Tuesday afternoon. I picked up both boys from school and drove to a very small community center nearby. This is where Yonatan's social skills group meets for ninety minutes each week. Since March, he and six other boys with Asperger's Syndrome have been practicing the art of interacting with others through a routine of guided discussions, relaxation exercise and games led by two therapists. While Yonatan was hanging out with his mates, Nadav and I joined the other moms and assorted siblings at a nearby cafe for our weekly get-together. After an hour, Nadav and I excused ourselves and drove fifteen minutes to the Unley Swimming Centre for Nadav's 5:30 p.m. lesson. Meanwhile, Bobby picked up Yonatan from his group, which ends at 5:30. Nadav finished his lesson at 6:00 p.m., spent an additional ten minutes splashing around, had a 100 second shower (we counted), and got dressed. We arrived home at about 6:45 p.m. for a quick dinner and homework.
This is the kind of day I swore I would never have when our children were born. We have struggled hard not to fall into the trap of the overprogrammed child. I think we've mostly succeeded, since neither kid has more than one activity on any one day. But I sometimes feel like an overprogrammed parent!
The reason Tuesdays in particular have become so crazy is that I determined that Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. was the only time in the week when I could fit in a swimming lesson for Nadav. Not having swimming lessons wasn't an option. Australians may regularly argue about whether Australian Rules Football or cricket is this country's national sport. But really, there's no question what the Australian national sport is: it's swimming. I had swimming lessons when I was a kid, but I don't think it was necessarily a big thing. I never did become a very strong swimmer, and my parents didn't seem to think that I was disadvantaged for life. I think there are plenty of kids in America whose parents just don't get around to signing there kids up for more than a preliminary round of lessons. By contrast, most of the kids we know who are Yonatan's age can already swim a full kilometer, and a lot of kids Nadav's age are impressively competent in the water. When you're living in a country where some astonishingly high percentage of the citizens live within 50 miles of the ocean, the ability to stay afloat takes on a greater significance.
Some parents might accuse me of child abuse, because Nadav only has swimming lessons six months out of the year. State Swim is a network of indoor pools that offer regimented swimming instruction year round, and we know lots of people whose kids take lessons there. I think State Swim classes are overpriced, and I find it depressing that the kids get kicked out of the pool at the end of their lesson. Lessons at our local pool are slightly cheaper, and the kids can stay in the water for as long as they like when the class is over. The risk in taking lessons at an outdoor pool is that if the weather is chilly, swimming just isn't that appealing. We skipped last week's lesson altogether when the temperature fell below 70 with an even chillier breeze. The water may be heated, but the air isn't.
Unlike Nadav, Yonatan has lessons year round. For most of the past year, he has been taking classes through Child's Play, a group of physical therapists who teach disabled children to swim. Yonatan has an intensive one-on-one lesson for thirty minutes, which really wears him out. Progress has been slow, but it's been steady. He now can almost ALMOST manage all of the components of the freestyle stroke, and he's gradually getting better at breaststroke.
Both boys will have an additional opportunity to hone their swimming skills in the new year: like most other primary schools, Massada College offers two weeks of swimming lessons during class time in the summer term. It's quite a challenge getting the kids into their bathing suits, into the pool, dressed, and back into class. But parents expect swimming lessons in school as well as after school at least once a year. A fellow mother at Massada College told me how she judged if her children had learned enough to stop swimming lessons: if they found themselves on a sinking boat, and they were able to save not only themselves but the people next to them. We have a long way to go!
Every once in a while, I tell the story of when I came to visit Beit Shalom Synagogue in Adelaide back in May 2006 to decide if we might be a good fit for each other. I toured the synagogue (this didn't take long), visited Massada College, and saw some of the sights. Mostly I drank lots of espresso coffee and excellent wine with a representative cross section of the synagogue, all of whom were very pleasant. At the end of a leisurely week, I arrived on Friday evening to lead my first worship service. Six members of the choir were present, which wasn't a very impressive number. What was impressive was that they sang in majestic four-part harmony. I was hooked!
Two years later, I've been conscripted into the choir after one of our sopranos dropped out due to the pressures of first-year university coursework. I had a rather challenging time at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur singing in the choir, leading services, and delivering sermons. And there was many a Shabbat afternoon on August and September when I just wanted to go home for a nap rather than staying for a ninety minute rehearsal. At the same time, I felt myself nostalgically returned to the considerably larger Temple Sinai Choir from nearly thirty years ago. I joined at age fourteen and discovered that I was at least forty years younger than the youngest members. Nevertheless, it was hard to imagine a more meaningful way to spend the High Holy Days than beautifying the service with our music.
The Beit Shalom Choir is really nothing like Temple Sinai's: even at the High Holy Days, we were only ten people, while the choir of my youth had thirty or more members. We always sing unaccompanied, as opposed to the electric organ which is a mainstay at Temple Sinai. We are also a nicely varied group, with members ranging in age from early twenties to mid-sixties.
Six of us went off to sing as part of an interfaith concert this afternoon, and I must say we were pretty darn good. We sang four short songs in the ten minutes allotted to us, and at times I had that lovely feeling that comes when the harmony is spot on and the voices are soaring. It helped to be singing in an old Anglican church with magnificent acoustics, and it also helped that the event was well-attended by a very friendly audience.
Even when we don't have enough choir members in attendance at services to sing more than two parts, there is a lot of music at Beit Shalom. This is a singing congregation. I attribute this trait not only to our luck as a synagogue in attracting a large number of people (including bar/bat mitzvah students!) who can sing. I also want to extend credit where credit is due: to our small sanctuary and low ceiling, which mean that those in attendance can hear each other's voices. If you're in Adelaide, come on down and add in your voice!
The weekend travel section included a full-page ad of deals for vacations within Australia. "Holiday within Australia this year," the ad urged, "where a dollar is still a dollar." It is reassuring that the Australia dollar is holding its own here in Australia, because it sure isn't standing up in most of the rest of the world. For a magical period which lasted for many months, the Australian dollar and the American dollar were virtually equal in value. It was a beautiful time that we came to expect would last for ever. But it didn't. As the American stock market began its catastrophic nose dive in September, our colorful dollar started a slide into the abyss. Today, the Aussie dollar is worth a pathetic sixty-five American cents and an even more pathetic fifty-one Euros.
Practically, the impact both on Australia as a whole and on our family has been quite dramatic. Just about everything that isn't imported from China costs more. A recent segment on ABC Radio National focussed on a talent agency which brings performers to Australia and pays them in American dollars. If the agency promised US$50,000 to a performer when the two dollars were par, it now has to fork over a hefty AU$77,000. Of course, that's just a small example, but you can imagine where it leads. Another example: each year, hundreds of committed Jewish students go to Israel following high school graduated to do a gap year of study and servicel. Thanks to a surprisingly-strong shekel, tuition for that program has DOUBLED from $16,000 to $30,000, which makes it highly probable that some very promising young Jewish leaders will end up stuck in Australia next year. As for us, we continue to make payments in American dollars on life and disability insurance policies, plus a stray student loan. Suddenly, the bill has gone way up.
We are left scratching our heads as to why this is happening. Here are some quick facts about the current state of the economy in Australia: a) While it is true that the Australian stock market has had a terrible year, this economy is not in recession, and there is a very good chance it will not slide into recession. It is estimated to grow at a slow rate of 1 1/2% next year, but that's still growth. b) Although they're being pinched for sure, not a single Australian bank has failed. c) The Australian government has been sitting on a surplus of at least $20 billion, which it is now spending to ward off economic dangers. In addition to passing out $10 billion in cash to pensioners, care providers, and poor families, it has just announced $200 million in grants to cities and towns for local improvement and development projects which will create jobs and bolster local economies.
The reward to a government which appears to be doing everything it's supposed to is, apparently, to see its currency become increasingly worthless when compared with money from the flourishing economies of America and Europe. Go figure. Several months back, as the dollar was starting its decline, I cornered a member of my congregation who is an investment advisor. I asked her how the Australian dollar could possibly be falling so fast against the American dollar, when it was the American economy which was declining so precipitously. Answer: I don't know, and it doesn't make sense. So much for economics.
The only good news to come out of this is that, suddenly, people we love are considering trips to visit us. After all, you can come to Australia and feel rich!
