Right from the moment I looked at the petition, I thought it too crude and propagandistic to even consider signing it, and I only expect the ministry that it is addressed to would think the same. After all, who would think a campaign entitled Reprimand the Terrorist-Sympathisers at Marrickville Council could succeed? It’s rude to call people names. Labelling someone a terrorist sympathiser shows that one has made no sincere attempt to understand their case, and would rather appeal to fear than to logic.

The petition preamble’s main argument continued along this fear-mongering line:

By this action, the ten councillors have formally aligned their municipality with terrorist organisations seeking to overthrow the State of Israel, the one free and democratic nation in the Middle East … In short, they have espoused totalitarian values over Australian democratic values.

What unconvincing nonsense! followed by references to “playing into the hands of the Islamist Global BDS Movement” and “supporting the worldview of totalitarian Islam”. Woah.

In its final paragraph, this preamble tries to ridicule the council’s departure from traditional local governance, which is much closer to the argument of Federal MP Anthony Albanese, and may be fair enough.

But perhaps the most ironic line of the petition preamble states that local governments “must never be seen to side with … totalitarian, anti-democratic religious fanatics”. The petition was written by an organisation called Q Society whose slogan is “Upholding Australian values”. I don’t know what Australian values are. We have borowed this term from the USA, but there they have a very different understanding of values as defined by their constitution and its Bill of Rights, patriotism to a flag representing those values, and modelling (as statues, for instance) their founding fathers and presidents as the ideologues of those values. I only know of “Australian values” being defined by labelling Australians and their actions as un-Australian, a term which can only be used by someone who has undemocratically divined what Australian means and where its boundaries lie. To me, use of the term un-Australian to label one’s political enemies is edging much closer to totalitarianism and anti-democracy than the political activism of Marrickville Council with the broad democratic-electoral consent of its constituents.

The mission statement of Q Society is summarised as “Pro-Egalitarianism + Pro-Freedom + Pro-Democracy + Pro-Western + Pro-Multi-Ethnic + Pro-Israel + Anti-Islam + Anti-Fascist + Anti-Totalitarian + Anti-Moral Relativity + Anti PC”. (I assume the petition preamble is an example of “Anti-PC” that means “fear-mongering is fine”.) But I don’t see how “Pro-Western + Pro-Multi-Ethnic + Pro-Israel + Anti-Islam” can be deemed anything but hypocritical, hateful, and a likely clue that Q Society are precisely what they claim to be against: religious fanatics.

Read Q Society’s mission statement and I hope you will agree that these are people who the Jewish community should fear rather than find affinity with, and certainly, we should not be running to climb aboard the petition bandwagon built by them.

The actual petition statement is written in very different terms to its preamble, which also makes it extremely suspect. Even if only that carefully-worded petition statement is submitted to the NSW Minister for Local Government, it is not hard for the recipient ministry to find the original fear-mongering nonsense that people read before signing it, especially after it has been so widely disseminated.

The foolishness that allowed this petition to be the largest campaign against Marrickville Council’s decision shot that campaign in the foot. How could anyone who saw that petition virally passed from inbox to inbox take it seriously, and consider its undersigned sincere, intelligent, discriminating people?

Boycotts do not work. If they have any impact at all on the target population, they harm the wrong people, affecting the poorest and disadvantaged first. (Academic boycotts are equally foolish, affecting the most critical voices within.)

But Marrickville Council is too small to make a difference on the ground, and they know it. Like many BDS campaigns, the Marrickville boycott’s main effect is to raise awareness in the community where the boycott is being made. The Jewish community response has brought it greater attention, and one could certainly argue that there is a lot that Jewish community members should become aware of and be thinking about before their automatic click-and-forward response.

So first some reminders on why we should care:

• The law of Bal Tashchit (בל תשחית) expanded from Deut. 20:19, and described by Rambam as a prohibition of “all waste … such as burning clothes for no reason, or breaking a vessel for no reason.”
• As a chesed to future generations (presumably pre-messianic) by saving the resources on the planet.
• To avoid the burden of those that slave to provide us with the resources.
• Possibly following the law of the land (דינא דמלכותא דינא). Although legislation on water reduction and recycling is limited, it is clearly within the legal ideology of a country in drought. One could say it is derekh eretz.
• Assuming environment and resource presevation is a good thing for the world, we should practice it as a light unto the nations, or maybe as tikkun olam.

