HUMAN RIGHTS & EQUALITY FOR ALL,FREEDOM & JUSTICE FOR PALESTINE, ZIMBABWE, BURMA, EVERY COUNTRY SUFFERING FROM WARS, DROUGHTS, STARVATION, MILITARY ADVENTURES, DICTATORSHIPS, POLICE STATES, RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION, HOMOPHOBIA, CENSORSHIP & OTHER OBSCENITIES.INTERNATIONAL ASYLUM SEEKER SUPPORT
A BLOG SITE, "BLOGNOW" COLLAPSED IN 2009, SO USE THE GOOGLE SITE SEARCH ENGINE
When I left South Africa in 1978 to escape the police state and hope for a new life in Australia, I did know that Australian governments had tendencies similar to police states, in its treatment of its indigenous population, tendencies which have magnified over the years.
Censorship in South Africa was extreme, particularly in relationship to the English-speaking media, because of their anti-apartheid views and the journalists who expressed these views.
Raids on all sorts of organisations - political, media, social - went to extremes and death resulted more often than not and also incarceration for non-crimes but deemed crimes by the police state and its laws and regulations - themselves criminal activities.
Australia has a government which is pressing the security button on every occasion, but one needs to consider what the threats to Australia are and where they are or are not - coming from.
Australia involves itself with wars which threaten Australia's security, but which Australia has no right to be involved with. It has locked up - illegally of course - people fleeing from the terrors of many of the regimes around the world, often supported by the USA and its allies of which Australia plays its part one way or another. These people are locked up in concentration camps in Manus - Papua New Guinea, and Nauru, which is a country with laws similar to dictatorship and from whom all the poor asylum seekers need to be removed immediately.
Attacks by the government on journalists as has happened in the last few days is something which Morrison and Dutton are responsible for, no matter how much they deny it. The next step after this could well be complete censorship and we are well along that road because of the secrecy of the governments operations. What we do know is that we don't know what is going on in this country, and that is dangerous.
My friend Andrew Rubin is an amputee. He’s lost his right hand, lower arm, right foot, and lower leg.
He used to be an avid runner and cyclist. He can’t do much of that
anymore, although his walking is getting much better. Soon he might be
able to run with his artificial leg.
Andrew is incredibly lucky.
The medical catastrophe that left his hand and foot so terribly
damaged didn’t kill him. But when his limbs never healed even after a
decade, he decided to undergo the amputations. It was his choice, and it
was made much easier because he knew what lay ahead: the most advanced
artificial limbs ever imagined. The kids call him Bionic Man now.
Andrew is lucky for another reason: He doesn’t live in Gaza.
According to the United Nations, 1,700 young Gazans are facing amputation,
mainly of their legs, in the next two years. They’re among the 7,000
unarmed Palestinians in Gaza shot by Israeli snipers over the last year.
Since last spring, thousands of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied Gaza
have poured out of their teeming refugee camps and houses every Friday
to join nonviolent protests, demanding an end to the siege that’s
destroying their lives, and the right to return to the homes Israel
displaced them from.
Even though they were nonviolent, they were met by Israeli snipers
from the beginning. Children, journalists, and medics were targeted too.
International law prohibits using live fire against unarmed civilians
unless the police or soldiers are in imminent danger of death. That’s
not the case in Gaza. A UN investigation of 189 killings during the
first nine months of the protests found that Israeli forces may have committed war crimes.
More than 220 Palestinians have been killed so far. Stunningly, more
than 29,000 have been wounded — including those 7,000 by live fire. So
far, 120 have had to endure amputations — including 20 children.
Anyplace else, their limbs might’ve been saved.
But Gaza has been under Israeli military siege for more than 10
years. Hospitals are massively under-equipped, many of them seriously
damaged by Israeli bombing. The delicate surgery needed to save
shattered bones is virtually impossible there, and the surgeons have no
access to the most up-to-date methods.
Andrew had a choice about his amputations. Gazans don’t.
Otherwise, those
1,700 young Gazans face the catastrophic loss of arms and legs, or risk
dying of infection. They’ll have virtually no access to the advanced
artificial hands, legs, and feet that my friend Andrew uses.
Unfortunately, U.S. taxpayers are funding this madness.
Every year, we send $3.8 billion directly to the Israeli military —
no strings attached — and American companies make the tear gas and other
weapons that Israel deploys against demonstrators. Washingto
n makes
sure that no Israeli officials, political or military, are ever held
accountable at the United Nations for potential war crimes.
Crueler still, the Trump administration has cut off funding
for the very UN refugee agency that staffs health clinics in Gaza, even
as it funds the Israeli military that’s filling them with gunshot
victims.
