This post is addresses difficult current issues. It shows one of the ways in which the history we love is bound to the present we live in. It may not be comfortable for all readers.
Sometimes, small events come together in surprising ways. My
academic side has been looking at what makes us draw history in fiction in the way
we do, as writers. One of the side topics is where writers get those
interpretations from. When we write about outsiders and minorities and people who
are just a bit different to us, we draw upon our own background and also upon how
we describe these others.
While I was thinking about that, my friend, Rivqa and some
of her friends began a writing project. In her words “Problem Daughters will amplify the voices of women who are
sometimes excluded from mainstream feminism. It will be an anthology of
beautiful, thoughtful, unconventional speculative fiction and poetry around the
theme of intersectional feminism, focusing on the lives and experiences of
marginalized women, such as those who are of color, QUILTBAG, disabled, sex
workers, and all intersections of these. Edited by Nicolette Barischoff, Rivqa
Rafael and Djibril al-Ayad, the anthology will be published by Futurefire.net
Publishing and is currently being crowdfunded. “
It struck me that this project is an opportunity for us, as
readers of history and historical fiction, to ask our own questions. In historical
fiction, it’s important to get beneath simple descriptions and to add just a
bit more depth to how we see those historical figures we love. One of the reasons
fiction is so powerful is because it, more than formal academic history, can make
people come alive in all their complexity. Done well, it’s a wonderful thing.
Doing it well is hard.
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| The first time this Australian government menorah was lit was in Parliament House, Canberra in 2016. It was only the second time politicians had formally come together to celebrate the festival... ever. Yet Australia has had a Jewish population since the arrival of the First Fleet. |
In my most recent novel, I looked at Australian Jewish women’s
history, and how it’s different to the standard ways Jews are seen and interpreted
historically. Rivqa and I both come from that background. We decided to have a long
chat and to find out what we share and what we don’t share and why some language
works to describe us and why some doesn’t.
This kind of discussion gives me a solid standard for
reading fiction. If the characters aren’t
as complex and interesting as we are, then they don’t feel real to me. This is important,
and so I’m sharing the whole conversation. Just to make it clear, Rivqa led it.
I hope you enjoy it!
Rivqa: Hi
Gillian, it's so great to talk to you as always! I hope summer and novel
writing are treating you well.
You and I are both Jewish people living in Australia, but
that doesn't mean our cultures are the same; I'm still tickled by how you
signed my copy of your most recent novel, The
Wizardry of Jewish Women -- ‘please don't throw this book against the wall’
for this exact reason.
But I'm getting sidetracked, because I first wanted to ask
you about the use of the term ‘Jew’, as compared with ‘Jewish people’, which I
tend to reach for first. I'm particularly wary of non-Jewish people using
‘Jew’; I've had it thrown at me as an insult enough times to make me jumpy when
I hear it, even though it's usually said with complete cluelessness to the
sensitivity. What do you think?
Gillian: My
personal preference is simply ‘Jewish’ for that keeps me out of the firing line
that some people save for anything that makes them think of Israel or global
conspiracies and for some reason 'Jewish people' is one such description. We
both are and we aren't a people, so 'Jewish' is easier from that direction, as
well.
I used to react to 'of the Jewish persuasion' the way you
react to 'Jew'. I've seen it so often in so many contexts and it's always been
faintly pejorative. In recent years, however, 'Jew' has overtaken it in terms
of negatives. It's much harder to address, too. If someone says 'you're of the
Jewish persuasion', I can ask them 'which persuasion is yours?' or 'does this
mean you're of the Catholic persuasion?" Because those constructs are so
very dated, they sound a bit daft and can be used to push people to instantly
reconsider their language.
 | |||
| The symbolic distance between this flag at Parliament House and those candles | is telling. |
'Jew' is much harder to address. I have to slow myself down
when I hear 'Jew' and try not to react, because it can be being used as an
insult or a faint pejorative, but it can also be a perfectly standard
description.