Organisations like Canfei Nesharim focus on providing resources for the Orthodox community to learn about and support the environment, but I will illustrate here a few of the issues I have encountered:

Washing

Often I see this procedure for washing hands:

1. Turn on tap with cup under it.
2. When cup is overflowing pour over hands 6 times (with or without turning off the tap), emptying the cup.
3. Put the cup back under the tap and let the next person wash.

The shi’ur (quantity) of water legally required for washing hands is a revi’it. That’s the same amount as one is meant to drink at kiddush, and is about an eighth of the standard washing cup. There is no requirement to have the cup overflowing, nor to empty the entire cup, nor to keep the tap running. And there is good reason to use only the minimum: fresh water is one of the most limited resources in many parts of the planet.

Some claim that overflowing the cup is a custom (a virtue!). It purportedly shows that they are not wanting, and that God has given them all. But surely saving the water is a greater virtue.

Paper

Since the advent of photocopiers and home/office printing, shiur notes, parshat hashavua sheets, and newsletters at synangogues have been printed out by the thousands. Page after page of tree pulp is shot out of printers and placed before patrons of the synagogue or the beit hamidrash. But they are rarely all used, but people often refuse to recycle them because of their kedusha which would require them to be disposed of in a geniza or by burial.

But that is more stringent than the halakha. I have seen teshuvot from Shlomo Riskin and Michael Broyde that suggest that only 7 particular names of God, in Hebrew, need to be put in the geniza. If these are not present on the sheet, it needs careful disposal, but with care it can probably be recycled.

Accepting strictures upon the letter of the law can be good, but chumrot that lead to forbidden waste and the like cannot be accepted. For the quantities of such material that we now produce, we clearly need to pursue the path of recycling rather than burial of documents of which the halakha does not strictly require the latter.

Plastic

Because of the combined difficulties of (a) washing up on Shabbat; (b) many guests; (c) kashrut issues, meal hosts on Shabbat tend to supply plastic plates and utensils. These non-recyclable, non-biodegradable, fossil-fuel-based products tend to be unnecessary. In the long run, these “disposables” aren’t as cheap as they look, and the washing up may be worth it. Even if not, there are natural alternatives that lunch hosts should be aware of.

So, Orthodox Judaism, join the rest of the world: reduce, reuse, recycle.

Suddenly in these last few days, University administration has decided the chapel in the McGill “Birks” Religious Studies building no longer exists. Signs that once indicated its presence are now gone. The room that the rest of the building is centred around no longer has any official purpose or title.

(It seems Hillel Montreal has also removed its Chapel sign. A plaque proudly reading “CHAPEL” remains lying around the room, presumably from before the recent renovations here. But its removal “chapel” was probably a rejection of terminology and not an issue of secularisation. The one currently labelling the room says “Beit Midrash” instead, which possibly implies being more Orthodox, but maybe less religious, changing focus from worship to text.)

Québec is not known for being the most tolerant place for outsiders. Its language laws have threatened the removal of historical signage, and cause it to have PFK stores while France does not dispute the name “KFC”. In our case it seems that secularism, or at least some form of xenophobia is intended to keep the Québécois with what is familiar to them.

And yet Montréal is still built around its famous cathedrals, and most of its street names that don’t begin with “Saint” begin “Sainte”. As my professor B. Barry Levy argues, if we want to make the city secular, we not only have to rename all the streets, but we have to stop celebrating Christmas and Easter as public holidays… He would rather putting the Christ back into Christmas and allowing religious expression in a more pluralist society. Despite being Dean of the aforementioned Religious Faculty, he only found out about the changes in signage after returning from two days off for Pesach, and considers it akin to Egyptian pharaohs each removing the names of their predecessors, as if they had never ruled.

