Last night I went to my friend’s Filipino family’s place for Christmas eve, while my brother went to his girlfriend’s family, who are German. Today my parents are spending Christmas day at their annual gathering of a group of (Jewish) friends. Tonight we’re all having shabbes dinner together, and tomorrow my brother and I are going to the cricket, for the Boxing Day Test.
This is (one of the reasons) why I live in diaspora.
Also because diaspora produces this:
If you read the Age today, as I just did, you would have seen three articles about Israel’s actions, two of which are nothing but horrifying. The first explains that, yes, in the 1990s Israel took dead peoples body parts without permission from the people themselves (prior to their deaths) or their families. They removed corneas, skin, heart valves and bones from Palestinians, Israelis and foreign workers. When accusations about this practice were made in a Swedish newspaper earlier this year, the Israeli government flatly denied it. And now we learn that it is true. And though they say that the practice has ended, I don’t see how we can believe them.
The second article talks about the impact of Operation Cast Lead on the children of Gaza, and their parents. It says that 75 percent of the children in Gaza have at least one symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. One in ten of these children has every symptom. And the problems aren’t just from the bombardment that took place: because of Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza, the materials for rebuilding houses, for providing proper food and educational materials, are not getting into Gaza. People are still living in tents, in overcrowded conditions. Because Israel bombed the sewage treatment plant in Gaza in 2006, there is raw sewage being pumped into the Mediterranean, so when families play in the water – one of the few recreational activities available to them – they are getting sick.
So I read these articles, and I wonder how anyone justifies these practices. What has to happen to one’s brain, to one’s sense of humanity, to be able to assert that these are acceptable things for a Jewish State to be perpetrating? Without a doubt, this is not my idea of Jewishness. My Jewishness disavows these actions.
Yep, you read it right. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, from Utah, was asked nine years ago by Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for Tablet magazine, to write a Chanukah song. And he has now delivered. I used to get Tablet magazine, an online magazine, sent to me, and stopped recently because of their refusal to actually properly engage with the politics of the issues they covered. This seems to be one of those moments – when they’ve decided that it’s oh-so-lovely to have a super-conservative Republican mormon write a song about Jews, and this just shows a bit of inter-religious love. hmmm. I’m suspicious. Particularly seeing as the song sounds an awful lot like Christian music to me…
For some reason the song won’t embed, but you can find it here.
Alternatively, you can just enjoy the dulcet tones of Tom Lehrer, and his take on Chanukah. Happy Chanukah all. Hope you’re enjoying your latkes and ponchkes.
So thus far we haven’t done any posts on John Safran’s ‘Race Relations’ show, which finished this week. For my part, I haven’t been really sure what I’ve thought about it. There’s so much I’ve enjoyed and appreciated, but also so many moments which I wish had never made it to screen. The most disappointing scenes were when Safran made no mention of the political implications of what he was engaging in/with (most particularly in his interactions with women in Thailand, where the colonial relationships implicated in a white, western man trying to date a Thai woman were not really mentioned), or when he expressed some kind of offensive ideas about Jewish women, and women generally. In fact, at times he kinda came off as a bit misogynist.
Plus there was the fact that he really didn’t at all deal with the pressure in the Melbourne Jewish community to be coupled up in a heterosexual relationship, a pressure which totally marginalises queer and single people, and reinforces the idea that dating necessarily leads to marriage. It would have been nice to have seen him critique the whole concept, rather than just the ways in which it is enforced. But I don’t want to dwell on the criticisms, because I feel like they have proliferated much more than the positive comments (or at least amongst my friends they have).
What did I like about the show? I liked that this was a chance to see my people on screen. And not just because I knew a couple of the people who popped up in episodes. But because here was someone who is intelligent and articulate, actually engaging with some complex issues involved in being Jewish in Melbourne today. He challenges the handed-down lessons which are gained by attending Jewish school, and by listening to one’s friends and family. But he also takes them, and the emotional hold they have, seriously. He challenges, but doesn’t dismiss.