The one I will argue with always (as well as from things
like 'dirty Jew', obviously) is ‘people of the Jewish faith’. It suggests that
Judaism is constructed in the same way that Christianity and Islam are. Judaism
is quite different. Faith is an element of religious Judaism, but we do not
have a faith-based religion in that way. Unlike Christianity and Islam (the two
most well-known faith-based religions) a simple statement of faith will not
convert someone to Judaism. This is the technical definition of the term, and
is a very handy standard, so I stick to it. The people who want to argue with
it, are actually arguing that Judaism is something quite different to its
reality and those differences usually include elements that bigots ascribe to
us but that we don't actually have. Once a friend laughed at me for my pedantry
in saying this, which showed me some surprising limitations at her end. Or
maybe it just demonstrated that I have problems with people who only accept
Judaism if it complies with their biases concerning it.
The bottom line with all these terms is that we're seldom
allowed self-definition. Most other people assume they can tell us who we are
and how we act and think and believe. This is why the word 'Jew' is becoming so
very uncomfortable: it is not guaranteed to allow us our understanding of
ourselves. This has happened before. It's often well-intended, which rubs salt
into the wound. It relates to some cultures and religions and races being
verbally related to a place slightly apart. I'd rather be joined with
Indigenous Australians through all the cool things we share than through both
of us having to deal with this demeaning form of light bigotry.
Rivqa: I feel
that denial of self-definition so strongly. Without the relevant education, the
average white Australian (in my experience) seems to think that Judaism is more
or less analogous to Christianity, minus Jesus (minus Christmas has genuinely
not occurred to many I’ve spoken to). And although I’m largely not-practising
now, I find I need to over-emphasise what I do practise for people to register
me as Jewish at all. It’s a weird, liminal space to occupy.
More on the world stage, the obsession with whether
Ashkenazim are white is equally tiresome; particularly when it involves leftists
and Nazis arguing over our heads about it. For many reasons that I won’t go
into (at least just yet), I identify as white. More or less. But it’d be nice
to be able to make that decision for myself, even as I consider the social
structures that inform that identity. And those assumptions about political
alignment based on religion! Please stop. It’s exhausting. I don’t need to
justify my existence to white Australians, especially those who are
suspiciously quiet on refugees.
And yes, definitely; I like ‘Jewish people’, not ‘the Jewish
people’, which implies a monoculture when we are not one. The two of us had
very different Jewish Australian experiences -- again, and I still chuckle when
I think about that book inscription I mentioned earlier! Because you signed it
at your wonderful Rosh Hashana dinner, where so many of your traditions were
just different enough from mine to make me wonder if I’d stepped into an
alternate dimension. So, if we can get a bit reductionist, let’s talk about
that for a bit.
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| The dinner Rivqa talked about. |
I grew up in the Chabad community in Melbourne. Chabad is an
interesting Hassidic sect, especially for women; there’s much less expectation
to be demure, my high school in particular prized secular education, and my
constant arguing with rabbis at my Modern Orthodox yeshiva (post-high school)
horrified some of my peers (but not the rabbis; that’s the Talmudic way, after
all). There were no restrictions on my reading.
Yet as far as Jewish law and custom went, I was taught one
way to do things. I won’t go into a detailed history of the Chabad movement,
but many customs, rooted as they are in Jewish mysticism, are at odds with
other European Jewish practices. As much as I now believe in pluralities of
Judaism and Jewishness, it’s hard to shake that ingrained feeling that others
are (and, indeed, I am) ‘doing it wrong’ … even though that ‘right way’ is at
odds with my personal beliefs. Jacob wrestling with the angel; tension;
internal struggle… it might seem like a negative way to describe how I relate
to my culture, but for the most part, for me, it’s positive. Complicated, but
positive.
Gillian: I
identified as fully white and solidly privileged, until I discovered that Jews
historically in Australia are far more frequently ambivalently white: near
white, honorary white, or, as I like to call it, off-white.
