Who Am I?

 Ironically,  I was rehearsing the role of Yente in a local Merimbula, NSW  production of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ on 7 October 2023. An opportunity to play Yente and be the ‘only Jew in the village’ in this production was too good to be true.  And then, October 7 2023, happened, and I could not be silent.  I was compelled to talk to the cast about what happened, and actively made the connection between the themes of ‘Fiddler’– the dispossession and murder of Jews wherever they live- and connect this tragedy to the antisemitic tropes that were oozing out world over. One of the actors didn’t like the production taking on a political tone and subsequently stopped talking to me and later refused to hold my hand in a dance sequence. Others were moved by my talk (and my tears)  and came up to me afterwards. One of them, a young Aboriginal father,  was able to empathise and understand exactly how disconnected I was feeling. In January, when the production was performed at the Bega Civic Centre, I tried to explain to the director the importance of mentioning this connection – Jewish history, past and present – in the program. However, there was great reluctance to join the dots, and I was told – ‘Well, Fiddler is about a universal theme. It’s about all displaced peoples in the world’. And I’m thinking – No, it’s not. It’s very specifically a production about Jews,  written by Jews. This story of Anatevka is my history. My people’s history. Why can’t they understand?

Let me take you back to the 70s.  I  grew up in the haunting echo of the Holocaust in the 60s and 70s in Toorak, Melbourne.  Some friends’ parents hoarded soaps and toilet paper and canned foods and had pictures of Rabbis on their wall; some friends’ parents had Auschwitz branded on their skin. My school principal, teachers – so many survivors. We lived inside our own community constructed ghettos – Toorak, Caulfield, St Kilda, Elsternwick, Elwood, Brighton, Kew and Doncaster. I attended an expensive private Jewish school for 12 years and went to a religious youth movement, even though I was not religious.

I felt claustrophobic in my home and my little community of Melbourne – I didn’t know how to fit in. It wasn’t so much about being Jewish but the expectations that were inherent in bringing up second-generation Jews in Australia. I wore yakka overalls and my friends wore Jag jeans..  And my mother, who never stopped putting a Jewish emphasis on everything – to the point that it was embarrassing.  Everything was ‘Jewish’ this and ‘Jewish’ that. Nobel Prize winners, those topping medicine at Melbourne University, famous writers and actors.  If an earthquake occurred and 150 people died, she would only talk of the four that were Jewish. As kids, we were never allowed to forget we were Jewish. Mum would scold us when we used the expression “cross your fingers”. Were we Australian Jews or Jewish Australians? Always on best behaviour when out on school trips to the theatre or movies so the ‘goyim’ (non-Jews) won’t point out any bad behaviour. That perception of us as “other” was tattooed deeply inside us all. And it was suffocating.

The moment I finished school, I flew my Australian Jewish community coop and moved to Israel. I can’t say this had anything to do with being Zionist per se, but more with extracting myself from what I saw as the ‘uni degree, marriage and Caulfield picket fence’ life I absolutely knew I did not want.  I grew up with the niceties of being an Ozzie but with the chutzpa of a Jew. In Israel, I could be myself. I ducked out in my pyjamas to a bakery in Kiryat Moshe at 2 am to get hot bread. The holidays are Jewish holidays, and most people didn’t attend synagogue. Bicycles cycled up and down the main streets of Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. I travelled to the beach with my uni friends, went hiking around the Judean Hills and felt part of the land. During that period, I travelled to the Shuk in Bethlehem and ate at fantastic Arab restaurants in the hills. I’d buy wine at the Cremisan Monastery. I felt like I was a continuation of these mountains, these deserts, much as Aboriginal people do here – an extension of the landscape.  I was young and idealistic and loved the freedom and immediateness that existed in every moment. Then, I got married to an Israeli and became tightly wrapped in the blanket of politics.

