Towards Post- Holocaust Flourishing of in

Dr Melanie Landau

2015 7 978-0-9874195-9-0 Acknowledgements 1

Executive summary 2

Note on research methodology 4

Chapter 1: Let the nation congregate: community, leadership and inclusivity 9

Chapter 2: Reflections on Jewish day school education 25

Chapter 3: Interrogating continuity: intergeneration opportunities and the relationship between parents and children 43

Chapter 4: Israel engagement 54

Summary 64

Appendix 66

Bibliography 68 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Every writing project is the culmination of the thinking and experience of many people. This work is based on focus group discussions conducted under the auspices of the Gen08 project and I am grateful for the focus group participants without whom none of it would have been possible. In particular, I would like to thank Professor Andrew Markus for his guidance and ever‐measured feedback and input. Timnah Baker, Dr John Goldlust and Professor Leah Garrett offered very helpful input and I appreciate their efforts that far exceeded my expectations. I would like to express my gratitude to Debbie Dadon for her friendship and support for me and for the project. At the eleventh hour, Nadine Davidoff brought her editorial professionalism and her wisdom and insight. Finally, thanks also to the director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Associate Professor Mark Baker, for his support and encouragement of this project.

Mays thi research make a modest contribution to the vitality and thriving of Jewish life in Australia.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

We’re a post‐Holocaust community … people shouldn’t want to be Jewish because they don’t want to break the chain, they should want to be Jewish because it’s awesome to be Jewish … that message doesn’t come out strong enough in the community … it’s [often] all about breaking the chain … posthumous victory to Hitler … [We need to move] from negative to positive. (Syd03)

The more I progressed, the more I was forced to abandon the myth of ‘One People’. I was searching for what I believed in: continuity. I found only discontinuity. And the more Jews I met, the less I understood what a looked like.

Frederic Brenner, Diaspora, 2003

 Community diversity is strengthened when it is expressed through diverse leadership, which in turn requires active mentoring of successors who are different from the people who have preceded them.  Although women have served and continue to serve on the boards of and in leadership of communal organisations, they are particularly underrepresented in the leadership of the roof‐ body organisations, and other organisations most likely to be playing a visible and vocal representative role on behalf of Australian Jewry.  There are many Jews in Australia and around the world who value and express their Jewishness and are not connected in any significant or quantifiable way to organised Jewish community. In many cases, they may be connected to multiple spheres of belonging and community. This requires us to adopt new ways of considering their identities if we want to understand them.  While many people who attended non‐Jewish day schools envy the social connections and knowledge attained by Jewish day school attendees, they also appreciate their access to multicultural Australia, and in many instances, to a broader education than that offered by Jewish day schools.  A number of respondents who attended Jewish day schools reported feeling like they were in a ‘Jewish bubble’, separate and not belonging to Australian society. This bubble was hard to break out of after school. They reported feeling as though they had missed out on more

2 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews sophisticated information about both Jewish pluralism and Israel. There is some indication that this has changed in recent years with a new cadre of Jewish Studies teachers.  living in Australia expressed their lived experience of feeling both at home in Australia and elsewhere, providing a possible model for Australian Jews struggling to feel at home in Australia.  Some of the more notable generational shifts include the unwillingness of many Gen Y Jews to simply carry on with traditions for their own sake, and out of guilt.  A number of Jews who care about their are marrying non‐Jews and this means that the Jewish community needs to strategise and plan accordingly to embrace these families.  Although many participants in Israel programs experienced a meaningful connection with Israel, they also expressed deep ambivalence and concern about how Israel is currently dealing with its great challenges, including the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict, and the lack of religious freedom in Israel.  Participants expressed a lack of openness in the organised Jewish community concerning discussion of Israel and relationship to Israeli government policy.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 3 NOTE ON RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

As part of the Gen08 survey of the Jewish communities of Australia and New Zealand, researchers conducted and digitally recorded over fifteen focus group discussions.

This report is predominantly based on the focus groups with young adults. Aside from two focus groups in Byron Bay and one focus group with women leaders in , the rest of the focus groups analysed in this report took place in and Melbourne were comprised of young adults, 20–30 years old, with a range of Jewish backgrounds. All participants had some institutional involvement in the Jewish community including attendance at a Jewish day school and/or being a youth group leader and/or working in the community. Only one focus group consisted of those who self‐define as religiously observant.

Some participants were born outside of Australia, and some of them were born in Australia, outside Sydney and Melbourne. The focus group participants are not necessarily representative of the whole community, but given their familiarity with and commitment to the community, their comments serve as an important complement to the more quantitative nature of the Gen08 survey and the associated report on Jewish Continuity.

Most focus groups comprised 8‐10 participants and the discussion lasted up to 2 hours. Participation was voluntary, with no payment for participation; food was provided when the meeting was held at lunchtime at university or in the offices of Jewish communal organisations. Further detail is provided in the Appendix, ‘Focus groups: Core Questions and Issues’.

I was not present at the focus group recordings and this report, in its present form, was not conceptualised at the time of the discussions.

We devised this additional project to capture the richness of the material from the focus groups and to supplement the findings and reports of Gen08 that were based on quantitative data. The focus groups were initially recorded to complement the larger Gen08 research survey.

I listened to recordings of the focus groups and took notes of selected discussions and statements. After my initial encounter with the digital audio records, they were professionally transcribed. I then analysed the focus group transcripts and highlighted salient points for this publication. Some of the statements here discussed are not necessarily the most representative, but were selected because they open up important issues for consideration. References in brackets identify the focus group discussions from which quotations are taken.

4 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Once I had a long list of various statements and excerpts, I coded them according to themes. I then organised the themes into smaller groups. Some excerpts cited in the report are longer dialogical exchanges and others are single comments that are brought out of their conversational context. I chose them because they represent an important perspective.1

No one lives outside his or her social milieu. Hence, I have chosen certain comments from individuals because I think they represent an important aspect of the conversation. These reflections and comments are not merely personal; they also represent a certain moment in social and cultural history and speak beyond their own particularity.

This dynamic between the choices of the individual as located within a social, historical and economic context is well‐described by the social theory framework that looks at agency‐choices of individual and their relationship with structure as represented by the various contexts in which the individual operates.

Some comments as recorded by the professional transcripts were slightly revised to achieve clarity. Great care was taken to ensure that the meaning of comments was not changed.

At the outset it is important to acknowledge some of the potential pitfalls of focus groups. Reed and Payton (1997,p770) argue that because of the powerful role of the group we may not get an accurate picture of what individuals actually think. There may be dominant members of the group who unduly influence the sequence and direction of the discussion; and where people know each other they may act and speak differently because of a certain image they project in social situations.

It is hard to get the full picture of the social dynamics within the group setting with access only to the audio recording and without knowing the identity of the participants and the existence of prior relationships between them. It seemed apparent, however, that in most groups individuals were comfortable to disagree with each other and disagree with the rest of the group. Due to the expert facilitation of most of the groups by Professor Andrew Markus, Dr John Goldlust and Dr Miriam Munz, a space of inquiry and genuine curiosity was created that lessened the potential of dissenters to feel threatened or silenced.

Reed and Payton acknowledge that an assumption of focus groups is that the group interaction produces data that would otherwise not be produced by individuals being interviewed alone. Hence,

1 Sylvia Barack‐Fishman in Jewish Education in an Age of Choice uses narrative in a comparable way. Her main emphasis is to bring out important theoretical considerations about Jewish identity and education. She does this by using quotes from her focus groups. She also brings in single statements of people outside of the conversational context to highlight a range of points. She doesn’t justify her approach in the methodology note but rather explains details of whom she spoke to as part of the research and in what context.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 5 the focus group is not merely a way to save time that would be taken if each individual was interviewed.

They also acknowledge the important relationship between focus groups and other data. According to Reed and Payton (1997, 769), focus groups become most useful when they are used in conjunction with other data, most specifically prior ethnographic work. This combination of data enables a richer analysis of the subject of investigation and helps avoid superficial findings. The purpose of the Gen08 focus groups was to inform and deepen the capacity of the researchers to read and interpret the quantitative survey data.

A ‘meaning-based’ approach to Judaism

Quantitative surveys of Jewish identity often ask Jews to rate how important Judaism is to them. I am not sure how people understand Judaism when they respond to such a question. Even if a Jew doesn’t consider Judaism to be very important to him or her, or even important at all, I am interested in how Judaism makes a difference in a person’s life and how it sits within other commitments and circles of belonging.

In this respect, the qualitative data of the focus groups, in which people express how they understand their lives and how they connect to , practice and community, is very instructive to me; as is the context of the formative experiences in people’s personal narratives.

As well as asking questions about a range of normative Jewish practices and attitudes – such as keeping kosher, observing , attending – as a predominantly quantitative project, the Gen08 survey asked participants to rate how important being Jewish was to them.

The aim of this current research project is to open up the possibility of a ‘meaning‐based constructionist’ approach that looks at how Jewishness is expressed according to the self‐ understanding of Jews rather than according to a range of normative Jewish actions and beliefs. This report starts from the self‐defined experience of the respondents and explores what Jewishness is for Australian Jews. As Zehavit Gross and Suzanne Rutland (2014) say in their recent study of Australian Jewish School education:

..a key characteristic of fluid modernity is individuation, where each individual constructs, confirms, and maintains her/his identity according to her/his choice, desires and tendencies (p145).

6 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews A potential criticism of this less normative, less prescriptive approach is that it is too subjective and individualised (Cohen, 2008). This critique assumes that there is a solid thing called Judaism with particular actions and beliefs that one either adopts or doesn’t. The critique is sharpened when it is discussed in the context of inter‐generational transmission. In other words, if the way we practise Judaism is so nuanced and individualised, how will we educate or inculcate the next generation?

Currently though, this is not the predominant approach. Jewish education is often considered to be something for children and youth, and transmitted through schooling of some sort.

The following comment from a focus group participant describes the apathy of some parents concerning Jewish education:

It’s a strange type of apathy … it’s not … ‘we don’t care, we’re not going to be involved’. I guess I’d describe it as Jewish day school apathy, which is, ‘I want to drop my kid off, get them the Jewish education, preferably make them menschlach and do it in half an hour for nothing, but we don’t care about what you’re doing’. Which makes absolutely no sense … it’s a lack of appreciation, I guess, closer to a lack of caring altogether … or caring about the content. (Melb02)

The attitude expressed here reflects the journeys of parents who have lost – or never found – a point of real connection with their Jewishness but nevertheless want to share that (lost or absent) connection with their children.

When we believe that solid concepts or practices define Jewishness, we ignore that Jewishness has been transformed throughout history and in response to the social, cultural and economic milieu in which Jews have lived. As Stuart Charme (2000) explains:

Attractive as this idea sounds, current discussions of the development of Jewish culture and religion have challenged the idea of a continuous, linear tradition that is seamlessly linked to an original ‘authentic’ Judaism or Jewish people. Rather, Jewish culture and identity take form in what Efraim Shmueli describes as ‘a complex struggle of historical situations’. He suggests that the question of Judaism’s essence, or ‘authentic’ Judaism, regularly arises in periods when communal consensus is under attack and when borders between acceptable and unacceptable practices have become unbearably fuzzy …

Although cultural, ethnic and religious identities continually recreate and redefine themselves, change is usually accompanied by the claim that innovators are merely rediscovering or returning to the true tradition. The innovations of one period may become

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 7 the ‘authentic’ tradition for future generations even though at the moment of innovation they may be rejected as inauthentic. (pp. 138‐139)

Not only has Judaism changed throughout history, but an individual’s relationship to their Judaism can change throughout their lifetime, sometimes peaking around life‐cycle events.

My aim in this report is to bring into the public arena another lens with which to view a slice of a slice of the complexity of Jewish life in Australia. The lens comprises the voices of mainly young Jewish and it is located within the theoretical context of current sociological research about Jewish communities worldwide.

8 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews CHAPTER 1

Let the nation congregate: community, leadership and inclusivity

The way we speak about things matters. When we speak about community – in this case, the Australian Jewish community (and mainly Melbourne and Sydney) – we are also, simultaneously, recreating this community through our words.

Narratives in the form of stories and interviews help us understand how people create meaning in their lives. They can allow us to know communities in a different and sometimes deeper, thicker, way than other modes of social research. Narrative analysis can give voice to those who would otherwise be without voice. Furthermore, hearing these narratives can sometimes stimulate change in communities (Ewick and Silbey, 1995, p.199). So, stories can be told and retold in ways that reproduce the existing power relationships and dominant mythologies or they can be told in ways that make visible and challenge the dynamics in a given situation (Bekerman and Zembylas, 2008, p.125).

The introduction to the Jewish Continuity report, one of the several reports in the series of the Gen08 survey, divides the community into core, middle and periphery in the following way:

In this report the Australian Jewish community is considered in terms of three segments: core, middle and periphery. Within the core there is a strong sense of Jewish identity and effective transmission of Jewish values across generations; decisions are informed by Jewish concepts and meanings and individuals experience life as part of a community. The core is an effectively functioning segment of the community sure of its values, constant in its beliefs, resilient in its capacity to withstand challenges of the external environment. It is highly motivated and successful in transmitting Jewish values to the next generation.

The greatest threat to Jewish continuity is within the middle and periphery. Within the middle the key variables that shape identity are not as consistently integrated and hence decision‐ making may occur in the context of conflicting values: for example, teenagers facing disharmony between home environment and school or between the values of school and post‐school friendship circles. On the periphery, outlook may be shaped by a value system in which Jewish teachings play little or no role. Within the middle, while Jewish identity is challenged, strong traditional beliefs and linkages still remain, in part a legacy of the post‐war immigrants and their fierce determination to sustain Jewish life. In the major Australian communities (unlike many communities in the United States) young adults within the middle have had a range of sustained Jewish involvements: many have spent years in a Jewish day

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 9 school, have direct knowledge of through their families, have attended a Jewish youth group and have visited Israel. But for a substantial number their experiences have not been such as to lead to a high level of Jewish identification. To succeed, programs directed at this young cohort face both conceptual and funding challenges.

