JewishNews October 2009

Newsletter Second Semester 2009

Landmark national population survey to aid communal planning Results of a ground-breaking national Jewish population survey will be used for communal planning and to provide evidence to support submissions to government, including funding applications. The project’s methodology will also serve as a guide for other ethnoreligious groups.

‘Almost nine out of 10 respondents indicated that they were very satisfied or satisfied with their “life as a whole”, a marginally higher level than is indicated by general Australian surveys.’ More than 6200 Jewish Australians and New Zealanders participated in the detailed attitudinal survey undertaken by researchers in the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation in partnership with Jewish Care (Vic) Inc. in Melbourne and Jewish Communal Appeal (JCA) Planning in Sydney, and with funding support from the Australian Research Council and leading foundations. The project is led by Professor Andrew Markus.

The first phase of the study involved a detailed analysis of the 2006 census findings. The attitudinal survey, the second part of the study, was undertaken between September 2008 and April 2009. It was the first national

survey undertaken across Australia’s Jewish communities and Professor Markus observes that it is, to the best of his knowledge, the largest survey of its kind undertaken within the Diaspora.

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Conference examines Holocaust consequences Deborah Staines The first ever conference to examine the aftermath of the Holocaust as it was experienced in Australia and New Zealand by Holocaust survivors, their families and the Australian Jewish community will be hosted by the ACJC in March next year. Titled ‘Aftermath: Holocaust Survivors in Australia’, the conference (14–15 March) will feature special guest Dr Zeev Mankowitz, head of the new Diana Zborowski Center for the Study of the Aftermath of the Shoah at Yad Vashem. Other speakers include Professor Yehuda Bauer (Hebrew University and Yad Vashem), Professor Konrad Kwiet (University of Sydney and Sydney Jewish Museum), Associate Professor Suzanne Rutland (University of Sydney), Associate

Professor Mark Baker (Monash University) and Pamela Maclean (Deakin University). The conference will address three broad themes, contextualised by the regional experience: Consequences, Identities and Diaspora. The immediate and long-term consequences of the Holocaust include displacement; antisemitism when people attempted to return to their former homes; the claims for reparations; the forging of new Jewish identities in Australia and New Zealand; connections with Israel; the growing international practice of Holocaust education; the second and third-generation movements of return to the sites of loss and atrocity; and the development of Holocaust remembrance. These are just a few of the topics to be discussed at the conference.

Conference convenors Associate Professor Mark Baker and Dr Deborah Staines are inviting submissions for papers and conference activities. The conference is co-sponsored by the Jewish Holocaust Centre Melbourne; the Jewish Museum of Australia; the Sydney Jewish Museum; the Diana Zborowski Center for the Study of the Aftermath of the Shoah, Yad Vashem; the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute and the Joint Distribution Committee. Further information on registration costs and downloadable conference information will be available soon from the conference website at www.arts.monash.edu.au/acjc

2 | Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation

Director’s message

Second Semester 2009

Immigration conference inspires book A conference which took place in May at the Monash Prato campus, Italy, comparing the immigrant experiences in Israel and Australia, will culminate in the publication of a book next year, co-authored by Professor Andrew Markus and Dr Alexander Semyonov. The book will contain chapters on demography, government policy, immigration law, labour markets, civil society, public opinion and second generation. Titled Nations of Immigrants: Israel and Australia Meeting of Authors, the conference

The Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation (ACJC) is living up to its name as a centre that represents the breadth and depth of Jewish civilisation. While the ACJC operates from its new base at the Caulfield Monash campus, the Centre is truly located at the intersection of numerous communities – locally, nationally and internationally. The ACJC is firstly part of the wider Monash community, enriching its student and academic life with Jewish scholarship. This academic year the Centre has taught more than 700 undergraduate students across Jewish topics that span the ancient and modern worlds, from the classical texts of Babylon to contemporary Israeli literature. Our postgraduate students are undertaking coursework and research degrees in Jewish and modern Israel studies, interreligious studies, Holocaust and genocide studies and teacher-training for Jewish schools. Students have experienced the benefits of the Monash passport, which enable them to study overseas in Israel, South Africa, Europe and America. The ACJC research seminars have drawn in academics from other faculties to explore questions of law, philosophy, religion, literature and film, generating fruitful research projects on a collaborative basis. The ACJC is also part of an international community of scholars, exemplified by conferences it has led at the Monash campus in Prato, Italy, which has spurred research in studies of the Zohar, and a book comparing migration patterns in Australia and Israel. Distinguished scholars of Jewish and Israeli studies have spent time at our Centre, offering seminars on an interdisciplinary basis and delivering public lectures on themes that impact on the world today. While expanding its global profile, the ACJC also nurtures scholarly debate within the Jewish and wider Australian community through its community engagement activities. The Australian Jewish Population Survey conducted by Andrew Markus, alongside the Roslyn Smorgon Program in Jewish Communal Service and Leadership, demonstrates the nexus between the community and university based on research foundations. On behalf of the ACJC, I invite you to visit our new Centre at Caulfield and to continue your educational journey by enrolling in one of our courses and public programs. Associate Professor Mark Baker

brought together 17 leading scholars contributing to the study, including one of the world’s leading demographers, Professor Sergio Della Pergola from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Professor Andrew Jakubowicz, Professor of Sociology from the University of Technology, Sydney. The project received financial support from the Monash Institute for the Study of Global Movements and from the Pratt Foundation.

Population survey to aid communal planning Continued from page 1

The preliminary results for Melbourne and Sydney were published in August 2009 and launched at a function hosted by John and Pauline Gandel. The key points to emerge from this survey are that: • There is a very strong sense of Jewish identification; depending on definition, between 80 percent and 90 percent of respondents see their ‘Jewishness’ as an important or defining characteristic of their lives. • A distinguishing characteristic of Jews in Australia is the connectedness of families. More than 70 percent of respondents indicated that they spent Friday evening Sabbath with their family every week or most weeks. • Support for Israel unifies the Jewish community. There is evidence of division of opinion in response to many issues, but much of the difference disappears when Israel is considered. Close to 80 percent of respondents indicated that they regarded themselves as Zionist, while only 13 percent did not. There are, however, a wide range of views on the policy to be followed in pursuit of peace with Palestinians. • There is a relatively high level of discrimination, understood in terms of antisemitism, reported by Jewish Australians. Fifty-eight and a half percent of respondents in Melbourne and Sydney had personally experienced or witnessed antisemitism in Australia. Of these, 45 percent in Melbourne and 45 percent in Sydney reported one or more incidents of antisemitism over the last 12 months, five times the rate of discrimination reported in the Australian community. • When asked about the extent of change in antisemitism in Australia over the last five years, 45 percent were of the view that it was about the same as five years ago. But those who thought that it was less of a problem were outnumbered more than six to one by those who considered antisemitism to be ‘worse’ or ‘much worse’. • Generally there was strong support for the Jewish community. Only 20 percent of

