The Jews Down Under

A Roundup of Australian Jewish News

By Garry Fabian

ECAJ calls for compassion on asylum seekers

SYDNEY- While reconciling Australia’s obligations under international refugee laws with the need for proper screening might prove a difficult balancing act for the
federal Government, the Jewish community has called for asylum seekers to be processed “expeditiously” and “in a spirit of compassion.”

A statement on asylum seekers from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) last week also called on the Rudd Government to “to work
constructively with other governments and appropriate non-government organisations to ameliorate the plight of refugees around the world and in Australia”.

It called on the Government “to implement in good faith and with humanity, Australia’s important legal and moral obligations” on refugees.

The ECAJ statement drew on the recent history of world Jewry in highlighting that “especially prior to, but also during and immediately after World War II, many thousands of Jewish refugees attempting to flee persecution in Europe were
denied entry into other countries or [were] forced to engage ‘smugglers’ to try to escape to freedom”.

The ECAJ stated that the International Convention on the Status of Refugees of 1951, to which Australia is a signatory, “came into existence in belated recognition by the international community of the great wrong that had been done by civilised nations in refusing to grant asylum to Jewish refugees fleeing from Europe prior to and during World War II.”

More broadly, ECAJ president Robert Goot called on Australians to discuss asylum seekers in a considered and respectful manner and avoid resorting to “pejorative generalisations”, which he said are unhelpful and can be misleading and unfair.

Wide selection at Jewish Film Festival

MELBOURNE and SYDNEY– The Festival of Jewish Cinema’s 2009 program kicks off on a decidedly light note with the quirky fish-out-of-water tale, A Matter of Size.

From co-directors Sharon Maymon and Erez Tadmor, the film follows four overweight friends and their quest to find their place in the world.

Resigned to an endless regime of diets and fitness groups, the friends stumble upon the one place that accepts them for who they are — the world of Israeli sumo wrestling.

The festival opens in Sydney on November 11 at Bondi Junction and in Melbourne on November 12 at ACMI Cinemas, Federation Square and the Classic Cinema, Elsternwick.

A Touch Away is one of Israel’s best-kept secrets. A riveting drama series produced for the small screen, the series follows two families in a religious suburb of Tel Aviv. One is ultra Orthodox and the other is a newly arrived secular Russian family.

The powerful, confronting eight-part series broke ratings records in Israel and will be screened in two parts as an encore presentation.

Acne is an offbeat coming-of-age tale about a bar mitzvah-age boy who is beginning to awaken sexually. Set in Montevideo, Uruguay, Rafa has
lost his virginity, but has never kissed a girl.

His efforts to do so are thwarted by bad skin, an interfering Jewish community and his parents’ messy divorce. A charming outsider tale, Acne‘s
sexually charged plot will likely divide audiences, but it’s a romp not to be missed.

One of the picks of the festival is Adam Resurrected, starring stalwart Jeff Goldblum and based on the novel of the same name.

Goldblum plays Adam Stein, a former Berlin magician, who used his talents to survive the horrors of the Holocaust.

Forbidden love in the Orthodox community is examined in the contoversial feature Eyes Wide Open. The film focuses on the gay realtionship between a father of four and his younger shop assistant, and is sure to divide audiences.

French film Hello Goodbye stars two of the country’s iconic figures: Gerard Depardieu and Fanny Ardant. A middle-upper-class French couple
uproots and makes aliyah in the hope of re-discovering their Jewish identity.

The mid-life sea change swings into action after their son’s decision to marry out in this romantic comedy.

Other films to look out for include From My Father, a love story about the relationship between a Palestinian and an Israeli; Cycles, which looks at four different generations of a French Jewish family; and Slovakian Holocaust drama Broken Promise.

Being Jewish in France is a documentary about Jewish lie in the European country from the Dreyfus Affair to the rise of anti-Semitism in modern France.

Other documentaries in the program include Inside Hana’s Suitcase, about a group of present-day Japanese students that unravel the mystery of a
young Auschwitz inmate; Killing Kasztner, which looks at the controversial figure Israel Kasztnerwho saved nearly 2000 Hungarian Jews
during the Holocaust; and Operation Moses, which tlls the story of the emergency evacuation of Ehiopian Jews to Israel during the 1970s and ’80s.

Australian filmmakers are also well represented inthe documentary section of the festival. Leave the Stone’s Throw is a documentary by journalist
Julie Szego, who details her struggle to accept the legacy of the Holocaust in her family, while Israeli documentaries A History of Israeli Cinema, Z32 and the Tunisia/France co-production The Wedding Song are also featured.