Once married,  I lived within the magnificent ancient walls of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. Now a completely religious enclave, in the 80’s there were many more secular Jews living there. I learned a whole new language about Palestinians – mainly from my then mother-in-law who provided me with a left wing education – none of which I had received growing up in Melbourne. I studied psychodrama with a  Palestinian woman who became a life-long friend. I discovered the world from her perspective too – the occupation – the Naqba. I performed in the first Israeli theatre production in the West Bank since 1967 with two Israeli and two Palestinian actors about women’s lives – our similarities rather than our differences. We laughed a lot in rehearsals. And cried.  I went to Beit Jallah, an Arab city perched on a hill outside of Jerusalem where Rhaeda lived and saw, with her twenty year old eyes, why she believed the Oslo Agreement wouldn’t be worth the paper it was signed on. “Come and see a very different reality.”  From her home, we saw the expansive Jewish settlement of Har Gilo being built.  All of Beit Jallah’s roads were covered in rocks and potholes with endless dust and constant banging while massive machinery pounded the mountain to create the tunnel where Jews could safely drive through.  Heavy equipment rattled through the village all hours of the day and night, with dynamite blowing up rock into the nearby hills. No one could sleep – not the old, nor the babies. Rhaeda’s family and all the other inhabitants could only watch as a ring road was built for the new settlement with no access for  Beit Jallah residents.  They were left with the filth and dirt and rubble and mess that was created by the Jerusalem municipality. The residents of Beit Jallah were invisible. How could this be? How could the Jewish State treat others like this? Rhaeda was sure none of this would stop with the Oslo agreements – and she was correct. And what did this say about me, my people, my homeland?

 Netanyahu and his Likud members who had sown the seeds of divide and conquer into their lexicon and managed to penetrate the hearts of the masses was called ‘King Bibi’. Rabin’s face was plastered on posters wearing a kafiya to paint him with the image of hopping into bed with the enemy.    I was called ‘Arafat’s whore’ at demonstrations against the occupation, and spat at by religious Jews. I could no longer survive there. The fragmentation of Israeli society was clear to see.  These were not my Jews. And then Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by a radical religious Jew aided by his brother.    I was at that Tel Aviv peace rally and heard the announcement of Rabin’s shooting on the bus ride home to Jerusalem. I just couldn’t understand it – one of ours.I cried until there were no more tears. Who are my people? I felt so anguished and, at that moment, knew that I couldn’t live in a place where people played out their religious fervour using violence.  I just didn’t belong there. Those people who hated me and my Jewish values were not my Jews either.

 After 18 years in Israel, I returned in January 2000 to Australia and found my rural tribe in the Sapphire Coast of New South Wales. My new home.

I thought I had found my place. Far enough away from Jewish Melbourne so that friends and family would need to call before they visited!  Only thirty four Jewish people are registered in the Bega Valley, but I have plenty of other friends willing to take part in our Shabbat and Passover dinners and enjoy Chanukah latkes with us. In our home, we incorporated our non-Jewish  friends into the customs. Everyone lit a candle on my grandmother’s candelabra from Israel on Friday night and made their own internal blessing . Many learned the blessings in Hebrew and sang the Hebrew and Aramaic tunes.    I still visit the local Steiner school to teach about Judaism every year and I facilitate a Shabbat meal for the students. The 9 year olds get together with my partner and braid their own little Challot,   twittering and joyous. All of them learn to dance the Hora for weeks before the Shabbat event and then they become the teachers for their parents after the beautiful meal. I’ve given talks about Judaism at the local Catholic high school, and at the local government high school. But October 7 changed so much of that for me. Now, I feel a stranger in my own chosen home. Friends I’ve had for more than 20 years here in the bush don’t call. The RUOK crowd forgot to ask if I was OK.  I wasn’t and I’m not.  October 7 has possessed all of my thoughts since then – 411 days.

I had never deeply contemplated the fact that Israel is only 76 years old and our homeland could be destroyed. When I went on Aliyah, the country was still in its infancy –  developing its own unique personality.  Now everything has developed, and we are in the teenager phase of arrogance and rebellion.