respondents indicated that they felt no connection (or only a ‘slight’ connection) with the community. A larger proportion of one-third however, indicated that they could ‘never’ or ‘hardly ever’ have a say on issues that were important to them. • Comparison of the outlook of Jewish day school graduates with those who had no Jewish day school education indicates a marked differentiation. But closer examination points to factors additional to the type of school attended in the shaping of identity, two of which are considered in this report: religion (or its absence) in the parental home and involvement in United Jewish Education Board (Melbourne) and Board of Jewish Education (Sydney) supplementary classes or secular youth groups. Differentiation in outlook and reported behaviour is most evident when those of religious background who attended a Jewish day school are compared with those of secular background who attended a non-Jewish school. • Almost nine out of 10 respondents indicated that they were very satisfied or satisfied with their ‘life as a whole’, a marginally higher level than is indicated by general Australian surveys. Consideration of a range of variables with possible impact on life satisfaction indicated that socio-economic status produced the largest variation. • While poverty is at a relatively low level within the Jewish population, those at greatest risk by a large margin are those unable to work because of a disability. • A comparison of immigrants from South Africa, the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Israel highlights differences in experience – and the range and extent of problems faced by FSU immigrants, including serious difficulty finding employment, obtaining recognition of qualifications and inadequate income. Notwithstanding difficulties experienced, FSU-born together with South Africa-born, indicated a high level of satisfaction with their lives in Australia compared to their former homelands. A majority of the Israel-born also indicated satisfaction, but there was more equivocation in their responses.


Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation | 3

ACJC creates Zohar history in Prato The ACJC created history in July this year by bringing the world’s leading Zohar scholars together for the first time at three-day Zohar symposium, the first of a series of bi-annual conferences in Jewish Studies held at the Monash campus in Prato, Italy. Convened by Zohar scholars and teachers Nathan Wolski (from ACJC) and Merav Carmeli, participants included Israel Prize winner, Professor Moshe Idel; Professor Daniel Matt, the translator of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition; and Professor Arthur Green. Papers were presented in both Hebrew and English and are currently being edited to appear as a special volume of the prestigious journal, Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts. The 13th century medieval town centre provided an ideal setting for such an exploration as the Zohar itself – the major work of the Spanish Kabbalah – was composed in the latter part of the 13th century. Italy, it should be noted, enjoys a proud place in the history of the Zohar: the first printed editions were from Mantua and Cremona. The ACJC has a deep interest in the Zohar. Nathan Wolski has translated the widely acclaimed study by Melila Hellner-Eshed,

ACJC lecturer, Nathan Wolski, at the head of the table with fellow Zohar scholars at the groundbreaking Zohar symposium at Prato in July.

A River Flows from Eden: On the Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar (Stanford University Press, 2009) and his own book, A Journey into the Zohar: An Introduction to the Book of Radiance, is due for release by SUNY Press in April 2010. Merav Carmeli is the manuscript editor for the Pritzker Zohar

New partnerships in Interreligious Studies ACJC lecturers Michael Fagenblat and Melanie Landau travelled to Malaysia during the July semester break to participate in a workshop on collaboration in interreligious studies. Sharon Bong, senior lecturer in Gender Studies and Creative Writing, Monash Sunway (Malaysia), gives this update. Teaching and research collaboration in interreligious studies was forged in an innovative two-day workshop that brought together researchers from Monash Sunway, Monash Australia and the India Institute of Technology (IITB), Mumbai. Hosted by the School of Arts and Social Sciences (Sunway), the workshop was funded by the International Strategic Initiative grant and team-led by Michael Fagenblat. Explorations included jointly writing new units in religion and gender, religion and media; introducing units in interreligious studies in Masters (taught) programs; developing a new

and has been working with Daniel Matt for six years combing the handwritten manuscripts of the Kabbalistic classic. The conference was a landmark for the ACJC and highlights its capacity to make a significant contribution to Jewish Studies at the highest international level.

Students explore genocide, conflict

PhD program with areas of specialisation such as multi-faith movements in Asia, nationalism, conflict management, human rights, sports and youth in Interreligious Studies; identifying a Monash network of scholars with research expertise in interreligious studies; and identifying research grants that recognise the merits of interreligious studies. Other dialogue partners included Greg Barton (Monash Caulfield), Siby George (IITB), Yeoh Seng Guan, Zakir Hossain Raju, Tony See and Sony Jalarajan (Sunway).

Dr Michael Fagenblat of the ACJC led a team of scholars to Monash’s campus in Malaysia. The workshop was part of a project called ‘Internationalizing Interreligious Studies’ which is aimed at establishing teaching and research collaboration in the field of interreligious studies. The ACJC’s Melanie Landau also attended the workshop.

Inside Kigali Memorial Centre, Rwanda.

‘After Atrocity: The Holocaust, South Africa, Rwanda’ brought together 25 students from Monash campuses in Australia and South Africa to study the contemporary histories of post-genocide and post-conflict societies, through three specific cases: European Jews after the Holocaust; the South African approach after apartheid; and local and global responses to the Rwandan genocide. Held in the winter semester and led by ACJC director and Holocaust and genocide lecturer, Associate Professor Mark Baker, students spent a week in Johannesburg and a week in Rwanda exploring public debates on memory and justice through visits to memorial sites and museums. Students visited places including Soweto, the Apartheid Museum, Constitution Hill and the Murambi genocide memorial and witnessed a Gacaca village trial.



Israel shines in 2009 season August arrived, the heart of winter, and with it a virtual storm of scholarly content from Israel. This season of lectures, seminars and round tables – endowed by the Leon Liberman Chair of Modern Israel Studies and appropriately titled ‘Israel among the Nations’ – brought a wealth of perspectives to the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation (ACJC), reports Tammy Reznik, manager of the Leon Liberman Chair of Modern Israel Studies. Leon Liberman Lecture Series In the first of four community lectures, Professor Oz-Salzberger presented a wideranging discussion on the relationship between Israel and Europe. Israelis and Europeans – not just the European Union and Israel – are more estranged than ever before, argued Professor Oz-Salzberger, who went on to assert that this ‘cultural, historical and moral black hole’ cannot be neglected any longer. “As the stakes and tensions of Middle Eastern politics shoot up, the European–Israeli chasm becomes not just saddening but dangerous,” she said. Presenting a supple and nuanced argument, Professor Oz-Salzberger pushed for a new kind of dialogue between Israelis and Europeans. “Many urge Israelis to return to Europe [but] Europe cannot neglect its Jewish past if it wants a political foothold in the Middle East and if it wishes to create a cultural identity for itself,” she said. “For some Israelis, Europe is a poisoned bed of antisemitism; for others it is associated with cultural elitism. Many find it almost impossible to regard a thousand years of interaction – of travel and migration and mutual influence – other than through the prism of Auschwitz. And on their part, for many Europeans, the Jews are a vague and embarrassing memory and Jewish history a hypersensitive subject that is sometimes avoided.”