This characterisation of core, middle and periphery is based around the survey analysis of the likelihood of these groups to successfully transmit Jewish identity to future generations.

But are the categories of core, middle and periphery useful in describing Jewish life in Australia? Are they accurate? Do they reflect the various ways Australian Jews connect with and express their Jewish identity? Or does this categorisation limit how we conceptualise the community?

As the below discussion indicates, sometimes it is necessary to think beyond existing paradigms in order to arrive at a fresher, possibly more nuanced, view of the community and to consider the myriad possibilities for Jewish expression in the future.

Different conceptions of Jewish identity

One’s experience and/or understanding of Jewishness can be conceived of in diverse ways. Our various biases affect the way we interpret social research about Jews and Jewish identity.

On one side of a continuum there is an emphasis on whatever it is that Jews do. This perspective puts intra‐group ties and social boundaries at the core of Jewish vitality and continuity. Thus, Jews engage in ongoing invention and reinvention of the meaning of Jew, Jewish, Jewishness and Judaism, creating the possibility for continual transformation. In this paradigm, social scientists need to continually update and invent measures and modes of observation so that they are attuned to novelty, innovation and the diversity of Jewish expression. Here Jewishness is so called because it is what Jews do. (Goldscheider quoted in Cohen, 2008, internet)

On the other side of the continuum is a more normative approach to Judaism: ‘ an essential Judaism … [or] what Jews ought to value and believe and practise … what they affirm as the beliefs and values and practices of the Jewish tradition’. Although Judaism (the sets of values, beliefs, rituals, ceremonies and behaviour patterns to which Jews subscribe) will continue to evolve over time, there is a point where Judaism or Jewishness might so transform itself that it can no longer be called Judaism. According to this perspective, ‘Judaism is not anything you make of it.’ Authenticity demands slow change, and some restraint on innovation and diversity. (Liebman quoted in Cohen, 2008, internet)

10 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews When ‘transmission of Jewish identity’ is the measuring factor of Jewishness, then normative acts – such as going to synagogue, giving to a Jewish charity, visiting Israel – take precedence over how Jews make meaning in their lives across their lifespan. In a model that prioritises or centralises ‘Jewish continuity’, the Jew whose children may have the highest chance of marrying other Jews is accorded a stronger Jewish identity than the Jew who is cultivating a culturally rich, cosmopolitan Jewish identity that draws thickly on the tradition and negotiates a mutually productive relationship with the surrounding cultures. When the traditions that are transmitted are not embedded in the life and values of an individual, such as when they are superficially understood and merely passed on, it makes for a thin Jewish identity whose future transmissibility is highly questionable.

As Bethamie Horowitz (The Forward, 2004) argues:

With the disappearance of social barriers between Jews and others, and the expanding means of expressing Jewishness, the conventional questions for taking stock of the Jews have become less effective, and even potentially misleading. It will just no longer do to count up the number of candles lit or the days of synagogue attendance or dollars contributed to charity to describe who’s out there.

Recognising and inviting diversity

Jews have always been in a process of transition, adaptation and challenge to existing norms. The process is continuing as Jews in Australia experience unprecedented levels of assimilation and acceptance within Australian society. This mirrors the experience of other second and third generation immigrants in Australia and the US.

The challenge of those researching the Jewish community is to do so with an awareness of the limitations of the methods they are using. If quantitative research is employed measuring normative practices, one needs to be aware of the richness and cultural thickness of what one could be missing when people practice in ways that do not fit conventionally accepted practices. In addition, community leaders also need to be flexible and adapt to shifting paradigms and new social environments, to see Jewish life as changing and adaptable rather than solid and immutable. Sometimes this new perspective can be assisted through research that reflects the community back to itself in ways that make people think differently.

As Shaul Magid says in “Why the Jewsh Now (and Past) Can’t Be Confined to the Paradigms of the Past” (Zeek, 2014):

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 11 It is difficult to contest Wertheimer and Cohen’s data (in “The Shrinking Jewish Middle”). But, as sociologists readily acknowledge, data only represents the questions that have been asked and the answers of those who have responded. And these studies function only within a specific paradigm of what constitutes success or failure.

Inviting and recognising the diversity of all voices within a community is not a gesture of tolerance; it is an acknowledgment that each person plays a valuable role in the community and is, in fact, crucial for community flourishing. Each individual, with his or her collection of unique experiences, makes a contribution to the whole picture. Diversity can be harnessed to gain a more complex and nuanced understanding of the community’s needs and aspirations.

One way of describing and analysing the dominant ideologies in any community without reinforcing their dominance is to seek out the stories of those on the margins. In the case of the Jewish community, minority Jews and/or those who do not usually have a voice in the dominant communal discourse include working‐class Jews, Mizrachi and , Russian Jews, Israeli Jews and gay and lesbian Jews (and those who cross several categories). Because of the limitations of the focus group data available for this study, we cannot adequately represent the diversity of the community in this report. Further research is recommended to highlight the diversity and opportunities of the community.

The below excerpt, taken from a group of Sydney student leaders indicate that people conceive of their Jewishness in myriad ways, and often renegotiate their relationship to Judaism multiple times throughout their lives. It is not an immutable identity, but one that morphs and adapts. Hence, the need for a more flexible set of definitions to determine what, exactly, is a Jew and what is Jewish identity.

Speaker 7: It’s also about how people conceive their Jewish identity. Is a Jewish identity one shortcut on a desktop, or is it the ‘start’ button, or is it the ‘on’ button to the computer? I think at the moment there’s an expectation and there’s a feeling that Jewish identity should be the ‘start’ button, and if it’s not, then it’s not going to be in the computer system at all … it’s going to milk down the hardware, kind of thing.

Speaker 8: I believe that things do come round in cycles. All of my friends that I grew up with in England, all were observant and more religious than their parents. And I think that you can’t just cast aside those who are on the fringe, whether it’s geographically or age‐ wise or whatever it is, because what about their kids? I think that is always a cycle coming round and people – especially in this society and in this day and age – want to

12 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews find their identity, and if they don’t find it through Judaism, then they’ll go to India and meditate in a temple somewhere. They’ll keep trying to find it. (Syd03)

Speaker 8 makes an important point about the way identification goes in cycles, both within an individual life journey and also within a collective historical journey.

We don’t know the end of the story yet, this respondent implies. The models of Jewish life that will prove to flourish and prosper in the future are as yet unknown.

Speaker 8 acknowledges that many of her friends have embraced their Jewishness through observance in a way that their parents didn’t. She also described life as an ongoing search for meaning, a search in which some Jews will find what they are looking for within Jewish expression, and others will seek elsewhere. Even when seeking elsewhere, this excerpt hints that one can’t come to conclusions and can’t underestimate the power of Jewish identity in the crafting of one’s life choices.

A more representative leadership

Community leadership that fosters a spirit of inclusivity and welcomes diversity helps cultivate a thriving community. The excerpt below, taken from a group of women leaders, addresses important questions about established and ongoing leadership, representation, homogeneity, ‘people on the edges’ and the challenge and importance of independent thinking:

Speaker 4: I have a real problem with our roof bodies that theoretically represent us and they go to government and they say they represent us but they are a very homogenous group of people. They’re all the same.

Speaker 5: Who are these bodies that are going to …?

Speaker 4: Well, I’m talking about the state body, the State Zionist Council, ECAJ. In a way they claim to be representative of the community but there are people who are not elected by the community. They put their hands up and then they are appointed. I’ve worked for them so I don’t have any illusions … I’ve been on both sides. But I really think that people who are on the edges feel very excluded from all this.

Interviewer: Who do you call people on the edges?

Speaker 4: I think people who aren’t religiously active, traditional identified; I think people who have financial and social problems can’t identify. There are people who can’t buy the Australian Jewish News or don’t want to, so they know nothing. And the other thing

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 13 that happens, of course, is that our kids read the Australian Jewish News at our houses if they come for Shabbat dinner but otherwise they don’t go near it …

So they’re not informed so they don’t even know who these people are … people with disabilities, people with illnesses, and there’s a whole section of the community that doesn’t participate, can’t participate and are actually excluded or chooses not to …

Interviewer: Where’s the next generation of leaders coming from, can you see them?

Speaker 1: To be a leader you also have to have a lot of time and resources …The cohort of supporters of UIA who are giving their time and their money could be the future leaders.

Speaker 4: But then they’re coming from the same batch.

Speaker 5: I don’t think it matters if you come from the same background. I think what matters is whether or not you’re educated and sympathetic to the people who are on the margins.

Speaker 2: You must be an independent thinker.

Speaker 5: That’s exactly right.

Speaker 2: We do not have independence of thought in our leadership. I had a very interesting experience. I was in a lecture, I won’t say who gave the lecture, but the person who gave the lecture is highly regarded in our community as an intellectual. One of the things he said was that there was a time that he would always put pen to paper. If there was something against the common voice, the common leadership, he would write an article. He had reached a point in his career where he thought a second time before he did it now, because of fear that his funding would be affected. He was concerned that we don’t create a space for independence of thought. If we don’t create that space for independence of thought then we don’t encourage quality leadership. (Melb03)

In this excerpt, the speakers address the non‐representative and non‐democratic nature of the communal roof‐body organisations. They comment on the homogeneity of the mainly male leaders, especially with relation to their class background and/or income.

14 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews An interesting question raised here is whether or not leadership has to be diverse in order to represent diverse interests. As one speaker said, ‘I don’t think it matters if you come from the same background. I think what matters is whether or not you’re educated and sympathetic to the people who are on the margins.’ However, this still poses a problem of accessibility. It is patronising and even untrue to assume that someone can adequately understand, let alone represent, the needs of others who live different lives in vastly varied economic situations or have different genders, to name a few.

The speakers raised the importance of independent thinking for communal leaders. Reflecting the firm ideological stronghold that reigns over almost all communal institutions, an anecdote was told about a communal leader who admitted that he self‐censors out of fear of financial and other recriminations to the institution he leads.

Repeatedly, the young Australian Jews who participated in the focus groups questioned whether the vocal leadership of Australian Jewry accurately represents them. For example, one respondent said:

One of the reasons I find it very difficult to associate is because I wonder if I am represented. You’ve got far right‐wing, vitriolic, sort of cr#p coming out of the leaders of the community, you know openly racist stuff coming out of our supposed leaders, on one hand politically. And then, going out with a non‐Jew you’re completely shunned. So how do you relate to that? (Melb01)

According to this speaker, mainstream Jewish leaders express antipathy towards members of the non‐ Jewish community, as well as towards Jews who don’t fulfil cultural norms and expectations.

Another focus group participant described the sense of ideological narrowness in the following way:

I mean we’re talking about post‐Holocaust Australia, Melbourne, and I think we’ve had a very strong and traditional community and as the next generations are going there is much more diversity but there is also much more dichotomy. As our religious bodies are becoming more right‐wing and dominated by one or two different, more extreme, sects they’re actually alienating to a larger extent the other side of things. But it’s not just them. I mean, I just see that there is a dichotomy now. Perhaps there always has been, and I think that there doesn’t seem to be too much of a middle ground. (Melb03)

In seeking the ‘middle ground’, an ideological openness, the speaker is referring to the challenges of an ideological conservatism that has taken hold of Jewish communities both in the US and in Australia.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 15 There have been some attempts to challenge and critique the ideological stronghold of mainstream roof‐body leadership through initiatives in social media and blogging such as @#Galus Australis, Jwire and, when it was active, @# A Sensible Jew. For example, see the editorial policy of Galus Australis:

Galus Australis is a forum for discussion and debate about Australian Jewish life. We’re interested in identity, culture, politics, religion, sociology, food and humour (to name a few). Sometimes even sport.

Galus Australis does not subscribe to any particular ideological viewpoint, and is committed to the value of robust and challenging debate. We endeavour to publish a range of viewpoints and welcome well‐written, considered (and controversial!) submissions from across the religious and political spectrum.

Each writer is responsible for the opinions expressed in their own posts, and the views expressed do not represent any Galus Australis editorial position.

It is difficult to tell how much interest such initiatives garner, and to quantify the extent to which they have shifted the status quo.

Organisations such as Stand Up (formerly Jewish Aid Australia) that focus Jewish personnel, financial resources and media attention on wider development and social justice causes outside of Israel and the Jewish community, provide an opportunity for Jews to be involved in Jewish communal activity without the parochialism they may associate with other elements of the organised Jewish community. Stand Up has expanded its programming in the past several years and continues to grow in response to Jewish families wanting to express their Jewishness through social justice work in the broader Australian and international community, in particular through Indigenous Australian and refugee and asylum seeker communities.

16 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Nurturing women’s leadership

One of the measures of success of a flourishing community is its capacity to access and use its talent. Nurturing and developing women’s leadership opportunities within community organisations helps make the community more accessible, accountable and representative. This excerpt focuses on women leaders’ reflections about women’s leadership.

Speaker 5: I think it’s been disappointing over the last two decades to see the relative absence of women in top executive positions in the general community.

Speaker 2: But particularly in our own Jewish community, there are few opportunities and a lack of encouragement by those around them for women to reach the highest level of leadership.

Speaker 5: I don’t know if I totally agree about the lack of encouragement of women’s leadership because two years ago when I first joined the xx board, the men on the board were actually very encouraging. It was very overwhelming for me with just one other person to be so much younger but they were very welcoming.

Speaker 2: I think there is encouragement of women to get onto boards but not to the actual presidential levels, not as the voices of the communities or the organisations. (Melb03)

Although women have led major organisations in welfare and philanthropy, school boards and , they are still dramatically under‐represented, especially in roles on Federal roof bodies that claim to represent the whole Jewish community. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry – according to their website in 2015 – has 3 out of 13 women on its executive, the Zionist Federation has 4 out of 5 states with male lay leadership. It is a notable development of the last few years that both the Jewish Community Council of Victoria and the Jewish Board of Deputies has female and male leaders on par with each other.