Now that it's daily savings time, Shabbat lasts just about forever. Tonight, the sun set at 7:40 p.m., which means we didn't even have to think about the end of the day all afternoon long. We celebrated a bat mitzvah at the synagogue in the morning. Theoretically, this should be a restful time for me, since the bat mitzvah girl led the service, chanted the Torah and haftarah, and provided a Torah commentary. But I always end up way more exhausted at the end of a bar or bat mitzvah than on a normal week. I spend the whole service on the edge of my seat, ready to jump in and provide assistance at any moment. Following the luncheon, I brought the family home and slept for an amazing two hours. I woke up at 4:00 p.m., with another four hours of daylight still left. What luck!
The boys and I hopped on our bicycles and rode to a playground. This was something of a heroic effort, since the playground turned out to be more than a mile away through the southern stretch of the city of Adelaide. We were able to ride on the narrow bike lane for much of the trip, with me barking orders at the kids the whole time: "You're going to fast!" "Don't stop suddenly!" "Stop AT the stoplight, not fifty feet before you get there!" "Watch out for cars pulling out of parking spaces!" Other possible remarks: "No, you are not allowed to ride through the outdoor seating area of a cafe." "A main city street is probably not the best way to experiment with one-handed riding technique." They actually did really well, and did not complain once that they were tired. We are gearing up for an even more ambitious ride to the synagogue tomorrow morning: a whopping 2 1/2 miles.
We did make it to the playground in one piece. I shortened our play time somewhat so that we would still have energy for the ride home. Then it was time to feed the sour. I feel quite privileged to have been deemed worthy to receive a cup or so of a three-year-old sour solution used for making sourdough bread. By now, a fair number of hard-core bakers in the Jewish community have been so blessed. It's a big responsibility, and I almost feel as though I've acquired a new dependent. I had to go through a twenty minute tutorial to learn the care and feeding of the sour, and by the first night, it already smelled just a bit off to me. I'm dutifully adding 1/4 cup water and 1/4 flour twice a day, and if it doesn't appear utterly foul, tomorrow I'm going to attempt my first loaf of bread.
I have 102 friends on Facebook. Yes, I've hit the triple-digits. I will note that one of my former bat mitzvah students has 1251 friends, so I still have quite a ways to go. And I don't even personally know all of my 102 friends. There are at least two (both Reconstructionist rabbis) whom I have never met. But still we're friends.
During those few slow moments of the day, I enjoy virtual visits with my friends and contemplate who they are. My youngest friend is ten years old, and my oldest friends are in their sixties. Perhaps thirty live here in Australia, and the rest are in the United States. About ten are people who were classmates in high school, including at least two I've known since preschool. Sixteen of my friends are former bar/bat mitzvah students who are now off living wonderful lives of their own. Maybe one-third are rabbis. A handful live in my old hometown of Ambridge, Pennsylvania. A surprisingly small number are classmates from Oberlin College, including one old friend who tracked me down from Calcutta, where she now lives with her family. Maybe Oberlin grads are too cool for Facebook.
I don't think I really get Facebook. I read other people's notes and catch up a bit on their lives, but not too much. I post an occasional neutral note about myself. Here's my latest: "Shoshana and the boys planted an herb garden and will remember to pronounce the 'h.'" I don't think it's appropriate to share too much about my life in this venue, especially now that I know how the information posted on Facebook pages never ever disappears.
Ultimately, I've decided that Facebook has the unintended consequence of aggravating any homesickness I may be experiencing. I see snapshots of my friends' children as they grow up, read up on those I've left behind. Not enough to know what's going on, but enough to feel that I'm really missing out. With Facebook, I can take a tentative step towards assembling all the disparate elements of my life. But then it all vanishes, and I'm just looking at a very sterile website with all sorts of odd tidbits which in no way comes close to replacing real life.
Here's what's up in real life lately. We had our first summer day quite a few weeks before summer is actually officially due to begin. Tomorrow should be even hotter--97 degrees or so, if the weather forecast is accurate. Two of our three fans are in need of repair, and the boys have won the one functioning fan for the night. But it's a dry heat.
We really did plant a herb garden, with the "h" pronounced. (You have no idea how many times I've been heckled for my American pronunciation of that word.) So far, we have thyme, oregano, basil, and coriander growing. We've put about a hundred carrot seeds in the ground and are waiting to see if they decide to sprout. In the meantime, our noisy street has gotten even noisier, now that our town council has decided to tear up the road and make it more scenic. We have many months of dust and noise to look forward before we get to behold the wonder of a newer, lovelier street.
Australians haven't stopped talking about Obama. His visit to the White House was among the top news stories today. Our local ABC radio station interviewed a linguist this afternoon, who analysed Obama's acceptance speech to show why it was so effective. Australia's PM Kevin Rudd is a nerdy policy wonk on his best days, and I think Australians are jealous. They want a dashing new political leader with soaring political rhetoric, two adorable daughters, and a promised puppy.
We had an all-American dinner of soy hot dogs smothered in chili and cheddar cheese and corn-on-the-cob to celebrate the election. It's already Tuesday evening here; polls are due to open on the east coast at 10:30 p.m. Adelaide time, and by my calculation we should have the first results before noon on Wednesday. Based on the sense of anticipation here in Australia, I can only imagine what it must be like in the U.S.
The Greek-Australian family who run the corner store asked me if I could vote. I explained for about the fifteenth time that I had already mailed off my absentee ballot and that I was fortunate enough to be voting in the swing state of Pennsylvania. An astonishingly large number of Australians know that Pennsylvania is a swing state, and they also know that Ohio, Virginia, and Florida are also considered crucial.
I went to Melbourne for two conferences--the Council of Progressive Rabbis for two days, followed by the four-day conference of the Union for Progressive Judaism. I spent a lot of time talking about Jewish issues. I spent almost as much time talking about the election. I'm not sure how many of the Australians were discussing it with each other, but as soon as they heard my accent, they dived right in.
Who are they supporting? Out of all the people I've talked with--and it must be in the hundreds by now--exactly two people have been in any way ambivalent. Every other person is hoping for an Obama win. My guess would be that if Australians were eligible to vote in the American election, Barack Obama would be elected by a margin of 95%. Even people who tell me they vote for the conservative Liberal party here in Australia are supporting Obama, generally for two reasons: they want to make a clean break from the Bush administration, and they find Senator Obama to be tremendously compelling.
My most touching conversation was with one of the attendees at the Union for Progressive Judaism conference. He shared with me that he has cleared out his entire schedule on Wednesday and is dedicating the day to watching the election returns. He fully expects to burst into tears should Senator Obama be proclaimed the victor. He told me how he left South African decades ago to escape apartheid. He could imagine no greater vindication than to see an African-American elected to the most powerful post in the world.
If it's election day, it must also be the Melbourne Cup. I attended the annual National Council of Jewish Women luncheon at the hilariously-tacky Fontana di Trevi restaurant, complete with fake Grecian statuary clustered around a little fountain. We talked a bit about horses, a bit about our lives, and a lot about the election. What will we talk about after tomorrow?
Wow! Those nine days really flew by! My attempts to re-enter the blogging world have been somewhat hampered by the relentless parade of Jewish holidays (now concluded until Hanukkah) plus crazed preparations for a five-day trip to Melbourne to attend two conferences. The big excitement while I'm away will be Evolution '08, the South Australia state jubilee for Cub and Joey Scouts. Yonatan will be departing late Friday afternoon for the Scouting complex (which is only 20 minutes from our house). Bobby and Nadav will go up early Saturday morning and camp together. They're expecting about 3000 Scouts aged 6-10, which is pretty amazing. I'm looking at the detailed gear list to make sure everyone has insect repellant, sun screen, and working flashlights.
Here are some highlights from the last week and a half: We had a lovely time visiting other people's sukkahs last Sunday. We were invited for afternoon tea into the sukkah of Rabbi Abraham and Malkie Gutnick, where we were joined by the vast majority of their ten unbelievably well-behaved children. I have learned that in the Orthodox world, the rabbi's job description includes the obligation to entertain guests on Shabbat and the holidays. By the time we entered their sukkah, they estimated they had already had 200 people come through the house since Rosh Hashanah. They now had a well-oiled entertainment machine, which rolled out lovely home-baked cakes, fruit, and tea. From there, we made the short hop to the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation for a Sukkot sausage sizzle. Sausage sizzles are all-pervasive here, and it's easy to get the impression that Australians really aren't interested in eating anything else. In fact, the iconic Australian barbeque in most cases is really just a flat heated surface perfect for sizzling a maximum of sausages. We all had a lovely time at the AHC get-together, especially since a number of the boys' classmates were there.
