Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza

I am trying hard to understand the background to the dreadful situation in Gaza and the powerful emotions evoked on both sides. Peter Beinart's short book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, sets out the history of Palestine and Israel with brutal clarity, and he speaks from the perspective of a Jewish person who has been an unquestioning supporter of the concept of Israel in the past, but who is appalled by the actions of that state against its Palestinian inhabitants (not necessarily citizens).

I struggled reading Ruptured a few months ago, though I could understand that the anguish and the experience of anti-Semitism in Australia described by the various writers is very real; however, there was little acknowledgement of the long and cruel suffering of the Palestinian people that provided a context for the horrific events of October 11. Beinart has no problem recognising this history.

Beinart writes from a US point of view, but much of what he says applies to us here in Australia. Beinart argues passionately that the nation of Israel has betrayed the promise of a Jewish homeland by becoming an oppressor itself. I used to believe that a two state solution was the only possible answer to Israel-Palestine tensions, but I'm coming round to the view that a single state, where Palestinians and Jews have equal rights, is the only way to peace. Whether that's achievable is another question altogether.
 

Ruptured

I expected that I would find Ruptured difficult to read; and I did. I've been increasingly aware that, despite always being fascinated by and sympathetic to Judaism, at the moment I exist inside a decided pro-Palestinian bubble. One of my daughters is determinedly pro-Palestinian, to the point where, to me, she's become uncomfortably anti-Israel. I can't defend the actions of the state of Israel in Gaza, but I wanted a clearer understanding of why Israel has been behaving that way.

Australia is a small world. I didn't expect to find essays in here from an ex-housemate and from my former school captain. I also had to remind myself that this book was published before the Bondi shooting of December 2025; I can only imagine how much the deep anguish and fear expressed in these essays has intensified since then. One thing that became immediately obvious that that although I myself find it simple to separate the nation state of Israel and its actions from the Jewish people, these Australian Jewish women experienced no such easy distance. For them, Israel and being Jewish are inextricably intertwined, so that criticisms of Israel's action are felt directly as anti-Semitism. It's much more personal than I'd realised. Any critique of Israel is felt as a denial of Israel's right to existence. Also, the events of October 7, when Hamas attacked and murdered Jewish citizens, was such a violation, so painful, that no amount of bloodshed in Gaza seemed to touch it; there was no comparison, no equivalence. (I'm aware that my words are clumsy and indeed I'm struggling to clearly express the emotions that rose so painfully from these pages.)

I'm not sure that I really found the clearer understanding that I was seeking from Ruptured, but I'm much more aware of the genuine suffering that these women have endured and are still enduring, and the mutual incomprehension that seems to lie between the Jewish community and the pro-Palestinian protesters (I'm talking about peaceful marchers like my daughter, obviously not the terrorists who have firebombed schools and synagogues, and definitely not the Bondi shooters.) It's all such a horrible, agonising tangle, and I don't know how it can ever be smoothed out so everyone can live in peace together. Here and now, it seems impossible, even in my city here on the other side of the world.
 

The Gift of Asher Lev

I read My Name is Asher Lev in high school (from memory, my mum had been studying The Chosen in adult education, so naturally I read it, too, and that led me to Asher Lev). I was very moved by the conflict between Asher with his genius for drawing, and his disapproving Hasidic religious community, especially his father. Asher's art-making was clearly presented as something he was compelled to do, a gift from God just as much as the words of the Torah or the wisdom of his elders. I didn't realise this sequel existed until I found it recently in a street library.

Years on from Asher's exile to France, he's now married, a celebrated painter, and has two children of his own. He and his family are brought back to Brooklyn by the death of his uncle, and his parents' desire to spend time with their grandchildren leads to their stay becoming extended, though Asher insists that they will have to go home to France soon. Gradually Asher (and the reader) becomes aware that the venerable Rebbe, the frail and elderly leader of the community, is harbouring a succession plan that involves Asher's six year old son, and most of the novel concerns Asher's internal wrestling with this scheme.

The Gift of Asher Lev is a slow-paced novel but I really enjoy the way that Potok builds up the story, brush stroke by brush stroke. We see everything through Asher's observant eyes but he lets us know what he's feeling only rarely, either in occasional emotional outbursts, or through his drawings, or through his description of his body's reactions to what he's seen or heard -- fingers tingling, spots before his eyes, a sensation of dizziness. It's very cleverly done, and so much more effective than giving us direct access to Asher's feelings.

The Gift of Asher Lev was published in 1990 and set in 1988, and it was striking how the litany of the world's troubles hasn't changed that much. In Brooklyn, they swelter though a cripplingly hot summer, the summer that first made the American public aware of global warming; there are elections in the US and in France, and in France there are fears that 'that racist Le Pen' might be elected -- of course it's the present Le Pen's father, and that particular outcome seems to have been averted for the present. The eager Zionism of Asher's father and the Rebbe is hard to read about, as is their agenda for Israeli politics; but this isn't really the point of the story. It's a very personal, intimate account of a war within a family, a war conducted largely without words, through hints and parables, meals and pictures, even dancing, and a war fought ultimately inside one man.
 