What will it take for women’s leadership opportunities at all levels to be on par with men’s? One of the key factors in determining leadership is the tendency of outgoing leaders to replace themselves with like‐minded successors. How can this tendency be interrupted? If women come forward with broad coalitional support, will that be strong enough to override self‐chosen successors?

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 17 Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community (AWP) is an organisation founded in 2001 in the US to address the anomaly of women being the majority of workers in the Jewish community yet holding the minority of leadership positions:

AWP has found that gender bias pervades Jewish communal life. Our 2003 study of federations identified some of the key factors that impede women’s advancement. These include the misperception that women are not ‘tough enough’ to lead while women who are tough enough are seen as too abrasive. This bias also extends to questioning women’s ability to solicit major annual gifts from male volunteer leaders. The weak human resources system, the challenge of work‐life balance and the effect of the ‘old boys club’ on executive search all add up to a leaky pipeline for talented women.

The following excerpt highlights the link between advancing women’s leadership in the community and making communal structures more inclusive and accessible.

Speaker 2: I think our challenge is to contain this diversity so that the people in our community feel they belong somewhere and that they’re not on the margins. All people should feel that they have access to the main communal organisations, that they could have a voice and that they could be part of it. However, as our children grow towards the type of Jewish person they want to be, we have to be less judgmental and give the young people an opportunity to have their own room in the community. How do we create that diversity and let people feel they’re part of our group?

Speaker 1: I don’t know if this is a feminist perspective or a left‐wing perspective but I think we’re led as a community with ‘male’ attributes or male values in a traditional way. I think ‘female’ attributes and values of diversity, flexibility, respect and process are important. As a woman I don’t think we’re a very female‐oriented community and I think there needs to be more expression of those values to make the changes we are talking about.

Speaker 4: It’s interesting because it’s almost as if that’s the culture of the community because that’s the family structure of people in the community.

Speaker 1: And the religion.

Speaker 4: And the history and that’s how it’s been in the past. I want to reflect on what was said before about inclusiveness and welcoming and also education. I think if people

18 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews learn more about the history, the traditions, the culture and the meaning of Judaism I think they’re going to be more engaged with it.

Speaker 5: I believe there are values that come with women in leadership. With quality leadership, a quality leader will bring healthy change. This change will foster tolerance and inclusion (in the wider sense) and really drive healthy movement in the community and I think that is most important going forward.

Speaker 2: I was thinking similarly that traditionally Judaism is being reflected in children and continuity; it has always been through women and through education of children. There is a generation of women that we need to keep educating, reinforcing Judaism’s importance both to get to the next generation and to inspire more women’s leadership. (Melb03)

While we need to be careful of characterising the desire for more openness and acceptance as a female attribute, being in a socially subordinate situation does raise awareness of the consciousness of ‘otherness’ and the need to be inclusive. People, such as women, who have experienced oppression, have a ‘double vision’ (Du Bois) that allows them to see the situation both from the inside and the outside, from multiple standpoints.

Practising “authentic” Judaism

Unlike the denominational split in the US (12% orthodox, 29% conservative, 41% reform, 18% other)2 Australia has a much smaller reform and an even smaller conservative presence. The vast majority of orthodox congregations are led by .

This orthodox predominance is coupled with a phenomenon, enacted by a significant proportion of the Jewish community, known as ‘orthodox non‐practising’. This means that many Jews who identity as ‘traditional’ may not observe the stringencies around Shabbat and the holidays, kosher food and (laws around menstruation and refraining from sexual intercourse). However, they maintain a belief that it is only strictly observant orthodox Jews who are ‘authentically’ Jewish. This is difficult philosophically because these Jews are simultaneously affirming themselves as orthodox and condemning themselves as non‐authentic.

2 2012 http://blog.beliefnet.com/religion101/?p=691 accessed 25/5/15

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 19 Some traditionalists argue that this is a good thing; that even if someone can’t live according to their ideals, at least they still hold them as ideals. Yet, in general, we assume that the way a person acts reflects his or her own ideals. In this situation, however, people are living their lives in one way and somehow deferring authenticity of Judaism to others living their lives in a different way.

This deferral of authenticity is changing inter‐generationally. While plural modes of Jewish life and culture have always existed, ideological pluralism in the community is gaining ground. Other forms of expression of Jewishness are being celebrated and affirmed as valid and authentic. The strength of university programming in Jewish studies, the development of other learning initiatives such as Limmud Oz, and the growth of Jewish Aid/Stand Up has helped create more solid ground for alternative, robust somewhat secular expressions of Jewish identity.

This shifting communal landscape is helping Australian Jews to take seriously the dimensions of their own realistic practice and beliefs, and conceptualise a sense of their own authenticity rather than deferring authenticity elsewhere. For those identifying with the tradition in religious ways, the establishment of more specialised and niche congregations in Melbourne, both orthodox and liberal, such as Kehilat Nitzan (the only conservative congregation in Melbourne), Hamayan, Kedem, Shira Hadasha, DaMinyan, the Secular Humanist , and Moishe House, the non‐shule community and others, as well as the changing demographics in major congregations has somewhat reduced this phenomenon of deferral of authenticity.

Major congregations that have flourished lately – and have prospective members on a waiting list such as Caulfield Shule – continue to innovate in programming and service to the broader community. For example, Ralph Genende is responsible for writing the “Prayer for Australia”, a prayer used by other congregations as well.

There may be some lag‐time for major organisations and educational institutions to embody a sense of Jewish pluralism. The recent new position for Victoria of Manager of Leadership and Vision is meant to develop this niche in the largest Jewish organisation in the state.

Barriers between Jews

The excerpts below highlight how religious belief and/or practice can separate Jews from each other and delineate Jewish identity.

Speaker 2: Chabad can be very welcoming … there’s a difference between welcoming non‐ religious Jews and people who converted reform.

20 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Speaker 3: Liberals already accept you, it doesn’t matter as long you have one parent who is Jewish, it doesn’t have to be through your mother.

Speaker 5: I see reform as so different to what I was brought up with. I went to a service at the liberal shul the other day for someone’s grandparent who passed away and I felt it was a mockery of Judaism. I respect the religion as black and white but I choose not to live it, if that makes sense. (Melb03)

The following extract shows that people of different varieties of Jewish observance are often subjected to judgment and alienation. The speakers also point to the challenges of creating an inviting environment for Jews who want to participate in Jewish activities. (See Sid Schwarz, Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews can Transform the Synagogue, Jewish Lights Publishing, 2003).

The comment made by speaker 5 “I respect the religion as black and white but I choose not to live it” raises a lot of questions. It embodies the perspective of deferring the authenticity of one’s Jewish life. This Jew understands Judaism in a certain “black and white” way, and this is the way that he or she expresses “respect” for Judaism. However, this respectful attitude to Judaism somehow means that he or she chooses “not to live it”. What are the relative benefits of respecting something and keeping it at arm’s length as opposed to dropping some of the “respect” but finding a way to connect in the present?

Interviewer: Is there anything that struck you that could be done better?

Speaker 3: In a school?

Interviewer: Or even across the community.

Speaker 3: A million and one things.

Interviewer: What, in particular? Like if you had to pick two or three things that could be done better?

Speaker 3: In order to what?

Interviewer: In order to ensure better continuity from one generation to the next.

Speaker 3: I think less alienation from, for example, youth movements and synagogues. I think a lot of them are very alienating to people who might be seen to be less religious.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 21 They might be a little bit intimidated to attend synagogues … I’m speaking from personal experience.

I think being more accepting and tolerant of people who aren’t on their level of religiosity, maybe not looking at people as more inferior in their religious aspect, because I think a lot of people who aren’t religious think that religious people look down upon them in that respect. And maybe just being more accepting and tolerant and not looking down their noses at people who are less religious.

Interviewer: Yes.

Speaker 4: If you’re religious you’ve got to follow it.

Speaker 3: Yeah, follow it for yourself, not look at someone else and say, ‘Ah, you’re less of a person because you don’t follow God like I do.’

Speaker 6: Well, yeah, there’s a lot of like, you know, just meaningless jokes. But there’s a truth behind that. I’ve got a lot of experience with my family and their friends who know people who haven’t been accepted into more religious families, purely based on the fact that they’re not religious … (Melb01)

The excerpt also shows how different expressions of religiosity can be a barrier between people. The respondent coming from a less religiously observant perspective (such as Speaker 3) thinks that more religiously observant people judge his religious expression. It is difficult to know how much of this judgment is projected and how much of the judgment is real because our speaker did not proffer examples.

But perhaps it is not relevant whether or not this judgment is actual or projected; the fact is that it highlights the challenge of fostering an atmosphere of acceptance and respect across difference within the Jewish community.

Challenging the orthodox hegemony

Whereas previous generations may have been prepared to risk their relationships with their children and grandchildren because of their own adherence to the tradition, Speaker 2 (below) both acknowledges the importance of tradition and makes it clear that she wouldn’t let anything come in the way of her family relationships. This shows a marked difference from her parents’ generation

22 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews where some people did allow these differences to ruin family relationships – such as the case of child who marries a non‐Jew being estranged from the family.

Speaker 2: I certainly come from this more conservative background, that’s where I was twenty years ago, and I’m far more tolerant. I’m not looking for intermarriage and I’m not looking for assimilation but I’m not looking for the loss of children and grandchildren. I would like us to move away from this sense that those most orthodox own the community. That’s a matter of some concern to me and I’m not orthodox and I’m not reform but it’s a concern to me, it doesn’t speak to me of a healthy community. (Melb03)

Speaker 5 (above) respects what she sees as authentic Judaism but she defers its practice to others when she says: ‘I respect it as black and white but I choose not to live it, if that makes sense.’

The orthodox hegemony in Australia is particularly notable when compared with the comments of participants who have lived in the US. There, the balance between the denominational affiliations is totally different and the discussion about religious pluralism and robust Jewish life takes on a different and, at times, more flexible and nuanced tenor.

Speaker 6: So I’m from America, where there are six million Jews, but my city only had 50,000 Jews at the time. So, not big in comparison to other Jewish communities in America, but it’s the same size as Sydney, I believe. I think it was a similar kind of community, because it was geographically centred around one area, or two areas, I guess.

Interviewer: Yes.

Speaker 6: It’s that intimate.

Interviewer: Is there anything about Sydney that strikes you as very different from the community in which you grew up, or is it similar?

Speaker 6: Yeah, there’s a lot that strikes – different. One is the fact that most people are non‐ orthodox, and when I say non‐orthodox, I mean a mixture of reform, reconstructionist and conservative, and that the orthodox population is quite small. A lot of my friends didn’t go to Jewish day school; there was one Jewish day school that served the whole population and it was small. People tended to go to public school and be involved either going to summer camp or their youth group

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 23 which is generally denominationally affiliated and not Zionist. There was the reform youth movement and the conservative youth movement and the orthodox youth movement and BBYO, which is pluralistic. (Syd03)

This excerpt reflects some of the differences in the norms of a US city with a similar Jewish population as Sydney and/or Melbourne. The main differences seem to be a greater affiliation with liberal streams of Judaism, and that summer camps and/or youth movements are denominationally affiliated rather than Zionist‐affiliated.

There is an absence of comparative research between Australian and US Jewish communities. Informal comparison and anecdotal evidence usually reduces the differences between the communities to a question of time and degrees of assimilation: Australia is two or three generations behind the US and it is ‘just a matter of time’ before Australia ‘catches up’. This reduction obviously misses the nuances in both Australian and US Jewish life, and further research and investigation is needed to explore the relationship – similarities and differences – between Jewishness in major centres of diasporic Jewish life today.

Chapter summary

This introductory chapter explored how different understandings of Jewishness impact the way we look at research about Jewish communities.

In a more normative approach to Judaism, Jewish identity is evaluated according to defined Jewish acts and expressions – such as observing Shabbat, keeping kosher etc. By contrast, a more meaning‐ based constructionist approach to Judaism looks at the role Judaism plays in the life of individuals. This chapter problematises research that focuses on the more normative approach.

This chapter also explored the emergence of religious pluralism that encourages a broader constituency in the Jewish community to become involved. This diversity is strengthened when it is expressed through leadership. Although women have served and continue to serve on boards and in leadership of communal organisations, they are particularly underrepresented in the leadership of roof‐body and other organisations that represent Australian Jewry.

24 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews CHAPTER 2

Reflections on Jewish day school education

Jewish day school education is often considered the jewel in the crown of Melbourne and Sydney Jewish community infrastructure. Jewish day schools have benefited from massive investment by the community and major philanthropists, and received significant government support.

The Jewish Continuity report of the Gen08 survey found that Jewish day school education was ‘effective in identity formation’ when it was combined with other factors:

Examination of survey data utilising a range of different methodologies establishes that identity formation is best understood in terms of a number of inter‐related factors. The five key factors are: a young person’s home environment; school attended; form of Judaism/ synagogue affiliation; youth group involvement; and experience of Israel. The findings show that the more consistent and integrated these factors, the stronger one’s Jewish identity. In isolation, individual factors such as schooling or a visit to Israel will generally have limited impact. It is the extent of coherence or synergy between the five key factors that provides the strongest basis for Jewish continuity.

Similarly, it concluded that, ‘Identity is thus not to be understood simply in terms of whether one attends or does not attend a Jewish school.’

The qualitative data obtained through focus groups of young Australian Jews in Sydney and Melbourne sheds further light on the discussion of Jewish day schools by exposing narratives of how these young Jews experienced Jewish day school education.

Skeptics of our research have argued that recent graduates of the day schools may not be reliable sources for considering the impact of Jewish education; that one can expect them to be critical of their educational experiences at this stage in their lives.

I was well aware of this risk in the analysis of the transcripts and hence I have not included participants who were consistently negative and/or didn’t explain the rationale behind their negativity. Rather, my analysis seeks to establish:

[1] Substantive issues raised in the discussions.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 25 [2] The views of participants who sought to present a balanced assessment – showing awareness of both their positive and negative experiences.

[3] The views of those whose day school education was completed some years ago, including those who are now university graduates or advanced in their university studies, and can reflect on their Jewish day school education.

