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 [...]
Oct
5
2009
5
2009
A Brief History of The Sensible Jew
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
24
2009
24
2009
How to Make Enemies and Repel People: Robert Goot and 60 Minutes
For those still defending our current leadership’s handling of public relations, please ask yourselves this question: if our leaders are so very effective, why does Israel continue to receive consistently unflattering press?
Indeed, problematic coverage, which used to be the preserve of the public broadcasters, has now bled into the mainstream.
The 60 Minutes segment, “Hate Thy [...]
Sep
24
2009
24
2009
AJN – Loose Lips and the Holocaust
It’s the sort of article one has to read twice just to make sure it’s not a hallucination.
On page 3 of this week’s AJN we learn, yet again, how close we are to another Holocaust.
Or perhaps we learn that if you complain enough to the ABC, they’ll say only positive things about Jews.
Or that it’s [...]
Sep
22
2009
22
2009
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
17
2009
17
2009
The Sensible Jew on ABC Radio and in the AJN
The ABC’s PM programme (Radio National, 774 Melbourne, 702 Sydney and all local ABC stations) did a fair and balanced story on the issue of homophobia in the Jewish community.
There is a small bit of Sensible Jew interest at the end.
I made it clear that homophobia among Jews is the preserve of a very small [...]
Sep
9
2009
9
2009
Sep
6
2009
6
2009
AJN 1 – Transforming Trauma: Congratulations Nomi Blum
Nomi Blum has won the B’nai B’rith Bernard Lustig scholarship (AJN, page 12), which enabled her to take part in a Monash intensive course in South Africa and Rwanda to study apartheid and genocide.
In itself, winning this scholarship was a commendable achievement. What struck me as particularly interesting, was Blum’s personal path to this academic [...]
Sep
3
2009
3
2009
Sandilands, The Holocaust, and our Leaders’ Response:The Smart, The Stupid, and The Very, Very Ugly
Kyle Sandilands is the product of a commercial media environment that has abandoned even the pretence of caring about public decency. Only the threat of advertising dollar withdrawal seems to have any power to influence his management.
The appalling treatment on air of a teenage rape victim should have been indication enough that this was a [...]