The protests, overwhelmingly nonviolent, continue — and the killing
has continued too, week after week. Meanwhile, there are so many
disabled kids in Gaza now that the beleaguered territory is setting up special sports leagues for them.
Israel needs to call off its snipers, lift the siege of Gaza, and
stop violating the human and political rights of Palestinians. And until
they do, American taxpayers need to close their checkbook.
It is disingenuous for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies to
single out a leader of the ANC, as if the Minister of International
Relations and Cooperation, Lindiwe Sisulu, was not implementing and
promoting ANC policy.
A
story is told of how two ladies, one day, spotted Nelson Mandela and
Joe Slovo. One wondered who the white man was with Madiba, the other
responded: “That’s not a white man, that’s Joe Slovo.” May
23 this year marks the 93rd birth of Yossel Mashel Slovo better known
to us as Joe Slovo or JS. As his name suggests, he was born in Obeliai,
Lithuania, to a Jewish family and came with his family, aged eight, to
South Africa in 1934. While his father was a truck driver and fruit
vendor in Johannesburg, Slovo left school at the age of 15 to start
working as a dispatch clerk later becoming a shop steward for the
National Union of Distributive Workers. A
year after leaving school, he would join the Communist Party of South
Africa, which would later become the SACP, and volunteered to fight
against the Nazis during the World War ll. Eventually, as we all know,
JS would become the General Secretary of the SACP while having been the
first white person to be elected to the National Executive Committee of
the ANC at Kabwe in 1985. He would be a sworn enemy of the apartheid
regime. Up
to the talks about talks at Groote Schuur, Joe Slovo was an item on the
agenda for the Nationalist Party. FW de Klerk and his colleagues hated
Slovo so much that they demanded that he not be included in the ANC’s
delegation. Madiba would hear none of it. Yet one wonders why they hated
him so much. Was
it because he was a Communist or Chief of Staff of umKhonto weSizwe?
Was it because he was a white man and therefore seen as a betrayer of
white people in South Africa? Or was it because he was a Jew? Even
though JS was an atheist, he would remain faithful to Jewish culture. He
would later marry another prominent Jewish anti-apartheid activist,
Ruth First. Yet
the story of JS and Madiba sums up the view that the ANC has had not
only of white people but also Jews. On the one hand, the story
illustrates that non-racialism which has been the foundation of the ANC,
more specifically from the days of the Freedom Charter. On the other
hand, it tells of an ANC that is simply not anti-Semitic. In
fact, the expulsion of the Gang of Eight, after the Morogoro Conference
in 1969, a conference JS played an instrumental role in, exemplifies
the intolerance that the ANC, whose membership was opened to all races
by this time, had of those Africanist members within its number that
criticised the organisation for being “hijacked by minorities”. Like
those who left the ANC in the late Fifties to form the Pan Africanist
Congress, the Gang of Eight were dissatisfied with the role and
prominence played by people such as Joe Slovo in the ANC’s leadership. Fundamental
to the understanding of the ANC, based on the universal principles of
the Freedom Charter, was that despite the fact that oppression under
apartheid was being led by and favoured white people, it could by no
means condemn or in fact judge all White people. Similar to the notion
of “an injury to one is an injury to all”, the ANC believed that, as
Archbishop Desmond Tutu would put it, freedom would free not only the
oppressed but the oppressor as well. White people themselves needed
liberation from the chains of apartheid. The
condemnation of the human rights atrocities perpetrated by the
apartheid Israeli regime is therefore not a condemnation of all Jewish
people. Far from it. In fact, the ANC believes that just as white people
needed liberation from the chains of apartheid, so too Israelis need
liberation from the atrocities perpetrated by the apartheid state of
Israel. The ANC will never hold all Jews responsible nor even condemn
them for the atrocities of Israel just as it never held white people, as
a group, responsible for the atrocities of the apartheid regime in
South Africa. The
ANC has a long history of the involvement of Jews in its membership and
its fight for freedom. It would be anathema for it and its members, and
especially its leaders, to be anti-Semitic and in fact one could be
disciplined for “sowing racism, sexism, tribal chauvinism, religious and
political intolerance, regionalism or any other form of
discrimination”. (Rule 25.17.6 of the Constitution of the ANC.) It
is therefore disingenuous and somewhat dangerous for the national
vice-president of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies firstly to
single out a leader of the ANC, as if Lindiwe Sisulu was not simply
implementing and promoting ANC policy and, secondly to thereby suggest
that the ANC is anti-Semitic because it condemns the atrocious abuses of
human rights in the Occupied Territories and the crimes perpetrated
against Palestinians globally. Even
more so, it is questionable for the SJBD to speak on behalf of South
Africa’s Jewry, as if there are not Jews who do not currently support
the State of Israel and even worst to suggest that they are lesser Jews
because they do not support Israel. If
Israel wishes to recall its ambassador to Pretoria, as a sovereign
state it has all the right to do so. The ANC and, in particular South
Africa as a sovereign state, should beg no country to keep its
ambassador in place where it does not wish to be represented. In fact,
the remarks made by the vice-president of the SAJBD are sectarian and
radical in themselves because it serves to cause anxiety and
apprehension about the ANC administration under President Cyril
Ramaphosa by suggesting that South Africa’s Jewry has an enemy. As
in the last 25 years of democracy, South Africa’s Jewry have nothing to
fear and have no enemies. What is well within the government of South
Africa, they would find, are enemies of discrimination, enemies of human
rights atrocities and enemies of violence. The
words of Nelson Mandela, who was seen with Comrade Joe Slovo by those
two ladies in that story, continue to reverberate across our country and
the ANC continues to listen to them. “As long as the Palestinian people
are not free, South Africa will not be free.” As long as Palestinian
people are not free even South Africa’s Jewry will not be free. DM Jessie Duarte is Deputy Secretary General of ANC
Electric vehicle charging startup takes on world first, Australia second
Labor's
ambitions to ramp up electric vehicles may be in tatters but some small
Australian startups are amongst world leaders in the sector.