I started to feel the disadvantages of this before I started
comparing notes with people who don't have full white privilege. It was a shock
to discover how much life experience we had in common. How many setbacks, how
many knockbacks, how much discounting, how many people who said 'you people'
and left us off lists.
I've developed ways of identifying some of these shared
experiences, to help me deal with this change in my self-perception. Let me
give you an example. When we talk about walking into a room of strangers, you
can tell those whose differences make them unsafe. There's a shared note of
masked caution in the body language and in the words. It’s not always safe to
walk into a room full of strangers, so we manifest caution.
There has never been any guarantee that strangers won't hate
me for being Jewish. I might be argued with by the tolerant, or walked out on
by the ‘I can't deal’ or told various things I really don't want to hear by
others, but the moment strangers know I'm Jewish I'm almost guaranteed a
reaction. There's always a strong likelihood of a room not being friendly. Knowing that I share this with others is a
bridge we build. I'd rather the bridge were built on liking roses or enjoying
walking in the rain, but how we enter a room is important and that particular
bridge has helped me talk openly with many people with similar experiences. It
also helps me not open myself to people who have no idea, until I'm sure
they're safe.
‘Don't tell them you're Jewish’ is the usual recommendation.
I've always thought, though, that if those who pass all hide, then racism
festers. Not everyone can hide. If I don't address problems, some of my
friends, who have to deal with racism based on skin colour, or bigotry based on
being in a wheelchair, will have far harder everyday lives.
Every time someone walks out of a conversation or looks at
me in a certain way, I wish I were less combative. Prejudice isn't about me,
though, or the person doing the hating: it's about the society we live in. We
all contribute to society and we all make choices as to what our contributions
are. I choose to be open about my background. I choose to not 'pass.' Why?
Because Australian Jews mostly pass as white, some of the
negatives don't happen at all and others don't happen as often as they do to
those who don't pass. And because we (my family, the Jews I grew up with) have
a culture of public silence about hate, it took me a very long time to identify
that what I was seeing ranged from intolerance to hate. Hate, to me, was the
Shoah. Anything else was just a natural part of society. For some reason, by
being exposed to Shoah since I was so very young (I saw photos of the
liberation from the camps and those giant piles of bodies when I was six) I'd
normalised it.
Except it wasn't. It's never been a natural part of society.
It should never be normalised.
When we accept hate, we're condoning hate crimes.
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| This mikvah (in Montpellier) was lost for centuries. Persecution has a vast cultural cost, historically | . |
These aspects of prejudice, and the idea that we all have
choices and we should make them thoughtfully, are how I was taught to interpret
tikkun olam (a part of Jewish philosophy that boils down to making the world a
better place). This brings me to how I was taught such things.
I come from an Australian Orthodox family. Not Chabad.
Quite, quite different from Chabad. My mother taught us most things, in the
home. We had a Hebrew teacher (Israeli, which is why my accent is always
unexpected for someone who has Hebrew-for-praying). We kept strictly kosher,
for Mum, but Dad worked on Saturday mornings.
We were a blended family. Mum's father was from Bialystock
and Mum's mother was born when the family was fleeing the Kishinev pogroms.
Dad's culture was so much from his mother that I only know a little of his
father's culture. It was terribly, terribly Anglo-Australian. I can’t imagine
being unable to make scones. Chops or sausages and three veg and a salad and
maybe a pudding was our weeknight food, with a roast on Friday. All the sets of dishes. All the trials of
Pesach in the days when orders had to be made way in advance to get the kosher
food over to Australia in time. And we went to state schools, because, on Dad's
side, we were quite left wing. We went to shul, but we also learned musical
instruments. I was in Girl Guides for years, supported by Dad for he was in
Scouts for even more years.
The older members of two sides of the family didn't get on
that well much of the time because they were so very, very different, so for me
being Jewish is about sitting next to people who won't talk to each other and
making them comfortable. It's about afternoon tea and fine china and silver
teapots and committee meetings and musical afternoons. We could read Hebrew and
music, for both were important. And tikkun olam came from both sides - some
things are universally Jewish.