‘Many urge Israelis to return to Europe [but] Europe cannot neglect its Jewish past if it wants a political foothold in the Middle East and if it wishes to create a cultural identity for itself.’ – Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger Professor Oz-Salzberger emphasised the need for a new kind of relationship to emerge: one in which Israelis and Europeans remember and acknowledge their common past, their shared political values and their mutual indebtedness in shaping the ideals and philosophies of democratic states. The past paradigms of antisemitism on one side and emotional manipulation on the other, need to make room for a new kind of dialogue, she said.

Furthermore, the professor strongly asserted Israeli membership in European history. As she said, ‘We fully belong in it and it fully belongs to us. Israelis should be able to go to Europe, not just as tourists, but also as well-read travellers who have plenty of cultural real estate – their own ancestral legacy – to trace and explore.’ The following week, visiting Professor David Menashri, Director of the Centre for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, addressed a packed auditorium on ‘The Islamic Revolution in Iran: a view from Israel’. Professor Menashri challenged old views and presented a rather atypical picture of the Iranian populace, which emphasised the strength of civil society and the tradition of taking to the streets to effect revolution. Iran, Professor Menashri emphasised, is built on the twin pillars of Islam and Persian culture, suffused over time with a strong dose of Western global culture.

‘The question for the world, and not only for Israel, is whether the carriage carrying a nuclear program reaches the station before civil society topples the current [Iranian] regime.’ – Professor David Menashri There are two trains that have left the station, he argued: the one driven by civil society that is seeking a new government based on freedom and improved material conditions, and the other steered by a radical Islamist regime that deploys repression and an anti-Western foreign policy to divert attention from its inability to deliver on its promises. The question for the world, and not only for Israel, is whether the carriage carrying a nuclear program reaches the station before civil society topples the current regime.

Monash Israel Oration In the annual Monash Israel Oration, Professor Itamar Rabinovich brought a wealth of experience to his discussion of a different look for the Middle East. In his varied roles as Professor of Middle East Studies at Tel Aviv University, Distinguished Global Professor at New York University, Israel’s Ambassador to Washington (1993–96) and chief negotiator with Syria, Professor Rabinovich was a key

participant in high-level negotiations. His oration navigated the entangled web of politics involving all the Arab states with an emphasis on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. In the final lecture of the series, Professor Yedidia Stern, who has been appointed to Monash University as Sir Louis Matheson Distinguished Visiting Professor, spoke about the importance of developing a language of human rights within Judaism in order to maintain a balance between Israel as both a Jewish and a democratic state. Professor Stern, former Dean of the Bar Ilan Law School and Chief Researcher at the Israeli Democracy Institute, quoted from a survey which demonstrated that an overwhelming majority of Israelis support strengthening the Jewish nature of the state. Concluding ‘Israel Among the Nations’, the lecture illustrated how Israel negotiates a path between uniqueness and universalism, in the same manner that all culture expresses both particularistic and universal elements.

Academic seminars The ACJC hosted a number of research seminars for local scholars. The colloquium on Israel and human rights began with presentations from visitors of the Leon Liberman Chair and Director of the Castan Centre, Professor Sarah Joseph. Professor Joseph presented a legal perspective on Israel’s human rights obligations in relation to the occupied territories, followed by a range of presentations from Leon Liberman Chair, Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger, Professor Eli Salzberger, Professor David Menashri and Professor Yedidia Stern. This was followed by a session focusing on the necessity of writing a constitution for Israel and comparisons with parallel debates in Australia. A colloquium on Iran brought together a cross-section of students from the Monash Asia Institute and the ACJC. It was attended by 40 researchers studying aspects of the Middle East and Asia, including students from Iran and Pakistan studying at Monash and other Australian universities. Professor David Menashri answered questions from doctoral students who were working on issues including current geopolitics in the region, Iranian civil society, and the role of women in Iranian history.



From left: Professor Itamar Rabinovich, Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger (Leon Liberman Chair), Professor David Menashri, Professor Eli Salzberger, Professor Yedidia Stern, Associate Professor Mark Baker (ACJC Director).

The following week, Professor Yedidia Stern hosted a seminar entitled ‘Legal Pluralism in Israel’. He thrashed out a range of scenarios and challenged pre-conceived notions of legal pluralism as a necessary ingredient to a successful democratic society. He asked the question: Does pluralism cause more dissent and polarisation than fusion? Israel season 2009 was a triumph and will now be a key feature in the ACJC’s calendar for the

years ahead. We thank all our visiting scholars, our ACJC staff and the Liberman family for their continued support.

open to students across the country. For more information, please contact Israel Studies manager Tammy Reznik on tammy.reznik@ arts.monash.edu.au

Israeli identity On 16–17 March 2010, Israel Studies Chair Fania Oz-Salzberger and Yedidia Stern will hold a Graduate Workshop exploring the nature of identity in modern Israel. The workshop will be

The Israeli diaspora Down Under: A doctoral study Ran Porat, recipient of the Leon Liberman Chair Scholarship, is undertaking doctoral research on the emergence of an Israeli community in Australia. At the Limmud Oz conference in Sydney in June, Ran outlined the framework of his research. There are approximately 10,000 Israelis now living in Australia – three times that of 10 years ago – constituting some 10 per cent of the Australian Jewish community. Until recently, this new Israeli Diaspora was barely researched. There were a few studies and articles about Israelis which were included in two Jewish population surveys in Australia. The first was conducted in 2005 and included a small sample of Israelis as part of a report on new immigrant groups (together with Jews from the former Soviet Union and South Africa). The more recent J-Survey of 2008-‘09 includes 280 Israeli participants. My doctoral work, supervised by Professor Andrew Markus and Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger, examines this Israeli-Australian group from a social perspective. Temporarily titled Yordim Down Under, my research aims to map out the social patterns of the new Israeli community amongst its members and with the host Jewish community. (Yordim, or ‘people who descend’, is a derogatory term used to describe Israelis leaving their homeland as opposed to olim, or ‘people who ascend’, to Israel.) I intend to compare the Israeli-Australian community with peer communities worldwide and ultimately contribute insight and new research into Diaspora, immigration and Jewish and Israel studies. Ran has also published an article entitled ‘Let my people vote’ in Rhapsody (Issue 7, 2009) in which he calls on the Israeli government to increase its outreach to its former citizens, starting with re-granting them the right to vote. In May, Ran participated in a workshop at Monash Prato for authors of the upcoming book Nations of Immigrants: Australia and Israel. This project, the second in a series previously touching on Australia and the United States, compares Israeli and Australian immigration policy developments, experiences and challenges over the past several years.