I felt so deeply that those kidnapped and murdered were my brothers and sisters and parents and children. I had a deep need to connect with my Jewish friends in Israel, Melbourne,  Sydney and Perth and ask how they were feeling and coping. Everyone was in shock, and many, for the first time, expressed the thoughts that they had never considered that Australia could feel unsafe. And yet, the Imam in western Sydney was visibly excited at the deaths of Jews, the protest at the Sydney Opera House, and vandalised offices of Jewish MP’s. Here in the Bega Valley,  people who had been to our home were baking cakes for Palestinians and demonstrating for an end to genocide and occupation with ‘Free Palestine’ posters. My partner ‘graffitied’ onto the posters “from Hamas”.  In Bega, posters of the hostages were pulled down. None of these people – and I asked – had the slightest notion about Jewish history, Middle Eastern history or had visited anywhere in the Middle East. One didn’t know Jesus was Jewish. A close friend was very upset one day – “it doesn’t matter if terrorists are there – you don’t bomb schools and hospitals”. I thought, Wow,  even you don’t understand and have my back.  And right then, I felt unsafe and so, so alone.

 I try to explain to my friends that this is what terrorist groups do – hide behind their own people – the population they are supposed to be defending. If Gazans try to escape, they are shot by Hamas. If they don’t join Hamas, they are threatened with the murder of family members. And when they kill a Jew – there’s a nice fat reward.  Australians are so naive. Later, she talked about Israel causing a famine. There’s no famine I tell her – trucks are going in – perhaps not enough –  but food is being stolen by Hamas. She told me to stop arguing about semantics. My partner and I spoke to the Social Justice Advocates locally about giving a talk to their members, and although someone was going to call us back, they never did. We pursued them and were then told, ‘Well, we need to present both sides. ’ What both sides is there about thousands of people invading homes of others whilst they are in bed and killing and burning and raping and filming it with mobile phones belonging to their victims – that pride exists in killing a Jew. Does anyone here in Australia actually get it?  I haven’t written about the friend who had me for dinner and then informed me that the rapes that took place on October 7 was fake news and there were no tunnels, and that I had been brainwashed by my Jewish education.  How does one respond to that? And where do I stand amidst the multitude of feelings and podcasts and papers and books?

As a hard leftist for decades in terms of Israeli politics, I am bemused that in  Australia, I’m now considered right wing because of my perspectives on the war in Gaza.  Though  I don’t allow others to determine who I am, I find this incredibly disturbing. The woke left,  who don’t like anything delivered in binary terms,  has suddenly created a new binary view. Israelis – white colonists and Palestinians –  poor dark skinned people.

I visited Israel in September 2024 to connect with my people, my friends and family and their kids in and out of the army.  I was nervous and wondered how I would feel being back there after October 7. My Israeli friends, after all these years, remain the ones I am closest with because I know they would jump through hoops to help me if I needed them.  I miss their intellectual vitality, their humour and fun. And their deep knowledge of me and their profound love for Israel, even though I found I could no longer live there. There were still taxi drivers who told me that being Jewish and not upholding religion is a fallacy, but also I met wonderful people displaced from the north just living day by day in different hotels in the centre – maybe never able to go back to their homes in Kiryat Shmona and Metulla again. We have all been displaced. None of us Jews are ever sure of where we belong.

And so, I continue to exist within my own dilemma of belonging and the dichotomy of my existence after October 7. My heart is with my people in Israel, in spite of all the things I find profoundly worrying,  distressing, disturbing and offensive. I know as Jews we are not perfect but we aim high. My body, though, is firmly planted here, in the bush with my partner and horses, chooks, alpacas and dogs – quietly growing vegetables and fruit. This space is my haven where I quietly hide watching sunset after magnificent sunset and pray that I will never have to leave and every Friday, light candles and wish for a Shabbat Shalom.