Brisbane-based
Tritium manufactures the fastest electrical vehicle charging stations
in the world with 95 per cent of its production exported.
Dr
Michael Hajesch, chief executive of IONITY and Dr David Finn, chief
executive and co-founder of Tritium with a charging station in Germany.
"This
is a critical piece of infrastructure that allows electric vehicles to
make sense," co-founder and chief executive David Finn says.
Mr
Finn started Tritium in 2001 with his former university class mates Paul
Sernia and James Kennedy after they met as part of a university solar
car racing team.
"Back
in '99 we were driving across Australia on the power of a toaster and
it made you think 'there must be a better way of doing this'," Finn
says.
Production of electric bowsers at Tritium. Credit:Robert Shakespeare
Focus on charging
The
trio turned their attention to electric cars but decided to focus on
charging stations after identifying it as the key component enabling
easy uptake of electric vehicles.
"It
is high power to make it convenient," Finn says. "We really focused on
what we thought the driver wanted and brought that to the market place."
For
the first 10 years Tritium was in business the co-founders funded the
startup themselves and once they pivoted to focus on charging stations a
Commercialisation Australia grant took Tritium "from a bench top
project to something commercially viable".
"From there it has been the story of a growth company, we have had multiple funding rounds," Finn says.
"We launched in European and the North American market and have been riding a wave ever since."
We were driving across Australia on the power of a toaster and it made you think 'there must be a better way of doing this'.
David Finn
Its
biggest single customer to date is Ionity, a startup funded by
Volkswagan, BMW, Ford and Daimler which operates a charging network
across Europe.
"The
car companies have spent billions developing vehicle technology and
don't want to run the risk of people making a buying decision to stay
with a petrol car because they can't charge," Finn says.
Video Player is loading.
This is a modal window.
The video could not be loaded: crossdomain access denied.
The company involved hopes to build one hundred more by the end of the
year but says Australia could miss an important window to the
potentially lucrative industry.
Heading for unicorn status
Over the past three years the startup's revenue has doubled every year and it employs 250 people.
Tritium turned over $13.4 million in 2017, $34 million in 2018 and is on track for turnover of $65 million this financial year.
"Even
if you just extrapolate that through for six years that is a billion
dollar company," says Finn. "We think it is going to accelerate because
the market place is changing. More vehicles to the marketplace will
accelerate adoption," he says.
Tritium is a Brisbane company that produces electric vehicle chargersCredit:Ruth McCoskerAustralia is among the top 20 nations for new car purchases but electric vehicles represent only 1.2 per cent of sales.
That
is set to change with only 11 models of electric car available in
Australia at the moment and 60 different models set to be available in
the next few years.
"Another factor is the price of batteries
dropping, they will reach parity with internal combustion energy in the
next few years," Finn says. "For us our focus is on making sure that the
petrol station equivalent is there."
Australian 'laggards'
While Tritium's chargers are being snapped up overseas, its products have not got the same traction in the Australian market.
Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon Brookes questioned why there was not more support for Tritium on Twitter last month.
"Fastest
chargers in the world," he tweeted. "Made in Australia. Manufacturer.
Exporter. Absolutely massive growth industry. And 20 per cent of the
jobs of Adani construction phase (not running the mine). From one Aussie
tech startup. Imagine if we leaned in?"
