Jewish Life Digital Edition November 2014 | Page 25

AS A JEWISH MOTHER, I WEEP. I WEEP FOR FALLEN IDF
SOLDIERS, WHO I KNOW TO BE A SON, A BROTHER, A
FATHER TO SOMEONE WHO IS ALSO WEEPING. I WEEP FOR
THE GAZAN MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN WHO ARE
STUCK IN A SYSTEM THAT DOESN’T VALUE THEIR LIVES.
I grew up as a first-generation Australian
in Sydney. Both sets of my grandparents
were displaced, or let’s be honest, bullied
out of their home of more than 2 000
years, from Iraq (which originally was Babylonia). This was after the Farhud pogroms
in Baghdad, where about four hundred
Jews were violently murdered. They were
airlifted in 1952, with more than 120 000
Iraqi Jews, to Israel. They had one suitcase
between a family of seven. Of course, all
their properties and bank accounts were
expropriated by the Iraqi government. It
was an abrupt, rude ending to the oldest
Jewish community in the Diaspora.
This was a story told to me over and
over again by my grandparents, with
great bitterness. They lost everything,
more than properties, but their ancient
Jewish shrines and Babylonian heritage.
And they weren’t the only ones. A total of
about 800 000 to 1 000 000 Jews from
Arab and Muslim countries (Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen,
Iran and Turkey) had to flee their homes
from 1948, when Israel was established,
until the early 70s. Six hundred thousand
Jews from Arab and Muslim countries
reached Israel by 1972. Notably, Israel absorbed their Middle Eastern and North
African refugees, while they were themselves in the middle of a depression,
where eggs were rationed, as my great
aunt used to tell me. (If Jordan, Lebanon,
Egypt and Syria embraced the Arab refugees from Israel and absorbed them into
their countries, there would be no Palestinian crisis. They certainly had enough
funds from all the Jews who left. It would
have literally been a population swap and
they could have gotten on with their lives
like my grandparents did.)
So I grew up with the trauma of the
Middle Eastern Jews fed to me as assuredly as I was fed Baghdadi delicacies of kubba

bamya. I also grew up with matzah ball
soup. Australia has one of the highest populations of European Holocaust survivors.
I knew many growing up. When they rolled
up their sleeves at our Shabbat table, in
the scorching Australian summers, their
faded blue numbers shimmered in front of
my wide, child eyes. These were the only
tattoos that were acceptable in my conservative Jewish home. Over my mother’s
matzah ball soup, one survivor would tell
us how he survived the camps by imagining his mother’s kneidlach soup, to the extent that he could smell it and taste it. I
appreciated my mother’s matzah ball soup
much more after that.
As a child, with these stories came incessant dreams. I was being pursued by Nazis
because I was a Jew. Only they were not in
Germany, they were in Sydney, Australia.
Large, blue-eyed soldiers with clapping,
big, black boots and barking Alsatians. I
needed to run away. I had an escape route
over my balcony, onto the garage roof and
a leaping jump down to the ground, where
I would then run and run and run. I was always relieved to wake up. I always knew
where the key for my window was.
I hadn’t dreamed these dreams for a
long time. Until these last few months.
The Nazis are back. Only now, I have to
save my family as well as myself. Interestingly, now, in my dreams, I also find myself fighting back.
Dreams are the door to the whirling unconscious mind that remains hidden in the
light of the day. Our deepest fears and concerns come out in our dreams. My dreams

have come now because overt anti-Semitism is at an all-time high. There were over
72 anti-Semitic incidents reported in
South Africa in one month alone.
As a Jewish mother, I weep. I weep for
fallen IDF soldiers, who I know to be a
son, a brother, a father to someone who is
also weeping. I weep for the Gazan men,
women and children who are stuck in a
system that doesn’t value their lives. They
are vulnerable victims too. Who is speaking up for them? To protect them from
their leaders? Totalitarian regimes are always cruellest to their own people. They
have no voice to protest their own persecutors. That is the first right to go, the
right of free speech.
In the meantime, what am I meant to tell
my children when their bus route to their
Jewish school is changed for better security? When they see hate speech about Jews
and Israel that they can’t understand?
I tell them we are very proud of Israel,
that Jews have a right to defend themselves against attack, just as kids have a
right to defend themselves against a bully
on the playground. I also try and teach
them not to hate. We don’t hate. To hate
is to destroy ourselves. I tell them, “Not
all Muslims are bad and want to kill
Jews.” (It sounds so dramatic, but really
it’s not in light of all the anti-Semitic slogans