Israel and... Australia Map drawn to same scale.



Rabbi Lau shares interfaith stories The former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who has a celebrated history of engaging in interfaith dialogue and in sharing interpretations of the Bible that bring out its humanistic concerns, was guest of the ACJC in May at a lunch attended by Jewish and interfaith religious and community leaders and Monash academics.

sheltered Jews during the war. He spoke of the Pope’s concern for reshaping CatholicJewish relations based on acknowledgment of the tragic history that led to the Holocaust. Rabbi Lau retold the story of Noah as a tale that warns against neglect of this world in which humans of diverse faiths and cultures are interconnected through globalisation.

Associate Professor Mark Baker introduced Rabbi Lau with a story (and projected photo image) about his own father being liberated from Buchenwald with Rabbi Lau when the latter was only a young boy; in fact the youngest to be liberated from Buchenwald.

Professor Fania-Oz Salzberger, Leon Liberman Chair in Modern Israel Studies, thanked Rabbi Lau, who was also presented with a wooden box made of wood of more than 1000 years old, as a gift from the Monash University Vice-Chancellor.

Rabbi Lau told of his meetings with Pope John Paul II, who was born in Poland and

Wrestling with God: Holocaust responses

About Paul

Wrestling with God is an ancient tradition that goes back to the biblical narrative of Jacob’s encounter with the angels. For visiting scholar, Professor Steven Katz, the struggle is framed by the Holocaust and how it can be reconciled with faith in God.

Theology after theology was struck down for its inadequacy to deal with the logic of its own premises: Katz masterfully quoted biblical, classical rabbinic and modern theological texts to interrogate traditional notions of sin, deferred reward in the afterlife, sacrifice as atonement and the retreat of God from history. In the end, the audience was left with the same question, but with more knowledge about the impossibility of providing glib answers to profoundly unsettling realities.

Associate Professor Ghil’ad Zuckermann’s lecture in July entitled ‘Without any shame: Israeli, speak Israeli!’ examined the origins of the Israeli vernacular and unique language phenomena countering the argument that Israelis speak a modernised version of biblical Hebrew. It was an overview of Zuckermann’s arguments about the language of modern Israel, as expounded in his recent controversial book, Israeli: A Beautiful Language (Am Oved, 2008). Zuckermann is Associate Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellow in linguistics at the University of Queensland, Brisbane.

Germans, Jews, Israelis explore the Holocaust

Professor Katz is well positioned to referee the match: he is an American philosopher, theologian and author of numerous books on post-Holocaust theology, one of which bears the title of this well-attended talk at Monash University. Katz carried a mesmerised audience through each round by presenting a theological response to an age-old and universal question that challenges the possibility of a world that allows for both faith and evil to coexist. For Katz, the Holocaust is a unique rupture with history that further sharpens this question.

Arguing for biblical Hebrew

Professor Amy-Jill Levine

Earlier this year, the ACJC welcomed Professor Amy-Jill Levine back to Monash for her only public lecture in Melbourne. The Centre hosted Professor Levine in 2008 as the Winter School scholar-in-residence. A recipient of numerous academic awards, she is Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and has an international reputation as a leading Jesus scholar. In her lecture ‘Paul the Jew: Continuities and Contradictions’, Professor Levine explored Paul’s Jewish identity, his understanding of Torah and his views on the role of the Jewish people in the divine plan. She noted that Paul is hailed by the Christian world as the foremost missionary of the early Church, but is often condemned within the Jewish world as a self-hating Jew who distorted the teachings of both Judaism and Jesus. However, through a close reading and analysis of selections from Paul’s writings, Professor Levine was able to show, with her characteristic wit and scholarship, that such dichotomies belie the complexities and contradictions of Paul’s Jewish character and identity.

An evening at Monash Caulfield in May on the theme of Germans, Jews and Israelis, explored the legacy of the Holocaust in shaping how the past is remembered by the children of those who lived it. Each of the four Israeli speakers has spent considerable time living in Germany, encountering the stumbling blocks of memory that impact on encounters between Germans and Jewish Israelis today. Leon Liberman Chair, Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger, who wrote the book Israelis in Berlin, emphasised how cities such as Tel Aviv were influenced by the destroyed culture of German Jews. But in her presentation, the Professor of Modern Israel Studies pointed out how much of Germany was created by its Jews and how the dialogue was more important to young Germans today than to Jews and Israelis. Writer Navah Semel spoke about her bestselling novel And the Rat Laughed and how its futuristic theme of Holocaust memory generated strong interest in Germany. Monash post-doctoral fellow in Israel Studies, Dr Ari Ofengenden, talked about his time in the university town of Tubingen where the Holocaust was a theme that inevitably touched upon day-to-day life and personal relationships. Melbourne University Jewish historian Dr Gideon Reuveni, who writes on German Jewish history and lived in Munich and Leipzig, discussed the monetary reparations for Holocaust survivors and the normalisation process between Germans and Israelis.



Wallenberg Oration focuses on Holocaust influence The manner in which the Holocaust came to be seen as one of the most crucial events of the 20th century was the key theme of this year’s inaugural Wallenberg Oration delivered by Professor Omer Bartov at Monash Caulfield on 13 May. It was only in the 1980s that the study of the Holocaust gradually assumed a more central position. The fall of communism and the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda reawakened interest in the phenomenon of state-organised mass murder and reminded the international community of its commitment to preventing this crime and punishing the guilty.

Professor Bartov is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History, Professor of History and Professor of German Studies at Brown University. He has published seven books on the subject, as well as numerous articles and papers. The oration, entitled ‘The Holocaust and Genocide: Remembering the Twentieth Century’ also explored the effect of the Holocaust’s recognition on the definition of and resolution against further acts of genocide.

