Festival wrap up and writing competition winner

We are excited to have hosted another successful Sydney Jewish Writers Festival. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. The range of outstanding presenters, the diversity of subjects and the thought provoking ideas all combined to make it a wonderful Festival with over 500 people attending over 3 days. We have put many photos on our Facebook page and encourage you to tag yourself. 

Thanks to all our amazing presenters and volunteers, we couldn't have done it without you. 

We wanted to post the outstanding winning entry for this year's Australian Jewish News writing competition:

KIBBUTZ MOTHER

By Elle Kaye

Typical Kibbutz

She was pregnant again. It had taken her time to work it out but now she knew. It had been five years since the last pregnancy and she thought she was done. She placed her hand protectively on the tiny bump that she only now acknowledged for what itwas. A girl. She could tell.

She vacillated between joy and dread as she contemplated the being inside her. She allowed herself to close her eyes and fantasise about this one. About holding her. Kissing her all over her soft, downy head. Smelling her. Breathing her in. comforting her. Brushing away her tears. Smiling at her. Singing to her. Rocking her. And then she opened her eyes. Enough silliness, she scolded herself.

Children at Kibbutz

When she had left her family for the Kibbutz she didn’t think about children. In the early days, she didn’t think she wanted any. She watched the other women grow fat with their children and she judged them and their supposed sickness, their supposed fatigue. Any excuse not to work, she had scoffed. She judged them their weakness and tears – of course the children should be raised collectively. What did they think this was? Summer camp? She judged them their tears and their milk stained clothes and their softness. This was no place for softness.

When she had the first one she tried, and succeeded, to remain as distant as possible. When they discouraged her from breastfeeding too often, she agreed. It would only spoil the child.

When they recommended against visiting during the workday,

she blushed with embarrassment. Of course she mustn’t coddle

her. So she determined to set an example. She kept away. She

weaned her as soon as possible. Understanding the other

mothers now, she only judged them more harshly. When they spoke of their grief, of their need to be with their babies, she tut-tutted and continued with her work. But the ache. The ache within her. That parasitic ache for her child. She ignored it. She would conquer it.

She spent the required hour a day with the baby. The smell as she walked up the path towards the room made her sick. Chicken soup. Every day, at this hour, the children were fed chicken soup. She would be handed a yellow or orange bowl of mushed chicken and vegetables. She would spoon the mush into her wary daughter’s mouth. She watched in judgment as the other mothers smiled and cooed at their children. She held her head

high as the woman in charge of the babies praised her for

treating her daughter like an adult. For refusing to talk gibberish at her. She was assured that her daughter would grow up to be a useful member of the collective. She nodded. Smiled tightly. That

was the aim after all. The mission. Wasn’t it?

The second child was male. And she was told to be even tougher

with him. But her resolve crumbled like the quiver of her lips as

she had to hand him over too. She ran into the thorn fields and

allowed herself to sob then. And then, she returned to work. And

told her man there would be no more.

But this time. This baby. This baby she did not want to let go.

She felt like a petulant toddler. She wanted to stamp her foot. To

holler and scream and hit the floor with her fists, her head.

Image: bajasfamilyrestaurant

Wanted someone to listen to her. But what would she say? What did she know? She was just ignorant. Corrupted by the bourgeoisie values of the family she left.

It was time to visit the children. She walked down the path and smelled the familiar sickening smell. She knew her nausea had nothing to do with her pregnancy. She fed them. Gave them the perfunctory kiss that was expected. She stood and left. 
The fragrance of the chicken soup lingered as she shut the door behind her.

Are the best TV shows the ones that demand we do more than just watch?

CREDITI

We are very excited that one of the biggest voices in television, The New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum, is joining us at the Sydney Jewish Writers Festival on Sunday. She has a busy schedule in Australia: presenting at the SJWF, the Melbourne Writers Festival and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House.

She'll speak on Sunday 24 August @Shalom College, UNSW in two sessions:

·         12:30pm - 1:30pm in conversation with Lexi Landsman about why TV turns me on.

·         5:45pm – 6:45pm she will be joined by ABC head of comedy Rick Kalowksi and SMH TV critic Ruth Ritchie to discuss Highbrow/Lowbrow television – Are we what we watch?

