Jewish women capture angst of post 7 October Australia

South African-born author Joanne Fedler contributed to Ruptured, a book in which 36 Jewish women in Australia reflect on life post 7 October 2023. The SA Jewish Report speaks to her about it.

Why do you believe a book like this is important?

I’d always considered the Holocaust a bizarre and inexplicable mystery of history. On 7 October 2023, everything I thought about myself and the world ruptured. I understood for the first time what it means to be a Jew. Ruptured captures a moment of a time in our history when my Judaism, along with so many other Jews, was activated. We turned back to our history and remembered our ancestors lost in gas chambers; exiled, expelled, and hunted. We entered a new cycle of history. This book is a testament to this return.

How do you feel as one of 36 Jewish women’s voices heard in this book?

I’ve lost so many non-Jewish friends in the past two years, and have often thought of Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, Maus, where he shows Poppa, Artie’s father, saying, “Friends? Your friends? If you lock them together in a room with no food for a week … then you could see what it is … friends …” As one of 36 women’s voices in this book, I feel part of a collective anguish, a grieving community. I belong to this communal pain. These women are my sisters.

How did you hear about the book, and what was your initial reaction?

I thought it was a brilliant idea and wanted to be part of it, so I reached out to [the author] Lee Kofman.

How would you describe the other women who have written in this book?

An eclectic group of writers, activists, artists, rabbis, athletes, comedians, musicians, actors, and mothers.

What does this book mean to you personally?

This book feels like my passport to a kind of home coming, to the collective consciousness of Jewish women’s voices, grieving, wailing, and howling.

Which of the other stories most resonate with you and why?

Melinda Jones’ The Crack and the Light, because I was like her, an idealist and activist, someone who once believed in a non-violent solution to the Middle East.

What impact has being involved in this book had on your lives – or most of them – now?

I went to Melbourne for the first two launches of the book. It was extraordinary to be among the other contributors, some of whose lives have been upended by the vicious antisemitism that’s been unleashed in Australia. There is something unifying about promoting a book that isn’t about self-promotion or ego, but about education, community, and solidarity.

The 7 October massacre happened in Israel. Why do you believe it has had such an impact on Jewish lives in Australia?

As Jews, we are a living body of people. What happens to one of us, happens to all of us.

Why was it important to hear women’s voices in particular?

Women’s voices have been missing from the discourse in this war right from the start, including those young Israeli soldiers who reported seeing military activity in Gaza and were dismissed by the Israel Defense Forces. Soon after 7 October, I started craving hearing from brave women like Noa Tishby; Nova Peris; Rachel Goldberg-Polin; and Rabbi Sharon Brous. Apart from Einat Wilf and Assita Kanko, a member of the European Parliament, there are few female politicians who have had any presence or say. As mothers, sisters, daughters, and grandmothers, women bring heart and soul into the discourse. Watch any video of Goldberg-Polin speaking, and you feel it.

How did you decide what to write about?

Since 7 October, I have kept notes. I imagined that someday, perhaps, there would be something to be made from the shards. I wrote about a friend’s 60th birthday party, and how everyone cheered when she said, “We stand with the Palestinian people against Israel.” I left and stood sobbing outside in the dark waiting for my husband to pick me up. I wrote about being doxed as part of the Zio-600 WhatsApp group of Jewish academics and creatives. In the end, I wrote about a moment that fundamentally changed me, in a way that has shocked me. In my essay, The Privilege of Being a Pacifist, I have grappled with my own performative politics to understand my relationship to violence when I have spent my life working to end all forms of it.

What impact has the rise in antisemitism in Australia had on your life?

I used to consider myself a “leftie”, but the Jew hatred on the left and the silence of women’s organisations has sickened and exiled me politically. I now assume people are antisemitic until proven otherwise. I often don’t feel safe in groups or crowds. I was asked to leave a book launch in a church “because Zionists are not welcome”. I now wear a Magen David.

What do you believe can be done to curtail antisemitism?

I don’t have an answer to this. Antisemitism is a shapeshifter. Jews become the object of projection of society’s ills in every generation. We are living through another desperate time in Jewish history, with all its challenges. We will never be marched to gas chambers again. That’s what Israel has given us. Now we need to figure out how to do a better public relations job, because we are deeply misunderstood and we need non-Jewish allies. We cannot fight antisemitism alone.

How do you feel about the future of Jews in Australia?

As tiny as the Jewish population is – there were as many people who marched over the bridge some weeks ago as there are Jews in Australia – we aren’t cowering. We are doing powerful advocacy work. This book is part of that activism. The Albanese government will not be in power forever. Tides turn. We are experiencing the “destruction of our temple” once again. But we Jews know how to hold the temple in our hearts and to carry our faith invisibly within us. They can burn our synagogues and chant for our annihilation, but they can’t snuff out the light we carry inside us.