But while the Holocaust played a central role in legitimising the study of genocide and facilitating international legislation against it, its growing prominence in public discourse has caused critics to complain about Jewish monopolisation of suffering and to argue that the State of Israel is sheltering behind rhetoric of victimhood.

During the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945 Nazi Germany’s crimes against humanity and especially the mass murder of the Jews, played a key role, Bartov said. In 1948 the United Nations passed the Genocide Resolution, which defined this type of crime against humanity and obligated all signatories to strive to prevent or stop it, and to punish those found guilty of it. Yet during the following few decades the Holocaust remained marginal to the study of Nazism, World War II,

Professor Omer Bartov gives the 2009 Wallenberg Oration.

and the 20th century. At the same time, such genocides as that perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia/Kampuchea met little response by the international community.

The lecture identified a new form of antisemitism that has fuelled attempts to marginalise the Holocaust once again either by denying its importance or by using it as a tool for contemporary political purposes against the State of Israel.

Omer Bartov on genocide, memory Annabelle Baldwin

Professor Omer Bartov, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the study of genocide, presented a research paper to staff and research students of the ACJC and the School of Historical Studies in May on his most recent work which explores the memory of the mass murder of the Jewish inhabitants in Buczacz during the Holocaust. Buczacz is a small Galician town in Western Ukraine. In 1941, approximately 10,000 of the 15,000 inhabitants were Jewish, with Ukrainian and Polish minorities. By 1945, only around 100 of Buczacz’s Jewish population remained alive, almost all of whom had survived the mass murder of European Jews by hiding in nearby forests and bunkers.

they did their best to protect and to hide the Jews of Buczacz.

Professor Bartov’s work examines how the people of Buczacz remembered this brutal period of local history, largely through the use of oral testimony, and how this has intersected with ethnic relations in the region. There is a discrepancy, he notes, between what the local townspeople described and historical documentation of what happened to the town’s Jewish population. Many of the townspeople Professor Bartov interviewed said there was no antisemitism in Buczacz and that it was the Soviets and later the Nazis who conducted purges against the local Jewish population. The locals insisted that

The site where local Jews were shot to death is marked by a Ukrainian Christian cross that commemorates the few Christians killed there with no mention of the thousands of Jews murdered at the same location.

But Professor Bartov notes that the town has no physical memorials or remnants of the local Jewish population remaining in the town; the Jewish cemetery remains destroyed, the synagogue is now a marketplace and the Jewish hospital an empty lot.

Many of the local Poles and Ukrainians he interviewed expressed the view that Jews themselves should fund any memorials for the murdered Jewish residents of Buczacz. Several locals who were known to have hidden Jews kept silent about this even after the war for fear of violence against them by their neighbours for betraying Polish or Ukrainian nationalism.

Professor Bartov’s work shows how oral testimony can add another layer of meaning to historical work. His interviews highlight an underlying ethnic tension in the region between the Polish residents and the Ukrainians, which influenced how they reacted to the Nazis’ plans for Jewish extermination and the subsequent erasure of evidence of Buczacz’s Jewish past. More broadly, Professor Bartov’s extensive research demonstrates the relationship between violence, representation and identity and the interconnectedness of these three notions. Combined with written German police records and Soviet postwar investigations, the oral testimonies of surviving Jews and Polish and Ukrainian townspeople are integral to constructing an accurate history of this Galician town during the Holocaust.



Spotlight on PhD Students

Documenting stories of sexual violence in the Holocaust Holocaust and Genocide PhD student Annabelle Baldwin discusses her research into sexual violence during the Holocaust. My PhD thesis examines both the experience and the memory of sexual violence in the Holocaust. As my main source, I am using survivor testimony from the Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive and I am interested in looking at not only the incidences of rape and sexual molestation that occurred during the Holocaust, but at how these survivors dealt with such events both during and after the war and how they articulated these experiences in testimony. The investigation of sexual violence in the Holocaust is a fairly recent development as historians have long believed that the occurrence of rape was low due to German racial purity laws. However, my research shows that many women and men were raped, and

that the perpetrators were not only Germans, but also aid-givers, local non-Jews and even, in some cases, fellow Jews. While interest in the field has increased in recent years, an in-depth study of sexual assault has not yet been undertaken, so the stories of those who survived rape, molestation or attempted rape have remained untold. I believe it is worthwhile to document stories of rape from the Holocaust despite it not being a typical experience for most survivors. I have located almost 900 testimonies in the Shoah Archive that discuss this issue in English, with several hundred more in other languages. The testimonies reveal that these survivors found their experience of sexual violence one

of the most difficult aspects to deal with emotionally following the war. Given the lack of historical attention to this topic, many have struggled to make sense of these horrible abuses in the wider context of the Holocaust. As my thesis uses oral testimony, I am also exploring how survivors remember and give meaning to these experiences. Using video testimony allows me to not only look at these disturbing events, but to include the survivors themselves and their own perspectives in my analysis. It is important to me that the stories of these survivors and their own interpretations of their stories become part of Holocaust discourse.

From the ‘nerd’ to the ‘rebel’ Postwar Jewish-American writing Professor Leah Garrett, the Loti Smorgon Chair of Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture, outlines the scope of her new research. Jewish American writing of the 1940s–’60s is the focus of my new research project. I have just completed an essay in which I compare three of the most important masterpieces of American literature: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949), JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951) and Bernard Malamud’s The Natural (1952). These works by Jewish authors all came out within three years of one another and I believe they should be examined together. I am exploring how and why these authors decided to use Christian protagonists to level a critique on US culture and what it was about the postwar years that led them to use this type of subversive approach. In my mind, all three authors were, in a sense, rewriting popular boys’ literature, and by doing so were trying to create a new paradigm of masculinity that was much more intellectual. Part of my larger aim is to bring a focus to works that are traditionally neglected in Jewish American studies because they are not overtly Jewish, even though in 1999 Miller finally admitted the Lomans were in fact Jewish, and Salinger drops hints throughout Catcher in the Rye that Holden may be half Jewish. The aim of this project is to explore how the huge increase in antisemitism during the war years made many writers decide to hide the Jewishness of their characters.

The project also considers the stellar representation of Jewish writers during the 1950s and 1960s in terms of winning all the major American literary awards, and asks what it was about their work that was so appealing to the non-Jewish world. The book will look at how part of the success of Jewish literature was that it appropriated and transformed mainstream tropes to such a degree that the images become ‘American’ rather than ‘Jewish’ (as we see for instance with Superman and Batman – creations of eastern European Jewish immigrants).