I made it through the last several days of the holiday, and then found myself--amazing!--with an entire free day to spend with the kids before they returned to school. Everyone else in South Australia was already back in class, but Massada College had closed for end of the holidays. I packed a picnic and some water bottles, and we drove about 40 minutes north to the astonishing St. Kilda Adventure Playground. This is a very odd place by most definitions. For one thing, it's in the middle of nowhere. St. Kilda may be at the heart of Melbourne, but in South Australia, it's a tiny hamlet of 200 people. The closest big town is at least fifteen minutes away. We were the only ones there for extended periods, and I might have found that situation creepy if it weren't so hard to get the place in the first place. Second of all, there's virtually no shade. We were blessed with temperatures in the low 70s and a cool sea breeze, so it was a perfect day for a visit. When Yonatan suggested this would be a great place for his birthday party in the middle of summer, I had to laugh. The lack of shade is compounded by a lack of water. Most playgrounds have a simple water faucet available nearby, but I wandered the vast grounds of this playground and never saw one. I took the water bottles to the bathrooms--a good-size walk from the entrance to the playground--and wondered about the planning process that had created this place.
Despite all its drawbacks, the Adventure Playground is a wondrous place. We stayed for a whole three hours, which I think is a record for us. The kids found the long steel slides to be fairly bumpy and uncomfortable, but they loved the network of underground tunnels, plus the very cool underground slides. And I loved the flying fox. Wikipedia defines a flying fox as "a small cable car, often propelled by gravity, and used as an item of children's play equipment and more rarely for other purposes." The flying fox at St. Kilda is approximately 200 feet long. It's safer than the kind where you hold on, because an actual seat is provided for the trip, seeing as this is an awfully long time to hold on. The only problem with this conveyance is that the trip ultimately comes to an end, which involves slamming into a tire with an abrupt thump. Nevertheless, in a state without a single amusement park, this flying fox came close to satisfying a need for great ride. The kids even dared me into taking one ride backwards! It was a great time, and one we'll look forward to repeating on another cool day.
Having been overwhelmed by fan mail (two e-mails, a comment over the phone, and a personal comment), I have been inspired to return to blogging. I'm going to attempt a modest entry each week, with time off for good behaviour. We'll see how long it lasts.
It's Sukkot here in Adelaide and elsewhere. (Jon Stewart's translation of Sukkot: Let's see how many Jewish holidays we can fit into one month.) Sukkot is the harvest holiday which, of course, falls in the late spring here. The first few days were beautifully cool, but now the temperature is fast approaching 85 degrees, with an even hotter day promised for tomorrow. Nevertheless, we will make good on our promise to Yonatan and Nadav that they can sleep out in the sukkah tonight.
Our sukkah is sort of a jerry-rigged affair, made out of the rather delicate 2x1's that Bobby happened to have available for this purpose. It doesn't look at all sturdy, but it's made it so far, with only an additional four days to go. The walls and roof are bamboo curtains. This tip thanks to Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence of Sydney's Great Synagogue, who was extensively interviewed on ABC Radio National's religion show "The Spirit of Things" giving a learned discourse on the vast quantity of Jewish holidays that fall out at this time of year. He himself now has one of those cool spring-loaded sukkahs that basically assembles itself (now on sale in the US for the low LOW price of $880). We will salvage the bamboo curtains at the end of the festival and use them to try to shade our west-facing windows as the sun strengthens.
I bought a string of coloured lights at Australia's Walmart equivalent Big-W, and Yonatan and Nadav now both believe they've died and gone to heaven. The lights are draped decoratively around the sukkah and flash in an apparently endless varieties of patterns. Before they were added to the sukkah, Nadav spent the better part of an afternoon in our darkened hallway, mesmerized by the beauty of the lights. For kids suffering a certain degree of Christmas deprivation, these appear to have provided a much-needed remedy.
We went for two years without a sukkah. Two years ago, we moved into our first house as the holiday began. We ate outside, sitting on the floor because we didn't yet have a table and chairs. Last year, we were in the midst of getting ready to move out of that house and into our current residence. It has been a pleasant surprise to see how much easier it is to observe Sukkot now that the boys are old enough to help carry dishes out to the sukkah for meals. What a difference! By next year, I'm hoping we'll have a sukkah with a little more thought behind it that we can keep stored 51 weeks of the year.
What else is new? We are gearing up for summer by mulching the fruit trees and sprouting tomatoes. The grape vines that I cut back last autumn have returned with a vengeance; some of the leaves really do look large enough to stuff. Our new next-door neighbour asked for permission to help herself to some leaves; her sister is the one with the patience to make stuffed grape leaves. Maybe we'll get a few?
The headlines in late July absolute electrified me:“Radovan Karodzic placed under arrest in Serbia.” I followed with morbid fascination how as his secret life practicing holistic medicine was revealed. We saw photos of this self-identified poet and psychiatrist with his long white beard and pony tail. His capture moved quite a few journalists to cast back more than ten years to one of the darkest eras in modern history: Serbia's conquest of Bosnia, and the failure of the western powers to do anything of substance to stop it. `Roger Cohen, a columnist with The New York Times, wrote powerfully of that time:
After covering a war, a friend said, buy yourself a house. I did. I came to this French village where church bells chime the rhythm of the days, married here, raised children and parked Bosnia somewhere in a corner of my mind.
I had to forget. I had to write a book, so the horror would never be forgotten, in order to forget just enough to go on. There is always a measure of guilt in survival when so many have died. There are faces, in death and bereavement, that can never be eclipsed.
It’s peaceful here. I’d been out watching crows in the stubble when I returned to discover Radovan Karadzic had been arrested in Belgrade, 13 years after the end of the war, to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
The years fell away, fear resurfaced, and I’ve been unable to sleep. I find myself back in Pale with you, Dr. Karadzic, back in that two-bit ski resort you parlayed into the Bosnian Serb capital and bestrode with your killer hairdo, back asking you questions you never could answer.
Objectivity and neutrality are not synonymous. The head is useless without the heart. War teaches that better than journalism school. The unseeing eyes of young Sarajevan women penetrated by shrapnel had taught me the rights and wrongs of the war long before I met you. Still I wanted to look you in the eye.
An international court in The Hague will now examine the contentions of the former Bosnian Serb leader. I don’t doubt the outcome. Justice is important — for Bosnia and for amnesia-afflicted Serbia with its everyone-was-guilty evasiveness. But justice won’t change the faces brought back to me now across the years.
Jamie Walker wrote equally eloquently in The Australian:
I still wonder what happened to those hollow-eyed men I met in the autumn of 1992, as the freezing mist closed in on their prison camp in the mountains of northern Bosnia. They were lying in long miserable rows, huddled beneath skinny blankets. The cow shed that made do as their barracks was heated by a single stove.
How were they to survive when the snows arrived, I asked the corpulent Serbian commandant. He shrugged his shoulders in the lacerating cold: the translator, quoting him, muttered "who cares".
The "detention camp" at Manjaca, in those freezing heights above the city of Banja Luka, held perhaps 4000 Croat and Bosnian Muslim prisoners. There were armed guards on the perimeter, but not many. No one bothered to escape, you see. The surrounding area had been "cleansed" of anyone who might offer a man on the run shelter from the cold and the wolves.
The going was difficult enough for our own little convoy as we pressed deeper into Karadzic country. We passed checkpoints, where bands of trigger-happy Serb militia fidgeted with assault rifles and chugged down their ration of liquor, all the while eying us with unconcealed hostility.
Our destination was supposed to be the town of Pale, where the great man himself, Radovan Karadzic, was holding court. Until war came to the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, it was a no-account place in the snowy peaks behind Sarajevo, Bosnia's once-proudly multicultural capital.