In the 20th anniversary retrospective section is From Hell to Hell, a film about the events leading up to the Kielce Pogrom in Poland in 1946,
German political thriller The Giraffe Mechugge) — from the producers of Run Lola Run, Khroustaliov and My Car — about Stalin’s
infamous Doctor’s Plot to get rid of Jewish doctors,Dutch film Left Luggage about a secular Jewish girl in Antwerp who takes a job with an Orthodox
family and the brilliant Phyllis and Harold, a film about the family of artist Cindy Kleine, are also in the retrospective.

Pilger continues diatribe on Israel

SYDNEY– Peace Prize winner John Pilger launched a scathing attack on the
media’s coverage of Israel during a lecture at the Sydney Opera House on Thursday night.

Speaking before a capacity audience in the concert hall, Pilger, a journalist, author and filmmaker, criticised the Australian media for its “modern propaganda”, particularly when it came to coverage of the Gaza war.

“In no other democratic country is the discussion of the brutal occupation of Palestine as limited as it is in Australia,” he said to applause. “Are we aware of the sheer scale of the crime against humanity in Gaza? Twenty nine members of one
family – babies, grannies – are gunned down, blown up, buried alive, their home bulldozed.”

He urged the audience to read the Goldstone Commission Report, stressing the point that it was written by “Jewish judge” Richard Goldstone.

“Those who speak from the article of freedom are working hard to bury the United Nations report. For only one nation, Israel, has the right to exist in the Middle East, only one nation has the right to attack others, only one nation has the
impunity to run a racist apartheid regime with the approval of the western world, and with the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia fawning over its leaders.”

Pilger also criticised United States President Barack Obama for “stepping up [George W Bush’s] wars and starting his own war in Pakistan”.

“Like Bush, [Obama] is threatening Iran, a country Hillary Clinton said she was ‘prepared to annihilate’. Iran’s crime is its independence . Iran is the only resource-rich Muslim country beyond American control. It doesn’t occupy anyone
else’s land and it hasn’t attacked any country, unlike Israel, which is nuclear-armed and dominates and provides for the Middle East on America’s behalf.”

The Sydney Peace Prize is the only international peace prize awarded in Australia.

The citation for the Sydney Peace Prize refers to significant contributions to “peace with justice”, awarded to an organisation or individual “who has made significant contributions to global peace”.

Past recipients of the prize have included Professor Muhammad Yanus, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.

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American professor to bring Talmudic guidance down under

MELBOURNE–What guidance does the Talmud have for ethical decisions on space travel or human cloning? Plenty, according to Professor Laurie Zoloth.

Prof Zoloth is professor of religion and Jewish studies at Chicago’s Northwestern University and is also the director of the university’s Centre for Bioethics, Science and Society.

She will be in Australia next week to take part in Hadassah Australia’s stem-cell awareness week of activities, together with her colleagues in science, Professor Alan Trounson and Professor Ben Reubinoff.

A secular ethicist, Prof Zoloth served for two-and-a-half terms as the sole philosopher on NASA’s National Advisory Council, one of the highest positions a civilian can hold.

Today she chairs the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Bioethics Advisory Board, and serves on NASA’s planetary protection advisory committee and the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

Like a lawyer, Prof Zoloth draws precedents from classical texts, including Jewish ones.

“It is one of many traditions that I use. If there’s a really good argument that emerges from the Orthodox or halachic texts, I bring it in,” she said.

Indeed, much of talmudic teaching is highly resonant with the aspirations of science. “The rabbinical position is that much is permitted in order to learn,” she explained.

Prof Zoloth is renowned by her peers for her rigorous intellect.

“She is very demanding and articulate,” said Prof Trounson, the Australian scientist who since 2008 has been president of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), and a guest speaker at Hadassah Australia’s dinner next week.

“If you say something that requires a better philosophical or scientific underpinning, she’ll challenge you,” he said. “I don’t always agree with her, but it’s always intellectually satisfying,” Prof Trounson added.

Prof Zoloth’s visit is timely, with a review of Australia’s human embryos and cloning legislation imminent.

Her visit also coincides with a major shift in the scientific and ethical landscape of stem-cell research.

Since 2007, researchers have learnt how to avoid the use of embryos altogether in the making of embryonic stem cells. Skin cells can be turned directly into embryonic stem cells – cells that could provide a patient with a limitless supply
of matched tissue to treat diabetes, blindness, bone-marrow disease, skin diseases and neurodegenerative disease.

According to Prof Trounson, CIRM is now funding translational studies in these areas ­ meaning in the next four years stem cells will be making their way out of the lab and into the clinic.

Another guest speaker at the dinner, Hadassah University Hospital’s Prof Reubinoff, is one of the pioneers of that journey.

Working together with neurologist Tamir Ben Hur at Jerusalem’s Hadassah, Prof Reubinoff ­ who worked with Prof Trounson at Monash University ­ is using embryonic stem cells to treat macular degeneration and multiple sclerosis.

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