shut-down over Christmas. This means no tradition of Chinese restaurants for anyone Jewish.

What I sometimes do in its stead these days is host an online chat with friends about the Toledoth Yeshuah. 25 December then is a big working day for me, except for an occasional detour via that really interesting by-product of antisemitism. The Toledoth came into being because of other times like this, and it’s interesting to see how we dealt with this stuff (culturally) in times past. So I will be exploring it, but unless anyone asks, I’ll explore it alone. It’s not a comfortable text, nor a comfortable tradition. Hate hurts.

Boxing Day is different. This year it will be my father’s 100th birthday. He died when I was 26, but I miss him and want to celebrate anyhow. I’m just 2 years younger now than he was when he died, which is, I admit, sobering. Friends are coming round to toast him during the day, but only a few friends. I shall watch a really bad comedy he enjoyed, or maybe one of his favourite Doctor Who sequences… I’ll decide on the day.

In my evening, which is morning in Europe and the day before in the US and Canada, I’ll open up a Zoom room where anyone who is at a loose end can drop in and tell bad jokes in honour of my father and generally catch up. If you would like a link to the room, contact me in the next few days and I’ll send it the moment it’s live. Waiting til the last minute means if I am unwell, which happens, I can sneak in some rest and start a bit later. I’m looking at beginning around 8 pm AEST (Australian Eastern Summer Time, which is UTC/GMT+11) and continuing for as long as there are friends who want to hang out.

Let me know if you’d like to be part of anything I do online during this time.

Also, I’d love to know what other people do over the long weekend, if they don’t have a regular Christmas for whatever reason. I’d love to hear about other kinds of Christmas!

Fairies and Sarcasm

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I misheard someone talking about the fairies in their garden as “I’ve got theories at the bottom of my garden.” And I do. So many of them. There are people who cannot deal with me for more than ten minutes at a time because that’s the limit they have for the way my brain works. I also have friends who love to talk with me for hours because I apparently say interesting things.

I’m not going to do that today. Not so much theory. Just a smattering of reaction that may one day become theory.

Yom Kippur is over and my life is the better for it, but I’m wrapped into how Australian Jews are represented on the public broadcaster responsible for multicultural services in Australia. My latest email from them told me (on Yom Kippur, though obviously I didn’t read it until afterwards) which shows are being moved from their streaming service. One of the two lead shows that is being taken down, as announced on the Jewish Day of Atonement, is David Baddiel’s “Jews Don’t Count.”

This is the same broadcaster that, when I asked what TV programming they had for the High Holy Days last year, sent me to a Hebrew radio show (hint: Hebrew is not the standard language of Australian Jews, English is).

This year, the special show they had just before our New Year was set at (in their regular email about programming), they explained, a Jewish funeral. It may have been a comedy set at a funeral, though the detailed description sounds as if it was set in the mourning period immediately after a funeral. I don’t know for sure because it was, honestly, not something I wanted to start my new year with. I’m assured by a non-Jewish friend that it’s a good show. If they put it on again, I’ll watch it and find out. I’ll watch the Baddiel tomorrow, though, because these programming decisions make me feel very much as if there are fairies at the bottom of the broadcaster’s garden, that Baddiel’s title sums up what needs to be said about it, and that I’m far safer with my theories than watching public television right now.

The good news is that some of my thoughts will be words at a bunch of places in October: at the Irish National Convention (I’ll be presenting online), at a Melbourne academic conference, quite possibly at the World Science Fiction Convention (again online), and elsewhere. I won’t be bored. (And if you want details of where I’ll be, let me know and I’ll post them as they are finalised.) I also won’t be able to see if SBS finally sort out why I wax sarcastic about them. They stopped replying to my emails when I pointed out that sending me to Hebrew radio was about the same as sending Australian Catholics to Latin radio.

I may be full of ideas these days, but I used to be such a nice person. I suspect sarcasm comes with menopause. Just suspect, mind. I now want to read a proper and carefully researched scientific study of the relationship of sarcasm to menopause. I shall go to bed and dream of such a study…

Australia’s early cookbook history

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I was going to talk about the World Cup and countries that have played with the haka but… it’s such a big subject. It was such a stupid thing to do. Instead, I’m going to talk about plagiarism by politicians. Well, one bit of plagiarism, by one politician. That will reduce the subject to manageable size.

The book that contains the plagiarism is Australia’s first published cookbook, first printed in 1864. Except that it isn’t. Apparently there is an earlier (1843) printed volume, “The Housewife’s Guide” but the Australian Food Timeline claims that Abbott’s is really the first, as it was compiled entirely in Australia. Here is the article about The Housewife’s Guide. When you finish reading my description of the first recognised-as-Australian cookbook, you can make your own decision about the status of the book and of its politically-inclined author. I agree with the author of this article.