I am also considering how being Jewish enabled these writers to consciously, or not, perpetuate many troubling aspects of the mainstream white, male word, such as racist imagery or writing about women using stock sexist clichés. These writers were immensely popular, not only because they were the rebellious other, but because they were adept at utilising the voice of the conservative centre.

I am asking how being Jewish allowed the writers on the one hand to be the liberal and tolerant voice of the ‘subjugated minority’ while at the same time made them often use conservative, hyper-masculine traditional gender constructs. Were these Jewish writers who were seen as emblems of tolerance by their ethnicity really so tolerant? If so, why do their writings have such an overwhelmingly masculine tone where men seem to occupy all the space and there is no or little room for women’s voices?

Although often categorised as the ‘nerd’, the Jew in the 1950s and 1960s became the ‘rebel’ and his writing transformed American letters, turning mainstream literature into an urban, multivoiced and multilingual expression of change and rebellion. My larger thesis is how Jewish men were able to change the construct of rebellion into one that had so many Jewish resonances.

This ability to be both an insider and an outsider gave Jews a unique means to navigate the broader world and to critique it from both within and from without. In the 1950s and 1960s, as Jewish writing broke out of old literary and cultural moulds, it became popular with young Americans who were seeking a language of rebellion against the old institutionalised discourses.


ACJC hosts seminar on communal leadership Strategies to simplify the challenges faced by professional staff working in community organisations were discussed at a communal leadership seminar hosted by the ACJC for the Jewish Community Council of Victoria in June. Shelley Marshall, lecturer at Monash’s Department of Business Law and Taxation, presented her research on the law governing corporations (which includes not-for-profit community organisations) including company directors’ perceptions of whose interests they serve in this role. Discussion focused on issues such as the difficulties of professional staff who may sometimes feel caught between selling the vision of their board and working with people on the ground, and also the challenge of dealing with sensitive issues when employed in such a close-knit community. While very real concerns, the discussion showed that various strategies are available to ensure that these problems can be surmounted. A further concern raised in the meeting was that professional staff would be better supported by more well-trained and equipped board members and lay leaders. It was agreed that respect for validation of community professionals cannot be achieved without the parallel empowerment of their employers. As participants were aware, the JCCV and the ACJC have been collaborating on providing suitable training. A further suggestion raised in this regard was dedicating time in board meetings to training and skills development. This meeting again demonstrated the need for Jewish communal staff to understand that they are employed in a distinct profession which necessitates regular and appropriate skills improvement.

Learning on Shavuot ACJC staff organised a night of learning on the theme of B’tzelem Elokim (In the Image of the Divine) to celebrate Tikkun Leil Shavuot – the Festival of receiving the Torah. Debbie Masel, Michael Fagenblat, Nathan Wolski, Michelle Lesh, Howard Goldenberg and Melanie Landau presented papers that explored variations on this theme, which is central to Jewish teaching and learning.


Rethinking the community

Participants at the ‘Rethinking Australian Jewish Community’ intensive session held early in the year included back row (left to right): Tamara Newman, Dara Podjarski, Benji Gersh, Debbie Dadon, Marcia Pinskier; front row (left to right): Sara Meyerowitz, Amy Goldman, Melanie Landau, Laini Liberman, Naomi Gelbart, Susie Ivany.

The Roslyn Smorgon Program in Jewish Communal Service and Leadership offers a comprehensive course and professional training for university students as well as for community professionals, lay leaders and philanthropists. ‘Rethinking Australian Jewish Community: Policy and Practice’ was the title of an intensive unit that took place at the end of January at Monash Caulfield. Facilitated by ACJC lecturer Melanie Landau, participants came from Melbourne and Sydney to hear a wide range of guest presenters. The next ‘Rethinking Australian Jewish Community’ intensive in March 2010 will focus on the Gen08 Australian Jewish population survey and its implications for creating the community’s future.

Two seminars were held as part of the professional development program for Jewish communal professionals and board members. The first on fundraising and marketing was addressed by Louise Zygier, Philanthropic Relations Director, Art and Design at Monash University who discussed preparing to fundraise; branding; mission of the project/ organisation; marketing strategy; fundraising goals; vehicles for fundraising; research about market/ prospects; resources for fundraising; and stewardship of donors. The second on project management was presented by Dr Joze Kusic, Director of Master of Business, Information Technology Management at Monash University who discussed the characteristics of project management.

Can Hollywood rewrite history? A panel discussion on Inglourious Basterds Chana Graj A panel discussion entitled ‘Can Hollywood rewrite history?’ hosted by the ACJC in September, responded to Quentin Tarantino’s controversial film Inglourious Basterds which audaciously presents an alternate version of World War II history. Presented in collaboration with the Research Unit in Film and Cultural Theory at Monash University, panellists included Mark Baker, Adrian Martin, Jan Epstein and Nathan Wolski, with the session chaired by The Age film critic Philippa Hawker. Speaking from a deeply personal perspective as the child of Holocaust survivors, Baker discussed the film in relation to the Holocaust, indicating his complex and conflicted response to Tarantino’s imagery and morality. Film scholar Adrian Martin examined the film in the context of Tarantino’s career and discussed how in Inglourious Basterds, the film-maker engages with political history rather than just the history of film. He branded Tarantino an ‘adolescent moralist’ and questioned his ability to deal with a concept as ‘messy and complex’ as World War II. Martin said the film was ‘full of contradictions’ and ‘strange and confusing’.

Nathan Wolski addresses the audience flanked by fellow panellists (from left) Jan Epstein, Mark Baker and Adrian Martin and chairperson Philippa Hawker.

Epstein looked at Inglourious Basterds in relation to other films about the Holocaust. Claiming that her initial reaction to Tarantino’s film was one of revulsion at the ‘grandiose arrogance’ and violence, she concluded that it does have the potential ‘to open the door to understanding … as the Holocaust is not just a Jewish problem.’ Biblical scholar Nathan Wolski offered a fascinating reading of the film, placing it in the context of a long history of Jewish revenge fantasies, from the Book of Esther through to Talmudic texts and other biblical narratives. A link to the video of the event is on the ACJC website: www.arts.monash.edu.au/acjc



Donor profile: Paul Huppert When the late Paul Huppert finally received restitution from the German government for his years of slave labour as a child during the Holocaust, his family wanted the funds to be put to positive use. The Hupperts approached Louise Zygier (Monash University Philanthropic Relations Director) who suggested supporting the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation. ‘We wanted to give something back that would have a positive effect for the future,’ said his widow, Michele Huppert. ‘We are honoured that the Centre chose to use the money in the form of a scholarship. Good has come from bad and it has the blessing of the whole family.’ Paul Huppert was born in 1931, interned in Terezin in 1943 and transferred to Auschwitz in 1944. Liberated from the satellite camp Kaufering, he was 13 when the war ended. In 1950 Paul migrated to Australia with his mother, stepfather and baby sister Eva. He met Michele in Melbourne where they married in 1960 and had three children. Paul didn’t want to burden his family with his negative experiences, so never discussed the

The late Paul Hupp

ert

Holocaust until his first overseas trip in 1984 when he visited the nine other survivor friends, the Nesharim (eagle) boys from Terezin, including their madrich (leader) who were scattered throughout the world.