You may not have had a chance to read her work in The New Yorker.  To get a taste of her insight and understanding, below are some excerpts from an article she wrote titled The Great Divide: Norman Lear, Archie Bunker and the rise of the bad fan.

Emily Nussbaum

She explores the politics and power of television through the hit 70s American sitcom “All in the Family” and its right-wing icon Archie Bunker. It was the No. 1 TV show for five years. At its peak, more than fifty million viewers nationwide watched weekly. But it didn't quite turn out as the writer planned ...

A proud liberal, Norman Lear, had clear ideological aims for his creations: he wanted his shows to be funny, and he certainly wanted them to be hits, but he also wanted to purge prejudice by exposing it. By giving bigotry a human face, Lear believed, his show could help liberate American TV viewers. He hoped that audiences would embrace Archie but reject his beliefs.

… However, “A funny thing happened on the way to TV immortality: audiences liked Archie,” author Saul Austerlitz writes. “Not in an ironic way, not in a so-racist-he’s-funny way; Archie was TV royalty because fans saw him as one of their own.”

Archie Bunker

... Archie represented the danger and the potential of television itself, its ability to influence viewers rather than merely help them kill time. Ironically, for a character so desperate to return to the past, he ended up steering the medium toward the future.

… As the show’s ratings rose, it began to saturate American culture, high and low. In 1971, the Saturday Review reported that teachers were requesting study guides, to use the show to teach their students lessons about bigotry…In 1973, a poll found that Archie Bunker’s was the most recognized face in America, and for a while there was a craze for bumper stickers reading “Archie Bunker for President.” At the 1972 Democratic Convention, in Miami, the character got a vote for Vice-President.

... To critics, the show wasn’t the real problem: its audience was. In 1974, the social psychologists Neil Vidmar and Milton Rokeach offered some evidence for this argument in a study published in the Journal of Communication, using two samples, one of teen-agers, the other of adults. Subjects, whether bigoted or not, found the show funny, but most bigoted viewers didn’t perceive the program as satirical. They identified with Archie’s perspective, saw him as winning arguments, and, “perhaps most disturbing, saw nothing wrong with Archie’s use of racial and ethnic slurs.” Lear’s series seemed to be even more appealing to those who shared Archie’s frustrations with the culture around him, a “silent majority” who got off on hearing taboo thoughts said aloud.

… No critic could support that approach, least of all those who see TV as an art form, and want to free it from anxious comparisons to novels and movies—to celebrate TV as TV. During a recent visit to a university, I bridled when an ethicist praised me for taking a moral stance. (I’d called a network show “odious torture porn.”) I told her that I wanted originality, even if it was ugly, and that I’d rather watch a show that unsettled me than something that was merely “good.”

Iconic All in the Family cast

That’s true. And yet, like Archie himself, I have to admit to my own fascination with the good old days—in particular, that spiky, surreal moment when people found television so dangerous that they slapped warning stickers on it. Lear and his critics disagreed about how his show affected people, but they agreed that it should affect people. Every day marked a fresh skirmish: Should there be a “family hour”? Were Starsky and Hutch making viewers violent? Back when television was a mass phenomenon, controlled by three networks, watched live by the whole family, it was no wonder that observers wrung their hands over whether it might turn its viewers into monsters. (These days, we reserve those concerns for the Internet.)

... Decades later, television has a different relationship with its audience. We collect and record it; we recap it with strangers; it pours through hundreds of narrow channels.

... There is no way—and maybe no reason—to unite TV’s divided audience. If television creators began by trying desperately not to offend, they clearly learned that the opposite approach can work just as well: a show that speaks to multiple audiences can get ratings by offering many ways to be a fan. …Perhaps there’s another way to look at it, which is to imagine an ethical quality that is embedded in real originality. The best series rattle us and wake us up; the worst are numbing agents. Sometimes, a divided audience is a result of mixed messages, an incoherent text; sometimes, it’s a sign of a bold experiment that we are still learning how to watch. But there’s a lot to be said for a show that is potent without being perfect, or maybe simply perfect for its moment: storytelling that alters the audience by demanding that viewers do more than just watch. ♦

The SJWF starts this Thursday night -  21 August – we can’t wait!