The last episode (in which he got married to a bin Laden, and was crucified – you can still watch it online, through the ABC website) amazed me in its excessiveness. It was overwhelming, and to a great extent, incredibly painful to watch. But then, that is right: the problem he is dealing with—of what is the importance of marrying someone Jewish—is excessive. Who one chooses to spend the rest of their life with is, of course, a serious consideration. And how one can deal with the guilt placed on them by a community which openly disavows one’s choices. Yet throughout the series Safran never refused his own agency. He acknowledged that he is attracted to a particular racial stereotype (and we can certainly critique the implications of that), but he was willing to, to an extent, take responsibility for that; to make it a choice, rather than just something which happened. And I really admire that, and I’m glad that he put it on the table. Because in doing so, he also exposed that the decision to marry someone Jewish is just that, a decision, with its own set of necessary critiques.
So the excessiveness of the last episode was spot on, I think. And it was moving in the ways it demonstrated the entrappedness that many of us, I think, feel. I liked that he ended the series with a bit of Jew-pride, arguing that we Jews can always a find out of these problems, and I think he’s right. There’s a million ways in which we can negotiate the world we find ourselves in, and a big part of that negotiation involves the figuring out who we want to marry (and if we want to be married at all). But then we need to consider if that is ever figure-outable. Or if we just need to learn to live with the excessiveness, and be able to just see what happens.
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, the great modern Jewish historian, died yesterday. Yerushalmi (1932-2009) was, as Jonathan D. Sarna described in a post to the H-Judaic listserv, “the Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society at Columbia from 1980-2008. Before then, he taught for fourteen years at Harvard, where he rose to become the Jacob E. Safra Professor of Jewish History, Culture, and Society. Yerushalmi was one of the most creative and influential Jewish historians of his day. His wide-ranging books — From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto, Haggadah and History, Zakhor, and Freud’s Moses — generated significant discussion and paved new areas of scholarly investigation,” and he trained a generation of Jewish historians.
It took me a few years to appreciate Yerushalmi’s work Zakhor. On my first reading, he just didn’t speak to me. It wasn’t that I particularly disagreed with his ideas, but they weren’t exciting. It was a couple of years later, when I was really engaging with ideas of movements of Jewish modernity, and the question of what it means to write Jewish history whilst fully embroiled in Western methods of historiography, that I found great utility in his ideas. And while I might still not be certain of how I feel about the ways he engages with divisions between history and memory I really like the work that he does with the Wissenschaft des Judentums – the project of writing Jewish history that was a part of the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment. My own work has been to try to figure out how we, in the Melbourne Jewish community, are narrating the Holocaust: what historiographical practices are we engaging in, and formulating, in order to tell our histories. And what does it mean to take on the patterns of historical narration which the society in which we live, more broadly, utilises? This is a question which Yerushalmi dealt with. I thought about rephrasing what I have previously written about Yerushalmi’s work, but decided it’s probably best to just quote myself here…
The purpose of the Wissenschaft movement was to mould Jewish history within the same parameters of historiography practised in the Christian and secular societies which surrounded these European Jews. While non-Jews had written histories of Jews, the Wissenschaft movement involved the reclaiming of Jewish history. Yerushalmi argues that with the beginning of the Wissenschaft movement in the 1820s
“suddenly, there are no apologies [for writing histories of Jews]. History is no longer a handmaiden of dubious repute to be tolerated occasionally and with embarrassment. She confidently pushes her way to the very center and brazenly demands her due. For the first time it is not history that must prove its utility to Judaism, but Judaism that must prove its validity to history, by revealing and justifying itself historically.” (Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 84)
Yerushalmi here is pointing to the idea that these European Jewish communities were struggling to find their place in the larger societies. In order to find a place, they adopted the historiographical methods of those dominant societies. This was confirmed when he wrote that the new approach to historiography—that of the Enlightenment idea of history as scientific, known and verifiable—did not come “prior to Jewish historical writing or historical thought.” Rather, Yerushalmi wrote, “[m]odern Jewish historiography began precipitously out of that assimilation from without and collapse from within which characterized the sudden emergence of Jews out of the ghetto. It originated, not as scholarly curiosity, but as ideology, one of a gamut of responses to the crisis of Jewish emancipation and the struggle to attain it.” This “assimilation”, it was explained, was not negative, but rather was a response with a considerable history within the lifespan of the Jewish people.Moreover, Yerushalmi commented that Jewish historians of the late twentieth century shared the same features, problems and attributes as historians more generally—they contributed something unique (a Jewish history) but were closely bound up in the dominant disciplinary practices. We can therefore understand that it has perhaps become a commonplace that Jews in modern Western societies adopt the historiographical practices of the dominant societies in which they live. As in the nineteenth century this was undertaken to attempt to resolve the problem of how to manage emancipation, so too today it is a product of the anxiety about where Jews can fit into the Western world, in the context of contemporary forms of antisemitism and pressures of assimilation.