Tritium's technology is being used in Australia on a small scale through startup ChargeFox's network.
ChargeFox won
$6 million in funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to
roll out an ultra-rapid charging network along the major driving routes
from Brisbane to Adelaide, including around Sydney and Melbourne, and
separately in Western Australia.
Marty Andrews is the co-founder of ChargeFox.
ChargeFox co-founder Marty Andrews says the startup has raised $17 million and is building 22 sites across the country.
"We
use a couple of different charging station manufacturers including
Tritium," Mr Andrews says. "It's an Australian-based company and they
create chargers as good as any in the world, there are only a handful of
companies that make these products. It's ironic to have them in our
backyard in a country which, frankly, has been a global laggard in the
industry."
Mr Andrews says it is hard for car manufacturers to bring cars to Australia if there is nowhere to charge them.
"We
are helping to break the chicken egg cycle and to give manufacturers
confidence to bring cars to Australia," he says. "We have the tech and
ability to do it here in Australia."
With the Putin/Russia Collusion Fairytale debunked, the undeniable
cancer of real foreign interference in our government demands an honest
airing.
Since American politics is mortally corrupt, one might wonder why
bother to expose one prime cause of its ethical degeneracy. If the
beast is dead, what use is determining what killed it? Well, it isn’t
quite dead and we have to live with it. If the public knew one country
has done more to subvert our government than all others combined it
might raise enough hell to stop it.
In terms of influence, there can be no serious denial that Israel
exerts by far the most powerful suasion of any foreign power on
America. Influence exerted by a foreign power’s registered lobby is
legitimate per our toothless protocol. Israel’s is not so registered,
but… details, details. So, when Republicans invite Bibi to smarmily
insult a sitting President in a joint session of Congress, that’s
influence, not interference. When, besides financing most Senators and
Representatives elections, Israel takes them on cushy, free PR junkets
to Tel Aviv, that’s influence, not interference.
Conversely, when Clintonista subversion of the Sanders campaign
appears on Wikileaks and is instantly imputed to Russia and
Putin–without proof and against expert technical evidence–that’s not
influence, it’s Russki interference. More absurdly, when–again, without
proof–the same Dem CFOs howl that Putin Trolls bought chump change
worth of dingy ads on Facebook that swung the election to Trump that’s…
but you get the picture.
What is obvious and has long been so–and has been emphasized by two
years of fraud and insanity regarding imagined Russian collusion–is that
influence is what your friends have; interference is what your enemies
do.
Why, when it is so blatantly obvious as to be a source of outspoken
pride for them, is the fact that Israel’s right-wing ruling clique
brazenly and continually interferes in American government in the most
aggressive and offensive way, universally denied? You want flagrant
foreign collusion with high officials in U.S. government? Open your
eyes. And your mind…
The reason it’s officially denied is that Israel’s Congressional
whores know that not to do so violates their deal. Not to back Israel
unquestioningly terminates it, and the loss of that money means loss of
office… to say nothing of the beating they’d take in the press and on
their reputations.
The great mass of Americans won’t admit what many can’t help but know
because they, too, fear being attacked for such bold honesty. They are
equally vulnerable to rough handling from the same source: the
massively powerful Israel Lobby, a unified phalanx of militant American
Zionists.
To be clear: Zionism has always insisted that Israel exists for Jews only.
The Israel Lobby–financed by vast American Zionist wealth–potent as
it is, could not leverage our politics if its tactics were exposed, and
it knows it. History gives it the key that makes rational assessment
of Israel’s policies impossible: the Holocaust and the true
anti-Semitism that was its cause.
Evocation of that horror allows any critique of Israeli government to
be sleazily labelled Anti-Semitism, and so to effectively nullify
argument. The dishonest and cynical Israel Lobby uses this tactic
shamelessly to blunt and derail sound criticism or even plain
examination of Israeli state behavior.
What then is Anti-Semitism? By definition it is antipathy or hatred of the Jewish people as a whole. An Anti-Semite espouses that categorical prejudice, and Anti-Semitism in word or deed pertains to Jews in toto. In contrast, behavior that is ugly, hateful, or injurious but not directed
at Jews as a whole, though execrable, is not Anti-Semitic, just as it’s
possible to hate a Catholic or Muslim without hating their religion or
their people.
It follows then, that criticism, even vicious, hateful criticism of
the Israeli State, is not inherently Anti-Semitic, and the claim is
false on its face. To attack the Israeli State is not to attack Jews as
a people since Israel is not home to most of Jewry and its polity by no
means defines or represents Jews in all their broad, complex range of
beliefs, practices, and principles.