We were expected to be strong women as well, but in quite a
different way. Mum taught us our Judaism. Both parents educated us on other
ways. All the books! All the time! It was a wonderful thing as a child to have
no books that were off limits. We weren't expected to be loud, however.
I was taught Jewish law in a very traditional way. We were
taught to ask questions, but that if we wanted to answer back we had to be able
to argue and give proof. My sisters and I only studied the first six days of
Bereshit (the opening sequence of the Torah). It took us six months, because we
studied the commentary as well, as we learned how to work out which comments
were backed up by the text and which weren't.
This led me so naturally into studying history that it was a
seamless transition. I knew that my life was going to include history and
analysis of some kind when I was still in primary school. I dream of
palaeontology and museum curating and everything in between until I reached
university, when I discovered historiography.
Historiography is like Torah study - you can't turn your
brain off, ever. The moment I discovered this, I was hooked. I tried to be fair
to rabbis and my background and I listened to a vast range of rabbis, from all
branches of Judaism I could find. So many arguments they made were emotive or
ill-conceived. So many of the approaches they suggested lacked the cultural
context to demonstrate validity. I stopped studying Torah and started arguing
with all the texts, all the time. It was wonderful. It still is.
I totally missed out on Jewish mysticism until much later.
It's just not part of my immediate family background. My family cares more
about the scientific than the numinous. This explains the basic conflict within
my novel, doesn't it? I didn't explore it much, but I wanted the fact that both
approaches are very Jewish to be acknowledged. That we have mysticism and we
have scientific method, both.
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| Challenging stereotypes (like this Aussie woman) changes how we see history. Photo: Y. Green. |
Rivqa: Off-white
is just perfect. We (as Ashkenazim, it bears repeating) might be able to hide,
sort of, most of the time, but as you say, it’s not in anyone’s best interest,
long-term, for us to do so (barring instances where safety is a concern, of
course). Time and again we’ve seen antisemitic techniques deployed by
Islamophobes and vice versa, just to name one example, and we need to break
that cycle. An uncomfortable part of passing privilege is being all the more
likely to hear some of the more casual racism, the ‘jokes’ from people who
think they’re not racist because it’s ‘just a joke’ and they’d never abuse a
person of colour to their face. Calling out that sort of thing is never easy,
but hopefully it makes some small difference sometimes. Often, I think of
myself as an interface, a conduit -- it’s that liminal experience again, but
it’s basically constant, and these small acts of social justice are an
important part of that.
I love hearing about your upbringing, and how it informed
your career choices as well as your world view. For me, studying Jewish law
might not have directly influenced my study of science, but understanding the
internal logic of a system certainly did. Arguing with text is just such a
Jewish thing to do. Yelling at God! I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in
yelling at God; it’s about protesting injustice and advocating for kindness.
Agricultural Jewish law (for example, shmita, the concept of
letting the land lie fallow once every seven years) and laws around charity
(pe’a, leaving a portion of a harvest for the poor) had such a strong influence
on my world view. Equally, the image of the Jewish mystic slipping away to the
forest to meditate had a profound impact. The idea of everyone and everything
being connected is not unique to our people, but I think it’s important to mark
that journey, honour it, and continue to work for those core values that, for
me, have not actually changed as much as one might think.
More about Rivqa:
Rivqa Rafael is a
queer Jewish writer and editor based in Sydney. She started writing speculative
fiction well before earning degrees in science and writing, although they have
probably helped. Her previous gig as subeditor and reviews editor for Cosmos magazine likewise fueled her
imagination. Her short stories have appeared in Hear Me Roar (Ticonderoga Publications), The Never Never Land (CSFG Publishing), and Defying Doomsday (Twelfth Planet Press). In 2016, she won the
Ditmar Award for Best New Talent. When she’s not working, she’s most likely
child-wrangling, playing video games, or practising her Brazilian Jiujitsu
moves. She can be found at rivqa.net and on Twitter as @enoughsnark.