Karadzic was a psychiatrist and poet, who had soft hands and a mop of grey hair which fell to his shoulders and peppered his back with dandruff. He spoke English and preferred to be addressed as doctor. Like his political mentor Slobodan Milosevic, then president of Serbia, he had dangerous ideas about Serbian nationalism. When Tito's racial hotchpotch fell apart, Karadzic established his own Serbian republic in Bosnia with military backing from Belgrade.
The war this unleashed became the bloodiest of all the late 20th-century Balkan conflicts, inflicting more than 100,000 deaths and untold suffering. Two million non-Serbs were driven from their homes between 1992 and 1995, rape became an instrument of state terror, and a rich and beautiful land was laid waste before the international community was prodded into action by the crowning horror of Srebrenica, where more than 7000 Bosnian Muslim men were massacred by Karadzic's forces under the nose of the UN.
Richard Holbrook, the US diplomat who helped end the bloodshed, describes Karadzic as the Osama bin Laden of Europe. "He was in my mind worse than Milosevic, and has had become a kind of a Robin Hood figure to Bosnian Serbs," Holbrook said yesterday. "His capture is a historic event."
Perhaps the passage of years has mellowed Karadzic. Maybe he can be persuaded to accept his measure of responsibility for the death and destruction that overtook Bosnia, or to tell what he knows of the whereabouts of his general Ratko Mladic, who must surely be running short of borrowed time.
We will probably never know what became of all of those starving men I encountered in that freezing mountain camp at Manjaca in late 1992.
It was temporarily closed down a month or so later, then re-opened, as the killing and suffering in Bosnia continued in defiance of all the world's hand wringing. At least 1000 of those entered the camp are believed to have died.
An act of contrition from Karadzic won't bring any of them back. But it may go some way to healing the gaping wounds he inflicted on a land that has known too much suffering.
And now on to my recollections. The war in Bosnia played a critical role in making me who I am today both as a rabbi and as a person. I remember almost crying with despair in the early 90's, as reporters repeatedly talked about centuries-old hatred and how complex the situation was. Exactly the opposite was the case. Bosnia prior to the outbreak of war was one of the few corners in the world where religiously-moderate Moslems, Christians, and Jews had lived together for hundreds of years. Geraldine Brooks chronicles the extraordinary harmony of Sarajevo in The People of the Book. Sarajevo played host to the 1984 winter Olympics, then less than ten years later lay devastated as Serbian forces shelled the city from the hills that surrounded it. One of their first targets was the national library—a clear indication of their intention to wipe out memories of Bosnia's multicultural past along with its non-Serb population.
The Serb and Bosnian Serb leaders introduced us to the term “ethnic cleansing.” Hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Moslems were forced from their villages and driven into concentration camps. The United Nations recorded thousands of human rights abuses, but somehow no western nation seemed particularly interested in this poor corner of Europe. When war had threatened upon the disintegration of Yugoslavia a few years earlier, the United Nations had voted to impose an arms embargo on the whole of the former Yugoslavia. What this meant was that the only weapons available were those that had been purchased prior to the embargo. And these weapons were stored in Serbia, where they were made available to all those prepared to fight for the sacred Serb cause. The Moslems of Bosnia pleaded, not for western intervention, but simply for a lifting of the arms embargo so that they too could purchase arms to defend themselves.
I found myself as a Jew reacting fiercely to what was happening in Bosnia. It seemed inconceivable to me that a genocide could be unfolding inside Europe fifty years after nations around the world had promised never to let it happen again. I was still in rabbinical school and living in Philadelphia. A number of us entered an unusual partnership with local Moslems to try to focus attention on the plight of Moslem Bosnians and to bring an end to the arms embargo. We also formed a group within the Jewish community called “Jews Against Genocide in Bosnia.” I found myself going out on public speaking engagements and travelling to Washington, DC, to lobby our elected representatives.
I spoke before a number of Christian groups, and this was a particularly discouraging experience. I remember speaking passionately at a liberal church in a wealthy Philadelphia suburb. The fifty or so people in attendance shook their heads sadly, then asked if they could send contributions to assist the refugees. When I replied that what the Bosnian Moslems really wanted was the ability to defend themselves against the Serbs, the group became very quiet. They couldn't bring themselves to do anything that might intensify the violence. The concept of a just war appeared to have disappeared from their vocabulary. Indeed, the World Council of Churches bent itself into all kinds of contortions to justify its opposition to ending the arms embargo. Council of Churches representatives even participated in a tour of Bosnia personally conducted by leaders of Bosnian Serb forces which led them to the stunning conclusion that outside nations could do nothing to stop the violence. I had a revelation then: I realized that as a Jew I had an intuitive understanding that there was such a thing as a just war. I might stand for peace, but I knew there might be times when war could be the only way to a just peace.
Ultimately, a number of us rabbis and rabbinical students decided that we would get arrested in order to bring more attention to the issue. I had shied away from civil disobedience actions in university, but now it seemed to me I had little choice. The dean of our rabbinical school, in agreeing to join the protest, thanked us for asking him. He said that when his children asked him someday whether he had done as much as he possibly could to stop the genocide, he would be able to say yes.
On December 2, 1994, sixteen of us stood in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House waiting patiently for the Park Policeman to load us into vans and drive us down to the station to be booked. I admit it was quite an anticlimax after the days of anxious anticipation. Nowadays in Washington, demonstrators ring up the Park Police in advance so that enough vans can be on hand to accommodate all those who have come to be arrested. I spent exactly four hours at the booking station, paid my $50 fine, and went home. Our little act of civil demonstration drew fabulous publicity, including coverage by several national television stations. The arms embargo remained in force. The war reached its climax in July, 1995, when an estimated 7000 Moslem men and boys were massacred by Serb forces in Srebenica—a town the United Nations had promised to keep safe.
Twelve years later, as I applied for a visa to come to Australia, my criminal record turned up in my FBI background check. For a split second, I fretted that my chances of receiving a visa might be hurt. Then I wondered if I would really want to migrate a country that would condemn me for taking a stand.
The war in Bosnia taught me that there was an appropriate use for the rage and anguish we continue to feel at the horrors of the Holocaust. I cannot bring back the six million of my people who were so cruelly murdered sixty years ago. But I can try my utmost to keep others from meeting the same fate. I am proud that Jews remain passionately involved in fighting human rights abuses and particularly in trying to stop those who would kill or displace others simply because of their race or religion. It is not easy, and it is rarely satisfying. Even after the twin genocide of Bosnia and Rwanda, the leaders of the world still rarely seem prepared to do what is necessary to stop the destruction of a people.
And so we stand witness again as genocide unfolds in the Darfur region of Sudan. The facts are not in question; former U.S. secretary-of-state Colin Powell went so far as to declare that the ongoing attacks against the people of Darfur met all the necessary criteria of genocide, something that had never happened either in Bosnia or Rwanda. Under the terms of the 1948 United Nations convention on genocide, when genocide is identified, all nations are supposed to intervene immediately to bring an end to the attacks. This has still not happened. The website Save Darfur continues to call on the United Nations to send in sufficient forces to keep threatened populations from harm.
As with Bosnia, Jews have been at the forefront of fighting to end the genocide in Darfur. Dozens of Jewish groups, including a large number within the Orthodox community, have organised protests, marches, and letter-writing campaigns. Jewish groups raise money to assist the estimated 2.5 million refugees and are making meaningful contributions to the quality of life of those who have lost everything. At times, it seems like a drop in the bucket when compared with the magnitude both of the crisis and of the world's apathy.
Silence is not an option.
As Jews, we live with a painful legacy. At times, the grief and pain of the Shoah can seem unbearable. What is the lesson, the legacy of that event? Is there something we can pass on to our children aside from the thousands upon thousands of memoirs—each more tragic and devastating than the last? For much of my life, I tried to ignore this chapter in Jewish history. I was committed to teaching about Judaism as a path of joy, of hope, of fulfilment. The Holocaust didn't fit into that picture. So, terrible as it sounds, I ignored it. When I look back on myself, I realize that what I was really looking for was a way to make meaning of the Holocaust. If I couldn’t redeem the six million who died, could I redeem their memories by working for something positive? When I taught my students, did I have a lesson that they could integrate into their lives?