To say that criticizing the brutal, repressive apartheid Israeli
government’s actions is Anti-Semitic is no more legitimate than to say
that condemnation of the American State’s vicious imperialist wars makes
one anti-American.
This disingenuous con needs to named and refuted around the world.
Is there criticism of Israel that is clearly Anti-Semitic? Of
course, there is! Plenty of it. Anti-Semitism is no less real and evil
because it does not apply to all critiques of Israel or all insults to
Jews or Jewish entities. Precisely because Anti-Semitism is so
vile and toxic a disease, and because it will continue to live in its
odious carriers, it is critically important not to vitiate the
ubiquitous contempt it arouses by cynically muddling its meaning.
The dishonest and defensive crying of wolf that the government of
Israel and the Israel Lobby deploy against any criticism of their
history and policy is, in addition to being morally contemptible, deeply
counterproductive in terms of Israel’s standing in world opinion.
Mounting a transparently false, blanket, all-purpose lament as a cover
for their most obvious and glaring crimes and cruelties cannot prevent
the world from seeing them for the corrupt and unjust power they are and
fiercely, adamantly opposing them.
Beyond the damage Israel’s cowardly dishonesty does to itself, a more
critical concern for Americans concerns what it has done and is doing
to exacerbate the rolling debacle of our misruled and floundering
country. The Israel Lobby, Zionism’s American voice, wielding the bogus
trope of Anti-Semitism as a club, infects and pollutes through its
agents and activists every niche of our government from the Presidency
and Congress, to Federal Departments and Bureaus, to State and local
offices.
Without Zionist acceptance Trump would not have been President, but
neither would Obama. Through the Lobby’s diligence we have made our
country hated by carrying Israel’s dirty water in the Middle East,
crippled and hamstrung enlightened policy at home, and been afflicted
with such creatures of nightmare as the Harpy, Nikki Haley, bughouse
pseudo-Christian loon, Mike Pompeo, and murderous psychopath, John
Bolton.
Nothing suggests the death grip Israel and its Lobby have on our fate
can be broken. So long as the Anti-Semitic Con is viable, even our
security is in jeopardy with its blind, sick, demented chosen monsters
in charge.
The fable of the eagle and scorpion comes painfully to mind. When
the bird, stung and bearing them both down to death, asks how the
scorpion could sting it after swearing not to do so, it replies, “You
knew what I was when you let me ride.” It was all too clear what Israel
was in 1947.
This whole series of topics has no beginning, no middle, and certainly no end, largely due to the antics of the USA, the UK, France, and many other countries around the world. Let's start with Yiddish, because that is something I have had a lifelong (92 and counting) involvement with and still think it is one of the most interesting languages to know something about. My biggest regret is that those around me who spoke Yiddish, were involved with it and were interested in it are all long dead.
The following article appeared in the Saturday Age supplement "Spectrum" on 1 March 2019:
Yiddish concert embraces 'the lost language in
all of us'
As the Jewish language awakens, a group of local
musicians is putting poetry to song.
By Rachelle Unreich
March 1, 2019 — 11.00am
You could say Yiddish is having its moment, which is odd for a
language that originated among Ashkenazi Jews some time in the
11th
century.
In Shtisel, an award-winning TV show about the
ultra-religious Jewish community in Israel, characters speak a
mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish, which is largely old Germanic
dialect.
An all-Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof is
currently
playing off-Broadway, and later this year, Carnegie Hall will put
on
From Shtetl to Stage, celebrating old and new Yiddish
culture.
From left, Evelyn Krape, Simon Starr and Galit Klas in the
library
at Kadimah Yiddish Theatre. Credit:CHRISTOPHER HOPKINS
Melbourne is no slacker in the Yiddish arena, boasting the
largest
number of Yiddish speakers in Australia. It's also home to Kadimah
Yiddish Theatre, the team behind the production Play Me A
Poem.
At the National Theatre for one night, it will feature well-known
musicians and composers such as Deborah Conway, Lior, Willy Zygier
and Josh Abrahams creating original songs on stage to Yiddish
poetry.
Kadimah's co-artistic director, Evelyn Krape, is on a mission to
re-energise interest in Yiddish, which is sometimes referred to as
a
dying language, mainly because of its dwindling numbers: it was
once
spoken by more than 10 million Jews around the world but after the
Holocaust, this fell to an estimated 1.5 million. Krape's aim is
"to
establish Yiddish as a thriving and dynamic cultural source,"
and she recalls being validated by non-Jewish actor Rob Menzies
when
their paths crossed at a play reading. "He said, 'Yiddish is the
lost language in all of us'."