So… back to plagiarism.

Let’s start with an introduction to the author. He was well-known in his day, but remembered only for the cookbook. Edward Abbott was the author. He came to Australia with his family in 1815. He was a grazier, foodie, politician, coroner and apparently tried to raise Tasmanian tigers as pets. He also assaulted the Premier of the State (at that time its own colony) with an umbrella.

The cookbook itself reflects his character. It contains recipes for the infamous “Blow My Skull” punch, another drink called Tears of the Widow of Malabar which contains an inordinate amount of brandy, and also practical recipes such as how to roast wombats and to cook kangaroo brains in emu fat. These are the examples used when modern writers talk about the book.

All this sounds lovely. Perfect food history fodder. Why do I look across at 300 pages of recipes and cry “Plagiarism”? Even today, recipes attract a lower level of copyright than, say, tour guides. Just as long as the writer doesn’t use the exact words and the footnotes and whole passages that describe exotic places… using other peoples’ words. Of course, a politician (even an eccentric one) would not do such a thing.

There are quite a few sections that would be useful to look at (all of them very entertaining), but I’m going to choose the one where I identified the precise book Mr Abbott ‘borrowed’ from. It was part of the volume, and also  issued as a standalone little book by Aboott himself. It’s called, Hebrew Cookery, by An Australian.

Technically, it’s Australia’s first Jewish cookbook. This is, unlike the complete volume being Australia’s first cookbook in general, undoubted. The reason for ‘technically’ is it’s a section of another larger cookbook and that whole section is taken from A Lady’s (Judith Montefiore was the author) The Jewish manual, or, Practical information in Jewish and modern cookery : with a collection of valuable recipes & hints relating to the toilette. 

I appear to be the first person to have mentioned this online (and maybe the first person to spot the plagiarism) but that was some years ago and I didn’t actually publish an article about the discovery because I had other things on my mind and since then a couple of other people have identified that yes, Edward Abbott is a plagiarist. A very distinguished and rather dead plagiarist.

To sum up, parts of  The English and Australian Cookery Book. Cookery for the Many, as Well as for the “Upper Ten Thousand” are stolen. Whole sections, in fact. The one I know best is the first stolen English Jewish cookbook published for Australians… by a politician. Abbott was not Jewish, for the record.

I identified the plagiarism by trying to work out how Melbourne lost an ingredient in Abbott’s cookbooks and, in the process, I discovered that we never had it. Jewish cooking in London used chorissa as an ingredient, but none of the Sephardi Jews who moved to Melbourne in the 19th century could buy it anywhere. Once I realised that the footnote explaining that one could by chorissa (kosher chorizo) at a kosher butcher was not Australian, but referred to London, it took me about five minutes to find the original book that contained that footnote.

Why was I looking for it? I’m so glad you asked. I did an academic paper (someone at Sydney University really wanted it) in 2007 on my family’s English Jewish heritage. The cookbook that all these wonderful Jewish dishes were stolen from was very close to many of my grandmother’s recipes. She didn’t get them from Abbott, however – they were the family’s London-origin cooking. This might explain why he stole that cookbook. I have yet to find a sensible explanation of why Abbott ‘borrowed’ from books about famous places in the world.

Some of the (supposedly) first Australian cookbook is, indeed, Australian, but the rest of it shows very nicely what books Edward Abbott thought were important and had access to.

The National Library of Australia has online copies of both Abbott’s whole book and the “Hebrew” section that was published separately. I’m letting you know just in case you’ve always wanted a recipe for “Blow My Skull.”

PS I feel I ought to add that Abbott himself acknowledges his source in the smaller publication. he claims that the book was out of print (I’m not convinced it was) and that the wider community needed to taste Jewish cooking. I have this wistful dream that he visited Melbourne and was scolded by my great-great-grandmother.

Australia Reads

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

Today’s title is not a description of the unexpected (Australians are literate!) but of an annual event. We’ve been heading towards it for weeks. it’s this week, on 9 March. Schools and libraries specially have whole programs, and Young Adult writers are in particular demand. My big Australia reads function this year was talking about fantasy novels with Wendy Orr and Rik Lagarto for Libraries ACT. It will be put up the Libraries’ Facebook page on the day, and then readers in Canberra will be able to compare note and argue and chat about the books we talk about. We will probably join in the discussion. Of course we will. That’s what book discussions are for.