Ultimately, I understood that there is a powerful lesson to be learned: Never again. Never again means not only that never again should such horrors afflict the Jews of the world, but that no peoples should ever again be systematically hunted down because of who they are. Martin Niemoller, a German Protestant minister, became well-known for his chilling statement about the dangers the Nazis posed: “the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, but I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. And then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I was a Protestant, so I did not speak up. And then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for anyone.” At a certain point in his life, Rev Niemoller amended his now-famous speech to include an epilogue: “To make sure this does not happen again, the injustice to anyone anywhere must be the concern of everyone everywhere.” That is our holy task: to spare others the horrors we ourselves have experienced. There is much work to be done, but I believe we are up to the task. Let us go forth and do what needs to be done.
Two years ago, you will remember that I delivered what might possibly have been the shortest High Holy Day sermons in recorded history. There were two reasons for this phenomenon: one was that I had landed in Adelaide exactly a week before Rosh Hashanah and was intensely focused on finding a place to live and figuring out how to navigate my way around a supermarket. The other reason my sermons were so short was that I really didn't know what to say. Had I been speaking in the United States I knew so well, I would have had no trouble choosing topics I felt passionate about. Here I was a brand new Australian, with little idea of what the political issues of the day were, no really familiarity with Australian culture, and the barest knowledge that I would soon be hearing a lot about a mysterious game called Australia Rules Football. What I knew about Australia I had learned from reading those few stories that crept into American newspapers, from watching Priscilla, Queen of the Desert several times, and from my week long visit to Adelaide the previous May. I remained utterly ignorant about what Australia was really about, and so felt at a loss to find topics that would be meaningful to my brand new congregation.
We celebrated the two year anniversary of our arrival to this country on September 15, and I now feel considerably more comfortable speaking about life in Australia—or at least, life in South Australia. I've learned to make a booking at a restaurant rather than a reservation and to bank a cheque rather than deposit it. I can say “No worries!” with the best of them, and I find myself doing just that at least a dozen times a day. I roast pumpkin regularly, and even eat Vegemite on occasions. But I still have moments when I feel starkly out of place here.
I thought of entitling this sermon “Loving your neighbour as yourself.” This verse from Leviticus 19 is part of the tomorrow afternoon's Torah reading, and many rabbis have elevated it as the most significant teaching in the Torah. The word normally translated as “your neighbour” is a tricky one. Re'echa doesn't exactly mean neighbour, but rather one who is close to you. “Fellow” is another translation for this term. Either way, the word refers to someone who is not a blood relation but is an intimate part of your life. Certainly neighbours have often fit into this category.
For seven years, my family and I lived in the down-and-out town of Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Most of the homes had been built by the American Bridge Company to house its workforce in the 1920s. The 1100 street of Maplewood Avenue where we lived contained forty homes on tiny blocks. I could stand in my little backyard and look into the backyards of at least fifteen other homes without even standing on a chair. You could euphemistically call it an intimate living situation. Of course, we all knew each other. The elderly woman across the street kept a close eye on our lives and commented whenever we had out-of-town guests. Our grumpy neighbour next door was surprisingly delighted when we asked if we could pick cherries from her sour cherry tree. Our other next-door neighbours spent hours on hot summer evenings sitting on their front porch to see if anything interesting might happen. The mildly retarded man down the street who lived with his elderly mother set up dozens of movement-triggered Halloween decorations each October that roared, cackled, and shrieked through the whole month. When an alcoholic neighbour died suddenly in his thirties, a collection was taken up on the street to help defray the funeral expenses. You may be shocked to hear it, but we occasionally pushed our kids out the door and watched them run around the corner to visit with their friends on the street behind ours. In the summer, neighbourhood kids as young as five-years-old ran up and down the streets. Even in America, you won’t find many places like that anymore.
Now we live in lovely Parkside and really don't know our neighbours. I finally introduced myself to the young couple living on one side of us, but I had to stand on a chair to see over the fence separating the two properties. That house is a new courtyard home, designed with the garage facing the street so that it's virtually impossible to tell if anyone is at home. When the house was put up for sale, the sole indication that it was still inhabited was that the rubbish bins went out every Wednesday night. I have absolutely no idea who lives in the house on the other side of us. It is completely surrounded by those two meter fences which I'm told are a special feature of life in Adelaide. I've never seen anyone go in or come out of the house. We know that there are children who live in our neighbourhood, because we hear them laughing and playing in the yard. But the high fences mean that we don't know which homes are their's. I feel relatively confident that if I knocked on a door and introduced myself, I would be greeted with a shocked stare. I would appreciate the opportunity to love my neighbour as myself, but first I have to know who my neighbour is.
One of the preconceptions I had of Australians was that they were a very friendly people. In general, I have found this to be true. Australians in the Post Office, at the swimming pool, at the playground are very happy to chat with me. But they don't actually seem to be interested in finding out who I am or if there is something I need. I found this to be terribly frustrating when we first migrated and landed in the tightest housing rental market in Adelaide history. What we really needed was a real estate agent to hold our hands, sit down with us for fifteen minutes, and explain what we needed to know about renting in Australia. Instead, we had to figure it all out on our own, and we ended up making a number of mistakes. The same has proven true as we have confronted other challenges, such as finding services for our disabled son. Lots of sympathy from the professionals, but very few offers of meaningful help.
I have developed this theory that Australians have adopted the American model of the rugged individual, but have taken it to extremes. Americans are often loathe to ask for help in difficult situations, because they don't want to be seen as weak and dependant on others. My impression of Australians on a number of occasions has been that they frown on those who seek help to the point that they don't offer assistance even if they could be helpful. In a recent example, Lesley Willis, Lynette Ninio, and I wrestled with the Customs Service over the phone and in person. We were trying to persuade them to help us fill in our customs declarations for the new prayerbooks. They kept telling us that we needed to pay $250 to hire a customs broker to fill out the forms for us. In the end, Lesley managed to convince one employee in the customs office to provide the necessary help, which took ten minutes and saved us quite a lot of money. But this was after several other customs employees had already told us they couldn't help us.
So what happens when someone truly needs help? The original inspiration for this sermon came from a really terrible event several months back: Ori Henderson-Sapir, a member of our congregation, saw his beloved dog Mocha attacked and fatally injured by another dog. They were out on a Shabbat afternoon walking down a quiet side street when the attack happened. Ori struggled for ten minutes to tear the other dog away from Mocha, yelling for help all the while. Ultimately, only one person came out to help. When the police arrived at the scene, curious faces could be seen peering out from many windows. Of course, this is the ultimate fear when we become so absorbed in our lives that we decide that other people's problems are theirs alone. We ourselves might be in true physical danger and find almost no one willing to come to our aid.
The same weekend that the Henderson-Sapirs underwent their terrible trauma, I heard an interview on ABC local radio that also outraged me. Carol Whitelock was interviewing Yvonne Wenham, a councilwoman from Aldinga who had made an heroic attempt to travel for two weeks using only mass transport. She had failed miserably. In the process, she had suffered a shoulder injury while boarding a bus. She was hurt wrestling her youngest child in a pusher on to the bus while her eight-year-old son lugged the shopping trolley up the steps. No other passengers offered to help them. I had a sudden flashback of the many bus rides I'd taken in Israel. Mothers with prams would always stand by the rear entrance to the bus. The driver would open the door, and several passengers would jump off the bus and lift the pram and its passenger up the stairs. The mothers never had to ask for help; it was automatically offered. It was hard for me not to contrast the unconscious caring of Israelis with the behaviour of those passengers who left this mother, her two young children, and their groceries to fend for themselves.
At this point, I must say that the Jewish community of Adelaide is a welcome exception to the general unhelpfulness I've experienced on so many occasions. This is a wonderful community that truly looks after its members. Meals are cooked, rides are offered, the sick and elderly are visited and looked after, and help is given. Adelaide as a whole could learn much from how lovingly our members take care of each other. It is my impression that within Adelaide there are any number of communities bound together by ethnicity or religion who offer their members a home within a city that can sometimes appear cold and unfeeling. Can the warmth that is extended to those like us spread out to everyone?
I think a tutorial in the care of others is becoming increasingly crucial. I had a bad dream last Shabbat that woke me up. Once awake, I found myself even more terrified than when I had been asleep. I was thinking about the future. I was thinking about a world in which the polar ice is melting and the seas are heating up, in which the supply of petrol is rapidly diminishing and the skies are drying up. I was thinking about the current worldwide financial crisis. How economic uncertainty has ripped the challenges of global warming from the front pages and is likely to keep political leaders from thinking seriously about the hard choices and immense funding necessary to stop a looming catastrophe. I was worried about the world I might be leaving to my two sons and to those who will come after them.