It's true that audiences around the world have been responding to
Yiddish performances. A Yiddish-language production of Waiting
for Godot opened up a Samuel Beckett festival in Ireland in
2014, and appeared in New York again recently. Composer Josh
Abrahams
(Addicted to Bass) performed Yiddish songs with the band
Yid! at WOMADelaide last year. "The heat was incredible,"
he recalls, "yet thousands of people were giving the horah [an
Israeli group dance] a red hot go. It was amazing."
In Play Me A Poem, musicians will put Yiddish poetry to
unlikely tunes. Abrahams' song is reminiscent of Laurie Anderson,
while reggae, jazz and Afro-Brazilian vibes will also be in the
line-up. Simon Starr, musician and founder of the band Yid!, is
expecting "an emotional response". He believes people who
think of Yiddish as an old-fashioned language will be unprepared
for
how avant-garde some of the chosen poetry and lyrics are, despite
some being written early last century.
"It is still pretty radical for today," Starr says.
"Even if someone isn't connected to it ethnically, it's still
deep and passionate and provocative. There are audacious
commentaries
on the Bible and current affairs, and also heartfelt, harrowing
tales
of suffering and longing and separation that mirror the migration
patterns that were both a result of persecution and economic
aspirations. It's a very rich source of material."
For this show there will be surtitles, so that audiences aren't
merely listening to an orchestral piece but will have an
understanding of the lyrics. "What's really fascinating is to
see these amazingly modern responses to what are largely
pre-Holocaust poems," says Krape, who co-directs. "We want
to say to the audience: Listen – you'll hopefully be knocked off
your feet. You might think this is old, but it's not
old-fashioned."
Although many in the audience won't be familiar with Yiddish,
others will have heard it spoken by an older generation at home.
"I
don't know what's going on in the ether," says Krape, "but
it feels like people are searching for connections to community
and
heritage, in a way that is heymish [the Yiddish word for warm/
homey], but is [also] dynamic, innovative and contemporary."
Krape's parents and grandparents spoke Yiddish, but she only came
to
it as an adult, and now attends classes in Brunswick.
In Melbourne, there's a thriving community of Yiddish learning:
preschool and primary school Sholem Aleichem teaches Yiddish as a
second language (and also as a VCE subject), while Monash
University
offers it at tertiary level.
Kadimah's artistic director, Galit Klas (who is also the show's
initiator and co-director), was a Monash student, and was so
inspired
that she ultimately performed in and directed several Yiddish
productions (singing in Yiddish Divas and writing The
Ghetto Cabaret). "It really sparks something in their
insides for the Jewish audience; it's like this lost missing
piece,"
she says.
And it's also fulfilling for those who find modern music lacking.
"Popular music has become horrendously manufactured," says
Starr. "There's barely any trace of humanity in there, because
instruments and voices have been so treated electronically.
There's
little human feeling left; it's music by algorithm.
"I think people still respond to well-played, live music that
is played with the right intention. It's just people sharing real
stories, and I can't imagine that ever going out of fashion.
People
will respond to that heartfelt live performance, and the next
level
is when the content has another layer or resonance for them."
That layer might not just come from being Jewish. Yiddish, it
seems, has taken on a new life in modern times; TV viewers
incorporate some of the vernacular from watching shows such as Girls
or Seinfeld, as words like schmooze, shvitz and
kvetch
make their way into everyday language.
Starr says the thing he finds fascinating about Yiddish poetry is
that "the themes are quite universal and humanist". In New
York, he says, Yiddish "has become the hipster language of
lesbians, because it's an outsider language and it's their little
secret."
Non-Jews, such as US actor Shane Baker, have made a living out of
mastering Yiddish. Although raised as an Episcopalian in Kansas
City,
Baker was hooked after seeing a Marx Brothers film, and is now a
poster boy for Yiddish theatre.
Klas says Yiddish "doesn't feel dead to me at all".
"There's a challenge for all of us [in Play Me A Poem]
in that we're working in a language that we don't know very well.
But
it also gives you an extra lens with which to see the world and to
create art. I don't know if it's given me a huge insight into my
Jewish identity, but it's made me more proud."
Play Me A Poem is at The National Theatre on
March 3. nationaltheatre.org.au
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above article from Spectrum does not give the historical perspective on why Yiddish has diminished over the years.
There is only one main reason - the zionists who wanted to develop a "homeland" for Jews in Palestine wanted to remove themselves from the reminders of their origins in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world where Yiddish was the spoken language. The zionists who managed to steal the country from the Palestinians made a conscious decision to say that Hebrew was the biblical language of the Jews and therefore it needed to be the language of the "new" country being established in Palestine to be called Israel.
And so Hebrew was born as the language of the zionists who established this "new" country and Yiddish spoken there was frowned upon to the extent that it has gradually died out.
