“Two Jews, three opinions,” is a cliché. It’s also a gross understatement.
The ease with which a blog can be set up combined with my people’s natural tendency to debate anything, means that there is now a cornucopia of Jewish Australian opinion available online.
Left and right, centre and periphery, religious and secular, Zionist and anti-Zionist – [...]
Mar
15
2010
15
2010
Mar
4
2010
4
2010
Dec
17
2009
17
2009
Oct
5
2009
5
2009
The New Direction
Not long after this blog began in May, a phenomenon emerged: some of the more interesting developments began to take place either via email, or offline altogether.
After having lived away from the community – both in Australia and overseas – for ten years, I began reconnecting with Jews from the various sub-communities, and from different generations.
This was both a refresher course (some things hadn’t changed) and a steep learning curve, as I navigated through the labyrinthine arcana of communal politics and caught up on developments among the younger generations.
Since returning from the hiatus and outing myself in early August, blog-related activity offline has become even more frenetic. Being “out” has given me the opportunity to meet numerous people, and some of the more inspiring and exciting developments seem to be coming from Generations X and Y.
Oct
5
2009
5
2009
A Brief History of The Sensible Jew
This piece was originally published in The AJN in September.
In February, I received an email that had gone viral in Melbourne’s Jewish community. It claimed that owners of a Caulfield-area restaurant were anti-Semites and urged readers to boycott it. On the one hand, something in the email’s tone aroused my suspicion. On the other, I [...]
Sep
29
2009
29
2009
In The New Year 2: Thoughts After Yom Kippur
One of my grandparents never set foot in a concentration camp.
All four went through the Holocaust and all four lost most of the people they ever knew; but one – my paternal grandmother – managed to spend the war in Poland without being captured by the Nazis.
All such stories are intricate, complicated tales of foresight, [...]
Sep
25
2009
25
2009
Wishing You All Well Over the Fast
I wish all readers the very best over the fast.
Sep
21
2009
21
2009
In The New Year: Glimpses of the Future at Auburn Rd Shul
I have written previously about the crises facing our community – assimilation, disaffection, substance abuse, among many others.
But I had another fear: that generations X and Y are either not inclined or incapable of taking the reins from the baby boomer generation. I have worried that our community is becoming so atomised, and our young [...]
Sep
14
2009
14
2009
An Interfaith Adventure: Evangelicals, Alcohol, and a Very Strange Night
Every so often, someone comes up with an idea so bizarre, it must have merit.
I have written before about my belief in the importance of grass roots inter-communal dialogue – the sort of interactions that do not take place in formal settings, in which difficult questions can be asked, and even occasionally answered.
So when a [...]
Sep
2
2009
2
2009
The Community Survey: Civil Discussion, the “Volunteer” Canard, and Intimidation
Yesterday, Mum and I attended the afternoon session of Andrew Marcus’s discussion of the community survey, at Monash University.
I urge everyone who can, to get hold of a copy of the survey results. At the presentation, we were also offered “Key Findings from the 2006 Census” on Victoria’s Jews, collated by Markus and Tanya Aronov.
Markus’s [...]
Homosexuality, Judaism, and Hypocrisy – by Rabbi Yaron Gottlieb
Gay.
This is a word that seems to unite religious people of all backgrounds around the world.
It also drives a knee jerk reaction, causing them to panic, babble incoherently, or simply pretend the word doesn’t exist.
I’ve been asked to explain the Orthodox Jewish response to homosexuality, and while I’m not going to panic or babble, I [...]