And so we mourn Yerushalmi, for his memory is blessing. If you want to read a piece by David Myers, which was originally published in an edited collection Jewish History and Jewish Memory, about the important role of Yerushalmi’s work, then you can read it online here
Last week, radio national had a program about William Cooper – the Yorta Yorta elder who was one of the few people in Australia, and indeed the world, who protested against fascism, the rise of Nazism and the persecution of the Jewish people in Europe in 1938. That year, during the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Cooper delivered a letter of protest to the German consulate in Melbourne.
“One Blood: The Story of William Cooper” is available to hear online and download on the radio national website.
What I find so moving, and inspiring about this act of Cooper’s is that it shows a commitment to human rights, and humanity that extends beyond his own people who, at that time, were themselves stripped of their rights and persecuted on their own lands. In 1937, only a year prior, Cooper sent a petition to the Prime Minister, Jospeh Lyons, in the hope that he would forward it to the King. The petition read:
“Dear Mr. Lyons, … I am forwarding you the petition, signed by 1814 people of the Aboriginal race, praying His Majesty the King to exercise the Royal Prerogative by intervening for the preservation of our race from extinction and to grant representation to our race in the Federal Parliament.
In requesting that you forward the petition to His Majesty…” ³
Lyons never forwarded on the petition, but the move lead to Cooper establishing the first “Day of Mourning” on 26 January 1938.
Cooper is such a stirring and admirable example of solidarity. And it’s a powerful reminder that Jewish people in Australia have, I would think, a deep obligation to return this solidarity by speaking out against the ongoing discrimination towards Indigenous Australians.
Thanks so much to LN for sending me the link to this!
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel releases a report this Sunday criticising Israel for its practice of granting “conditional” rights to its residents. Ha’aretz reported yesterday that “basic rights in Israel are increasingly conditioned on the identity and gender of those who seek to realize them”.
“Conditional rights” seems a nice way of saying “blatant discrimination” to me. It’s about as double-speak a phrase as they come! But the report seems to raise some important points, including the proposed “Nakba bill” which will cut public funding for institutions that allow the commemoration of the Nakba, crackdowns on protests against Operation Cast Lead, and “racist policies in the education system,” towards Ethiopians.
You can read about the report in Ha’aretz and on Ynet.
Thanks to New Profile for the links.
Switzerland currently has four minarets. This week, as you probably heard, 57% of the people of Switzerland voted to ban minarets in their country. The fact that there are so few minarets, that this is not a way in which Muslims in Switzerland express their religion, shows that there is something going on at a psychic level to create the perception that the presence of minarets, as an expression of Muslim presence, is a problem. Of course, the opposition to Muslims as people and the expressions of their identity in Western countries is always a case of a people being made outsiders, or Other. Where Jews were once Europe’s internal Others par excellence, and Muslims were the external Other, with recent migration (some of which is of course forced migration of refugees from countries to which Europe has gone to wage war) Muslims have become the internal Other.
And it is this presence which is being persecuted, at both a symbolic and physical level. The minarets are a physical presence in the landscape, but since there are so few, one which very few Swiss people would ever encounter. But, symbolically, they stand for a permanent Muslim presence in Switzerland; for the perception, it seems, that ‘Swiss identity’ is under threat. This, of course, should be a cause of much concern and anger for all of us, and all the more so for those of us who carry identities which have been made dangerously Other by Europe. It is this legislative production of Muslim-ness as designation of outsider-ness which, we may yet find, is but one of the early steps in an increasingly violent Switzerland.
As Anas Altikriti, writing in Al Jazeera, stated, “The construction of minarets is a right – one that bears no effect whatsoever on the vast majority of the Swiss people. By voting to ban this right, it is Swiss – and Western – values which become poorer and less meaningful.
The only way forward is for a realisation that Europe is not built solely on a Judeo-Christian heritage, but that Muslims too have played a vital and significant role in shaping modern day Europe through contributions of culture, arts, politics, law, theology, science, medicine and dozens of other disciplines.
There must be a realisation too that the 30 million or so European Muslims have become part of the European social fabric, through an invaluable contribution which they have made over decades if not for centuries.
By singling them out as suspects and potential enemies within, European societies are creating wide-spread instability and future uncertainty for everyone on the social, economic and political levels.
