Whispers from the past and miraculous discoveries

by Shelley Davidow

When I first began to write Whisperings in the Blood I planned on writing it as a novel. It was going to be called 'The Immigrant'. 

Shelley Davidow

I wanted to tell a story of generations of immigrants based on my gran Bertha’s life, because her life was kind of cool and interesting. I only knew a few things: that when my gran was 10 and living in Indiana, USA, her mother died, and she and her brother were sent to the Jewish Orphan Home in Ohio. I knew that my gran, at age 22, went out to Africa to marry a man she’d never met. 

Then, in 2012 I told my dad in South Africa what I wanted to write, and he said there was this box of letters he’d been holding onto and would I like them?

Every letter written to my gran from 1937 until her death lay in this box, including the love-letters from my grandfather Phil, asking her to come to Africa and marry him after just seeing her photograph. Once I’d read everything, I was stunned. The novel had to become a biography. Then my uncle in Israel said, ‘well, Shell, you know I have Bertha’s diaries. Should I scan them for you?’

A picture of Bertha on her 21st birthday 
that she sent to Phil before they had met.

I couldn’t believe it. Finding Bertha’s own voice,  I discovered miraculous parallels between my gran and myself. The book became then, a biographical memoir! I was blown away to discover that so many of my decisions, my fears, my illnesses, my longings, already existed in the generations that came before me. I uncovered what I can only call, a ‘whispering in the blood’ … a series of motifs and themes that have run through my family for over a hundred years. 

For all that time my Jewish family on my father’s side has been on the move, making immigrant journeys in a restless trans-generational search for home. Great-grandfather Jacob escaped the Pogroms in Eastern Europe and fled to America. His daughter Bertha escaped the Great Depression in the USA to go to Africa and marry someone she’d never met. I grew up during Apartheid and left to escape rampant violence… and then left America to escape health issues, and I thought all my decisions were simply contextual. 

I know that recent research at Emory University in the USA shows that trans-generational trauma can be quite literally passed down through our DNA, but in my book Whisperings in the Blood, I’m aiming to transcend even that… going deeper, into the realm of metaphor, into ‘soul dispositions’ that are more than genetically encoded responses to the world. I see our lives connecting to those of our forebears in a profound, intricate way, and in honouring the immigrants, the refugees of past world events, I want to shed light on our current issues: every non-indigenous person in Australia is an immigrant of one kind or another; we are uninvited ‘guests’ on Aboriginal land. 

I want to acknowledge that, as well as the trauma that flows through every Aboriginal person’s veins as a result of the decimation they’ve suffered over the last 200 years. And when I think of the Jewish refugees in my family since the early 1900’s, and refugees from Syria now, there is no ‘them’ and ‘us’! We have all been people running from dangerous places searching for a safe haven. 

Perhaps Whisperings in the Blood might help dissolve the idea of the ‘other’. Through reading other people’s lives we become them; we’re less likely to then be xenophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, sexist bigots. We become more empathetic, less fearful, less ignorant.

Shelley Davidow will be talking about how knowing one's family history can help to make sense of the past but also affect the present in the session 'Inheriting the past - family legacies', alongside Alexandra Joel, moderated by Michaela Kalowski, on Sunday August 28, 11:15am - 12:15pm at the Sydney Jewish Writers Festival. 

Book today at www.sjwf.org.au!

CHUTZPAH : THREE QUESTIONS THAT CAN ONLY BE ASKED OF A JEWISH AUTHOR

Pnina Jacobson & Judy Kempler

ONE EGG IS A FORTUNE

How does your writing reflect your Jewish identity?


In writing our book, One Egg Is A Fortune, we recalled the happy times from our own childhoods, and also more recently in bringing up our children. Many of these memories are associated with Friday night dinners and Jewish festivals, family and friends getting together and the sharing of meals, experiences and stories.  It is these celebrations that make us who we are as a people. Our writing reveals that food and stories are the very ingredients to our Jewish identity.

Has there been a seminal event in your Jewish life that has shaped the person you are today?


Judy: I find it difficult to pinpoint a single determining event in my Jewish life. I had a wonderful childhood and grew up with a strong connection to family, friends, learning and Jewish traditions – the annual ‘open-house’ breaking of the fast with cousins, and cousins of cousins, and friends of cousins, Friday night dinners and long family Sunday afternoon lunches and high teas– these were all sacred occasions and not to be missed.

When I moved to live in Singapore in the 1990s with my husband John and our three children, for the first time I understood what it was like to be in a minority. We were the only Jewish family in our school community, and the differences in our values and cultures became more noticeable to me.  This experience instilled a great sense of Jewish identity, and made me proud to share my heritage with new friends.  Returning home, it became more important that our children had a Jewish education, to learn to be respectful of others, to motivate involvement in our community and to love being Jewish.


The production of One Egg Is A Fortune has also been quite influential in shaping who I am today. The book’s genesis began over 11 years ago. At the time, I was a carer for my late mother-in-law and realised that so much more was needed to help our ageing community. Pnina and I decided that part of the proceeds from this book would support Jewish aged care. This goal in raising funds for the aged has truly deepened my connection to the community, and strengthened my ongoing personal commitment to give back. In addition to this, through our combined determination and sharing this project, Pnina and I have a formed an extraordinary friendship that will last a lifetime.  