This year we have a great line up of speakers and sessions. 

Our top picks, (besides Emily's sessions), are Emile Sherman in Big screen storytelling, A Singular Vision: Harry Seidler and the skyline of modern Australia,  and Monday Morning Cooking Club's Taste the stories (literally) where not only do you get to hear about their recipes but you also get to taste some of them. Throughout Sunday there are two simultaneous sessions to choose from, so there will be something for everyone. 

Books will be sold on the day by our favourite bookseller Scott Whitmont from Lindfield bookshop with thanks to Booktopia for sponsoring the festival.

Join in the conversation using the hashtag #SJWF2014 on Twitter - https://twitter.com/SJWFestival, Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/SydneyJewishWritersFestival, and on our Instagram account - http://instagram.com/encountersshalom – we would love to hear from you all and see your pics and Tweets over the 3 days!

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Book now - http://www.encounters.edu.au/SJWF/Buy-Tickets/Buy-Tickets-2014 Tickets can also be bought at the door. 

Spinning Israel's story - Alan Gold

Inspiration from the most unlikely places,
 including The Simpsons

by Alan Gold

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked when I lecture to students on creative writing, is where my ideas for a novel come from. Yet I’m never believed when I tell my students that it’s either the front page of a daily newspaper, or the latest edition of The Simpsons. 

But the idea for the most recent novel I’ve written came to me four decades ago, when I was weeding an Israeli tomato field with a Professor of Philosophy from an Ivy League American University. I was living on my kibbutz and as he and I were alone in the field under a broiling sun, hacking away with our hoes at the roots of the weeds, he asked me what I wanted to do when I’d left the Ulpan and the Kibbutz and was working in Israel. Did I want to remain a journalist or go into another area of life? I told him I wanted to be a novelist, the ambition of many journalists. The problem, I told him, was finding a story which sufficiently original that a publisher would be interested.

“The only originality you need,” he told me, “is telling an old story in a new and compelling way.” I admitted that I couldn’t even think of an old story to re-tell, and he stood up straight, took a drink of water, and said, “Jerusalem! There’s three thousand years of stories there, and writers haven’t even scratched the surface of one of its stones.”

The holy city of Jerusalem 

For forty years and more, I’ve been thinking of writing a story about the 3000 year history of Jerusalem, but told fictionally. Why as fiction? 

Because facts like dates, wars and sieges are never as memorable to a reader as are well-developed characters and the stories they tell. Told as fiction, a reader or viewer develops a deep empathy with the characters, and are absorbed far more memorably than dry facts from a history book.

Think, for instance, about Israel’s Hasbara. The Palestinians trot out fabrication after fabrication, soaked up by the world’s media. It makes front page news. And then some poor, hapless Israeli spokesperson will appear in the media the following day and say that what the Palestinians are saying is all lies, and here are the facts. So whose story is remembered by viewers and readers? Not the Israeli side…of that, you can be certain.

http://www.booktopia.com.au/exodus-leon-uris/prod9780553258479.html

But it was a phone call from the head of the UIA, Harold Finger, which put these two aspects together, and created a trilogy which, we hope, will begin to alter the way non-Jews view Israel and its right to nationhood.

I’d only just returned from two months in Indonesia, writing a book about the nation’s history, when Harold phoned me out of the blue. He was deeply and increasingly concerned about the continual bad press which Israel was getting around the world, and wanted to discuss the concept of me writing a book which told the truth about Israel’s history and its inalienable right to its existence. He knew that the facts either weren’t understood, or were disbelieved, by a majority of the non-Jewish world, and felt that a good book – like Exodus or Roots – was needed to make people understand the historical and moral claim which Israel had to its ancient land.

http://www.booktopia.com.au/bloodline-alan-gold/prod9781922052834.html

And as he spoke, the idea grew and grew in my mind, until by the end of the hour-long conversation, we’d created The Heritage Trilogy, a dramatized television series, a multi-lingual teacher’s resource for curriculums throughout the world. These would not be Israeli propaganda, but a factual analysis of the history of the Jewish people, the diaspora and the regathering of a people into their historical land. Bloodline, published world-wide by Simon & Schuster, was the first of the books; later this year, the second in the trilogy will be published, followed by the third next year. The books trace the 3000 year history of the Jewish people, told through the eyes of two families, from the time of the First Temple to today’s Israel.