Ultimately, if we're going to make it through, we will need to rely on each other. We will need to know our neighbours and to care deeply about their welfare. We will need to recognise how artificial are the walls we build between our properties and between each other. We will need to pool our resources, our expertise, and our passions to build a sustainable, hopeful world again. It will not be easy, but it will be what is necessary. Ultimately, even the most defiantly independent among us will need to come to the realisation that we must all rely on each other. Lately the words of American founding father Benjamin Franklin drift into my head with increasing frequency: If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately. The challenges we face as a city, as a nation, and as part of a world emperiled seem almost too great to overcome. What is clear to me is that the first step is to reach out to our friends, our community, and yes—to our neighbours. I feel blessed to be part of a community that already seems to understand this intuitively.
Remember the story about the man wandering lost in the forest? It comes at the start of service IV in Gates of Prayer. Shai Agnon, an Israeli writer who was awarded the Nobel prize in literature, related the tale in his 1948 work Days of Awe: “Once our master Rabbi Hayyim of Zans told a parable: a man had been wandering about in a forest for several days, not knowing which was the right way out. Suddenly he saw a man approaching him. His heart was filled with joy. “Now I shall certainly find out which is the right way,” he thought to himself. When they neared one another, he asked the man, “Brother, tell me which is the right way. I have been wandering about in this forest for several days.” Said the other to him, “Brother, I do not know the way out either. For I too have been wandering about here for many, many days. But this I can tell you: do not take the way I have been taking, for that will lead you astray. And now let us look for a new way out together.”
Rabbi Hayyim’s point in the story is that we need to search for a new way out of the forest. But the point that I take away from the story is that we need to make the search together. So too in this era when the future is so very uncertain. We are slowly learning which ways do not lead out of the forest. Now, our sacred task is to join our hands, hearts, and minds and to search for the way out together. May we all be inscribed and sealed for a new year of joy and contentment, good health and prosperity, but most especially a new year of hope. Amen.
It's been twelve days since my last blog entry, and although I've had several very fine ideas for entries since them, I haven't been able to muster the time or energy. I admit I've spent some time tracking down people on Facebook. Joel Neft, my very first bar mitzvah student at the Beth Samuel Jewish Center, is my 30th friend. Joel has 433 friends on Facebook, which makes me feel rather socially inferior. But it's true that I have been a grumpy Facebook user and routinely turn down offers of plants, hugs, and causes.
It may well be time to sign off for a while. As a Beit Shalom member and regular reader noted, "You're here." I think I'm mostly settled, despite the occasional bumps and surprises. We move from challenge to challenge with our kids, which makes us pretty much like all other parents. Other activites include trying to keep the cat off the dining room table, gearing up to pick several hundred oranges off our tree, and calculating whether we can hang out the laundry without too much fear of rain--we have had 2 1/2 inches of rain so far this month! My days and evenings are pretty well filled with synagogue or family-related activities, and I look forward to collapsing at the end of each day.
One way you can keep with us at least a bit is to check out the synagogue's website www.bshalomadel.com You can download our newsletter, see photos of what's been happening, and read my monthly attempts at wisdom. And it's entirely possible that I'll get enthusiastic about the project in a month or two and start writing again. Why stop at 146 entries?
I have officially run out of excuses to neglect my blog. Bobby's parents returned to the U.S. on May 5, along with several paintings by Aboriginal artists and two didgeridoos. Two nights ago, I finished the third book of Phillip Pullman's terrific "His Dark Materials" trilogy, although I'm contemplating starting the whole thing over again and reading it a little less breathlessly. And this morning, we survived our first rental inspection in the house where we've lived since October. WAY better than the inspections in our last house, when our property manager used to walk around with her clipboard, frowning and scribbling down notes, and then leave without saying anything to us. Our current landlady was very chatty and told us she would send us a written report for our records. Wish we'd gotten one of those at our last house! We are very happy where we are living now, despite the leaky shower, broken toilet seat, and rusty water. To compensate, we have lemons galore, oranges rapidly ripening on the tree, and enormous amounts of olives.
Personally, I have never liked olives, but I wasn't going to let them go to waste. Nadav and I held a huge tarp taut while Bobby shook down what turned out to be 6 kilos of black olives (about 13 pounds), with plenty of olives still on the trees. I pulled a recipe off the New York Times website, quadrupled it, and packed our olives in a huge bucket along with eight lemons, four heads of garlic, celery, four handfuls of chili peppers, lemon juice, white vinegar, and lots of salt water. Now it's supposed to sit for six months and will hopefully be edible and not moldy when we open it. Thanks are due to the Honey Shoppe at the Central Market, which kindly parted with a 20 liter container that had formerly held organic dishwashing detergent.
I promise to try to get more entries in in the next several weeks. In all honesty, the ideas are not flowing as thick and as fast as they used to, but I'm sure more exciting things will happen to me, and I'll write about them!
The year cycle swings round and round, and so Yom HaShoah--Holocaust Remembrance Day--has come again. Last night, the Adelaide community had its annual observance, this time at the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation. Five survivors were on hand to light candles to memorialize the six million Jewish lives lost. Regina Zielinski, who had lit one of the candles last year, is currently in Poland as an official guest to mark the 65th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Martin Spitzer, a partisan fighter and forgery artist during the War, died just a few weeks ago and was sorely missed. A piece of his extraordinary story is told on the "book of life" section of the website of Adelaide's Jewish museum. Karen Finch, an Adelaide native who is still a Beit Shalom member even now that she lives in Sydney, was the guest speaker. As an educator at the Sydney Jewish Museum, she has the opportunity to participate in a nineteen-day seminar at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem earlier this year. She spoke in particular of an extraordinary morning she and the other seminar participants spent with Hannah Goslar, a Dutch Jew who happens to have been Anne Frank's best friend.
Today, an article by me was published in the "Australian Jewish News" to mark Yom HaShoah. I had noted that by a happy coincidence, the start of Pesach fell on the same date as the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Indeed, part of the observance of the 65th anniversary was to include a Passover seder held in Warsaw, conducted by the chief rabbi of Poland, and attended by the Polish prime minister. I wrote the article three weeks ago just as Regina was gearing up for her big trip, and I can only hope that things turned out as planned!
The phone rang this afternoon as I was making challah and chicken soup for Shabbat. A heavily accented voice on the other end identified himself as Sam Spitzer, calling from Sydney to talk with me about my article. He wanted to make sure I knew the story of Rosa Robota, a young Jewish woman who managed to smuggle enough gunpowder into Auschwitz to blow up one of the five crematoria. He instructed me to read everything I could about her, and then expect a call from him next week to discuss her. Sam Spitzer himself was a partisan in Slovakia during the war who was instrumental in having a gate in Sydney named in Rosa Robota's memory. We made a delightful connection over the phone, when I learned that his granddaughter is engaged to marry a very lovely young rabbi in Sydney named Paul Jacobson. Shabbat shalom!
With luck, we'll have rain today and throughout the weekend, and then it will turn colder and more autumn-like. I asked the kids yesterday how they wanted to spend the last sunny day for the next while and suggested we go to the beach. They said No! Nadav commented, "I'm starting to get sick of beaches." I guess that five-day run down the Great Ocean Road soured him on local sand. Even when they are reluctant to go, by the time we get to the beach the kids are usually elated. But I decided not to force it on them yesterday.
Yonatan declared that he wanted to go to an art gallery and see beautiful pictures. He may well have been influenced by the book we've been reading called "The Art Book for Children," which is a thoroughly charming kids' art appreciation book. At any rate, after a quick stop at the department store to buy grey slacks for the new school term, we walked up to North Terrace to spend ninety minutes at The Art Gallery of South Australia.
The kids whizzed through the galleries displaying earlier works and started showing just a bit of interest when we hit the Impressionists. But what really captured their attention was the contemporary art. Nadav looked at an enormous field of black paint framed with a narrow band of red and asked, "Why did they paint a picture of nothing?" He commented that several paintings must have been created by children, and shrugged off my assurance that all the pictures in the gallery were by adults. Both Yonatan and Nadav are very tactile beings, and they were extremely disappointed that they weren't allowed to touch anything, including the oh-so-touchable metal sculptures just at their eye level.