For a Europe that still commemorates the tragedies that occurred when it played host to a concerted attack on one of its own communities nearly 70 years ago, it is a serious over-sight and a case of horrific negligence to allow the same to happen again, only against a different victim.”
A few months ago I wrote about the evictions of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem, in order for settlers to take over the houses. The evictions are being done under the cover of the idea that Jews actually own the houses, not the people who have lived in them for generations and believe that they own them. In the Jewish News last week there was an absolutely terrible piece by Rabbi James Kennard, the principal of Mt Scopus, who said that we shouldn’t be calling settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem settlers, and their settlements shouldn’t be called settlements, because in any other place they would just be neighbourhoods. He also defended the taking over of these houses in Sheikh Jarrah, saying that it was just Jews taking back the homes which are rightfully theirs. Oh, the beauty and power of changing language to make sure that it reflects ones own ideas and truth; the importance of rejecting euphemism. Because, of course, ’settlement’ is really a benign name for what Israelis living in the West Bank are doing. In Australia we’ve gone through the process of renaming, and thus reconceptualising, ’settlers’ as ‘colonisers’.
But to return to what is taking place in Sheikh Jarrah. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the head of Rabbis for Human Rights, went to visit the families yesterday, after the court ruled that the Jewish occupiers could stay in the houses, thus stranding the Palestinians on the street out the front, and helping to solidify the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. This is what he wrote in response (which I received via the New Profile elist):
Armageddon, Straight Ahead
Rabbi Arik W. AschermanIt is 1:30 am, and I just came back from Sheikh Jarakh –I see Jerusalem in
flames, and know than my words will not succeed in conveying the horror of
what I saw or the dread in my heart..Today the court ruled in favor of the settlers who had taken over part of yet another family’s home in Sheikh Jarakh. Because a lawyer for some of the
families in the 1980’s recognized Jewish ownership in return for protected
tenant’s status, the addition the El-Kurd family made to their home was deemed illegal. They had to ask permission from the “owners” to do it. Did the court order the addition demolished or a fine paid? Of course not. Why, anybody should be able to understand that the only logical thing to do was to let settlers move in to the extension.All day the tension was palpable, sometimes breaking into physical violence. People warily looked at me to determine if I was friend or foe, until I got close enough to be recognized and greeted in Arabic the newcomers who didn’t recognize me., Palestinians backed by Israelis and internationals huddled around fires, keeping a watchful eye out, as Arab music reminded settlers huddled inside their new acquisition just where they were. Nasser Ghawi is closing in on his fourth month in a pitiful lean to across the street from where 6 settler families lived in his home, with a constant stream of visitors in and out. He asked me if there was any hope left. Usually full of optimism in even the most difficult situations, I could only mouth some meaningless platitudes about looking for new legal options. Yesterday Maya, our staff person who spends the most time in Sheikh Jarakh, asked me where justice was. I didn’t have an answer for her either.
All of a sudden a group of settlers and their supporters comes to the Ghawi home amidst cat calls and insults hurled by Palestinians seeking an outlet for their seething anger and pain. The settler group moves closer and wants to come in to congratulate those within. Everybody jumps to their feet and the gate is slammed shut, but there are settlers already inside as well as outside. I am amazed that no fights break out. The taunts get louder and more vicious. Some spit at the settlers. In similar situations I have urged Palestinians to calm down, but here I felt that I had no right and that it would do no good. The only comment I responded to was when somebody said in Arabic that they wished Hitler had finished the job. I tried to think of what I could do if things escalated further, and didn’t come up with any answers. The settlers keep staring at me and my kippah. They don’t get it.
The most terrifying indication that we were at the brink of conflagration was that the police were did not wade violently into the Palestinians or arrest
people for having the wrong look on their faces, as so often happens in Sheikh Jarakh. I even saw one of the officers trying to clear the way for settlers to come in and out snarl at one of the settlers and tell him that he dare not
touch anybody. In other situations I would have been pleasantly surprised, but here this was an indication that the police also knew that they were sitting on top of a volcano about to blow.Maya arrives. I say to her, “It will be a miracle if the night passes without
an explosion.”Every few minutes a new group of settlers comes to look, to smile. At one point a settler inside comes demanding that the Palestinians turn off the blaring music. I have visions of what will happen if he pulls a plug or smashes something. I remind him of the Jewish teaching, “You don’t rebuke somebody in the midst of their sorrow. ” He goes back in, as Palestinians shout and rattle the windows. One woman addresses at length the Druze officer guarding the door to the captured room. I can only imagine what she is saying. What is said in Hebrew again and again is, “This is your system of law?” I can only answer what I learned years ago, “Not everything that is “legal” is just.”
