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\u2019s the year 5786.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll 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\u2019ve 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<\/i> (the book I spoke about last week) is still the best description of how this affects the lives of Jewish Australian women. It\u2019s also broken some of the silences. I have several friends back. They don\u2019t 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\u2019m still here and that I miss them.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve walked away from some people, myself. Those who accuse and blame. Those who don\u2019t see everyone as human and are part of jeering mobs. Those who agree with the public rhetoric of hate. It\u2019s 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\u2019s movement, over twenty years ago, but too many of those I worked with lean into the slogans right now, which means\u2026 they\u2019re not finding ways of making society functional for all of us, they\u2019re sowing distrust and spreading hate.<\/p>\n
There is good news. I\u2019m not nearly as alone as I could have been. People are, fundamentally, good. I don\u2019t 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\u2019t get to teach at all (I so miss teaching!) but I can go to professional meetings (in fact technically I\u2019m at one right now, as I write, but it\u2019s a break time) and give academic papers and even keep friends in fandom.<\/p>\n
I write for a shifted audience: some of my readers from always, but more Jewish readers. I\u2019m also writing more Jewishly, because I am still that child who, when someone says \u201cYou\u2019re a failure\u201d 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\u2019ve 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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 they gave me references!) origins of the Medjool date. Learning that it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
What will 5786 be like? It\u2019s a transition year. We\u2019re in a time of enormous cultural shift, worldwide. Enormous cultural shift inevitably brings the enormous idiots out of the woodwork. They\u2019re a sign, really, that we\u2019re moving into something different.<\/p>\n
For me, I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
Every time I was in Melbourne this last year, the library day didn\u2019t 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\u2019t at the receiving end of the hate, however, and they\u2019re not Jewish.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s 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\u2019m 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\u2019s not all the marchers. Most of them don\u2019t know about the violence committed 50 metres away. I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t talk about Australia as an antisemitic country, but it has always had that streak. I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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<\/i>. Having something I can point to and say, \u201cRead this\u201d reduces difficult moments and some of the misunderstandings and gives that much more energy that I can spend on making that year happen.<\/p>\n
May you all have a good and sweet year\u2026 even if it takes some work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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