As the following respondent demonstrates, they may also become more critical with distance from the experience and after accumulating different perspectives:

If you’d asked me at the end of Year 12 I wouldn’t have been able to come up with a critical thing about my Jewish day school experience. I loved it for the secular education, for the social aspect, for the Jewish education, everything about it.

With a little bit of reflection, I say that it was very high on the values content, but not good enough on Jewish literacy. I appreciate some things like the fact that we did prayers every day, but we didn’t do them three times a day … I really appreciate that I know how to do all those prayers.

But I don’t know enough Jewish studies which is problematic after thirteen years. I also don’t know enough Hebrew, which is also – I studied that for nine years. (Syd05)

The Jewish ‘bubble’

Focus group participants who attended Jewish day schools repeatedly discussed their sense of separation from the mainstream Australian community and their search for a place of belonging that straddles both Jewish identification and ‘Australianness’.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think just our generation in general is quite apathetic, as someone said before … It’s like the Jewish bubble can be really good or it can be really bad … I personally find that Sydney has a very snobby Jewish bubble and so that just pushes so many people away once they’ve finished high school. They just want to get away from it. But if it was very productive, warm, which maybe to some people it is, then it can offer more encouragement to keep being part of this community.

Speaker 3: Mine’s going to be a little bit of a long‐winded one but I’ll try and keep it short. I’ve been in xx school my whole life and I’ve also been in a youth movement my whole life,

26 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews so I’ve always been inside that Jewish bubble … But my whole time in high school I felt like I was stuck in the bubble but I didn’t fit into the bubble.

So as soon as I got out of high school I really tried to move away from the Jewish bubble and try and have some more non‐Jewish friends and try to have some more cultural diversity in my life and not just be around Jewish people. And I really struggled with it. I’m still struggling. I find that because I’ve been in that Jewish bubble my whole life, I can’t relate to non‐Jews the same as someone who didn’t go to a Jewish school.

And I find myself very intimidated by the process of trying to find non‐Jewish friends. Even at university I’m scared. I’m happy, I’m proud to say that I’m Jewish, I’m proud to say that I spent a year in Israel and I go to a predominantly non‐Jewish university and there are a lot of Muslim and Christian people there. And I get quite intimidated by the fact that I have to try and relate to people who have no idea about where I’m from or what I do. Or trying to explain to them that I’m the head of a Jewish organisation who runs camps for youth for free and, you know, that we have to put in all this effort.

It’s just easier and more convenient to try and stick in my bubble, and that’s quite an upsetting fact for me. But I also think that Israel is the major thing that will keep the future generations that are maybe trying to get out of the bubble like I was, or trying to, you know, maybe trying to become more in touch with the Judaism or their love for Israel. I think Israel is the way to do it. I think once they go to Israel their feet touch the soil, then they instantly have that connection that they didn’t have before. And I just think having Jewish friends is always the way to maintain Jewish continuity. (Syd02)

This rich excerpt addresses the experience of attendees of Jewish day school as being inside a Jewish bubble – the bubble referring to the challenges experienced in relationship to non‐Jews.

Speaker 3 expresses ambivalence about being in the bubble. On the one hand she wants to ‘try to have some diversity’ in her life while on the other hand she is overwhelmed by the challenge this brings; as she says, ‘It’s just easier and more convenient to try and stick in my bubble, and that’s quite an upsetting fact for me.’

The speaker suggests that one’s ‘feet touching the soil of Israel is a way out of that bubble’. It is ironic that, according to this speaker, one needs to travel all the way to Israel to break out of the bubble.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 27 The implication here is that life in Israel is somehow more real than in Australia, and that connection to Jewish identity is more easily accessible there.

As the speaker indicated, students who have been in wholly Jewish school environments can find it challenging to relate to non‐Jews when they go to university:

Other than interschool sport … no concept of fitting in with the broader community … My first non‐Jewish friends were at uni and I felt nervous about telling them I was Jewish.(Melb01)

The above extract expresses one of the potential downfalls of Jewish day school education: it can isolate Jews from the broader community. This clearly presents a problem. Being exposed to other Jewish children and Jewish education in the day school environment can help build connection to Jewishness. But how can this experience be tempered by a sense of connection and belonging to the broader community in which young people live?

Being ‘Jewed out’

Not only did respondents express a sense of being closed off from Australian society, they also expressed overload with Jewish input, to the exclusion of other things. They called this being ‘Jewed out’:

Speaker 1: I’d say the biggest challenge is assimilation and what I hear from people who go to Jewish schools: this idea of being ‘Jewed out’. You know, once you finish school you want to detach yourself from the community because you’ve had enough of this Jewish bubble, so people are very keen to step away from that. The question is whether they’ll come back later on. (Syd04)

Another Jewish day school graduate described being ‘Jewed out’ as:

… being bombarded with so much at school that you get sick of it … there is no discourse … it’s being drilled in to your head … there’s no intellectual growth … you need a break. (Syd04)

The extract below raises the question of how Jewish culture, history and textual tradition can be taught in ways that engage students’ creativity and imagination in an expansive, inspiring way rather than in a way that might lead them to think that they have exhausted their interest in Jewish life and learning.

Well, quite a number of teenagers who I know from x and y, a lot of the kids I’ve come across

28 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews in the last three years, were very unhappy with their Jewish identity or the type of Judaism that the schools were giving them. And a lot of them seem to reject aspects of it rather than accept it. So I don’t know how that works with the whole bell curve of kids coming back to Judaism afterwards … a lot of them have the feeling that the Judaism that’s presented to them is flawed or unattractive. (Syd04)

The content of Jewish day school education

Respondents spoke about a certain approach to education and pedagogy that did not necessarily facilitate the intellectual and creative growth of the students. As one participant said:

I don’t want to hear another thing about learning about the Jewish festivals because it’s rote learning, it’s done every single year in the exact same way; there’s nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing exciting about it. (Syd02)

Another respondent commented that school was not a place where his questions were welcomed, a crucial component to his connection with his heritage:

It happened in the last years of school, in Year 11 and 12 when the questions naturally start to occur in everybody. When they started to occur in me I found that x did not have the atmosphere in order to safely deal with my questions in a way, which did not try to stop me from asking them.

I felt that there are a lot of ways to look at these things and I’m a philosophy student. And I study philosophy of religion. So this is my job to pose these questions. And I found that people deal with religion much better in a secular sense than they do in a religious sense. (Syd05)

Many respondents in the focus groups talked about the importance of family and social connections in their sense of belonging to the Jewish community. This is especially so for youth who attended Jewish schools. However, for some of these students, the social connection was offset by negativity when it came to the content of their Jewish education. One person said:

… it is a sense of belonging to a family … they thought it was Jewish but I just thought it was a family … the Jewish stuff gave me a really negative feeling … that I would never let anyone indoctrinate me … the positives come from the secular education and not the Jewish education. (Syd05)

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 29 This person expressed a common ambivalence among the young people in the focus groups – they have a sense of belonging but also feel stifled and, in some cases, indoctrinated.

Some young people who attended Jewish schools were shocked when they realised how little they knew beyond the Jewish world:

[I was] shocked at how little I knew about the world …I couldn’t actually discuss anything …(Syd06)

This sense of not being equipped to mix within the broader society concerns social connection but it also expresses young people’s perception of having an education that is more particular than universal. For example, it is possible to graduate from a Jewish day school without learning that forty‐ four million other people died in World War Two besides the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Sometimes students of Jewish day schools have over‐inflated perceptions of their Jewish knowledge. Because they have been to a Jewish school they can mistakenly think they know all there is to know about Judaism and Jewish people. Consequently, many Jewish day school graduates maintain school‐ level approaches to Jewish text and culture throughout their adult lives as opposed to developing more nuanced and sophisticated frameworks for relating to the tradition. Paradoxically, this could result in day school graduates being further alienated from a lifelong Jewish education. This has further ramifications for the education of their children. In addition, many day school graduates hold erroneous stereotypes about other Jews not within their social, economic and religious denominational grouping.

The *Summertime program

(*Summertime is a pseudonym for a Jewish educational camp. It was important to mention this program because of the impact it had on focus group participants but since it is no longer running it was not necessary to use it’s name.)

A program run by Jewish day schools that elicited the most attention within the focus groups was *Summertime. *Summertime has taken different forms throughout the years but it was essentially an intensive school camp with religious programming and content. It started off as a joint program in Sydney and Melbourne run by Yeshiva University. Soon after in Sydney it was taken over by the Jewish Agency, a branch of the World Zionist Organisation, and in Melbourne it continued another ten or so years under the auspices of Yeshiva University until it was passed on to the Jewish Agency.

30 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews The comments below about *Summertime are based on the experience of students from over ten years ago. Interestingly, Gross and Rutland (2014) describe *Summertime in more positive terms. This may be the result of programmatic changes over the past years.

Former participants of *Summertime were very judgmental of the program and its emotional effects, some even describing it as the experience that repelled them from Judaism. The data relating to *Summertime as a program has been retained and addressed in this study not as an accurate description of current practice, but rather as an indicator of the positive negative effects of certain types of religious education.

Speaker 1: Most people hate *Summertime.

Speaker 2: There’s another person in charge now. *Summertime was based on basically breaking you down, saying you have no meaning in your life, and then because you’re so vulnerable emotionally they had the answer, and it was Judaism. But I know that now the program is more a combination of intellectual and emotional. I wrote a program for Year 11 in *Summertime now and it was all about basically questioning why they do what they do. We didn’t provide them with an answer. We asked them why they go to shul on Yom Kippur, why. And they answered, ‘Oh, because of my parents.’ But why?

And I actually landed up having lots of religious kids in my group and I said to them, ‘So you pray but do you actually know what you’re saying?’ And they said, ‘Oh, no.’

Speaker 3: But, to be honest, that’s the view that I have of *Summertime. I would have rather been anywhere than at *Summertime. I honestly, I hated it. It felt like being at a cult’s brainwash camp. It was disgusting and I don’t really care who it comes down to, but the leadership allowing it to get that far to the point where it’s exactly what she said, it’s they literally send you so much bull that you were at your most vulnerable point of, ‘I don’t know who I am, I don’t know why I’m here, what is my purpose in life’, and then they gave you God, and that was it. Honestly, I tried to go into each *Summertime with a positive energy and I came out feeling like I’ve just sat through a week of brainwashing. (Syd02)

Describing the experience as ‘brainwashing’, the respondents criticised *Summertime for not encouraging them to use their analytical faculties.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 31 The respondent below used programs such as *Summertime as an opportunity to learn and reconsider his own approach to education as a youth leader:

Speaker 6: Because it’s very trendy to say we were indoctrinated. We were brainwashed. And what they’re basically saying is that at certain points in their education they didn’t get that freedom of choice. They were put into camp where they had to go to programs, where they had to listen to what was being said. And if you tried to question what you were being told, you were shut down.

Speaker: 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6: And that’s not a generalisation. That’s the truth. So that’s what my experience was. But then positively, I learned that this was what I didn’t want for my Jewish education. And I didn’t want for my Jewish learning. So I decided to go the other way and start teaching other people and start learning and start questioning. And I think that was positive. (Syd05)

Another participant expressed her reservations about *Summertime in a sympathetic way, acknowledging some of the structural challenges:

I know one of the problems that people always used to complain about is *Summertime, which is the camp we used to go once a year and how ‘brainwashy’ they thought it was. But there’s not much you can really say … it’s hard because the school is an orthodox school and the people who lead it are orthodox Jews and so they’re pushing one idea including one idea of and one idea of Judaism. And some people get very turned off by that and put up a wall and just start fighting it. And some people embrace it and then you have people who become religious when their families weren’t religious before. (Syd04)

This young student recognised the difficult predicament of Jewish families who send their children to orthodox day schools that neither reflect their own ideology nor their practice.

Although this program is not currently in action, it is still significant to hear the negative ramifications. It sheds light on the importance of programming in affecting the future Jewish life and identification of students.

Over the past ten or more years, across the board, Jewish day schools in Australia have been consistently updating their Jewish studies formal and informal curricula and a new cadre of staff have been taking leadership in these areas. Some have taken leadership as “Director of Jewish Life” and

32 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews others in a variety of administrative and teaching roles, encompassing elements of both formal and informal Jewish education.

Dissonance between home and day school environments

The problem is that the parents portray Judaism as a drag, therefore the kids see it as a drag. Lots of kids in Year 8 ring up their parents saying, ‘Oh, the madrichah (youth leader) said this, this and this’, and the parents don’t listen to him.

Because they don’t actually want their kids to turn out religious. I know that a parent once said to the head of *Summertime, I’d rather my kid be in Kings Cross hooking up with some random guy on a Saturday night than hanging out with one of your madrichim. (Syd02)

Evident here is parental antipathy towards Jewish observance, and the mismatch between parental values and school ideology. This sets up major challenges in transmitting and teaching an authentic expression of Jewish life because of the inherent inconsistencies between school and home.

In some cases the family has provided an environment of rich Jewish content characterised by a spirit of inquiry and curiosity that is at odds with the mainstream day school community. This phenomenon is often apparent when it comes to women’s participation in ritual life and viewpoints on Israel.

One woman spoke about the dissonance between the values she learnt at home and those apparent in the community:

My family is progressive … I grew up with women having equal access. When I first got to school x, the batmitzvah pageant was very traumatic for me … I hated seeing the way women were treated in relation to their rite of passage ceremony. I tried to get involved in the B’nei program and I got called to the but I didn’t feel like there was any way for me to study that at school xx … boys had their way of doing things … not really open for me … I was met with ‘what are you doing?’ and ‘why are you doing that?’ (Melb01)

Jonathan Woocher, a leading US Jewish educator, argues that a Jewish education that addresses people in a way that’s relevant to their lives will result in students embracing their Jewish identity and community:

… it will be embraced as learners discover that Jewish tradition and Jewish community can help them live richer, fuller, more purposeful lives. Too often today our curricula focus on a

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 33 narrow range of skills and rituals without connecting to the larger issue(s) that animate genuine concern and conversation and the larger world in which we live (blogpost).

