Tag: Rosh Hashanah

To a Good and Sweet Year (a reflection)

personby Gillian Polack
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First and most importantly, I want to wish you all a good and sweet year. Tonight (Monday at dusk), you see, is my new year. It’s the year 5786.

I’ll be relieved when 5785 is over. It was full of silences and antisemitism. The people who retained me as a friend and as a co-worker also kept me going and helped me find safer paths to travel. I have also made new friends, many who are walking the same fragile road as me. Some of my old friends were silent and will hopefully re-emerge in my life when the hate dissipates (I can hope this because I’ve seen it happen before), some accuse me of things they know I am not guilty of: most just stepped away quietly, without explaining or caring. I am branded as someone to hate. So are most Jews. Ruptured (the book I spoke about last week) is still the best description of how this affects the lives of Jewish Australian women. It’s also broken some of the silences. I have several friends back. They don’t hate, but they had no idea what to ask me or how to ask me or even how to talk everyday, without the filter of hate that too much of Australia accepts. This is the real reason I hope to get some friends back. As more people find words without having to broach difficult subjects, they will realise that I’m still here and that I miss them.

I’ve walked away from some people, myself. Those who accuse and blame. Those who don’t see everyone as human and are part of jeering mobs. Those who agree with the public rhetoric of hate. It’s far, far easier to talk to left-leaning Palestinian activists than to these people. I hate walking away from them: I believe that understanding is the best way out of this shambolic time. Finding solutions that meet the needs of more than one group of people. Dumping slogans. This was what I and my friend did in the women’s movement, over twenty years ago, but too many of those I worked with lean into the slogans right now, which means… they’re not finding ways of making society functional for all of us, they’re sowing distrust and spreading hate.

There is good news. I’m not nearly as alone as I could have been. People are, fundamentally, good. I don’t get a lot of the income from writing I did, due to closing doors, and I only get to give talks or workshops maybe three times in a year, and I don’t get to teach at all (I so miss teaching!) but I can go to professional meetings (in fact technically I’m at one right now, as I write, but it’s a break time) and give academic papers and even keep friends in fandom.

I write for a shifted audience: some of my readers from always, but more Jewish readers. I’m also writing more Jewishly, because I am still that child who, when someone says “You’re a failure” I respond by being the person who annoys them. In this case, being Jewish is the failure-aspect, so I write more Jewishness into my fiction. And my history. I’ve spent all the time since I finished the doctorate sorting out how I got Jewish history badly wrong because I, too, was listening to formulae. I’ve finished the book on it and am looking for publishers. And I get to talk about it (sometimes): I just gave a talk to my local Jewish community on the food culture and the history of Jews in Northern France in the Middle Ages. I only made one of my Rashi jokes, which I felt disconsolate about at the time, but they want me back, so I will be able to make more.

I finished a PhD and wrote a book in 5785. I dealt with far too many bigoted idiots and I analysed the words they used and discovered the sources of their rhetoric. I learned how to de-prickle a prickly pear from a Palestinian activist and we talked about the (Jewish – they gave me references!) origins of the Medjool date. Learning that it’s possible to refrain from bigotry when one is being attacked and is displaced and when life is terrifying insecure gave me back some of my trust.

This activist is looking for the same thing I am: ways of talking and finding solutions. Those who shout and scream in Australia are not the people they trust. I’ve heard them (time and time again) talk about how the marchers in the West have made things worse. This does not make me happy. Good people causing more hurt is not something that will ever make me happy.

What will 5786 be like? It’s a transition year. We’re in a time of enormous cultural shift, worldwide. Enormous cultural shift inevitably brings the enormous idiots out of the woodwork. They’re a sign, really, that we’re moving into something different.

For me, I’m hoping issues with publishers will be solved and that the delayed books start to appear. I want to finish the book that was on hold because world events meant they needed new directions. And I want to finish that vampire novel. In a perfect year, I get to do more teaching, I get more of my public voice back, and I can take up the offer a friend made to get me to Melbourne libraries safely.

Every time I was in Melbourne this last year, the library day didn’t happen because of protesters outside it. This also happened the year before last. I would probably be safe, friends who marched informed me. They weren’t at the receiving end of the hate, however, and they’re not Jewish.

That’s one of the oddities about being Jewish. Historically, hate spewed at us can begin with words but it often leads to death. The Holocaust was the extreme version, but I am 7/8 a descendant of refugees from well before then, and I have no European family left at all. My family origins are from all over Europe and yet the one thing I’m guaranteed when I travel to anywhere in Europe is that I will not meet relatives. I do not think that marchers will kill me. They might hurt me, though, or shout at me, or push me around. All these things have been done to people I know. It’s not all the marchers. Most of them don’t know about the violence committed 50 metres away. I’m developing ways of identifying the ones who, in the 60s, might have been among the group who sent the letter bomb that crippled a cousin, or in the 70s, sent evil white powders to small Jewish organisations in regional Australia.

We don’t talk about Australia as an antisemitic country, but it has always had that streak. I’ve experienced trickles of hate since primary school, and then those trickles become a stream and right now that stream is flooding its banks, growing into a river of muck. None of this is new. What is new is the realisation that most of those who hate could have avoided hating.

What do I plan for 5786? To fight hate, as I always have. And to fight hating idiots, useful or otherwise. I shall avoid those who judge me for being Jewish or for not thinking exactly as they think, and enjoy the company of everyone who looks at those around them and see human beings. I shall write, and make bad jokes, and deal with my frail body.

This is one thing I discovered in 5785: it is possible to create a good year from a bad one with enough work and enough capacity to deal with the bad. 5786 will be a good and sweet year. For anyone who wants to understand why this is such a daring statement, read Ruptured. Having something I can point to and say, “Read this” reduces difficult moments and some of the misunderstandings and gives that much more energy that I can spend on making that year happen.