Yiddish remained a spoken language amongst Jews in the United States of America, particularly in the ghettos of New York and was also very much a language Jews spoke in Buenos Aires in Argentina. South African Jews were, in the main from Eastern Europe and their language was Yiddish.
The following is an extract from Pakn Treger, magazine of the Yiddish Book Center, and is written by Aaron Lansky for the Fall 2018 issue, part of issue number 77. Their address is:1021 West Street, Amherst, MA01002, USA The Nobel Prize for literature was awarded to Isaac Bashevis Singer in 1978. He was a Yiddish writer. This is what he said when he went to Stockholm to accept his prize: "The high honor bestowed upon me by the Swedish Academy is also a recognition of the Yiddish language," he said in Yiddish. And he concluded with words that can be read now as prophecy: Yiddish has not yet said its last word. It contains treasures that have not been revealed to the eyes of the world. It was the tongue of martyrs and saints, of dreamers and cabalists - rich in humor and in memories that mankind may never forget. In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of frightened and hopeful humanity. Yiddish has not yet said its last word. And neither, I suspect, has Isaac Bashevis Singer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This next article is from the same Saturday Age Spectrum as the previous article on Yiddish - 1 March 2019:
Antisemitism review: Deborah Lipstadt offers a
guide for the perplexed
By Geoffrey Brahm Levey
February 21, 2019 — 3.06pm
SOCIETY Antisemitism: Here and
Now Deborah Lipstadt
Every serious discussion of antisemitism includes this joke: an
antisemite is someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely
necessary. Attributed to British political thinker Sir Isaiah Berlin,
the joke is wise as well as witty. Given the Jews' calamitous
history, an ideological or pathological form of Jew-hatred can't
simply be about not liking Jews or even treating them harshly. It
must be a prejudice with no rational basis. Although often applied to
any occurrence of hostility or discrimination against Jews,
antisemitism originally entailed a conviction that the Jews are
inherently evil. The word "anti-Semitism" was coined only
in the late-19th century but has since been applied to Jew-hatred
throughout history.
Vandalized tombs with tagged swastikas are pictured in the Jewish
cemetery of Quatzenheim, in eastern France, on Tuesday, February 19,
2019.Credit:Jean-Francois Badias
Berlin's definition of an antisemite appears on page 14 of Deborah
Lipstadt's new book, Antisemitism: Here and Now. A Holocaust
historian at Emory University in Atlanta, Lipstadt attained
prominence after David Irving sued her in a British court in 1996 for
describing him as a "Holocaust denier". She and her
publisher famously won that case, as portrayed in the 2016 film,
Denial. The present book is not a history but a reckoning
with antisemitism in its current guises and contortions. (Lipstadt
rejects the old spelling of "anti-Semitism" as it wrongly
implies that the opposition is to "Semitism" rather than to
the Jews, as was always intended).
Alas, more than 70 years after the Nazis' quest to exterminate the
Jews of Europe, cases still abound in which Jews are variously slain,
vilified, excluded, or threatened because they are Jews. In October
last year, for example, a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue
claimed the lives of 11 congregants and wounded seven others. There
have been murderous attacks on Jews also in France and Brussels in
recent years. In Britain, graffiti with messages such "Adolf
Hitler was right" and "death to all Jews" has appeared
in its cities.
Antisemitism. By Deborah Lipstadt.
Closer to home, Jews have been targeted and intimidated on Sydney
public transport and while walking in Bondi. Earlier this month, more
than 20 swastika symbols were daubed overnight around the Bondi area.
Security guards are standard at Jewish schools and synagogues in
Western societies. As Lipstadt observes, if anything, the bigots are
growing more confident.
The current situation is complicated by two factors. First,
Western Jews (in general) now enjoy a privileged status. Highly
educated, socioeconomically successful, and politically influential,
they are perceived by some less fortunate and marginalised as part of
the dominant white majority. Second, there are the vexed issues of
the Israel-Palestine conflict and of controversial Israeli government
policies. Much of Antisemitism: Here and Now is devoted to
discussing cases thrown up by these twin associations.
The book is written as an exchange of letters between Lipstadt and
a whip-smart Jewish student, Abigail, and a non-Jewish law colleague,
Joe, at her university. The format allows these fictional
interlocutors to variously voice their confusion, outrage, and
internal conflicts about episodes of apparent antisemitism on campus
and in the wider world. Lipstadt responds sagely as a kind of guide
to the perplexed.