Sydney had its share of the religious accommodation issue in 2003 when it was suggested that the pedestrian traffic lights be automatic (and not button-triggered) on Sabbaths, in certain areas with religious Jewish populations (Bondi Rd). Despite the fact that a lot of the world’s urban areas run on automatic pedestrian lights, for some reason a lot of the local community were offended by the thought of accommodating to the Orthodox Jewish community’s (albeit strange-seeming) needs for safety. Yes, it would cost some Council money, but they make up a significant portion of the municipal population, and it detracts for nobody as far as I can tell. It seems that last December the Council acceded to the requests (although using some motion sensors) but according to the over-100 comments on that article, it was met with largely ignorant and intolerant obstinacy—at least by online Telegraph readers. (“Once again it shows that ordinary people are left to the pandering of a minority group.” says Fred Lavender; “If certain people consider pushing a button to be work then they don’t belong in our society and I don’t see why we need to accede to these so called religious laws. It seems to be an all male agenda. Why am I not surprised.” remarks Colleen Appleton; Leigh Roberts: “What an absolute joke. Australia used to be a place where people wanted to fit in, now its just about complaining about anything and everything that dosen’t suit.” They go on and on and on.) Even if I might agree that there are better places to spend the money, our society spends similar money on erecting Christmas decorations, and certainly more on NYE fireworks.

The seventh definition of “of” given by Merriam-Webster is:

used as a function word to indicate something from which a person or thing is delivered eased of her pain or with respect to which someone or something is made destitute robbed of all their belongings“

This may help understand the outlook for “freedom of religion” in an increasingly secular world…

It seems Jews are just fascinated with language. One web site lists 64 Jews (by broad definition) who have made significant contributions to the field of linguistics (also there a broad definition). Some of the most mentioned linguists of the 20th century are included: Noam Chomsky ([xɔmski]?), famous language universalist and social activist; William Labov, sociolinguistic pioneer; Zellig Harris, initiator of discourse analysis… Linguistics courses are littered with Jewish names and Israeli institutions. I would like to suggest that there are two major factors in drawing Jews to linguistics: one is academic, and the other sociological.

Rabbinic Judaism has long had a love of books and of words. The first is illustrated in the phenomenon within the Orthodox community whereby it is common to enter another’s home as a guest and begin by examining the contents of the bookshelf. Even weren’t this the case, literacy and torah education have been central to Jewish society for many centuries. And the study has often been highly language-focussed. Jewish bible interpretation has historically been very interested in a close reading of the text, its words and language used, to determine (whether or not correctly by modern linguistic standards) word and sentence meanings. Basic readers of the bible text are given numerous examples of folk etymologies, a few cases of dialectology (such as the famous sibboleth of the Ephraimites, see Judges 12), examples of taboo and euphemism in keri/ketiv pairs (such as שגל and שכב) and elsewhere, and of course an explanation of the dispersion of tongues in Genesis. A good student might follow commentators disagreeing in cases of syntactic ambiguity, watch Ibn Ezra or Saadya Gaon pick at phonology and morphological particulars, and analyse the meanings resolved from the chiastic structures of biblical poetry. Besides this, all students will encounter both Hebrew and Aramaic. The author of the aforementioned list also identifies this long-term addiction to text and philology as a clear influence for Jewish study in the field of language.

And on the other hand we have less-recognised but highly significant sociological catalysts for Jewish study in the field. Most of those who have been of major influence in linguistics during the 20th century were members of an immigrant Jewish community, usually 1st or 2nd-generation migrants to the USA. Many would grow up in societies where their parents spoke a different language to their own first, or where they had a language or dialect littered with Jewish influence; and they would watch as the melting pot of New York City absorbed Yiddish words and expressions, as shmucks, shpiels and shemozzles spread the world over. And they would then learn another language or two as part of Hebrew school education. If they were looking for linguistic variation and richness, all they needed to do was look around them. Chomsky, according to Wikipedia, had Yiddish-speaking parents but the language was taboo in his family; his neighbourhood in Philadelphia was split between the Yiddish side and Hebrew side. Many linguists are wholly devoted to the idea of Jewish languages, their formation and distinction: from Yiddish and Ladino to Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Persian, Jewish Aramaic, Yeshivish and Modern Hebrew. Modern Hebrew is in itself an interesting concept: Jews of the world watched as a language was revived from literary to vernacular use, an act of language creation, at the same time acting as a symbol of ideology that aided in the death and decay of other Jewish languages. Over the last couple of centuries, Jewish individuals have simply been brought up in societies where a curiosity in language is hard to avoid.

And then there might also be a desire to compete with Noam Chomsky whom many Jews have decided by default they don’t like…

All in all, after encountering multiple Jewish members in the Department of Linguistics and in course readings back home, I am not surprised to find so many Jewish students in linguistics classes here. I wonder, though, how much this linguistic fascination will remain in the next generation farther removed from the tongue-twists of immigration.