May you all have a good and sweet year… even if it takes some work.

Goodness, Sweetness and just a touch of ratbaggery

personby Gillian Polack
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Firstly, let me wish you all a happy and healthy and good and sweet New Year.

Rosh Hashanah starts very, very soon in Australia (I’ve put a delay on publication, so that it’s on Monday for most of you, but it’s already Monday afternoon here) and I’m furiously trying to get everything done in time. Lockdown, oddly, makes everything harder. If you’d asked me a few years ago, I’d have said “But of course it makes things easier.” I have apple and I have honey and I have mooncake in lieu of honeycake. I’m meeting my mother and her BFF and one of my BFFs online in a bare few minutes. My friend is a cantor and we’re going to have some music.

What makes this Rosh Hashanah special is my friends. One friend found me an apple. Another found me some honey. A third went to considerable length to get me mooncake. Even though I’ll be alone… I won’t be alone.

The downside is the number of people who want things from me today and tomorrow (sorry, but I can’t do these things) or, worse, the half-dozen different people who, just this week, have sent me invitations or reminders for events on my Day of Atonement.

To be honest, I’m not that observant. The more difficult people become around me because I’m Jewish, however, the more I stick to my special days. Holding gorgeous science fiction events (three of them! three different organisations!) on my holiest of holy days will make me stick to what I was taught as a child and even to fast and to pray. This has been the case ever since primary school. So many people have wanted me to be less Jewish or even not Jewish at all, and every time they express this or encourage me to be Christian or to eat pork or simply to work after sunset on days like today… I discover my Judaism all over again.

I do wonder what my religious views would be if I didn’t encounter antisemitism so often, or the limited toleration that I’m facing now. That limited toleration means that I make my mother happy, by doing the right things. This is not a bad outcome.

Whatever you believe or don’t believe, celebrate or don’t celebrate, please have a wonderfully good and sweet year. For anyone who, like me, will be fasting (at least as much as the doctor permits) then well over the fast. And for all of us, may we get through this pandemic well and safely and emotionally intact.

How Not to Win an Award

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

Each month, I ask my patrons what they’d like for their new essay. They vote. This month the vote was split, and I chose the one I wanted to write about, because no-one was asking me and I had stories to tell. You’ve seen the announcement here – that I won a prize for one of my novels. A not-unimportant prize. It struck me as odd that only my patrons want to know why I wrote this novel. Or maybe the oddness is that people are curious, but have not asked. Either way, I wrote that essay and it will go out tomorrow or Thursday.

The story of the novel may be cool, but I thought you’d like the story of what happened on the night of the award ceremony. It was the beginning of what promises to be a very interesting year.

The Ditmars are the Australian equivalent of the Hugos – awards for writing and art and criticism and more voted by SF fans. My novel was one of the finalists for best novel. I assumed I wasn’t going to win because I could see no reason why I should. I was fully expecting Eugen Bacon to win, in fact, so I didn’t worry too much about the award itself. My brain pushed all deep thought and lists of debts owed to the side, although I did wonder when the announcement would be made.

I only heard about the award ceremony three hours before, and that was a form invitation that all the finalists received. It was already Rosh Hashanah. My New Year.

If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, I wouldn’t even have kept the computer on. Work was out of the question and for me, that award ceremony was work. It took me a while to puzzle this out. I did it on Facebook with many contributions from friends. I discovered then that a lot of people go to award ceremonies for fun. I don’t. I love it when people I care for get recognition, but I find the ceremonies themselves hard work. Speaking to a big audience about a topic I love, however, that’s fun.

I finally puzzled my way through the whole problem, sent an email to my publisher, and sent an apology to the organisers. The only reason it took me that long was that I was dealing with medical issues all that week. I had to decide through a haze and it was not comfortable physically or emotionally. My mother was happy with my decision, which was the big thing. I couldn’t tell her about it until afterwards, however. Three hours is not a long time.

When the three hours were nearly up, I was spending my new year with two of my close friends. Yaritji Green, in the middle of our chat, asked me if I knew someone and I told her they were on the Ditmar committee. I asked her if that meant she was at the online ceremony. Not only was Yaritji at the online ceremony, but she was willing to stand in for me if needed. 

She asked me for some dot points, in case. I didn’t take the need seriously, for that whole day had turned improbable three hours before. I told her “This was an impossible work and the award is in an impossible year and it’s impossible for Gillian to be here cos it’s Rosh Hashanah.” I tried to think about it more but, “I have heaps of things I would say, but I can’t think of them tonight. My brain is outside work zone.”

She asked me about the nomination and I explained, “I had my heart stuff then wrote that novel the following October/November, BTW, so it’s very appropriate that you’re (as a doctor) my sub.” (I’ve cleaned up the impossible typing – everything looked impossible at that moment.) “I cogitated on the conditions for the novel for 20 days in hospital, then while I was recovering, then when I found myself with no paid work because the uni was leading up to sacking me and then splurged and I wrote it very quickly. You don’t need to say any of this – I’m just remembering that this was the first time I sorted out HOW to turn garbage into fertiliser. Fruitcake was the first flower in my new garden.”

My mind didn’t have much time to dwell on the irony in what I’d explained to Yaritji. In fact, the moment I finished typing it, I sent it and two words arrived from Yaritji.

“You won,” she typed.

She had been speaking on my behalf while I was trying to get my mind around why it was impossible to think lucidly about this novel. My immediate reaction to “You won” was “Wait…what!!!” Yaritji knows me very well and sent me a picture of her computer, with the announcement writ large on the screen.

That’s the end.That’s how it happened. I suspect I won’t believe I actually won until I see a trophy.