Forming Jewish networks

On a pragmatic level, many Jewish Australians, especially in Melbourne and Sydney, recognise the benefits of having Jewish networks, many of which were formed through attendance at Jewish day schools, for business and social mobility:

Social benefits that it gives you for life … that’s why I want my family raised Jewish … sports centre, temple, business … you can feel all the benefits of being Jewish … I’ve been introduced to people who I don’t think I’ve got much in common and then … I realise we are Jewish and we have the same kind of life … lifestyle. (Melb01)

This comment acknowledges the comfort of being with other Jews and being part of a community. To feel a sense of belonging in an increasingly individualised and alienated society is of great value to many people.

Yet there is another aspect to the Jewish network formed in day schools that must be acknowledged: these networks tend to constitute Jews from middle‐owning classes due to the high cost of a Jewish education (which can reach AU$30,000 per child in some schools, including extra expenses). The significant group of Jewish families who receive subsidies to attend Jewish schools should also not be understated. There is no doubt that the issue of privilege certainly exists within the Jewish community, resembling the WASP establishment but within the Jewish context. Hence, networking opportunities – available for those who attend day schools – possibly exclude Jews who can’t afford the day schools, or whose parents make an ideological decision to send their children to government schools.

Alternatives to Jewish day school education

Because of the centrality of the Jewish day school movement in the Australian Jewish imagination, and the massive investment of communal resources, there is insufficient (although growing) imagination in the Jewish community about how Jewish life can flourish for families who don’t send their kids to Jewish schools.

This lack of imagination has been further precipitated in past years (although changing now) by the fact that those who provide Jewish education to non‐day school children are parents of children who are within the day‐school system, rather than the parents of those seeking this alternative education.

34 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Consequently, there is a somewhat paternalistic approach to the education that does not necessarily see it for its own implicit value; instead, the day school system is considered to be the ultimate goal, as is reflected in the below comment:

There are people we know who could afford to go to Jewish schools … there are 20 per cent of parents who could afford it … they just need a little push to understand what Jewish schools could offer. (Melb02)

The above comment assumes that someone who doesn’t send his or her child to a Jewish day school must be lacking information. But perhaps they are well aware of what Jewish schools can offer? Perhaps they are making informed and ideological choices? Indeed, more and more families are choosing to send their children to government schools and to strengthen their supplementary Jewish educational opportunities.

Sometimes parents and volunteers who help provide education for Jewish students in non‐Jewish schools, and who send their own kids to Jewish schools, cast the decision in light of a human rights issue. One lay leader said:

It’s never the kids making the choice. That kid has just as much right to a Jewish education … those kids and their future … it’s never their decision. (Melb02)

The comment above indicates a limited viewpoint when thinking about a Jewish future for children who don’t attend Jewish day schools. Indeed, Jewish schools are seen as the be‐all and end‐all; the answer to Jewish continuity and tradition.

Ironically though, many parents who send their children to Jewish schools admit to ‘outsourcing’ their children’s Jewish education to the school; the parents themselves don’t adopt an active role in instilling a Jewish identity in their children. Hence, parents look to the day school system to influence and strengthen the identity of the whole family. This is a questionable strategy because Jewish life becomes something theoretical, an ideal, maybe even fetishised, and doesn’t get tasted through lived experience and home ritual.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 35 The role of informal Jewish education

Despite the community’s prioritisation of the Jewish day school system, informal Jewish education – such as that offered by youth movements, synagogue educational programs and United Jewish Education Board (UJEB, Vic) and Board of Jewish Education (BJE, NSW) classes and camps3– plays a significant role in fostering Jewish identity.

The youth movements play a significant role in fostering social connection and positive experience in relation to one’s Jewishness and to Israel. They also make a substantial contribution to Jewish education in Australia.

Many young people reported that the youth movements are the reason they remained connected to the Jewish community:

After I left school xx it was the youth movements that kept me engaged in the community … the youth movements have a big role to play. (Syd02)

This may be especially true for students not attending Jewish schools. Youth movements provide a space to be with other Jews and to connect with Jewish learning and culture in a fun way:

As someone who didn’t go to a Jewish school, if I didn’t go to a youth movement I wouldn’t be so involved and active in the community as I am now … [I would be] further assimilated … Youth movements are very effective in holding Jewish identity, especially for kids who didn’t get a formal upbringing …

Even for youth who attended Jewish schools, their involvement with youth groups played a significant role in affirming their Jewish identity:

But I will also say my youth movement was an important vehicle of Jewish education as was my thirteen years of Jewish day school. And the fact that that’s not being asked about is also problematic. But it was as important as a serious educational vehicle and a hell of a lot cheaper and more fun. (Syd05)

It’s hard to judge which factors are more predominant in encouraging Jewish engagement – the social networks established through youth movement participation or the activities that promote

3 Both UJEB and BJE are educational organisations that provide offerings for Jewish students who do not go to Jewish day schools.

36 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews knowledge, connection and identification within the group. Perhaps these two factors are inextricably linked and work in tandem.

Whatever the case, the value of informal Jewish education cannot be underplayed. This has been recognised by major Jewish schools over the past decade, many of which have employed informal Jewish education staff to complement their formal program:

And no matter if you’ve learnt it a million times over, if you come to a youth movement and learn it in an informal fun way that’s different and new and innovative, it’s still an exciting topic to learn, whether or not you’ve rote learned it already. So I think that’s why the youth movements are going to be the things that shape the Jewish continuity element of the youth of today rather than the schools. (Syd02)

One speaker concluded his statement about his youth movement experience by lamenting, ‘ … I don’t think they are as effective anymore in sheer reach.’(Syd02)

Has there been a negative downturn or does an organisation always turn over its leaders and experience periods of ebb and flow? It’s hard to know. Other youth movement leaders mentioned a lack of ideological commitment on the part of both leaders and participants. It seems people are not so much connecting to the ideology of a movement as they are connecting to the experience on offer:

Meetings have gone down [in attendance] … Previously you were part of an all‐inclusive year … a lot more people see themselves as ‘I am going to this youth movement’s camp’, not a person who belongs to this youth movement. (Syd02)

The fact that a young person goes to camp yet doesn’t necessarily belong wholeheartedly to the movement and attend regular sessions could also be symptomatic of a broader phenomenon mentioned in Chapter 1 about our tendency to belong to several spheres at once. Increasingly, our experiences are not unified but more disparate and we seek the fulfilment of our needs from a range of places. It is more sporadic, based on an encounter, and less based on fully developed long‐term programs with a single organisation.

Despite evidence of the importance of the youth movements, they continually struggle with a lack of funds and acknowledgment of their role by the broader Jewish community. In fact, youth movements are a massive potential force for engagement that could be harnessed if they were respected and nurtured. One youth movement leader said:

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 37 If they had the money they could rule the world … where you see where money goes in the community … if they had the money youth movements could be uber‐powerful and change the Jewish community in a big way. (Syd02)

Another youth movement leader commented:

The same thing happens every single year. If the youth movement goes to the xx and says, ‘Please can you consider the youth movements for funding’, and there are all of these loopholes and well, ‘No, we can’t because you’re not tax deductible, etc, etc.’ And they’re always very quick to find reasons why not to fund us, but, you know, every year they say we’re in negotiation. We’re all trying to be optimistic but history has shown us that it doesn’t exactly work out … If we had more community organisations pushing the x to give us money, I think that would be a very good solution … but at the moment it’s just the youth movements advocating for the youth movements and that doesn’t get us anywhere because we’re a bunch of teenagers in their eyes …

It also reflects the entire community’s attitude towards youth movements … the only people who know the importance of youth movements are the people within the youth movements. And the outside really doesn’t see the importance of it anymore. (Syd02)

Embracing both a Jewish and an Australian identity

As discussed above, for some Jews the price of being well connected to other Jews is being alienated from other Australians and not quite feeling Australian. What does it mean to ‘feel Australian’? How do other Australians ‘feel Australian’? We lack a model that incorporates both a firm and celebratory connection to Jewishness and a robust belonging to Australian society. It is important to note that this is not just a Jewish problem, but a challenge faced by other ethnics groups in multicultural Australia who also want to maintain a sense of their identity, and a sense of their Australianness.

In her paper, ‘Social capital within ethnic communities’, Australian sociologist Dimitri Giorgas says that:

… the ties that bind members to the community often exclude outsiders … membership in a community often demands conformity to prescriptive norms, thereby inhibiting individual innovation … social capital may stifle the acquisition of human capital and other benefits made available outside the community.

38 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews In Giorgas’s paradigm, the connectedness that Jews feel to Jewish community compromises their sense of belonging to the broader Australian community.

However, there may also be another way of conceptualising this other than Giorgias’s social capital analysis. Let’s consider a model that brings both Australianness and Jewishness together where one is not necessarily at the expense of the other. This would be a model that embraces multiple allegiances and identities and doesn’t consider the association and identification with one identity as detracting from the strength of another identity.

It could be argued that US Jews are much more comfortable with owning both their Jewishness and their Americanness. The question remains as to why many Australian Jews, especially those highly ensconced in Jewish social and organisational life, feel a lack in their sense of Australianness.

Multiple spheres of belonging

‘… we’re fighting an inherent paradox … we want people to become involved but we don’t want them to be too insular … how?’ (Syd03)

In the last decade, sociologists of Jewish life have talked about belonging in terms of multiple spheres of belonging (Horowitz, 2004). This means that someone could be affiliated and involved with their local synagogue, and regularly attend yoga classes and retreats and be part of that community; someone could celebrate their life cycles Jewishly, rich with Jewish symbols and text and also have a non‐Jewish partner and may or may not be bringing up his or her children as Jewish. Equally, someone could be fully identified with a social change movement and simultaneously be deeply Jewishly involved. Jews are, and have always been, exposed to a range of different ideas and experiences that are refracted through to the way they experience their Jewishness.

Many Australian Jews have a sense of belonging both to some kind of Jewish family and/or community as well as varying degrees of integration in and belonging to Australian society. Even where Judaism may be not defined as a ‘central’ element in someone’s life, his or her Jewishness will pervade in many ways. Because of this it is unclear how much we gain when we ask respondents to quantify how important Judaism is to them. We understand more about their relationship to Judaism by learning how they think about and live their lives.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 39 Allowing for multiple allegiances

The social insularity of Jewish day schools makes it difficult to inculcate a sense of multiple allegiances and belongings. All too often, someone who feels completely at home in Australia tends to feel alienated from their Jewishness, and one who is totally embedded in Jewish community is alienated from other Australians.

Israeli Jews living in Australia recognise some of the insularity that characterises the tight‐knit Jewish community. Indeed, Israeli Jews can offer a unique perspective on Jewish identity in Australia as they are located in a liminal juncture between being part of and identifying with the Jewish community yet simultaneously belonging to the Israeli community.

… some Jewish people, even Australian Jews who went to a Jewish school like my husband, most of his friends who went to Jewish schools, they were living in a cocoon of ‘these are the Jewish people’. You don’t really mix too much with people who are not Jewish because it’s a bit too scary whereas Israelis come to Australia, they mix with all different [people], they don’t only mix with these Jews, they feel comfortable. That’s why my husband used to tell me at the beginning, ‘I don’t see the things that you show me.’ (Byron01)

Israeli Jews living in Australia may provide an instructive model of people who are embedded in both their Jewish and Australian identities. This capacity to embrace multiple allegiances may be due to the establishment of their Jewish identities in Israel, in a majority Jewish culture – a sense that lingers when they move to Australia with a minority Jewish culture. Because their Jewishness has often been conflated with their Israeliness, they seem to have an easier time mixing with non‐Jews whom they don’t see as other as much in terms of religion as in nationality.

New expressions of Jewish identity

Many Jews express their Jewish identity through the concept of ‘tikkun olam’ – social justice work that is directed towards the community at large.

According to recent surveys of Jewish identity such as the “Pew Research Center’s 2013 Survey of U.S. Jews”, more than half (56%) of the people surveyed say that working for justice and equality is essential to what being Jewish means to them.4 As younger Jews are connecting to a more universal

4 http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish‐american‐beliefs‐attitudes‐culture‐survey/accessed 22/12/14

40 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews approach, embracing all humans within the context of their Jewish identity, they are reacting to what they perceive as the ‘insularity’ of the Jewish community:

Possible reasons why somebody would be turned off is that they might see the community as very insular and very closed‐minded and very, you know, ‘I’m only for myself, I’m not for anyone else. I’m only going to look inwards.’ And, you know, someone who doesn’t connect to Judaism in the religious sense, so they don’t believe in God, might just see it as just too inward …

If that person is more open to new cultures and new experiences, they need to connect to Judaism through an avenue that involves those things. That’s what I love about Judaism: it encompasses everything and you can relate to Judaism through social justice and through all these other means … (Syd04)

In response to a similar claim about universalism, one respondent mentioned Jewish Aid Australia (now Stand Up) as the most important organisation in the community because it harnesses universal human values and channels them through a Jewish vessel, through Jewish values and ideals. No one should have to decide between their identification with being Jewish and their commitment to universal values.

The meaning of ‘home’

Is home a singular thing, something we can only have one of? Or is home an attitude, an experience that can be felt in multiple places, even simultaneously?

The statement below raises the possibility that rather than needing to feel at home in only one place, we can have many homes:

…you see Germans meet with Germans, or you see Indians meet with Indians and you see Australians meet with Australians, it’s just a certain kind of communication and the Israelis have that communication which is very warming and strong … I still have that very much with Israelis and I love it and when you’re overseas and you see Israelis, you feel home. It doesn’t matter where you are, if you see Israelis or Jews, you think, ‘Oh yeah, sweet, I’m home.’ But I feel a different something with Australians that is also ‘homeing’ for me. (Byron01)

The speaker’s capacity to dwell simultaneously in different homes could provide the language and imaginative possibilities for how Australian Jews belong to both Jewishness and to Australianness, both in thicker and more meaningful and connected ways.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 41 What might this belonging to Australianness and Jewishness look like? What are new ways for deep Jewish engagement that is open to the world and secure enough for a robust exchange and mutual sharing?