Still, when I arrived on the doorstep of Rabbi Lipner a little late (public transport instructions didn’t match reality too closely) at 6:30pm on Friday afternoon, I didn’t know what to expect, nor what anyone answering the door should expect of the hairy youth on their doorstep carrying three large bags. I was welcomed in a European accent by a moderately tall man wearing a white shirt and long white beard who led me to a bed and to a shower after a sweaty hot afternoon. As one does, I first had a glance through the spines that graced the house’s bookshelves.

As sunset approached and the rabbi (whose wife was away in Israel) had too prepared himself for shabbat, it surprised me as it has before the enormous presence made by someone fit and neatly dressed in suit and hat. Unlike others, it didn’t just seem like a uniform to Rabbi Lipner, but more a careful sign of discipline and respect. And still I felt only a little shamed to be wearing my shirt collar open, and the same white shoes on my feet that I have been wearing most days of the week (there wasn’t space in my bag for shiny black ones).

As a few other youth arrived—some of the rabbi’s students—we did the evening prayers at home and had a very pleasant dinner, with some singing where I again didn’t know the American tunes to familiar words. In the morning we went out to a small synagogue, which in this vacation period only attracted 12-or-so men and 3 women. Nearly all returned to the Rabbi’s for lunch. In the afternoon I walked some of the guests home and to the beach on San Francisco’s west (here SF bears similarity to Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, as a peninsula between the Pacific and the bay).

Over the day I discovered much about the San Francisco Jewish community—or at least from the perspective of my hosts. Rabbi Lipner—a survivor of the holocaust from Moldova—has now lived in San Francisco for 37 years, founding and directing the Hebrew Academy. A lone or rare Orthodox institution in San Francisco, he has found continuous struggle in this endeavor, largely from the Progressive-dominated community in the area. While receiving record numbers of shlichim from the Jewish Agency (10 will be helping teach in the coming year), he claims that the school survives in this community by no natural force, but only through the rare miracle.

Around the table were many of the Academy’s former students, mostly from Former Soviet Union backgrounds—Jewish, but devoid of and often resistive of Jewish tradition. All very intelligent individuals, most were preparing for the coming year at a yeshiva (YU, Stern, Ohr, Aish…). The Academy is known to be very high achieving, with a lot of admittances to prestigious universities, but the rabbi could tell story after story of youth who have come from empty backgrounds, who have been given a love for Judaism and torah. It is a strange and wonderous feeling to hear a person declare at age 15 or 18 or 22 their desire to have a brit milah (ritual circumcision for males in Judaism, usually performed at 8 days old). This rabbi has been through many.

As George Bush had told him when he was surprisingly invited (one miracle) to a Whitehouse Chanukah party: “one at a time”. Despite the difficulty they find in a community such as San Francisco’s, the marvel of education is seeing the fruit—any fruit—of your labour, and I met a ripe handful over shabbat.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable experience this shabbat in very friendly, intelligent and interesting company. I also got my first job offer in the USA—while singing Moroccan tunes at the lunch table, I was told I should be a shaliach at the school. I said “we’d think about it” and another voice added “bli neder”.

Through the rabbi’s stories, the sun slipped away and Saturday night had long fallen when we took shabbat out. Although I then packed my bags to travel to the hostel room I had reserved (and would be charged for), I decided I would instead take the opportunity to sleep on a firmer bed, stay another night, and take a bus back downtown in the morning.

Maybe, sometimes, spending $20 on something free is worthwhile.

PS: Thanks Gary. When the lights suddenly went off here at 12:30 tonight (Saturday) the torch came in quite handy getting down some irregular steps…

It was nice to see that the glossy Wedding supplement (AJN 29/6) included its token Russian couple.

But since we’re talking marginalised, it would seem Sephardim don’t get married!

The famed Moroccan wedding feast; the colorful Yemenite henna party; the joyous shabbat chatan were all left unmentioned. Our beautiful Oriental women didn’t grace its pages- not even in the abundant advertisements!

While we are being inclusive and welcoming, why not give those photos a little colour?

I think it’s worth pointing out that our community, while diverse, is very easily dominated by the (granted, majority) European population, whether via South Africa or not. I don’t know whether it’s because the sephardim are so integrated or because they are so different that they are forgotten…