It was our great fortune to get to enjoy the exhibit The 2008 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Handle with Care. The exhibition had received rave reviews in "The Australian," and although I'm unqualified to evaluate contemporary art, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The textures, variety, materials, and presentations were very compelling, and the kids kept finding things to capture their attention. Both boys were entranced with an installation entitled "Leave your shoes here," which had the sense and feel of a mosque and had been created by the Iranian-Australian artist Hossein Valamanesh. It was a room with niches in the wall, covered in a variety of oriental carpets, and dappled with long vertical cylinders that cast spots of light. My favorite was a piece called "Be-longing" by Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan. It was a cozy room with a door and windows, formed entirely out of personal belongings. There were clothes of course, but also several home computers, kitchen appliances, a stereo, board games, stuffed animals, and hundreds of other items. I found the work particularly evocative, because it reminded me so powerfully of our own experience of trying to condense the possessions most significant to us down to 1000 cubic feet as we prepared for our move to Australia.
The boys behaved very nicely, and only once did a security guard need to chase one of them away from coming too close to one of the pieces of art. It was a lovely afternoon.
It seems that on those rare occasions when relatives come calling from overseas, my blog vanishes from sight. Bobby's parents arrived on April 10, and I've managed how many blog entries since then?
We have had a crazy but terrific time, with Bobby and his parents currently wandering somewhere in the northern Flinders Ranges while the kids and I hold down the fort here. We had our whirlwind six days on the Great Ocean Road, which was all around a great trip. Our favorite was the two days we spent in Lorne, north of opulent Apollo Bay. We rented a three-bedroom house with sea view and frequent visits by crowds of sulphur crested cockatoos, who seemed to expect this to be a good place for snacks. They especially enjoyed the Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers that Grandma and Grandpa had brought by special request from America.
We all started calling the house "Doug's House," and in the end we felt more like housesitters than renters. The house had the feel of a relative's home open for our personal use in the person's absence: "The key's under the mat, help yourself to whatever's in the cupboard, and clean up when you're done." There was a magnet on the fridge that said, "If it walks out of the refrigerator, let it go." Lots of condiments, including a jumbo jar of Vegemite, assorted cutlery and utensils, and a little sign that requested that the nice blue dishes not be used outside. We felt right at home.
From Lorne, we drove the rest of the Ocean Road, with the high point of the last day being a visit to the Airey's Inlet Lighthouse. Bell's Beach, one of the most famous surfing beaches in the world, was a bust, with indifferent waves and a shortage of surfers. We drove through the busy city of Geelong, then an additional hour northwest to the city of Ballarat to spend the night and gear up for the 330 mile drive home.
Ballarat had something Adelaide lacks: true Autumn. The boys and I headed for the caravan park's mediocre minigolf course, only to discover that it was mostly covered over with oak leaves. After fighting against the leaves for fifteen minutes, I had a brain storm. I went to the office and asked to use the rake. Then I raked up a huge pile of leaves, and the kids got to jump in autumn leaves for the first time in two years. (Upon returning to Adelaide, I heard a former Ballarat resident remark with ill-disguised disapproval that "Ballarat planted lots of European trees.") The air was cool and crisp, and we had our first truly clear day since we had set out on our trip. Plus, Rizzo's Pizza on Eureka Street was the best we'd eaten since coming to Australia.
We arrived home from our trip on Thursday evening, and Pesach showed up only two nights later, so I hit the ground running. We had a modest Pesach dinner, especially since the matzah balls dissolved when I dropped them in the chicken soup and we ended up with "matzah mush soup." But the pineapple with berry sorbet was a hit at least.
The high point of our first seder was the puppet show Yonatan and Nadav put together to portray the Pesach story. I had asked them to work on this as a way to keep them out of my way, and the production they come up with far exceeded my wildest expectations. They made at least fifty individual stick puppets, including puppets for doing special effects, like when Moses and the Pharoah's magicians turn their staffs into snakes. Required equipment: a pharoah puppet, a Moses puppet, two magician puppets, three staff puppets and three snake puppets. Moses' snake then eats the other snakes, at which point Moses' snake puppet is replaced with a larger, fatter snake puppet. The show took about half an hour to go through, mostly because the kids hadn't sorted their puppets into scenes and were constantly stopping to find the puppets for the next bit. We saw all ten plagues, and a terrific climactic Red-Sea split. I'm seeking a larger audience now.
Greetings to you all from Lorne, Victoria. We are staying in Avarest Cottage, a privately-owned house which I thoroughly recommend to all you Aussie readers. Three bedrooms, two with queen-size mattresses that still have their springs intact, a nice kitchen, cozy living room, and direct sea views for $115 per night. We have had adventures in accommodation along the way, and I must say it was a tremendous relief to arrive at the house and find it exactly as described on the website.
We drove for seven mostly monotonous hours through southeastern South Australia. Mile after mile of scrub and scrawny gum trees. We drove through Meningie and were quite shocked at the low water level in Lake Alexandrina. Luckily, we've had rain in recent weeks, so we can only hope that some of it reaches the lower Murray River area. By the time we reached Allestree Holiday Units outside of Portland, it was "time to brush our teeth," as Nadav put it. We had our first accommodation surprise here. There were two bedrooms, but not room for four adults and two children. We six ended up sharing one queen-size bed and two bunk beds. Otherwise, it was quite a friendly place to stay: just across a quiet road from the beach, nice-sized living space, decent kitchen, good bathroom. A good deal for $90 for the night.
Sunday was a long LONG day. We spent the morning seeing some of the sights in the Portland area, particularly the spectacular coastline at Cape Nelson State Park as well as its famous lighthouse. From there, we drove to the scenic town of Port Fairy. It wasn't until 3:30 p.m. or so that we finally hit the Great Ocean Road we'd traveled to see. In quick succession, we stopped to view the Bay of Islands, Loch Ard, and Thunder Blowhole. My mother-in-law Judy has been keeping a blog that includes many gorgeous pictures of our trip. By the time we left the Blowhole, it was already 5:30 p.m., and I was becoming concerned about making it to our campsite by darknesss. So we bypassed the most famous site of all, the 12 Apostles, with the intention of getting back there today. Hah! We spent sixty finger-biting minutes making our way through the twists and turns of the dark and spooky Otway National Park, and by the time we finally reached our destination we had all decided that we didn't want to do the drive twice the next day. So we are now just about the only tourists in the history of the Great Ocean Road not to see the 12 Apostles. At least there are nearly 19,000 available images of it on Google, so it's just about as good as being there.
Lest you think I am jesting about the impact of the places we did manage to visit, you should know that they were absolutely spectacular. The kids didn't want to get out of the car, but when they did, they literally jumped up and down. The scenery was magnificent, and well worth the trip.
At 7:15 p.m., we limped into Bimbi Park for the night. We had been looking forward to staying here, because it was located right in the middle of the Otway National Park and sounded quite charming. Charming it is, but rustic in the extreme. Bobby, the boys, and I shared a bunk house, which turned out to be a room with two bunk beds and no curtains. Not even a welcome mat to wipe our feet, so that within minutes the floor was covered with a thin layer of sand. Bob and Judy did better with a small but lovely cabin. Another big surprise was that there was no drinking water available. The camp relies on untreated spring water, which must be boiled in order to be safe for drinking. Hot water with your dinner anyone? The signs over all the sinks informed us that bottle water was available at the kiosk, but by then the kiosk was closed. The restroom facilities were state of the art, but you had to pay $1 for the privilege of taking a 3-minute shower.
Would I recommend Bimbi Park to others? I think so, provided you arrive while it's still daytime and are prepared for the sparseness of the facilities. Certainly, it is among the cheapest places to stay in a very pricey area.
You may have noticed the absence of new blog entries lately. I've been really busy, but I've also lately run a little short on inspiration. Happily, I'm looking forward to new sources of inspiration now. Bobby's parents have just arrived for a 3 1/2 week visit, and we are all gearing up for a five day drive along the famed Great Ocean Road in southern Victoria. I'll be busy getting ready for Passover when we return, but will plan to fill you in on everything in another 10 days or so.