The ‘Nesharim boys’ continued to visit each other. Three major reunions have taken place over the years, the second and third generations met in 2006 and now the grandchildren have formed their own group called Oci (eyes).

Researching genocide in Darfur Elissa Lipshutz

During my arts degree I studied the ‘Holocaust in an Age of Genocide’ which prompted my interest in Darfur. I thus decided to undertake a research project that would address the Darfuri genocide with a particular focus on the refugee experience. I discovered that many Darfuri refugees who had fled to Egypt, only to receive very hostile treatment there, crossed the Sinai border into Israel. This phenomenon and the way in which Israel dealt with these refugees really moved me and I knew I wanted to investigate further. As the grand-daughter of Holocaust survivors, it struck me that Israel – which accepted floods of Jewish refugees after the Holocaust – was similarly faced with Darfuris fleeing genocide. I believe it was Israel’s moral imperative to accept these people as so many countries closed their doors to European Jews during the Holocaust. I decided to do my placement project in Israel working with a non-profit organisation named the Hotline for Migrant Workers which hosted a smaller Darfuri self-help organisation called Bnai Darfur (Sons of Darfur). Here I worked with both Israelis and Darfuris who were attempting to improve conditions for the Darfuri

refugees in Israel. I was privileged to conduct interviews with Darfuris who discussed their lives, the violence that killed their families and forced them to flee, as well as their experiences as refugees in both Egypt and Israel. The placement opened my eyes to conflict and reconciliation studies and how traumatised people attempt to rebuild their lives with such limited resources. I learnt a lot about refugee studies, refugee law and policy; however, what became increasingly evident to me were the parallels between the Darfuris’ experience and that of my grandparents when they rebuilt their lives in Australia. My research in Israel formed the primary material for my thesis which explored the Darfuri genocide and the experience of refugees in both Egypt and Israel. I also travelled with a group of 20 Monash students to South Africa and Rwanda and met many genocide survivors. Addressing issues of peace and reconciliation, this fascinating intensive study unit offers many opportunities for research. I am sure I will use the knowledge I have gained in many future endeavours.

Study tours to Auschwitz, Middle East Next year ACJC director Mark Baker will lead two overseas courses for Monash students: ‘Final Journey’ will explore the Holocaust and memory by travelling from Berlin through Prague, Poland and Lithuania. In November, ‘Israelis and Palestinians between War and Peace’ will examine the Arab-Israel conflict and efforts to build peace.

In 1989, accompanied by his younger son Tommy, Paul returned to Prague, the camps and the places where he’d lived. He was interviewed by Melbourne’s Holocaust Centre for his testimony in 1991. At his untimely death in 1999 aged 68, there had not been a response to Paul’s applications for compensation. But his family persisted, and finally, several years later, the restitution payment was awarded. The Paul Huppert Memorial Holocaust and Genocide Studies Travel Scholarship supports a student wishing to travel overseas to fulfil a work placement unit as part of their Masters of Holocaust and Genocide Studies degree. The 2008 recipient, Elissa Lipshutz, travelled to Israel to work with organisations supporting Dafuri refugees and to take testimony from refugees of their experiences.

Avivah Zornberg masterclasses Debbie Masel Renowned scholar and author Dr Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg impressed large audiences with her unique weave of Midrash, Chassidic thought, literary sensibility and psychoanalytic theory at a public lecture and two masterclasses for the ACJC in August. In her first masterclass, ‘Let Me See That Good Land: The Story of a Human Life’, Dr Zornberg interpreted the story of Moses not ‘passing over’ the Jordan River in a way that transformed the human sense of ‘passing’, which can seem so sad, into the essence of life. The second masterclass, ‘From Another Shore: Moses and Korach’, was an exploration of the chalal panui, the creative space that distinguishes true dialogue from argumentative stonewalling. Korach, she argued, constructed walls of rhetoric, refusing to enter into real dialogue and was therefore consumed by ‘the mouth of the earth’. Jerusalem-based Dr Zornberg lectures widely in the US, Canada and the UK to general audiences and as a guest of psychoanalytic communities. Her first book, Genesis: The Beginning of Desire, won the National Jewish Book Award for non-fiction. Her most recent book is The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious.


What’s on offer in 2010 Undergraduate Courses Undergraduate units cover the following lines of interest, drawing on the diversity of its faculty across the university: • Biblical Studies • Jewish Literature • Jewish Philosophy • Jewish History (Ancient, Medieval, Contemporary) • Modern Israel Studies • Middle East • Jewish Cultural Studies • Holocaust and Genocide Studies • Yiddish Language and Culture First-year level • The Bible as history (first semester) Caulfield • Histories of God (first semester) Clayton • Conflict and coexistence: Jews, Christians, Muslims (second semester) Caulfield and Clayton Second/Third-year level • Modern Israel: History, politics and society (first semester) Clayton • The history of the Arab–Israeli conflict (second semester) Caulfield and Clayton • The Holocaust in an age of genocide (first semester) Caulfield and Clayton • Jesus and the Jews (first semester) Clayton • Mystics, authority and society (second semester) Clayton • After the death of God: continental philosophy of religion from Nietzsche to today (first semester) Clayton • Final journey: The life and death of European Jews, 1900–45 (winter semester abroad) • Israelis and Palestinians between war and peace (summer semester abroad) • Post-conflict: Justice, memory, reconciliation (second semester) Clayton • Yiddish language, culture and literature (first semester) Clayton • Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah (second semester) Clayton • Modern Jewish literature: writing across the languages (first semester) Clayton Postgraduate Studies The Graduate School of Jewish Studies offers a range of coursework and research degrees in the following areas: • Judaic Studies • Israel Studies • Holocaust and Genocide • Interreligious Studies • Jewish Communal Service and Leadership • Jewish Educators Program For more information and course codes see our website at www.arts.monash.edu. au/acjc


