I’ve written before about the story of my paternal grandmother’s Holocaust survival. In short, her father, a religious Jew, made friends with the local priest long before the catastrophic events that wiped out Polish Jewry.
As Jews from my family’s village were packed off to the concentration camps, this priest managed to forge papers for my [...]
Mar
4
2010
4
2010
Dec
17
2009
17
2009
Nov
17
2009
17
2009
Interfaith Conference 2: Answers… Some to Questions I Hadn’t Thought to Ask
Today’s morning session of the conference was something of a revelation.
One of the highlights of this conference was meeting a young woman who is part of the Muslim roof body.
Did you know the Muslim community has been having many similar debates to us regarding roof bodies and representation?
Did you know that they had their own [...]
Sep
9
2009
9
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 [...]
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 [...]
Aug
30
2009
30
2009
Dvir Abramovich in The Age: No Laughing!
Although Dvir Abramovich’s opinion column in today’s Sunday Age grossly misstates facts and makes various bizarre assertions, I would still like to thank him for the free publicity he has so generously given this blog, through his opinion piece.
Nevertheless, it is only right that [...]
Aug
25
2009
25
2009
Part Five – Axis of Honour: Dislocation, Family, and Terror
You probably remember the refrain, during the Bush years, that the Islamists objected to our freedoms and our way of life – that this is why America was attacked on September 11.
This is not exactly in the realms of profound analysis, and belonged with Bush’s ill advised response soon after the attacks, that America was [...]
Aug
24
2009
24
2009
The Big Sunday: Thousands visit and The Shtick
Yesterday was quite surreal.
After The Sunday Age published a story on this blog, we received unprecedengted traffic: 3,235 people visited the site (according to Wordpress statistics). This is a record for the blog, and outstrips the numbers that arrived when the initial Age story was published a couple of months ago.
This brought an expected spike [...]
Aug
23
2009
23
2009
Sensible Jew in The Sunday Age
The Sensible Jew is once again featured in the Sunday Age.
I urge all our readers, old and new, to read Tom Hyland’s excellent article.
Heartfelt thanks to Mr Hyland for his thoroughness, and his sensitivity to my family situation.
***
It’s amazing what a story in the The Sunday Age will do for a blog’s readership.
The page views [...]
Aug
21
2009
21
2009
In the AJN 2 – Congratulations and Caveats: AIJAC
On opposite ends of the political spectrum, this week, there have been signs of Jews behaving sensibly – together.
The AJN (page 6) reported on the AIJAC sponsored Inter-religious Coordinating Council of Israel’s members’, Rula Shubeita, Issa Jaber, and Dr Debbie Weissman, visit to Australia.
After overcoming the cognitive dissonance, there are many elements of this initiative [...]
More Than Three Opinions: A Map of The Jewish Australian Blogosphere
“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 – [...]