Abomination

 

Abomination was recommended to me by a school librarian while I was doing a school visit, and given my recent dip into Orthodox Judaism, Chaim Potok, Israeli drama series etc, I thought I'd give it a go. It was interesting to read a novel set in the same culture, but in my own city -- I know most of the streets the characters inhabit, the city landmarks, the cafes, a parallel world to my own.

Probably inspired by the case of child abuser Malka Leifer, the book opens with a protest against a sex offender who was smuggled out of Melbourne and protected by Israeli authorities (in this instance, a male teacher), which reunites old school friends Ezra and Yonatan after twenty years. Yonatan has remained Orthodox, married, expecting a child, now himself a rabbi and teacher at the same school; Ezra, whose parents pulled him from the school after the scandal, is living a secular life, but lost and unhappy. Both young men find themselves questioning their choices and their current situations, and their reunion acts as a catalyst for some difficult decisions for each of them.

I really enjoyed the way Ezra and Yonatan's parallel lives intersected and bounced off each other, and Ashley Goldberg has done a terrific job in posing tough questions about faith, friendship, community, loyalty, tradition and doubt. In a book which centres on questions of masculinity, I was pleased that Ezra and Yoni's partners got some time on the page -- I would have been interested to read more from their points of view.

My Name is Asher Lev

 

I first read Chaim Potok's classic novel My Name is Asher Lev in the early 1980s when my mum was studying it for HSC. The copy that I found in Savers is inscribed with the name Jo Reidy 1979; a Google search reveals that Joanne Reidy (about the right vintage) now works for the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, and has had a great career in education, co-authoring several textbooks. So that's pretty cool! She was certainly very diligent in marking significant passages and underlining good essay quotes -- in pencil, of course.

My Name is Asher Lev is perhaps the archetypal Chaim Potok novel, where the conflict between the individual and their community is presented at its starkest and most painful. Young Asher Lev, a member of a Hasidic sect in New York, with parents who spend their lives in utmost danger in Eastern Europe supporting the Jewish faith, has a unique artistic gift. This is a portrait of the creative artist as a genius helpless in the grip of their own talent, and Asher Lev ends up following his gift quite ruthlessly and paying the ultimate price in being cast out from his people.

Asher Lev starts slowly; it's not until about halfway through that the drama really picks up pace and then brings it home with a wallop. It really is Potok's masterpiece.

The Chosen

To my delight, I discovered my old copy of Chaim Potok's The Chosen on my book shelf, inscribed with my name and Year 12 class number. I don't think I'd picked it up since doing HSC many years ago. Looking for an image to include with this post, I came across a very recent article written by the director of the film version, celebrating the movie's 40th anniversary. Synchronicity! I've never seen the film, I hope I can find it somewhere.

Typically for Chaim Potok's novels, the story is slow-paced, but dense with detail and atmosphere. This was my first introduction to the world of Hasidic Judaism and on my first reading, much of Danny's world was a mystery to me -- the patriarchal community (women barely appear in the novel), the centrality of Torah, the almost mystical reverence for the rebbe, Danny's father. The book centres on the friendship between two boys: brilliant Hasidic Danny, destined to follow his father as leader of the community, but drawn to secular studies; and Reuven, observant but not extreme, who is ironically called to become a rabbi himself. The four way relationship between the two sons and the two fathers structures the novel.

The Chosen is set during and after the Second World War and it was odd to read of the death of President Roosevelt one day and the next day, see the same event portrayed on Band of Brothers (which my husband has been re-watching). It's really strange how often these threads of connection arise with my reading! I don't remember being struck by the almost complete absence of women in the book on first reading, even though I was at an all girls school, but it was glaring to me this time around. Now I want to revisit Potok's My Name Is Asher Lev, which I don't remember much about except that I found it moving, strange and intriguing.

In the Beginning

 

A proper grown up literary novel, the first one I've read for a long time. I read quite a few of Chaim Potok's novels in high school and was fascinated by the glimpses into a different cultural world, the world of Orthodox Judaism, that they showed to me; that fascination has never left me, as my recent television adventures with Unorthodox, Shtisel and Unchained have proved. But I haven't read In the Beginning before.

In the Beginning is an adult novel, but for most of its length David Lurie is a child or an adolescent, growing up in the Bronx during the Depression and the Second World War. We see through his eyes the hostility of the goyim, the oppression of history, and he is particularly haunted by his father's past, fighting in Poland. David is a sickly, gifted child, perpetually anxious, dreading 'accidents', and aspiring to a courage he is sure that he lacks. But in the end, the courage he finds is not physical bravery but a more demanding intellectual strength which will rip him away from the security of his tight community and family.

In the Beginning is a slow burn of a novel. Small incident piles upon incident, there is a growing sense of dread, although the violence and horror all occurs either in the past or many miles away in Nazi Germany. And I'm still fascinated that there is a world so utterly foreign to me, the world of Torah scholarship, which is so burningly important to many people and about which I know absolutely nothing.