Publication news ACJC staff members are prolific writers. A number of books and articles have recently been published or are due for publication next year. Co-written with James Jupp and Peter McDonald, Professor Andrew Markus’s book, Australia’s Immigration Revolution, was published in October by Allen and Unwin. In 2006 Australia’s population was 20.7 million, projected to reach 23 million in 2014. The book examines what has driven this rapid population growth and how the Rudd government dealt with immigration in a time of recession. Dr Michael Fagenblat’s book, A Covenant of Creatures: Levinas’s Philosophy of Judaism, will be published as part of Stanford University Press’s Cultural Memory in the Present series in 2010. The book argues against the idea, affirmed by Levinas himself, that Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being separate philosophy from Judaism. By reading Levinas’s philosophical works through the prism of Judaic texts and ideas, Michael argues that what Levinas called ‘ethics’ is as much a hermeneutical product wrought from the Judaic heritage as a series of phenomenological observations. Professor Fania Oz-Salzberger published an article entitled, ‘Intercivilizational Conflict: Some Guidelines and Some Fault Lines’ in the Israel Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 2009. The article can be found on the Israel Studies website: http://israelstudies.net/study-andresearch/articles/ Dr Nathan Wolski’s translation from Hebrew into English of Melila Hellner-Eshed’s A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar has just been released by Stanford University Press. Nathan’s next book, A Journey into the Zohar: An Introduction to the Book of Radiance, will be published by SUNY Press in 2010. The book offers a series of readings of complex yet enchanting zoharic narratives. With particular emphasis on the literary and performative dimension of the Zohar as well as its narrative-exegetical weave, A Journey into the Zohar opens the mysterious, wondrous and at times bewildering universe of one of the masterpieces of world mystical literature to a wider community of scholars and general readers alike. Nathan published a chapter entitled ‘The Secret of Yiddish: Zoharic Composition in the Poetry of Aaron Zeitlin’ in Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Mystical Texts, vol. 20, 2009. His article, ‘Don Quixote and Sancho Panza Were Walking on the Way: El Caballero Andante and the Book of Radiance (Sefer HaZohar)’, was published in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, vol. 27, no. 2, Winter 2009. Melanie Landau recently published a chapter called ‘Good Sex: A Feminist Perspective’ in Danya Ruttenberg (ed.), The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism (NYU Press, 2009) and an article entitled ‘Recovering Woman as Religious Subject: Reflections on Jewish Women and Hair-covering’ in Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, vol xxii, 2008. Melanie also presented a paper at the Interreligious Studies Collaboration Workshop held at Monash Sunway campus, Malaysia in June. David Slucki’s article, ‘From a Party in One Country to a Global Organization: re-imagining the Bund after the Holocaust’, will be published in Jewish Social Studies, vol. 16, no. 3, Fall 2009. Ran Porat published an article entitled ‘Let my people vote’ in Rhapsody, no. 7, 2009.

Scholarships and Prizes Each year, the ACJC awards a number of scholarships and prizes to students enrolled in its courses and units. PhD Scholarships Elton PhD Scholarship PhD Scholarship in Modern Israel Studies Masters (Research) Scholarships Zyga and Diana Elton Masters Scholarship Caren Lee Topol Scholarship Honours Scholarships Zyga and Diana Elton Honours Scholarships Travel Scholarships Paul Huppert Memorial Holocaust & Genocide Studies Travel Scholarship Pinskier Memorial Holocaust & Genocide Studies Scholarship Ryvka & Mordechai Lewin Memorial Yiddish Travel Scholarship Peter & Barbara Kolliner Jewish Studies Abroad Travel Scholarship Graduate Research Travel Scholarships

Prizes Bernard Rechter Jewish Civilisation Honours Prize – for the best Jewish Studies Honours thesis. Peter & Barbara Kolliner Undergraduate Prize in Jewish Civilisation – for the top Jewish Studies student completing a major or minor sequence in Jewish Civilisation. Holocaust Studies Prize – for the top student in the unit Holocaust in an Age of Genocide. Stewart Baron Prize in Middle Eastern and Israel Studies – for the top student in the units History of the Arab-Israel Conflict; the Modern Middle East; or Modern Israel: History, Politics & Society. For more details on scholarships such as eligibility and how to apply, please see the acjc website (www.arts.monash.edu.au/acjc) and click on Scholarships and Prizes.



Limmud Oz 2010 Limmud Oz, an annual festival celebrating Jewish learning and creativity, will take place over the Queen’s Birthday weekend of 12-14 June 2010 at Monash Caulfield. The volunteer-led, cross-communal Professor Raymond inter-generational Scheindlin event blends Jewish scholarship with art, music, philosophy and drama. International guests include Professor Raymond Scheindlin, Professor of Medieval Hebrew Literature, Jewish Theological Seminary; Yisrael Campbell, stand-up comedian, three times converted to Judaism; Avital Hochestein Campbell, Talmud teacher; Jeremy Dauber, Professor of Yiddish Studies

In Memoriam Together with the rest of the community we mourned the loss earlier this year of Richard Pratt AC who played such a major role in the formation of our Centre. “His vision and generosity built the foundations of tertiary Jewish studies in his home city, Melbourne,” said Professor Andrew Markus, Pratt Foundation Chair in Jewish Civilisation.

at Columbia University; Amichai Lau-Lavie, performance artist, writer and teacher of Judaic literature; Katie Green, Maale Film School, Jerusalem; Shira Kline, New Yorkbased performer and music educator, plus many more international and interstate contributors. For more information, contact Miriam Munz on 9903 5004 or at [email protected]. edu.au

ACJC Advisory Board Sam Lipski AM (Chair) Associate Professor Mark Baker, Director, ACJC Professor Barbara Caine, School of Historical Studies Professor David Copolov, Pro Vice-Chancellor Assisting the Vice-Chancellor Professor Edwina Cornish, Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Ron Fairchild, Vice President, Advancement Professor Rae Frances, Dean, Faculty of Arts Leon Kempler

“At a time when there was very little interest in Jewish studies at university level, Richard Pratt provided visionary leadership and support. “Without his guidance in the 1990s – and his ongoing support – there would be nothing,” Professor Markus added. The Centre also mourned the loss of Victor Smorgon AC, whose vision and generosity provided crucial support for the development of Jewish Studies in Australia, in particular for the establishment of the Loti Smorgon Chair in Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture.

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to the ACJC support its growth through named lectureships, scholarships and programs. For further information about giving to the ACJC, contact ACJC Development Manager Karen Klein on 9903 5015 or at [email protected]. You may also make a donation to the ACJC online at www.monash.edu.au/giving

Newsletter compiled and edited by Karen Klein and Nadine Davidoff, with contributions from ACJC staff.

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Loren Miller, Director Business Strategy (VP Finance)