Chapter summary

This chapter explored some experiences of Jewish day school attendees. While those who attended non‐Jewish day schools envy the social connections and knowledge attained by Jewish day school attendees, they also appreciate their access to multicultural Australia, and to an education that is broader than the offerings of Jewish day schools. Some of them have been involved in youth movements and experienced this as a very important source of connection to other Jews and to Judaism.

Many respondents reported feeling like they were in a bubble, separate and not belonging to Australian society, and that it was hard to break out of that bubble after school. In some cases, a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish community coincided with a strong sense of alienation from the general community as evidenced in the focus groups. This issue did not come up in the Gen 08 survey because it was not asked about.

In the focus groups, Israeli Jews living in Australia expressed their lived experience of the possibility of feeling both at home in Australia and elsewhere.

42 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews CHAPTER 3

Interrogating continuity: intergenerational opportunities and the relationship between parents and children

‘I was very black and white and now I’m more grey.’

Nowhere is the dialectic between continuity and transformation more apparent than in relationships between parents and children. On the one hand, children perpetuate the genetic material of their parents and internalise their emotional history and cultural expressions. Yet on the other hand, both children and parents acknowledge a sense of rupture and difference in the way they approach being Jewish and how they see themselves in relation to the world and their contemporaries.

Some young adults have resisted involvement in community institutions because they believe these organisations represent the interests and agenda of their parents and therefore inhibit their own intellectual and spiritual freedom. Cohen and Kelman argue that:

Younger adults also resist and reject the normative conformism or normative advocacy that they see widely characterising the Jewish world and culture. They speak of Jewish institutions as ‘having an agenda’, referring to their interests in advocating specific beliefs or behaviors, in particular those centered around matters of ‘Jewish continuity’ or group survival … Consequently, they prefer to avoid being subject to those who, in effect, represent their parents (p.20).

Paradoxically, then, the very efforts at trying to engage young Jews backfire. Instead, the actual content of the agenda has a greater chance of reaching its constituency if young Jews were given the autonomy and opportunities to direct their own learning programs.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 43 Mixed messages

In the Australian Jewish community, many parents are closing down the options from both sides. They don’t want their children to marry non‐Jews, yet they also don’t want their children to be ‘too Jewish’. As one religious youth leader said (quoted previously):

Problem is parents present Judaism as a drag … they don’t actually want their kids to be religious … [one parent said]: I’d rather my kid be in Kings Cross hooking up with some random guy on a Saturday night than hanging out with one of your madrichim (youth leaders). (Syd02)

This may be an extreme and rare statement of anti‐religious sentiment but it does capture the fear and negativity that many parents feel about their children approaching Judaism in a way that is different from them. This fear and negativity around children immersing themselves more deeply in Jewish religious life is understandable, and yet it also leaves children with a narrow pathway.

In the below excerpt, the parents indicate that they want the child to marry a Jew for tribal loyalty reasons, yet the parents themselves don’t seem to be engaged in a rich Jewish life. There appears to be a lack of clarity about exactly what values are being transmitted. Commitment to ‘Jewish continuity ’ in this context is premised on familial and social bonds with little other Jewish content:

… families do nothing except dinner on Rosh Hashanah … [but] me marrying a Jew is important to my parents. (Melb01)

These similar mixed messages are reflected in the parents’ commitment to send their child to a Jewish school while simultaneously expressing negativity about Jewish studies:

I think another problem also is the parents of some of the kids. Like you have problems with kids trying to get out of the *Summertime camps and all of that because their parents are saying, ‘Yeah, it’s fine, don’t worry, you can stay home and study … you don’t have to go to Hebrew, you don’t have to study for Hebrew or Jewish studies. It doesn’t matter just work on history or geography or whatever it is.’ (Syd04)

This apparent inconsistency about values is also exemplified through the phenomenon of ‘kosher at home’, as per the following excerpt:

Speaker 5: It’s called being kosher at home. It’s about respecting your parents.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

44 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Speaker 2: But your parents also eat differently out.

Speaker 6: Yeah, I know. It’s all about – it’s so about the façade …

Speaker 7: It’s weird … (Syd05)

I want to pick up on the way ‘kosher at home’ relates to Jewish identity and relationship with parents. People are participating in something that they define as respecting their parents – but they also see it as an act of hypocrisy and ‘façade’ when their parents eat out. So, the Jewish home is maintained as kosher while the Jewish people who live in it go out and eat what they want. This practice sends ambiguous messages to children about how parents relate to the tradition, and the kind of relationship with the tradition the parents hope for their children.

But we could look at this in a different, more charitable, light: perhaps the home is maintained as kosher so that strictly kosher guests can be welcomed for a meal. In this reading, the children are ‘respecting’ the Jewishness of their home and respecting their parents through maintaining it.

Rituals provide a sense of belonging

Despite the dissonance that sometimes occurs between parents and children when it comes to Jewish values and identity, life‐cycle and other rituals can provide a heightened exposure to and immersion in Jewish practice. Often, these rituals bring young Jews a sense of belonging:

I once went to a non‐Jewish funeral. And it was very confusing and I didn’t follow anything that they were doing, and then I felt really, really happy that if anybody who I loved ever died, I knew exactly what to do. And that was when I realised I was really happy to be Jewish. (Syd05)

This respondent’s familiarity with Jewish rituals of death helps her realise why she is happy to be Jewish. The familiarity of the tradition becomes an anchor and safe haven in difficult times.

Others mentioned the centrality of Friday night Shabbat dinners and how it was treated as sacred even if it wasn’t necessarily because of the religious ritual. One person said: ‘My mother‐in‐law was shocked that we would go out for Friday night dinner.’ And then someone else in the group responded:

I am surprised too … I assumed it is an important opportunity for family, even if it’s not about the candles and the Kiddush [prayer over the wine]. (Melb03)

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 45 This was one of the only times in the focus groups when one participant challenged or interfered with another participant’s comment. It highlights the sensitivity in the community about the ‘sacredness’ of Friday night dinners as a family tradition. This frequency of Friday night family dinners was highlighted in the Gen08 survey as well and the exchange above unpacks some of the layered meaning that is bound up with this tradition.

The impact of the Holocaust

Australia has the highest percentage per capita of Holocaust survivors after Israel. Research has been conducted on the effects of Holocaust trauma on second and third generation survivors. Undoubtedly, the impact of the Holocaust affects the Australian Jewish community in ways that are seen and unseen. As “second generation” Holocaust survivors are becoming grandparents, the impact of the Holocaust is becoming less apparent.

The respondent below named the impact of the Holocaust in terms of the guilt of second generation survivors and how this is transforming inter‐generationally:

… but what we haven’t mentioned is the Holocaust, and in terms of Jewish continuity, going back twenty years there were those people who saw more freedom of choice versus those who said, ‘We don’t move an inch.’ And with that, we had the generations holding on tight and not moving an inch, and their survival and their children, and their children’s choices were all about the debt that they owed to those who were slaughtered. And so there was no choice because there was the guilt and the shame and the horror of the Holocaust that survivors were living with. So that was a huge impact in terms of continuity and how people chose to live their lives.

We are now the next generation; we are educated but removed emotionally. We feel okay, we are making an educated choice … we are aware but we do have a choice … not having lived through it gives us an entitlement to move one way or another. (Melb03)

Some people have expressed concern about the declining interest in the Holocaust as the survivor generation is slowly leaving us (Gross and Rutland, 2014). However, I don’t think there is a danger about forgetting, and the recession of the Holocaust from the dominant paradigm of third generation Jews also makes space for new and life‐affirming paradigms of Jewishness and Jewish practice to emerge.

46 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Renegotiating Jewish identity and observance

As their children grow beyond school age, parents at times act as guardians and gatekeepers, trying to preserve their children’s connection to their Jewishness, especially their social connections. Sometimes it’s through words and action while in other instances the children may have internalised their parents’ voices. Sometimes the children may observe Jewish tradition from a place of fear and guilt and not necessarily because they have established their own, authentic, connection to the religion, as the below excerpt indicates:

… if our parents both died, then we don’t know if we would have family dinners … We go because my mum would kill me if we didn’t go. (Melb03)

As individuals refuse Jewish observance out of guilt and affirm agency in their own lives, they are forced to renegotiate Jewish practices that have been pursued for reasons other than a genuine interest. Sometimes a connection to Jewish life is jeopardised through this process of individuation. Alternatively, when the motivating factors of guilt and fear fall away, individuals have the space to explore why things are important to them in more authentic ways than if they were to be motivated by guilt. They move from relating to their Jewishness out of guilt towards connecting to the religion on their own terms. This requires them to take responsibility for their relationship with Judaism rather than approach it from the position of other people’s expectations.

It is important to note that Jewish identification is not static. In an individual lifetime, as family dynamics change, so, too, does Jewish life. One community leader mentioned that her relationship to the tradition changed and became more solid as her parents aged:

I became more responsible as my parents were ageing … [Earlier in my life] I was more rebellious … there are life stressors … life crises that force you back in to it. (Melb03)

She names the shift in dynamic from being in a rebellious, adversarial relationship with her parents and what they represented to becoming less reactive and more responsible for cultural continuity as they were ageing.

Relationships with non-Jews

Another marker of generational change is the shifting relationship to non‐Jews. This is second generation women speaking about their first generation parents. Some respondents discussed moving away from their parents’ xenophobic attitude to non‐Jews towards a more inclusive and broad‐ reaching approach:

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 47 My parents wouldn’t let me have non‐Jewish friends … wouldn’t allow me to have a non‐Jew at my wedding … and my parents are not religious … traditional orthodox … not like shomer Shabbat…

I’d be encouraging my kids to be part of the world … I wouldn’t be thrilled … but if they came home I wouldn’t be cutting them off … I saw my parents’ friends not talk to their daughter and not meet her grandchildren. (Melb03)

But the shift is not only generational. Some people remarked on their own changing behaviour when relating to non‐Jews. As one respondent shared:

My own views were much stronger then … if I think back … I’d like them to marry Jewish but I won’t impose on my kids like my parents. (Melb03)

Some respondents and analysts consider the openness to non‐Jews and the softening of attitudes about intermarriage as a danger sign for the Jewish future. Yet this same trend can be seen as an opportunity for outreach. Instead of seeing people who intermarry as leaving the community, one can also see intermarriage as an opportunity for expanding the Jewish people and contributing to Jewish cultural life. (See Chertok, Philips and Saxe (2006))

Different understandings of intermarriage

What do we mean by continuity? Do you mean no marrying out? Or having an identity that is Jewish that remains with you throughout your life? (Melb03)

Consistent with most Jewish demographic studies coming out of the US, the Gen08 survey made some assumptions about the relationship between a person’s Jewish identity and their preparedness to marry a non‐Jew. Some prominent US Jewish sociologists and educators (such as Leonard Saxe) have challenged this nexus, as did many of the young respondents in our focus groups.

They challenge this nexus by being people who simultaneously care about being Jewish – and may also choose to marry non‐Jews. This reality challenges the way Jewish communities have previously dealt with out‐marriage. If a community does not welcome and provide for intermarried families, then the community risks pushing couples to an abandonment of Judaism – where they may have started out as open and curious for further exploration. It is very difficult to demand from young predominantly secular Jewish people that they go to university, work, assimilate into Australian society – but not marry non‐ Jews. And if they do marry them, they cannot be refused re‐entry into the Jewish community. This was well put by one of our women leaders:

48 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews If we are more liberated and less rigid then maybe continuity will be about not losing those people who have married out. (Melb03)

Jewish continuity can be strengthened through embracing people who intermarry rather than abandoning and excluding them. This calls for a major paradigm shift from a defensive position to a position of embrace and welcome.

This shift in paradigms is often very challenging, even for those people involved at the coalface, working with families where only one parent is Jewish. A more expansive and inclusive approach to Jewish education is at stake in this discussion.

One Israeli educator from outside Melbourne and Sydney who teaches children of intermarried parents shared her hesitations with other Israelis:

Teacher: There are so many mixed families here, so many in this area. I’m teaching Jewish scripture and I have so many kids whose father is Israeli and the mother isn’t. So that’s it, there’s no more, they’re not going to be Jewish then.

Man: Finished, gone

Teacher: That’s it.

Woman 2: But they do go to scripture. Then they are interested or their parents are interested in some kind of connection.

Teacher: Maybe. So yes, there is some connection and I’m trying to make it deeper but I think, and for me when I see that I feel sad, because I wouldn’t want my kids to lose, I would want – well, I’ve got my two daughters, there’s no problem with them, my son I would like him to marry a Jewish woman.

Man 2: Why is that? Even that she’s Australian‐Jewish?

Teacher: You’re asking me why, I don’t even know why.

Woman 2: I would like my boys to marry a Jewish woman as well.

Teacher: I can’t say why, I can’t find a proper rationale, but it’s just an inner feeling. (Byron01)

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 49 In this teacher’s view, the children ‘are gone’ because their mother is not Jewish. Even though she teaches them Bible studies, which demonstrates their parents’ investment in their Jewish identity, she still treats them as if they are not Jewish.

In saying that she is not worried about her daughter, the teacher adheres to the orthodox definition of Jewish identity as matrilineal, determined by the mother. In a previous chapter I refer to the orthodox hegemony; this is an example of how people who don’t understand themselves as orthodox Jews defer to the orthodox definition of ‘who is a Jew’. A respondent expressed her concerns about this very succinctly:

Some in the community say, ‘You can be a Jew according to our legalistic structure.’ But who said that their legalistic structure is the be‐all and end‐all? (Byron01)

Some of the anxiety about intermarriage is related to effects of the Holocaust and the impetus to ‘replace’ the losses of the Holocaust. As Australian Jewish scholar Jordy Silverstein writes:

When asked if marriage was encouraged in her family, a respondent to a survey regarding family discourse of (inter) marriage, Holocaust memories and sexual histories among Melbourne Jews wrote that she was told by her father that she ‘should be married already, have an arranged marriage, we should have ten children after what Nana went through in the Holocaust’.

