On becoming a Jew - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 15: Divided Nation
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Lee Kofman
EVERY JEWISH CLOSET, 2006: IS FULL OF SKELETONS. SO IS MINE. I still struggle to reconcile the image of my distressed mother in the Brooklyn laundry, and that of her speaking triumphantly at my wedding. It is easier to love her in the laundry than at Kryal Castle, just as it is easier for me to visit Caulfield occasionally and enjoy the succulent Yiddish and kosher bagels than live or work in the suburb. It is easier to forgive those Russian girls from the hospital, especially as some of them are dead by now, but it becomes increasingly difficult to keep dismissing the current political climate in which the hydra of anti-Semitism is growing anew its ancient, horrific heads.
It is also impossible to keep dismissing my origins. Nowadays, as the racial and religious tensions rise, we are all – even against our wills – becoming a bit more Jewish, or Muslim, or American, or Australian, or whatever.
So I am a bit Jewish nowadays, and follow a more consistent version of cosmopolitanism with regard to Jews too – it's not about me and them anymore, Caulfield versus the beach. I take more interest in our history and follow current affairs more intently. And, perhaps for the first time, I let the pain of being a Jew into my life. Resistance and logic fade and I am flooded with an overwhelming sadness for our not-so-distant past of exiles, pogroms, for the six millions and for the present of the Promised Land which has been turned into chaotic, bleeding ground.
I am also sad about what the future might bring in light of increasing fanaticism and war.
Brian Castro wrote in Griffith REVIEW 8: Our Global Face that real thought is always in between, inseparable from the complexity of feeling, suffering from contradiction. I agree with him that contradiction is the experience of truth. I experience it now. At the same time that I am becoming Jewish, I also feel most acutely the urgency to preserve my old beliefs in some mysterious commonality of human nature, hoping – perhaps naïvely – this can be an antidote to the storm of hatred brewing all around.
I began this essay with the question of how it feels to be a Jew in Australia. I want to believe that nowadays I am more able to answer it.
I still maintain I'm immensely lucky to live here, in a country whose greatest downfall (or perhaps advantage?) is that it is laid back. I believe this even in the aftermath of the Cronulla riots: I see them not as a rule, but as an ugly exception. I am lucky in this spacious land where people still smile at strangers on the streets. But the word "lucky" is not synonymous with feeling safe, and means instead arbitrary and incidental. Lucky is a fragile word. And this, I guess, is my point – there is a fragility embedded in being a Jew that none of us can ever escape, no matter what colour our skin is or what we believe.
Isaiah Berlin once said: "I do not think that there is a country where Jews feel totally secure, where they do not ask themselves: ‘How do I look to others?'" Most likely, this same uneasiness is what I am inheriting as I am slowly becoming a Jew. ♦