The discussion begins by distinguishing different types of
antisemite. There is the extremist who is upfront about his or her
thirst for the Jews' demise. There is the "dinner party
antisemite" who wouldn't dream of physically harming Jews but
wants to exclude them from their golf or country club. There is the
"clueless antisemite" who remarks to her Jewish friend that
she, of all people, should be able to spot a bargain. And then there
are the "antisemitic enablers", who, while not antisemites
themselves, encourage the antisemitism of others.
Here, Lipstadt points her finger at both President Donald Trump,
on the right, and British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, on the
left. Trump has cultivated not only nationalist but also nativist
sentiment. He defended the white supremacists and neo-Nazis at the
2017 Charlottesville rally, for example, even after one of them drove
a truck through the counter-protesters. During his presidential
campaign he retweeted an image of Hilary Clinton alongside a Jewish
star embossed with the accusation of monied corruption. One of his
ads showed three prominent American Jews with commentary about
"global special interests" that "control the levers of
power in Washington".
Corbyn has a history of arch criticism of Israel but also of
supporting blatant antisemites. Last year, video emerged of him
speaking at a Palestinian Return Centre event in 2013 in which he
suggested that "Zionists" do not understand English irony
despite living in the country all their lives, a comment that has not
helped him shake the accusation that he himself is an antisemite.
Lipstadt marshals compelling cases against both politicians as
"enablers", while noting that Corbyn's disposition appears
to be sincere whereas Trump's appears to be cynically directed at
energising his electoral base.
The book further explores such issues as the difference between
antisemitism and racism, antisemitism within the Islamic world, the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the
"toxification of Israel", and the new hostility towards
Jews within progressive movements and on campus. Lipstadt wisely
cautions against an attitude of Jewish victimhood. She also
criticises Jewish organisations that respond to the BDS by seeking to
"boycott the boycotters" or which, like canarymission.org,
seek to intimidate Pro-Palestinian professors and activists by
compiling public dossiers on them.
Antisemitism is antisemitism regardless of the status of its
targets. The Pittsburgh synagogue victims are no less murdered for
having been visibly white and comfortably middle class. And the lazy
equation of "wealthy and white" with domination overlooks
the prominent involvement of Jews in progressive movements including
the civil rights movement and feminism.
Less satisfactory is Lipstadt's treatment of the Israel factor.
She is wrong to claim that questioning Israel's right to exist is
axiomatically antisemitic. To demand only Israel's disestablishment
among the family of nations, many of which are guilty of systematic
abuses, is clearly discriminatory. However, one can hold that it was
a mistake for a Jewish state to be established in Palestine without
remotely being antisemitic. Even the founding father of modern
Zionism, Theodor Herzl, initially campaigned to place the Jewish
homeland in East Africa.
Criticism of Israel as a Jewish state is dismissed too quickly.
Lipstadt counters that other democracies have official state
religions. True, but the issue is whether and how the state religion
is used in the distribution of individuals' rights, opportunities and
overall treatment. It should be of concern that national fronts in
Europe and alt-right figures in the United States laud Israel as an
ethno-democracy while peddling antisemitism at home.
The 2018 Global Anti-Semitism Report found that "70 per cent
of anti-Jewish attacks were anti-Israel in nature". Israeli
brutality towards the Palestinians provokes brutal and intemperate
politics elsewhere in reaction. It is also the case that
Israel-bashing attracts and provides cover for genuine antisemites.
The attempt to call this out has been hampered by the legacy of
Israeli politicians and Jewish leaders responding to any criticism of
Israel with the charge of antisemitism.
Often, non-Jews who are concerned about the Palestinians'
situation invoke traditional antisemitic tropes without realising it
or intending to do so. A current example is the controversy that has
ensnared US Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, who suggested in
tweets that American support for Israel is "all about the
Benjamins" (referring to Benjamin Franklin on the $100 note) and
the Israel lobby bribing politicians. The tweets sparked an uproar, a
rebuke from House Leader Nancy Pelosi, and ultimately Omar's contrite
apology. But as Peter Beinhart noted in The Forward, those
who are quick to condemn this clumsy verbal bigotry are deathly
silent about the tangible bigotry that Palestinians in the West Bank
face daily courtesy of Israeli law and policy.
Although most diasporic Jews do not hold Israeli citizenship, a
central plank of Zionism is the unity of the Jewish people. Many Jews
in and outside of Israel have protested "not in our name"
regarding Israeli government policies. Many more believe that this
has nothing to do with them, not unlike ordinary Muslims who believe
they shouldn't have to answer for the actions of Islamic militants.
And many support or defer to Israeli government actions.
The book closes with Lipstadt counselling Joe not to be afraid, as
a non-Jew, to call Israel out when he believes it has crossed a line.
Sage advice for Jews as well.
Geoffrey Brahm Levey is an Associate Professor of
Political Science at the University of New South Wales.