A new approach to intermarried Jews

There are many opportunities for the mainstream Jewish community to engage intermarried families and to harness their interest and enthusiasm. This is an area of potentially significant growth.

But regardless of whether the community offers a more embracing educational strategy, young Jews who care about their Judaism will keep partnering with non‐Jews. This is well represented by one respondent who said:

I’d like to raise my kids as Jewish … whether my partner is Jewish or not … I’ve seen heaps of examples where really supportive non‐Jewish partners allow a nice Jewish environment … kids grow up strongly identifying as Jewish … Most of my boyfriends have been non‐Jewish … I’d probably prefer to have a Jewish partner but it’s not a complete essential. (Melb01)

50 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Another young person said something very similar:

This definition of Judaism needs to be broadened … I may have a non‐Jewish partner but I still want my kids to be Jewish, I want them to have those options … the way history is taught … not look at it as defeat … it was instilled in us at school. (Melb01)

Some Jews who are intermarrying want to embrace their choices within the Jewish community. They aren’t interested in ‘looking at [intermarriage] as defeat’. Many of these couples wish to integrate Jewish symbols into their non‐. This tendency offers proof that despite marrying non‐ Jews, these Jews are still connected to being Jewish.

Some people have expressed ambivalence towards this practice, despite understanding the motivations behind it:

I’ve gone to a wedding where there is a mixed marriage … I’m grappling with this … they try to bring in Jewish elements … they have the chuppah and the glass and there is no rabbi … I somehow think it is a farce but I can see that it is what people want … they want the Jewish elements … they want to have that as part of their wedding ceremony. (Melb03)

Despite recognising and respecting the values underlying such practices, some people are wary of the broader implications:

I don’t know if it is watered down … It’s something new … maybe it’s an alternative? Is it a shunder [shame, disgrace] or is it the most positive way of tackling continuity? (Melb03)

The implication here is: do we define the new as a legitimate alternative, or is it just ‘watering down’ what we have?

For some people, the taboo of out‐marriage is so weighty, and has been internalised so fully, that they look to their celebrants for validation and reassurance because they feel so bad about marrying a non‐ Jew:

A celebrant had to say to a couple, ‘I am not a rabbi, I can’t give you a hechsher (kosher stamp).’ (Melb03)

Some respondents spoke about their non‐Jewish partner not being welcomed into the community, as per the below:

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 51 She’s mixed, she’s really mixed. I’ve talked a lot to my girlfriend about it and because she comes to Shabbat in and out, and she knows that’s where my family is, that’s where our culture is. It’s all about that family connection and friends’ connection. I think she understands that.

She came to Israel with me but she finds it very difficult and very disturbing when it gets into a formal setting. She saw some really disturbing stuff … like she came into xx kindergarten with me and was really, really shaken up by that. Comments people have made about me assimilating and doing Hitler’s work for him. I’ve had that. Okay, just fu#%ed up s%it like that. And whilst most people don’t believe it, like my mates don’t believe that, coming from someone in the community it’s true. (Melb01)

As the taboo against intermarriage breaks down, there is much fear and anxiety around the topic of ‘Jewish continuity’. The community has never been at this juncture before. No one knows what the current generation is going to look like, and certainly not the generations after that. As one woman leader said:

There are people who have married out who are incredibly Jewish … … what will happen in two generations? How do his children feel about their Jewish identity? (Melb03)

For some people, embracing intermarriage is more a pragmatic choice:

Why don’t we think about embracing people who aren’t Jewish … that it’s better than nothing … I’m not looking for intermarriage and assimilation but I’m not looking for the loss of children and grandchildren. (Melb03)

It is very powerful from a personal, communal and even religious perspective to decide to put family relationships first, ahead of ideological commitments and values. These community members may be consciously reacting against their parents’ generation who threatened to disown their children if they married a non‐Jewish person.

Young people are facing difficult choices in the future. They have been brought up with conflicting messages – on the one hand to engage in the secular, non‐Jewish world; yet, on the other, not to fall in love with or marry non‐Jews, despite not having an active and ongoing relationship to a meaningful Jewish life. One student said:

… especially the insistence on marrying Jewish … I face expulsion from my family … because I won’t necessarily marry Jewish … If they happen to be Jewish I’ll marry them but if they’re not

52 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Jewish that won’t stop me … the real things that people look out for in terms of information … like TED talks … these things are overwhelmingly secular … You’re going to have to make a really big and I think manipulative effort if you want to keep these things going. (Syd05)

This student recognised that due to the ‘overwhelmingly secular’ nature of his life, some ‘manipulative effort’ will be required to ensure that he marries a Jew.

The current generation of youth will be more attracted to a Jewish life that is motivated by joy and vitality as opposed to one that is driven by guilt and fear. The openness that is developing towards non‐Jews reflects the present reality of our youth where, instead of an attitude of suspicion and fear towards non‐Jews, the non‐Jewish, secular world is being embraced and welcomed into their lives.

According to Fern Chertok, Benjamin Philips and Leonard Saxe, intermarriage has been the straw person of the Jewish community. They argue that Jewish socialisation rather than the religion of their parents accounts for the strength of a child’s Jewish identity. As he says:

Jewish socialisation in the form of Jewish education, experience of home ritual, and social networks plays a far more important role than having intermarried parents, in determining Jewish identity, behaviour or connections. It is not just who one’s parents are, but one’s experience of Jewish living, education and friendship that determine who will go on to live a richly Jewish life. (p.2)

Their analysis suggests the worth of investing in programs and opportunities for diversified Jewish education, Jewish social opportunities and ways to strengthen home ritual and Jewish practice.

Chapter summary

This chapter explored the ‘Continuity of Discontinuity’ from the perspectives of Jewish social innovation, the relationship between parents and children and the phenomenon of intermarriage. Generational shifts have been noted that highlight new ways of organising and participating in community. Connections may be more fluid but they are also being created through a diverse range of personal interests and social change commitments, in real time and in virtual space.

Some of the more notable generational shifts include the unwillingness of many Jews to just carry on with traditions for their own sake, and out of guilt. This is also an invitation to new ways of relating. Jews who care about their Judaism are marrying non‐Jews and this means that the Jewish community needs to strategise and plan accordingly to embrace these families.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 53 CHAPTER 4

Israel engagement

I’m not sure why, but having a connection with this place seems to help a person’s identity. (Syd06)

One of the most consistent, if not the most consistent, finding of the Gen08 Survey was the strong sense of connection to Israel. Even if we take into account the broadness of the definition of Zionism used by the survey – a definition that included ‘anyone who feels connected to the history and culture of the Jewish people’ – the responses to these questions indicate a very high level of consensus of care about Israel in the Jewish communities Down Under.

Gen08 also asked respondents to describe how they felt when Israel was in danger or at the mercy of negative events. Many, if not most, participants felt concern, empathy and care for the safety and wellbeing of the people and .

This chapter attempts to unpack some of the complex attitudes towards Israel that were not captured by the abovementioned survey. My analysis offers a complementary perspective that reflects the multi‐faceted Australian‐Jewish relationship to Israel. Interestingly the recent research on Australian Jewish school education by Gross and Rutland (2014) did not address Israel engagement, but focused on the problematic nature of Hebrew instruction.

Redefining the relationship with Israel

Over the last few years, since the rise and fall of the Oslo Accords, there has been a growing sense of care and concern in diaspora Jewish communities about the social and ethical predicaments confronting Israel. Indeed, the organised Jewish (even Zionist) world is predominantly divided between those who support Israel while also expressing concern about Israeli government policy, and those whose support for Israel translates into total support of government policy.

According to some thinkers in the Jewish world, this contemporary period of challenging relationships with Israel can be named ‘the crisis of distancing’.

Shmuel Rosner argues that there is no crisis in the attachment between Israel and diaspora Jews and that young US Jews are not distancing from Israel:

They still feel attached to it … Attachment to Israel does not mean an absence of critical thinking about it, nor does it imply agreement with Israel’s current policies.

54 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Rosner asserts that Jewish attachment to Israel does not need to be configured with an absence of critical thought. In fact, creating the space for critical thought could actually enable and facilitate a more meaningful attachment because people would feel encouraged to bring their real concerns and care to the conversation.

So, this ambivalence has not necessarily undermined the fundamental relationship with Israel. Instead, committed Jews across the spectrum are reaffirming their commitment to Israel while simultaneously acknowledging their discomfort with current government policies pertaining to the Palestinians, to refugees and asylum seekers, and to non‐orthodox denominations of Judaism and the role of religion in the state. At the same time, hostilities in the region often reverberate in the Antipodes, in the form of heightened public expressions of support for and solidarity with Israel‐ alongside a small voice of dissent from particular small, often maligned, circles within the Jewish community.

With the creation of new avenues for expressing nuanced approaches to Israel, one could argue that a more authentic connection is being established – a connection to the ‘real’ Israel with its myriad of challenges, rather than the mythic Israel of one’s imagination. The tagline for the organisation Makom, for instance, is hugging and wrestling with Israel.

Wedged between support and discomfort

The extract below demonstrates the difficulty of finding oneself wedged between a position of support and discomfort – which can lead to dissociation because it is a very hard position to occupy. The difficulty of the ambivalence is doubly highlighted because there have not been many precedents in the community where people have spoken out holding the paradox of support and critique. In many instances, when people have criticised certain Israeli policies they have been targeted or accused of undermining the whole enterprise, even when they have clearly stated their commitment to Israel.

I find Israel … very difficult … I had a great experience in Israel. I think Israel needs to exist for many, many reasons. I loved speaking Hebrew in Israel, I loved being part of the kibbutz movement in Israel.

I had a really big problem with Israeli politics … I used to teach at the politics department of the university so I was in a unique position of providing a perspective on Israel. And again I don’t think that my perspective on Israel is terribly representative for most of the community. I think it is fairly left of centre … I was aware this was a representation I was then putting out

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 55 to the wider community, probably against the wishes of many people within the establishment. I don’t really have a problem with that. That said, while I have deep love for the country, I have really big problems with some of the ways that social policies and religious policies and political policies are carried out within the country.

And I would have a really big problem with the idea of making and having to exist within that social, political environment, and dissociation is by far the easiest option, which is not something I’m particularly proud of. But is something that is particularly true. (Melb01)

However, there has been a shift. Now, people are no longer willing to be silent or to be blind. As one community leader in the focus group said:

It was ‘Israel right or wrong’ and now it’s certainly not the case … Support Israel but not Israel right or wrong. (Melb03)

This notion of critique emanating from a place of support is an area that may be developing within the community. In that model, the passion and interest that people show towards Israel – politically, socially, artistically, environmentally – could be harnessed as a means of engaging them in meaningful Jewish conversation and community. Instead of warding off difficult questions, difficult questions could be encouraged and seen as opportunities for robust and nuanced learning.

Currently, there is little room in the organised Jewish community for people who do not support Israel, or even perhaps those who do not support Israeli government policy. It can be understood that many Jews experience Israel as being under attack by the mainstream media, and are positioned in a defensive mode which makes engaging in self‐criticism seem too risky. This needs to be explored at another opportunity. Suffice to say that during the time of writing of this report, and with the Second Gaza war and the perceived media antipathy towards Israel in its wake, and heightened international anti‐Semitism, the pendulum may have swung back closer to many Jews holding an “Israel right or wrong” perspective. The work of J‐street in the US, an alternative Israel lobby to AIPAC, is an interesting model of holding the tension of tough love, supporting Israel and simultaneously pushing back against government actions that undermine two states for two peoples.

Israel education in the schools

Providing Israel education in schools beyond instruction presents unique and significant challenges. There are few global comparisons where schooling is arranged not only according to religion but also according to peoplehood and where there is a strong connection to another country. Hebrew language instruction also presents a host of unique challenges, which in the

56 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews main have not provided positive educational experiences for Australian Jewish students. (See Gross and Rutland, 2014)

Since the establishment of the state of Israel there have been shifts in the Jewish world around understanding the role of Israel, the role of the diaspora, and the relationship between Israel and the diaspora. In addition, Jewish communities have not necessarily been uniform in their approach to diaspora relations with Israel. Indeed, the relationship is characterised by complexity and diversity.

When it comes to Israeli history and the role of Israel in Jewishness and the Jewish world, there are many different narratives. Not all people relate to all narratives; however, being exposed to different narratives may help appreciate the intricacy of the relationship as well as deepen understanding of current political, social and theological discussions concerning Israel.

Given the complexity of the endeavour, it is not surprising that several focus group participants expressed disdain towards the Jewish day schools’ approach to educating about Israel. They had ‘grown up in the sheltered lifestyle … everything Israel does is correct … there is no other side’. Participants expressed feeling disappointed, disillusioned, surprised and shocked that their day school education had failed to prepare them to engage with other university students about Israel and the Middle East.

This disillusionment can be read as an invitation, an opportunity for a more nuanced, direct, honest and challenging engagement with Israel; for hugging and wrestling with it.

Participants suggested that schools could focus more on presenting diversity in Israel as well as relating to Israel in cultural rather than only religious terms:

Schools need to focus more on the cultural aspects of Judaism, on the cultural aspects of Israel … I never understood why non‐religious Jews would want to go to Israel because it was represented as a Jewish (religious) place. (Syd04)

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 57 Holocaust consciousness, Israel and Jewish education

The relationship between Holocaust consciousness and Israel education cannot be overstated. Participants shared the narrative of that predominated in their Jewish education. According to this conceptualisation, the story of Israel was God ‘doing right’ by the Jewish people after the Holocaust:

Speaker 6: And also, like quite a vibe of the Australian Holocaust survivor community setting up the school. I very much feel like I was brainwashed, like I can sort of almost imagine this group of Holocaust survivors getting together and just thinking at all costs, what we have to do is make sure that we keep this tight‐knit community and I just feel like I was sort of lied to, almost.