And in that phone call a couple of years ago, grew the idea of a storyworld. This is a way of telling multiple stories at the same time, across a variety of media. Increasingly with the contraction of the book industry, publishers, television producers, movie studios and internet creators, are coming together to tell vastly bigger stories than can be told in a film or a book. And the concept which Harold and I were creating during an electrifying phone call, was, arguably, the biggest of them all … the three thousand year history of the Jewish people, told in book, television, animated games, interactive books, and much much more.

But I’m a writer and Harold is a property developer, so we needed an expert on trans-media multi-platform story-telling.  Along came my dear friend, Mike Jones…and that’s the beginning of the story. 

Watch the trailer for his book Bloodline here - http://youtu.be/KKrUwuWns9g

Hear Alan Gold at the upcoming Sydney Jewish Writers Festival @ Shalom College, UNSW on Sunday 25 August.

• When past meets present - fiction and history with Dr Bernard Cohen from 2pm-3pm moderated by Joanna Kalowski. 
• Spinning Israel's story with Dr Yoaz Hendel and Debbie Whitmont moderated by Yair Miller from 4:30pm-5:30pm. 

Full program details and ticket information are available at www.sjwf.org.au or call 9381 4160. Join us on Facebook and Twitter @SJWFestival #SJWF2014

Breaking down stereotypes from left to right - Dr Yoaz Hendel

Visiting scholar of The Shalom Institute and Sydney Jewish Writers Festival guest author Dr Yoaz Hendel arrives next week from Israel. As Chairman of the Institute for Zionist Strategies he is dramatically rethinking the political discourse in Israel and shattering typical stereotypes about right-wing and left-wing. In these difficult times, he brings some fresh, new ideas to a stalemated conflict.

Dr Yoaz Hendel 

TimesofIsrael.com wrote about the journalist, commentator, analyst, author and former Director of Communications for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Excerpts of the article are below.

Yoaz Hendel is undoubtedly a right-winger, having served as an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and today chairing the Institute for Zionist Strategies, a right-leaning think-tank. His interest, the overarching theme of his voluminous writing and commentary, is Israel itself, its many identities, social fractures and shared future.

Left-wingers, he believes, are too quick to surrender both their particularism and self-criticism; right-wingers are too eager to cling to unexamined tropes and unthinking maximalist positions. The Jewish people’s future as a nation will depend on Israeli society’s ability to resist these centrifugal forces pulling it apart.

“Jewish kingdoms have a tendency to collapse not from external pressure but from internal pressure,” he told The Times of Israel in a recent conversation. “The second Jewish kingdom [under the Hasmoneans] stood for 80 years.” Israel, he notes, is already 65.

Hendel is one of the most active and visible of Israel’s political journalists. He is a ubiquitous presence in Israeli media. He may be the most widely-read right-wing voice in the country.

“Yoaz has an influential and unique voice in Israeli mainstream media, a voice that is not heard that often,” says Yaakov Katz, a former Jerusalem Post military correspondent who co-authored a book on the Iranian nuclear crisis with Hendel.

Slim, talkative and earnest, Hendel doesn’t seem to fit his resume. He served for years as an elite Flotilla 13 naval commando, and then for several years in undisclosed operational roles in the defense establishment. He holds the rank of major in the IDF reserves. He rarely adds the appellation “Dr.” to his name, so his readers are unaware that he holds a PhD in Hellenistic and Roman-era guerrilla warfare and intelligence gathering, including in the militaries of the Hasmonean Jewish kings commemorated on Hanukkah. And he rarely speaks of his service at the prime minister’s side, a relationship that imploded after Hendel turned to prosecutors over sexual harassment allegedly perpetrated by a member of the prime minister’s inner circle against a subordinate, an act that led to the sacking of the senior official — and a falling out between Hendel and Netanyahu’s closest aides.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu with Dr Yoaz Hendel

His latest passion, which he tackles with the same energy evident in his military record and his media presence, is the Jerusalem-based Institute for Zionist Strategies. Since taking over as chairman in May 2012, Yoaz has shifted its focus to a complex, assertive effort at undermining the assumptions of Israel’s current political debate.