Australia Reads/Australian Reading Hour is an annual event where a lot of Australians read for a single hour on the same day. We’re not told what to read. We do, however, talk about books a lot in the lead-up. Some people buy a book they’ve been dreaming of, specially to read that day. I’ve done that, this year. A lot of the fun is in comparing notes and suggesting titles and worrying if we will get hold of our dream book in time or if we should find an alternate book, just in case. I always emerge from This lead-up period and from the day itself with a long list of books I need to take a look at. This is such a good feeling.

There are Ambassadors for Reading to encourage Australians to read something that day. I am one. Let me show you. https://australiareads.org.au/authors/gillian-polack/ It’s not my best quote ever. Every year I want to improve it and change it and every year I say to myself, “It’s probably better to spend the time reading.” And so I do. I’m very proud to be an Ambassador.

I don’t know if there are Reading Hours in other countries, but if you don’t have one and would like to join us, please do! Any book, the hour of your choice (or 4 lots of 15 minutes if life is simply impossible, though an hour is best, it gives time away from a fractious everyday). People often ask me if there’s a book of mine I suggest for Australia Reads. This year it’s The Green Children Help Out, because we really need a bunch of cheerfully quirky superheroes to help us deal with destructive fools. Me, I’m reading The Tangled Lands, a new novel by Glenda Larke.

What book will you choose?

July and books

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I tell people far too frequently that some places have a bad month. I’m in the middle of Canberra’ bad month. I can’t escape it, either, and have not been able to since COVID first hit. This is one of the charming side-effects of being one of those who are vulnerable. This July is particularly nasty. It just is. It’s not the wind from the snow or the cold nights. It’s not lack of sunlight, though it might be the weak excuse for bright sunshine. It’s only partly drafts and open doors and friends forgetting promises to help. In fact, two friends are actually helping later in the week and I shall be that much less uncomfortable and I shall see them and July won’t be nearly as bad, that one day. Other friends have, these last few years, responded to my July-depression with “I can do this thing and it will help” and two thirds of them have succumbed to July before they could. This is the nature of July in Canberra. (I strongly recommend that if you have any friends who are confined for all these years, don’t make promises. It’s better not to promise than to give someone hope and then not follow through.)

What gets me through July, every year, but this horrid year in particular, is story. Only I’m grumpy and don’t want to talk about what I’ve been reading. I don’t want to drag you into my morass. Instead of telling you what I’m reading, then, I’m going to give you the names of three books that make me smile when I think of them. I’ve read them so often and I suggest them to everyone all the time. Just talking about them pulls me out of the winter gloom.

Not everywhere in Australia has winter gloom, by the way. An hour and a bit from here and you have the best snowfields in the world in July, but I cannot reach them and I cannot ski. I don’t want to ski. I want to make snow angels and drink mulled wine and eat hot chips and talk half the night with friends. This is not something that’s achievable. What is achievable is to think of novels set in that part of Australia. Elyne Mitchell’s Silver Brumby series are those novels. They have been with me since I was a child, and one of the joys of moving to Canberra, 30+ years ago, was knowing that, if I looked carefully outside in a drive towards the deep mountains, past Cooma, I might see Thowra.

One of my favourite scenes in the Silver Brumby itself, has wattle, and the early, early wattle has just come out around the corner from me. A cold wattle, pale yellow and, just this once (because we missed autumn storms) concentrating wildly with the glowing leaves of the maple next to it. I wanted to take a picture, but it was dusk and it was the first time I’d walked anywhere in a month and I simply could not carry my camera. My phone doesn’t like pictures in the half-light. Still, the red maple and the pale golden wattle shone, and I thought of the Silver Brumby, and I smiled.

While I’m thinking of my childhood, let me dream of the Scotland of Peter Dickinson. I was supposed to be in Scotland this week, in Glasgow, attending a conference on fantasy. My paper had been accepted and I was wildly exciting. Then COVID had its say, and I’m stuck at home.

Dreaming of Emma Tupper’s Diary is not a bad way to think of Scotland. Submarines and dinosaurs and a girl who wrote a diary I wished I could have written, when I was her age.

My third novel is not as distant. I read it for the first time quite recently. Lisa Fuller’s Ghost Bird is for slightly older children. It has darkness and family culture and it’s dynamic and wonderful. Sometimes a dark novel takes one by the hand and offers a way out of despair. Lisa’s novel is that one. I know where she’s coming from for some of the novel, and we’ve talked about it and so, for me, it’s not the novel alone that makes me smile, it’s knowing that I have friends who are writers who write work that’s so moving. I start thinking of all my other writer-friends, including those who hang around this Treehouse. And I realise that it doesn’t matter how bleak Canberra is in July and how alone COVID can leave me (I haven’t seen my mother since January 2019, when the bushfires caused me to evacuate to her place), I live in a rich world.