Pnina:  I had a wonderful childhood growing up on a farm in Bethal, South Africa, 100km away from Johannesburg. My parents kept a kosher home and we celebrated all the Jewish festivals with family and friends.  Bethal had a thriving Jewish community with over 100 Jewish families which also included a rabbi, a beautiful synogogue and Jewish community hall. We attended cheder (Hebrew school) three times a week, and children’s services on Shabbat. There was also an active Women's Zionist Federation and many charitable events were held to raise funds for Israel. My parents sacrificed a lot for me and my siblings to attend a Jewish day school in Johannesburg. This upbringing has shaped my Jewish identity and I hope I have provided this same loving and supportive home for my own family here in Sydney.


Ma nishtanah? (aka why is your book different from any other book?)


On the inside cover of One Egg Is A Fortune we have a saying, “A wise man once said, ‘We came, we saw, we conquered - let’s eat!’” This captures the spirit of our book. So read, eat and enjoy! And when you’ve read one story, read another, and another. Heaven forbid you should go away hungry!A three-time award winner on the international stage, One Egg Is A Fortune is not just another cookbook. This recognition, combined with the ongoing positive press in online and print media, is evidence of its unique nature and appeal to a wide variety of readers and cookbook enthusiasts, both within and outside of the Jewish community.Our book is as much, if not more, about the people behind the recipes, rather than the recipes alone.  To be able to provide such insight into the families and traditions of 50 prominent Jewish individuals from around the world is indeed unique. We offer a smorgasbord of stories and cuisines from both men and women alike.

While each contributor tells a story, their anecdotes suggest that the enjoyment of food is the common thread that binds us together. No matter our location, profession or prestige, food and family relationships is an underlying universality of our Jewish heritage


The awards


Best in the World  2012 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, Australia-Pacific Fundraising, Charity and Community
Silver Award for cookbooks,  2012 IPPY
Winner  2012 The National Indie Excellence Awards, Cookbooks


Pnina Jacobson and Judy Kempler will be talking Jews and food at the Sydney Jewish Writers' Festival on Sunday 26 August, from 6.15pm - 7.15pm.
Craig Cranko, the photographer for One Egg is a Fortune, will be our next guest blogger.

Shades of Exodus

Guest blogger BARRY LEVY wrestles with  the immigrant's perspective of home

We (Jewish) South Africans are a very stubborn, hard-headed bunch.

Having said that, let me explain. If we are wrong, or found to be wrong, we will readily admit our error, and far more so and more vocally than many others (that we now live amongst).

But when it comes to big, life-changing issues - like migration - we are never wrong. We only ever make such decisions because they are absolutely right and will lead to a better life now and for future generations. We also tend to hate and swear a pox on the old country.

But, you see, there is a bit of an irony in this - our big decision to migrate from S'effrica, and I hear it in the echoes of my own parents at the height of the days of apartheid. Sitting around on a Friday night/Sunday afternoon, under the lazy South African sun (Jo'burg), they would guiltlessly say things like many of us say over here now (at least in public): 'There isn’t a better country in the world. This is God’s own country.’

The question is, and this is really one of the big questions in my new work of fiction, Shades of Exodus: Can there really be an instant love for another country? Do people who express this sort of sentiment, really, truly, absolutely mean it in their heart? Or are they just trying to be as positive as they possibly can?

You see, not for us (Jewish) South Africans (except among ourselves) any admissions of loss or emotional fragmentation when we choose to shift entire countries, entire societies. Rather there be a sense of, we’re a pretty tough lot (our grandparents or great grandparents did it before us), and the pain of adjustment, if there be any - and there probably ain’t - is unimportant.

Why should there be any pain? After all, we only ever choose the best for ourselves and our children, and like nature’s finest trees, we can thrive anywhere. We are universal people.

But this, in many ways, is what makes South African migrants, generally and particularly Jewish ones, different to others. Not that the pain or that sense of loss and fragmentation aren’t there, just the admission of it is missing. Actually, we don't even like to think of ourselves as immigrants - and hate the word migrants, which applies to birds or poor Africans or pushy Middle Eastern refugees.

And this is what Shades of Exodus explores: the deepest feelings of people who may have left their country for the best and most defensible reasons, but somehow find it necessary to deny any pain or upheaval.

The reality, as I have personally found (as much as we think we fit anywhere where English is spoken), is that migration is difficult for anyone. Be they starving Sudanese, fleeing-for-their-lives Afghanis, or even be they from the UK or the USA. And yes, that includes us South Africans.

OK, I grant, and readily: Like most migrants, there are very real reasons why South Africans - even rich ones - have chosen to live in other countries. One need only look at two broad waves: A million or so left in the decade before the end of apartheid - mainly for reasons related to apartheid - and secondly, a million more who have left since the demise of apartheid, mainly for reasons of rampant violent crime and black economic empowerment - a system (rightly) put in place to give blacks the start they were always denied, but which has acted as a kind of reverse discrimination against very capable white people, denying them and their children a chance to fulfil their potential.

But the question is: Irrespective of all these things, whether having secured a place in a wealthy, successful country like Australia, have we still not lost something of ourselves? Just a little of our emotional bearings? Just a bit of our identity? Just some of our soul?

I take counsel in this from Jane Austen, who says of the country one grew up in: 'One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering.'

Shades of Exodus does not prescribe answers to questions that are raised through migration (immigration for those who find the word easier to chew on). Rather, the book leaves it to migrants to face up to the questions for themselves.

Late in the book we read about a Sudanese man, who, after enjoying the material and security comforts of Australia, goes back to the poverty and immensely rough life of South Sudan where after 20 years of warring, the people have found peace.

With glee, he says: "Of course I want to go back there. That is my home."

My question is, how many others, of any nationality, have the heart to do the same?