Readers will remember the addition of a grey tabby cat to our household back at the beginning of December. Hobbes was then about 9 weeks old and weighed all of 3.5 pounds. He's been with us for four months now and has grown into a beautiful cat. Hobbes has become a beloved part of the family, and the boys absolutely adore him. Although he often minds his own business, he predictably turns up for the ritual singing of bedtime songs to the boys. This generally marks the start of the most high energy part of the day. He loves it when I chase him around the house and enjoys it even more when we fold paper airplanes and toss them for him to catch.
He has also grown into a discontented and rather large cat, weighing in at something in the neighborhood of 8 1/2 pounds. As responsible pet owners, we fed him a carefully calibrated diet of Hill's Science Diet kitten food, purchased from the local vet--$45 for a 5 kg. bag. The problem was, it never seemed to be enough for Hobbes. After our vet told us he gave his two cats only 1/4 for the whole day, we cut Hobbes' food rations down to 1/2 cup, split into two 1/4 servings during the day. We'd give him his 1/4 cup in the morning, which he would wolf down in five minutes. Then he would start haunting the breakfast table, sniffing in the garbage, and stealing crusts of bread off of the table. Eight hours later, he was more than ready for dinner and was furious when we refused to feed him before 6:00 p.m.
On Sunday, I talked to Jonathan Wysoke, a quietly brilliant veterinarian who is a member of the synagogue. As in the past, he had an immediate answer for my problem: The cat was hungry. Or, as he passionately phrased it, "The cat is starving." How was that possible? Because dry cat food is ten times as concentrated and so gives the cats all their necessary nutrients without leaving them feeling fed and satisfied. Furthermore, he pointed out, cats were not really meant to eat a heavy carbohydrate diet. Modern cats suffer from obesity and diabetes, conditions that have never before afflicted them. When I objected that I was feeding our cat the state-of-the-art pet food, he gently told me that I had been duped by the food industry. Alas for our nearly-full $45 bag of cat food!
Dr. Wysoke prescribed a strict diet of kangaroo meat. Kangaroo is increasingly acquiring a reputation as a delicacy for humans--slightly gamey, highly flavored, and very low in fat. It's also really REALLY not kosher, so it will not be finding a place onto our dinner table. Although kangaroo in restaurants is a fairly new phenomenon, kangaroo meat in pet food is a decades-old practice. It's marketed usually as "pet mince"--meat chopped very finely and apportioned out in pre-measured packages just right for kitty. This wasn't what Dr. Wysoke had in mind.
I made my way to a small pet store at the Central Market which sells meat for consumption by pets. For $4.50, I brought home a kilo a chunks of kangaroo meat scooped into a plastic bag and wrapped in newspaper. I gingerly slipped a few smaller pieces into Hobbes' food dish and waited. Hobbes of course made a mad dash for his food dish and prepared to dive in. He took one look at the radically-altered contents of his bowl and literally sprang backwards two feet. It took him about fifteen minutes to decide he was willing to try something new, and he did so in a fairly meticulous, almost scientific manner. He plucked each of the meat chunks out of his bowl, gave them little shoves across the floor, and then slowly starting figuring out how to eat them. These were not bite-sized pieces, so he had to use his teeth to tear off manageable bits to chew up. It took a solid thirty minutes for him to consume every bit of meat, and at the end he seemed to have achieved a state of inner bliss.
Americans are often amazed to hear that kangaroo meat is used to make Australian pet food. But the fact is that there are way more kangaroos living in Australia than is either good for the continent or good for the kangaroos. It's hard to get an exact figure, but one website estimated a total population of at least 50 million, well more than twice as many people and apparently more than at any other time in Australian history. Kangaroos are cute, cuddly, and generally friendly, so that periodic calls to engage in targeted population reduction are about as popular as efforts to trim deer population in America. Hobbes seems very happy to do his part, and we'll be quite delighted if at the end of the day he loses some weight, has more energy, and is less interested in raiding the dinner table.
We have spent much of this four-day weekend making up for the absolute absence of housecleaning during the fifteen day heat wave that ended last week. But yesterday after the bathroom had been cleaned, we headed off to the the Semaphore Odeon Cinema to see "Horton Hears a Who." Since I wrote about the Semaphore Cinema in an earlier blog entry, they have raised their ticket prices to $7 from $6, but that still makes tickets half what they cost most other places. Since our move last October, it now take a full thirty minutes to get there, but I consider it worth the trip. In addition to having a cozy small town feel, the theater has a little cafe for refreshments either before or after the show. Although popcorn is as expensive as anywhere else, ice cream bars are reasonably priced, and home-baked cookies are available for fifty cents each. We arrived half an hour early yesterday to make sure tickets were still available, so we spent the time waiting for the doors to open munching on popsicles. We sat through several minutes of quaint commercials advertising local businesses, plus two previews (was it my imagination, or did the preview for "Nim's Island" give away the ending?!). Then it was time for the feature presentation. Certainly wasn't the best kids' movie I've seen in the last twelve months ("Enchanted" takes that honor), but the boys enjoyed it.
The main attraction of this movie theater is that once the show is over, we're in Semaphore. It is a charming seaside resort town with a modest downtown shopping area, several playgrounds, and a gorgeous beach. As we drove into town yesterday, it seemed like the sky was littered with little balloons. In fact, we were seeing dozens of kites on display for the town's annual Kite Festival. After the movie, we strolled the two blocks to the jetty and enjoyed the spectacle. My favorite was the little teddy bear who with the aid of his own kite made his slow way up a long kite string. Suddenly, his handler hit a release, and the bear dropped from the kite string and floated gracefully to the ground with his very own parachute.
It was Easter Sunday, but nearly all the businesses were open, and the little Steam Train was running. We picked up a couple of apples from the local fruit and veg shop, and indulged in fried-to-order doughnuts to top off a special afternoon. Yonatan and Nadav dug in the sand for an hour, while the kites continued to soar nearby. It was a tough sell to convince them to get back into the car for the rather monotonous drive down commercial Port Road, but eventually we all had our shoes and socks on and were making our way back home. We'll be back as soon as the next decent kids' movie opens.
On Tuesday, both The Age and The Australian newspapers carried the same cover photo: it is a black and white picture of hundreds of men, smartly dressed in their naval uniforms, posing proudly aboard a large battleship. The ship is the HMAS Sydney, which was sunk off the coast of West Australia in 1941. The ship had approached a merchant ship, only to discover that it was actually a disguised German raider, the Kormoran. All 645 men aboard the Sydney were lost, and no one was left to suggest where the ship may have come to rest. The battle left the Kormoran fatally wounded, and it too sank nearby. However, 300 out of its crew of 390 sailors were rescued. Although the German sailors were interviewed extensively about the location of the Sydney's remains, their testimony was treated with considerable suspicion. Relatives and friends of the lost Australian sailors have been searching for the Sydney for the last 66 years, with little hope of finding this rather large needle in an enormous haystack.
Two spectacular news stories broke within 24 hours of each other at the start of this week. On Sunday came the news that the wreck of the Kormoran had been discovered, pretty much exactly where its sailors had said it had been. Of course, just knowing where a ship might be doesn't necessarily mean it can be found when it is lying 1.5 miles beneath the surface. The Finding the Sydney Foundation managed to raise enough money to dispatch a boat with a very sophisticated sonar device to the suspected location and start sweeping the area. They eventually spotted the outline of a boat lying on the ocean floor that matched the Kormoran's description. Excitement exploded with the very real possibility that the Sydney might finally be located as well. I was listening to the news on Monday morning when a reporter broke in to make the announcement that the Sydney had already been located--also just about where the Germany sailors had predicted and ten miles or so from the Kormoran.
The Finding the Sydney Foundation has gone so far as to publish the GPS coordinates for the ships, so that those who wish to can travel to these deep-water graves. When an ABC reporter expressed concerns that unscrupulous individuals might exploit that information to plunder the ships, the Finding the Sydney director pointed out that no one can possibly reach the ships without really expensive equipment.
I've said before that Australia is not a religious country, but remembering the military dead is in many ways the closest to an official religion we have here. Along with the jubilation that this great ship has been discovered and that now the mysteries related to its sinking might be solved comes the somber recollection of 645 souls lost so close to home. Thousands of words about the event have been written already just in the last several days. "The Australian" has dedicated a whole section to the Sydney and its history, and for sure much has yet to be said.