We were taught about Israel’s wars. I don’t know if many of you remember this, modern Israel’s wars in terms of God doing right by the people and in ’48 we won and then in ’67 we were attacked and then we won ’cause God was on our side, sort of thing. And looking back, I only sort of remembered that years later and that’s fair enough, it’s a religious school, but that’s still pretty intense sh#t.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that turned me off because then when you find out the truth – well, not the truth but a different perspective, a more historic perspective, like we did on Shnat [year away in Israel]. We studied with a guy, he did Jewish history … we’d only ever looked at it as in the Bible as Jewish history … And then when we looked at it, it was amazing, there’s actual Jewish history, real stuff, not just God did this and God did that.

Speaker 10: On your point about the Holocaust and all of that, I didn’t find that there was really a narrative to being Jewish in Australia for people who were not of Holocaust background. (Melb01)

What is the workable Jewish Australian narrative that isn’t based in the Holocaust?

Where are the alternative voices? The Sephardi/ Mizrachi voices. The pre‐war immigration.

58 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Reframing engagement with Israel

As well as reservations about Israel education, Jewish day school students expressed ambivalence about their relationship with Israel. They talked about having a ‘love affair with the place … a bit unquestioning’ and they expressed a yearning for more richness and variety in the way they learn about Israel.

As one respondent said, ‘People with answers are dangerous’ and ‘the way it is represented is dangerous’ (Melb01). The use of ‘danger’ here is interesting because although Israel is often represented as being under constant existential threat, the only ‘danger’ mentioned by the respondents was the danger of a one‐eyed representation of Israel.

As we move further from the Holocaust, current generations do not identify Jews as victims and by extension don’t necessarily relate solely to Israel as being an underdog or in a potential position of victimhood. This opens up different considerations when engaging in relationship with Israel.

Questioning community leadership on Israel

Participants expressed doubt about communal leaders accurately representing the community consensus when they speak publicly about Israel. These comments mirrored some results of the Gen08 survey concerning the representative nature of community leaders:

Where is the majority? Are we the majority? [We are] highly under‐represented … in schools and rest of the community …(Melb01)

Youth, and indeed people of all ages, lose respect for communal leaders and organisations when they believe that they are not operating with honesty and integrity. One person described the dissonance between the material they were learning at university and the views expressed by the organised Jewish student group:

… just an embarrassment to have them outside saying Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East when you’ve done a two‐hour lecture on constitutional democracy in Lebanon and Turkey. It’s embarrassing. (Melb01)

Underlying this story is a common difficulty faced by Israel advocacy groups. The world of advocacy rarely escapes the trap of polarisation. Instead of naming real situations of ambivalence, places where individuals experience internal conflict and dissonance, advocacy groups often avoid uncomfortable issues and instead overplay other claims, such as the one stated above: ‘Israel is the only democracy

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 59 in the Middle East’. Rather than engaging students’ passion and interest in Israel and the Middle East, some advocacy initiatives could be responsible for positioning students either in a polarised relationship with Israel, or pushing them away from engagement.

Students’ disengagement is not necessarily because they don’t care. It can also be because they feel forced into withdrawal due to a lack of a feasible model within the community about how leaders and organisations are dealing with difficult conversations.

Respondents were also dissatisfied with what they perceived as blanket support for Israel in the community and assumptions about what Australian Jews think. It was felt that individuals were not given space to explore and develop the contours of their own ideas about Israel:

I don’t think you should have to be particularly Zionistic to have a Jewish life in Australia. This feeling of having had something imposed upon you is also reinforced by Jewish day school education that really pushes a Zionist idea. I’m uncomfortable with how much support Israel gets… [It] should be opt in … should come from each person and develop organically. (Melb01)

New possibilities for connection with Israel

As the relationship with Israel transforms, other avenues of connection could open up through the notion of Jewish peoplehood. Diaspora Jews’ connection to Israeli Jews can be framed as an expression of their connection to Jewish peoplehood.

However, this relationship with Israelis has not necessarily been nurtured within the Zionist education of the day schools. Although Jewish day school education helps inculcate positive relationships with Israel, it doesn’t necessarily foster a positive relationship with Israelis. Some Australian Jewish youth mentioned feeling a great divide with Israelis:

I feel a much bigger divide between Australian Jews and Israelis … I feel like there is a link there but we are like two different breeds. (Melb01)

As a consequence of the Zionist education they received, some respondents showed a naïve understanding of how Israelis relate to their country and assumed they would never want to leave Israel.

One person acknowledged the effects of living in a conflict zone:

60 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews If you live in a society where there is constantly war … [it can] affect you for the rest of your life … affect the whole of society … detrimental to the Jewish people … if you lost five friends in your life how would that make you feel? …(Melb01)

Interestingly, the speaker recognised the cost to the Jewish people of being preoccupied with war and with its own survival once again. The establishment of the state of Israel was meant to create a different reality for the Jewish people. But despite that different reality, the fear of annihilation still exists, creating and even dominating the agenda.

Israel is the ‘real home’ for the Jews

Despite never intending to live in Israel, some Australian Jews feel that Israel is the real home for Jews and the country where they really belong. This impairs one’s capacity to fully engage in Australian life. A manifestation of this phenomenon, expressed by youth leaders, is that some Australian Jews care more about Israel than Jewish life in Australia:

A lot of people are more concerned about Israel and Israel’s future than the Australian community … so much more can happen in Israel in five years than in the Jewish community in twenty years … [laughs … several agree]. It’s also more tangible … the threats that Israel faces are the death and destruction of its people … the threats that face the Jewish community in Sydney are the potential dropping off of commitment … You can’t really identify it but with threats hanging over Israel they’re very existential, obvious, you can put numbers on them … faces to them. (Syd04)

It is ironic that even though these young Jewish Australians live in Australia, somehow life in Israel feels ‘more tangible’. It is also significant that the connection with both Israel and Australia is conceptualised as ‘threat’. In this economy of ‘threat’, Israel trumps because it faces threats that are perceived as existential, physical, a zero‐sum game, while the threat to Australian Jewry is ‘merely’ about cultural continuity. Anti‐semitism was mentioned in passing but does not seem to have captured the imagination of the people interviewed as a driving force in their thinking. This echoes a second and third generation tendency to invalidate present fears or concerns, they are always over‐ shadowed by darker threats. Sentences like “this is nothing in comparison to what the survivors/Israeli’s go through”.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 61 Travel to Israel

I love Israel … I always go there … I think that’s my way of connecting to Judaism. (Syd04)

Many respondents and most Australian Jewish youth have the opportunity to travel to Israel, and it has a significant impact on their Jewish identity. With the Birthright initiative – which provides some Jewish university students with free trips to Israel – visiting Israel has become more possible for young Australian Jews. But even before Birthright, Australian Jews had a comparably high visitation rate to Israel, despite the great geographical distance.

The Gen08 survey found that:

74% of respondents have relatives and 53% close friends living in Israel. Eighty‐six per cent of respondents had visited Israel, with 50% in Melbourne and 45% in Sydney indicating that they had visited three or more times. A significant proportion of the community undertakes regular visits. Thus in the last four years, more than four out of ten respondents had visited Israel.

These trips can be conducted in a way that empowers the participants to be nuanced and informed when talking about Israel in their home communities. By experiencing the diversity and complexity of Israel, Israel education itself can be strengthened and diversified. A person’s experience of the real, material Israel – in all its lustre and tarnish – can form the basis of a rich, ongoing relationship with Zionism that finds expression in their own diaspora communities.

A respondent spoke about the most important part of the trip being spending time with Israelis:

I think for me what I found which touched me most was when I had the opportunity to engage with Israelis in my age group and were of similar background to me, rather than seeing it through... I mean I'm sure most people would agree, rather than just seeing it through like the window of a tour bus. But actually having to like spend a night or so with like, you know, a bunch of, a similar group, I think that was really great. (Melb01)

62 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Does Israel save Jewish lives or does Israel need to be saved?

The idea of Israel, if not the reality of it, is a motif of safe haven for Jews of the world. While they may not actually migrate to Israel, diaspora Jews will visit and send money and delegations from their communities. This facilitates a sense of purpose and helps people connect to a certain idea of Israel and their Jewishness. United Israel Appeal advertisements in 2010 described UIA as ‘saving Jewish lives’. At the same time, however, Israel was also represented as being under threat from Iran and from the political instability of the region.

Some participants who work with young children mentioned the narrative of ‘security’ when framing their Jewish education:

Israel … security … Not that we’re teaching that to our preps, but it is a big part of the connection. (Melb02)

Chapter summary

This chapter explored the relationship between Israel and Jewish youth, examining Israel education at schools, educational and recreational trips to Israel and attitudes to Israel in the Jewish community.

Anti‐semitism may be responsible for Israel being disproportionately singled out for human rights violations. However, Israel faces major challenges that need to be addressed and whose resolution will have existential implications for both Israel and the Jewish people. Jewish communities do a disservice to themselves and their educational initiatives if they can’t find a way to represent the complexity and multi‐vocality of some of these challenges in their discussions and programming about Israel.

Although participants showed a strong connection to Israel, they also expressed deep ambivalence and concern about Israel’s attitude towards its great challenges including the Palestinian conflict and the lack of religious freedom.

Deepening connections with Jews from the Jewish community in the US – as the major Jewish diasporic community – could open up new ways for Australian Jews to understand and experience both their Jewishness and their Australianness.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 63 SUMMARY

Chapter 1: Let the nation congregate: community, leadership and inclusivity

This introductory chapter explored how different understandings of Jewishness impact the way we look at research about Jewish communities.

In a more normative approach to Judaism, Jewish identity is evaluated according to defined Jewish acts and expressions – such as observing Shabbat, keeping kosher, etc. By contrast, a more meaning‐ based constructionist approach to Judaism looks at the role Judaism plays in the life of individuals.

This chapter also explored the emergence of religious pluralism that encourages a broader constituency in the Jewish community to become involved. This diversity is strengthened when it is expressed through leadership. Although women have served and continue to serve on boards and in leadership of communal organisations, they are particularly underrepresented in the leadership of roof‐body and other organisations that represent Australian Jewry.

Chapter 2: Reflections on Jewish day school education

This chapter explored some experiences of Jewish day school attendees. While those who attended non‐Jewish day schools envy the social connections and knowledge attained by Jewish day school attendees, they also appreciate their access to multicultural Australia, and to an education that is broader than the offerings of Jewish day schools. Some of them have been involved in youth movements and experienced this as a very important source of connection to other Jews and to Judaism.

Many respondents reported feeling like they were in a bubble, separate and not belonging to Australian society, and that it was hard to break out of that bubble after school. In some cases, a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish community coincided with a strong sense of alienation from the general community.

Israeli Jews living in Australia expressed their lived experience of the possibility of feeling both at home in Australia and elsewhere.

64 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews Chapter 3: Interrogating continuity: intergenerational opportunities and the relationship between parents and children

This chapter explored the ‘Continuity of Discontinuity’ from the perspectives of the relationship between parents and children and the phenomenon of intermarriage. Generational shifts have been noted that highlight new ways of organising and participating in community. Connections may be more fluid but they are also being created through a diverse range of personal interests and social change commitments, in real time and in virtual space.

Some of the more notable generational shifts include the unwillingness of many Jews to just carry on with traditions for their own sake, and out of guilt. This is also an invitation to new ways of relating. Jews who care about their Judaism are marrying non‐Jews and this means that the Jewish community needs to strategise and plan accordingly to embrace these families.

Chapter 4: Israel Engagement

This chapter explored the relationship between Israel and Jewish youth, examining Israel education at schools, educational and recreational trips to Israel and attitudes to Israel in the Jewish community.

Anti‐semitism may be responsible for Israel being disproportionately singled out for human rights violations. However, Israel faces major challenges that need to be addressed and whose resolution will have existential implications for both Israel and the Jewish people. Jewish communities do a disservice to themselves and their educational initiatives if they can’t find a way to represent the complexity and multi‐vocality of some of these challenges in their discussions and programming about Israel.

Although participants showed a strong connection to Israel, they also expressed deep ambivalence and concern about Israel’s attitude towards its great challenges including the Palestinian conflict and the lack of religious freedom.

GEN08: Towards Post‐Holocaust Flourishing of Jews in Australia 65 APPENDIX

FOCUS GROUPS: CORE QUESTIONS AND ISSUES

PERSONAL IDENTITY

SELF What do you most like (What most excites you) / least like (What least excites you) about being Jewish? [Prompt: Has there ever been a time when you were embarrassed/ uncomfortable/ annoyed/ to tell someone that you are Jewish?]

SENSE OF COMMUNITY/ ISOLATION

COMMUNITY What do you understand by the term ‘Jewish community’? [Prompt: is there something different about being Jewish in Australia, or are Jews just like other groups?]

BELONGING Do you have a sense of belonging? Why do you have this sense? [Variant: How do you explain your sense of belonging]

[Where negative response: Can you explain why that is?]

CHANGE

LAST DECADE/ Over the last 10 or so years, has anything changed in your sense of being RECENT TIMES Jewish? Do you think that Australian Jews have changed?

CONTINUITY Do you see the Jewish community continuing as it is today? [Variants: How different are the lives of your children from your own life? Are young people different today? Prompt: What has been the change in family life/ in the way members of the family relate to each other?]

INTERNAL THREATS What are the ideas or developments in the Jewish world that you think are dangerous? [Variants: .. that are troubling … that concern you]

ISRAEL [Ask this only if it has not already come up in discussion.] Have the attitudes of Australian Jews changed towards Israel in recent years? If so, what is the nature of the change?

66 GEN08: What we think about when we think about Australian Jews SUMMARY QUESTION : PRIORITIES

CRUCIAL ISSUES What are the most important issues today for Jews? [Variant: If you had the power, what would you change in the Jewish community?]

AT END OF SESSION As a result of this afternoon’s/ evening’s discussions, if you could add just one question to the survey, what would it be?

➢ In reflecting on the discussion, consider relevance of general questions for specific demographics.

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