 “If there’s one thing you need to know about Yoaz, it’s that he breaks up monopolies,” an influential journalist said of him recently. “He wants to break up the religious monopoly of the rabbinate, the left’s monopoly on human rights, the right’s monopoly on Zionism.”

It’s a comment that summarizes succinctly Hendel’s political mission.

“The IZS tries to turn the State of Israel into both a more Jewish and a more democratic country,” Hendel explains, riffing off the common assertion that there is a tension between the two.

“We’re unflinchingly nationalistic. We have no doubts about our identity, even in a world that doubts the right of a Jewish state to be Jewish,” Hendel says.

“We believe the state was born primarily to be a home for the Jewish people, but at the same time we strive to make it more democratic.”

Democracy is not optional, he insists. “Jews have never lived in peace with each other without an external law.” Democracy is that set of rules required for Jews to live together.

 “The Zionist movement can’t be built on the denial of the other. My purpose isn’t just to teach the world [Israel’s side of the story], but to teach the Israeli as well, to teach parts of the left that not every statement that ‘smells’ nationalistic signals the end of democracy, and to teach the right that a national identity can’t be built on hate.”

One of Hendel’s first major steps when he took over the chairmanship of the institute was to establish “Blue and White Human Rights,” a group of self-identified right-wing activists who perform actions usually considered the sole purview of the far left, such as standing at roadblocks in the West Bank to ensure that IDF soldiers perform their duties according to the rules of the army, Israeli law and international norms.

The right -wing Blue and White Human Rights group monitors IDF soldiers at roadblocks. 

The left’s “monopoly on human rights” has been damaging for Israel because it has given credence to the idea, not least on the right itself, that the right is somehow less responsible for or less interested in human rights, he argues.

We say that morality doesn’t belong to anyone. If anything, morality is on our side more than theirs, because some of the human rights organizations use human rights discourse for political ends, to oppose Israel’s existence. We deal with human rights without making them dependent on narrow politics.”

Most observers of Israeli politics believe the Israeli right is a triumphant political force that has ruled the country for the better part of the last two decades and faces a fractured, confused opponent on the left. But Hendel refuses to celebrate. The right, he argues, has failed Israel. Its electoral victories are not a function of its political message. In fact, he worries, the Israeli right barely has a political message.

As he seeks to break the left’s monopoly on human rights, Hendel devotes perhaps even more effort to liberating what he calls the “paralyzed” discourse on the right when it comes to the Palestinians.

The abysmal electoral failure of the left over the past two decades has created a strange mirror effect on the right. Since the right appears to be unable to lose an election, “it feels no need to speak to the mainstream or the center.”

“I don’t want to see Likud fail to form the government” in an upcoming election, Hendel insists, “but I also want Likud to stay in the Israeli mainstream. Without the liberal nationalist voice, without the appeal to the Israeli mainstream, which is patriotic but liberal, wants peace but understands its limits, Likud will turn into Jewish Home,” its more hawkish coalition partner.

“Unlike others on the right, I think the status quo is damaging to Israel. We have to start finding our own answers as to how things should develop.” Instead, he says, the right has allowed itself to be dragged along by events.

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Don't miss Dr Yoaz Hendel in person at the Sydney Jewish Writers Festival at Shalom College, UNSW. 

• Secrets and Lies with Prisoner X author Rafael Epstein and Michaela Kalowksi on Saturday 23 August from 7:30pm.
• Israel: Dreams, Observations,Visions with Helen Gottstein, Michael Kagan and Dr Hilton Immerman on Sunday 24 August from 11:15am-12:15pm. 
• Spinning Israel's story with Bloodline author Alan Gold, Debbie Whitmont and Yair Miller. 

Full program details and ticket information are available at www.sjwf.org.au or call 9381 4160.

Join us on Facebook and Twitter @SJWFestival #SJWF2014