Reasons to write #ownvoice, a bit of personal history

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I’ve been thinking about the Jewishness in my fiction. Bettina Burger and I are working on getting a handle on Australian and NZ Jewish speculative fiction, so, this week, the books being discussed are my own.

Firstly, I need to admit (alas) that I don’t think I’m related to Joel Samuel Polack, who wrote in the nineteenth century. Right surname, right religion, right region of the world, wrong family. I’m descended from the Abraham Polack who came to Melbourne in 1858, not the rather more famous one who came to Melbourne in 1824. I think Joel Samuel is from the earlier family. There are other writers in my family, but I’m the only one with this surname.

A subject that comes up a lot in my vicinity is why there aren’t more Australian SFF writers who publicly identify as Jewish. There are so many possible reasons, but I don’t want to give simplified explanations, especially about identity. One thing I do know is that, when I speak before a large audience, I often have Australians (so far no New Zealanders) coming up to me afterwards and admitting they are Jewish and asking, “But don’t tell anyone.” Some give the reason as personal safety, while others give no reason at all. Others identify with Judaism because of Jewish parents and grandparents but are not halachically Jewish and do not wish to claim Jewishness. In other words, it’s a very personal decision. Given the number of Shoah survivor families who are in Australia and given the small number of Jews outside Melbourne and Sydney (and that I am in Canberra) the decision not to be public about one’s identity is an important one.

I have been publicly Jewish my whole life. It’s caused me many problems and lost me many opportunities, but various family members let me know how important it was to them and family culture is important to me. One Moment in my life was when my great-uncle explained to me that if no-one did this, then things would be worse for those who had no option. I was (and possibly still am) very dutiful and was on so many committees and did so much stuff in response to the need for public understanding of Jewishness in order to prevent another mass murder. I was on committees and even gave advice to government Ministers at one point, which is why a chapter of Story Matrices has a letter from a minister saying it was fine to use the material.

Eventually I realised that I was not my great-uncle or my grandmother and that Gillianishly was a proper way of living a life. I finally wrote my Australian Jewish novel. I thought the whole world would change in 2016 because there was finally an Australian Jewish fantasy novel. When The Wizardry of Jewish Women was released, I kept a very close eye on its trajectory within the Jewish community, partly because I have a history of activity in the Jewish community (that family thing!). Not many people noticed. It was world-changing for me, however, and was shortlisted for a Ditmar, and ever since then I’ve worked through my fiction.

Ironically, I’m writing this post on the weekend when Ditmar award nominations are open (see addendum, if you’re curious) and I have another Jewish-themed novel that is eligible (The Green Children Help Out). Given COVID, it’s been more visible elsewhere than Australia, so I’m appreciating the irony of writing about my Jewishness in my fiction at this precise moment.

Sorry about the diversion. Back to Wizardry. I wanted a Jewish Australian #ownvoices novel. There are so many options for Jewish Australian #ownvoices, so I chose one very precise family and had a lot of fun exploring them. I was also reacting to the invisibility of Jewish Australian culture and the misuse of the Jewish fantastic. I still have issues about all these things, and one of these issues is going to be addressed in a story I wrote for Other Covenants, where I brought out my Medieval self to address the significant differences between Christianity and Judaism and that Christian interpretations of stories are not going to be the same as Jewish. But that’s in my future. Today I’m talking about the past.

Most Jewish-Australian speculative fiction writers are, for the most part, first or second generation Australian. They bring with them backgrounds from Europe, Israel, South Africa and the USA. My family arrived in Australia between 1858 and 1918. While much of it is European, one branch is from London.

Given the strength and cultural impositions from the White Australia policy and Federation, that London origin has impacted the family culture. Yiddish and Ladino had not been family languages for over a century until Yiddish was reintroduced into the generation after mine and until I learned to read a bit of (transliterated) Ladino.

Anglo-Australian Judaism is closest to UK Modern Orthodox Judaism in culture and much of the acquisition of Yiddish folkways and even Yiddish words in English came to the family through US popular culture. I have a US Catholic friend who knows far more Yiddish than I do, because she is from New York and Yiddishisms are part of her everyday English. While the family Chanukah tradition included a sung version of Ma’otsur, the Dreidel song was not acquired until the 1990s. I still don’t think of the Dreidel song as very Chanukah-ish. I didn’t react to not being from a well-known type of Jewish culture. I built my world from the inside: I intentionally use my Anglo-Australian Jewishness in my fiction, whether directly in The Wizardry of Jewish Women, or indirectly, for example as satire in Poison and Light. (The Chelm-equivalent jokes in Poison and Light came from my mother’s neighbour, who was from Chelm and who taught me Chelm jokes ie none of these statements are universal – culture is delightfully complicated.)