The worst of it is that I don’t know what to suggest. Israel’s democracy has failed up until now. International pressure has failed up until now. The activist community has failed up until now.
Although his worst predictions that their actions would cause the inhabitants of the land to rise up and destroy them never came true, our ancestor Jacob cursed his sons Simeon and Levi until his dying day for their violent and brutal act of revenge in this week’s Torah portion, Their weapons are tools of lawlessness. Let not my prson be included in their council,, Let not my being be counted in their assembly. For when angry they slay men, and when pleased they maim oxen.”(Genesis
I hope that I too am wrong. What is the big deal here? Be angry and upset, but why so worried about one more incident of helpless Palestinian fury directed at an Israeli injustice? Why should activists spend a sleepless cold
Jerusalem night huddling in front of a fire. Why should the political echelons and the courts shake themselves out of their torpor. Can’t the international community feel satisfied with itself over it’s “strong protest?”Because this is Jerusalem. As I wrote a week and a half ago, I see a Palestinian anger burning so strong that, unlike what usually happens, neither the threat of arrest or the use of overwhelming force is a deterrent. That means a third intifada. That means that the fact that the world community forcing Israel into a settlement freeze (perhaps) may be too little too late. That means that the Obama administration remains a laughingstock at best, and in many quarters the U.S. is again the subject of scorn and derision.
I see Jerusalem in flames – I see Armageddon straight ahead. I see everywhere complacent alarm. I know that tens will answer our call to demonstrate today (see previous email below or call Maya at 054-7423044), but we need hundreds and thousands. The diplomats will write urgent reports, but we need effective pressure. The peace and human rights community will say that this is terrible, but we need them to come out of their homes. The politicians will say that it is a matter for the courts and that they can’t interfere, while the courts will say that the law takes precedence over their personal conscience. The police will prepare emergency plans. If nothing changes (olam c’minhago noheg), Jerusalem will burn.
If perchance you’re in Jerusalem and reading this, this is the information for the protest:
“In early November the Al-Kurd family was evicted from a section of their house. On Tuesday 1.12 the settlers moved into it. When settlers lived in the other Al-Kurd family house in the neighborhood, they terrorized the family for months, until they obtained ownership over the entire house. This led to the eviction of the family a year ago. This will be the fifth house taken over by settlers in Karm Al Ja’ouni.
Weekly Protest March from the Mashbir plaza to Sheikh Jarrah
Join a march from West to East Jerusalem in protest of the injustice committed against the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. The march will end in Sheikh Jarrah with a protest against the settler enterprise in the neighborhood.
The march will start at the Mashbir plaza on Friday 4.12 at 13:30 Come to raise awareness and protest the settlers’ attempt to take over East Jerusalem!
For further information or transportation from Tel Aviv: Maya 054-7423044″
over the weekend, I shared my idea for a tribute blog post to “the boss” with tobybee and some friends – oh, but he’s not jewish! you say? (that’s what they said too) – uh, yes he is, i said. for sure. look at his jewish face, and his jewish name… (of course he just changed the spelling! for his stage name, you know) and, i went on preaching about how bruce springsteen puts the sexy back in judaism, etc etc…
so, after some googling, it turns out i was wrong. according to this blog, bruce was raised catholic, and has dutch, irish and italian ancestory. and as one commentor who blames the breakdown of his marriage on the false belief that the boss is one of the “chosen people” (heehee) shows… i’m not the only one to make this mistake.
but seriously, as a child of the nineties, i really should have known better. adam sandler clearly busted this myth about springsteen in ‘99, in his classic chanukah song part 2, and i quote:
“So many Jews are in the show-biz
Bruce Springsteen isn’t Jewish, but my mother thinks he is”
so, i feel probably about as silly as adam sandler’s mother. but not as silly as the person who started the website “guess who’s the jew” – a game where you get to vote yes or no whether famous people are jewish. (to be fair, there ARE some tricky ones in there.. what would you say to madonna for example?) and just to note, the vote on bruce was an almost 50/50 split…
but really, this is what we all want to see, right?