Older Australian Jewish culture holds very strong family cultures of university education. For my work specifically, this means that the Jewish history I learned through stories and through books in our (very bookish) home was placed in the wider context of Western European histories from my teens. I owe being an historian to being Jewish, I suspect.

While occasional members of my family were Shoah survivors and whole branches of the family were lost to the Holocaust, the young men in my corner of the family were in the Australian and British military (army and air force) during the war, and the most significant loss for those close to me was my mother’s youngest uncle, who was a bomber pilot. When addressing issues of war and loss, my approach is still Jewish (and still replays many issues relating to the Shoah) but deals with these matters from a different angle to the work of most other writers. Where Jane Yolen wrote Briar Rose, for example, I split my sense of what was lost into several parts and addressed some of them in The Time of the Ghosts, some in Poison and Light and others in The Green Children Help Out.

There were emotional and experiential gaps between Australian Holocaust narratives and my family’s experience. These gaps are very Australian in nature. Many survivors came to Australia because it was as far from Europe as it was possible to go. My family had been here for a generation or more when they made that difficult journey. The difference between their experience and my family’s understanding led to a different set of narrative paths. This is not true of all Australian Jews. Mark Baker, for example, writes Shoah narratives based on his own family background. He does not, however, write speculative fiction.

I did a little research about Australian Jewish fiction (in general, and also in YA, and also in historical fiction and in speculative fiction) a few years ago and I was greatly perturbed to discover that novels about the Shoah or Ultra-Orthodox life were acceptable, but that secular Australian Judaism was almost impossible to find in fiction. The only aspect of Jewish folklore or magic that was written about consistently was the golem. This is the main reason I wrote The Wizardry of Jewish Women (2016) and a sequel short story (that was published long before the novel) “Impractical Magic.”

Poison and Light (2020) and Langue[dot]doc 1305 (2014) are examples of my ongoing tendency to include appropriate elements of Jewish history and culture in types of novels where they’re normally entirely neglected. In Poison and Light, Jewish characters (all minor players in the story) have a different response to everyone else when the eighteenth century is re-invented on New Ceres, while Langue[dot]doc 1305 has a minor character whose experience of Judaism is of a kind, again, that’s seldom covered in fiction. The Time of the Ghosts (2015) has a major character who is Jewish and whose personal writing about historical events and her own life again, do not follow the standard stories Australians use when writing Jewish character and culture. The Green Children Help Out (2021), stories in Mountains of the Mind, (2019) and “Why The BridgeBuilders of York Pay No Taxes” (that Other Covenants story) are all set in an alternate universe where England has a significantly higher number of Jews. Once I learned how to start creating fiction with Jewish components, I was unable to stop.

And now you know…

Addendum:

For those of you who want to know about the Ditmars (Australian SFF awards – the Hugo equivalent, really), this is the information that came by email today via Cat Sparks. These are not my words – they’re the official information.

Nominations for the 2022 Australian SF (‘Ditmar’) awards are now open and will remain open until one minute before midnight Canberra time on Sunday, 7th of August, 2022 (ie. 11.59pm, GMT+10).

The current rules, including Award categories can be found at:

https://wiki.sf.org.au/Ditmar_rules

You must include your name with any nomination. Nominations will be accepted only from natural persons active in fandom, or from full or supporting members of Conflux 16, the 2022 Australian National SF Convention (https://conflux.org.au/).

Where a nominator may not be known to the Ditmar subcommittee, the nominator should provide the name of someone known to the subcommittee who can vouch for the nominator’s eligibility. Convention attendance or membership of an SF club are among the criteria which qualify a person as ‘active in fandom’, but are not the only qualifying criteria. If in doubt, nominate and mention your qualifying criteria.

You may nominate as many times in as many Award categories as you like, although you may only nominate a particular person, work or achievement once. The Ditmar subcommittee, which is organised under the auspices of the Standing Committee of the Natcon Business Meeting, will rule on situations where eligibility is unclear. A partial and unofficial eligibility list, to which everyone is encouraged to add, can be found here:

https://wiki.sf.org.au/2022_Ditmar_eligibility_list

Online nominations are preferred

https://ditmars.sf.org.au/2022/nominations.html