February 24, 2025 • 51 mins
As Sydney celebrates its annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival, Dash and Tami speak with groundbreaking Jewish community activist and elder Dawn Cohen, co-founder of Dayenu Jewish LGBTQ+.
Born and raised in apartheid South Africa, Dawn spent decades campaigning – ultimately successfully – for the acceptance of LGBTQ+ Jews in Sydney's Jewish community, standing firm against threats and intimidation from homophobic opponents. Now, in the months since October 7th, she finds herself confronting a different form of prejudice as antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment surge within her LGBTQ+ community.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Are you interested in issues affecting Jews in
Australia, the Middle East andthe world at large?
But a little bit ashamed thatyou're barely keeping up to date
.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, you've come to the right place.
I'm Dash Lawrence and, in thispodcast series, your slightly
chaotic third cousin, tammySussman, and I call on experts
and each other to address allthe ignorant questions that you
might be too ashamed to ask.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Join us as we have a go at cutting through some
seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome to the Jewish Independent Podcast.
Ash, shame to admit.
Hello everyone, I'm DashLawrence, Executive Director
here at the Jewish Independent.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
And I'm Tammy.
At first I was afraid I waspetrified.
At first I was afraid I waspetrified, sussman.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
At first you were afraid and petrified.
And what about now?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Well, dash, I grew strong and I learned how to get
along.
Do you know what song I'mheavily referencing?
Dash?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
How do you pronounce it, Gaynor?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Oh sorry.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
No, it's fine, I say Gaynor.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Gaynor Gaynor.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I'll you pronounce it Gaynor.
Oh sorry.
No, it's fine, I say Gaynor,gaynor, gaynor.
I have to look it up.
I am, of course, referencingthe song I Will Survive by good
old Gloria.
It's an iconic song.
It's a queer anthem.
It's a Jewish anthem in manyways.
Did you know that?
No, I didn't, why, so it's beenembraced by both the LGBTQIA
(01:48):
plus community and the Jewishcommunity.
It's been adapted into Purimand Passover parodies because of
the strong themes aboutsurvival and resilience.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Love it, love it.
So, tammy, I'm assuming thatall of this is on your mind,
because this weekend, living inSydney as you do, you're going
to be getting out your glitter,your costume for Mardi Gras,
aren't you?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
I am.
It's Mardi Gras this weekendfor those of us in Sydney, and
this is our Mardi Gras specialepisode.
I am so excited to announcethis week's guest Dash.
Our prophet today is theawe-inspiring Dawn Cohen.
(02:39):
Now, I saw Dawn speak atEmanuel Synagogue a few weeks
ago at an event that wasorganised to celebrate 25 years
of Dayenu, and, for those of youwho aren't aware, dayenu is
Sydney's Jewish, lgbtqia plusdedicated organisation.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
And if the word Dayenu sounds familiar to you,
that's because it's best knownas the Passover Seder song.
You know, you know, Tammy,don't you?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I know what you're trying to do.
You're trying to get me to singDiana when I'm not going to.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
But you can.
No, you go ahead.
Can we do it together?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
No, I think you, as the non-Jew at the Seder who
loves belting out Diana, youshould give it a little bit.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Come on, do it with me.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Five, six, seven, eight.
Diana, Diana, diana, dianaDiana.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Diana, diana, diana.
It's the song which lists aseries of miracles, with each
verse concluding that any singleone of those blessings would
have been enough.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Dianel.
Dawn Cohen co-founded Dianel in2000.
Dawn became the public face ofJewish homosexuality in Sydney
back in 1990 when she debatedtwo rabbis at Australia's first
Jewish public forum onhomosexuality at the old Hakkoa
(04:06):
Club in Bondi, winning the daywith her passionate call not
just for inclusion andacceptance of Jewish homosexuals
but for a warm welcome home.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
In the years that followed, dawn repeated that
call in talks, articles anddebates in both queer and Jewish
settings, culminating in herco-founding of the
groundbreaking and at the time,controversial first Mardi Gras
Shabbat dinner at Shalom Collegein 2000.
And, of course, theaforementioned Dayenu float at
(04:38):
the Mardi Gras parade.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
These days, Dawn has another passion to add to her
list exposing the rejection andisolation that many Jews have
been experiencing in theirleft-leaning, anti-Israel
circles since October 7, andhelping them to carve out a safe
community.
I know you'll gain so much fromour chat with Dawn Cohen.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Thank you so much for joining us.
Dawn Cohen, it's wonderful tomeet you.
Welcome to the Ashamed to Admitstudio.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Thank you very much.
I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Now Dawn.
Our listeners will prettyquickly tell that your accent is
potentially not native toAustralia.
Yeah, I'm assuming you wereborn and raised in South Africa,
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Absolutely Well picked.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Tell us about your emergence into the world, that
South Africa that you grew up in.
What was life like for you,your formative years in South
Africa?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well, I was born in 1957.
And so I grew up under theapartheid regime.
Both parents were staunchlyopposed to apartheid, so I grew
up in an atheist Jewish homewith strong, you know, support
for equality, liberty,anti-racism, lots of discussion
(06:13):
around dinner tables aboutpolitics, and, although atheist,
we didn't use the term secularJew, we just used the term
Jewish.
And I was in a very Jewishenvironment.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
This is in Johannesburg.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
In Johannesburg.
Yeah, and absolutely novisibility for gay people,
except the headmistress of myschool was a lesbian and this
was a big, open secret but shewasn't allowed to mention it.
She was in a relationship.
Everybody thought of course Inever got to check this out, but
(06:48):
she was in a relationship witha vice headmistress and that was
my first exposure.
She was a very Christian lady.
She didn't like me for onesecond because I was an atheist
and I was uppity, but that wasmy first introduction to
homosexuality of this verycompetent woman who didn't like
(07:09):
me.
And also you had to be very,very careful about never for a
second exposing thehomosexuality and of course I
don't know 100% if it was true,because you so couldn't ask.
But I grew up being terrifiedthat I was homosexual.
I'm not a suicidal person atall, other than when I thought
(07:30):
I'm homosexual I thought I'dhave to kill myself, and that
was purely from homophobia,because it's not my natural
response to life at all.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Do you have a memory of when you felt attracted to
women and you could sense inyourself that you were possibly
gay?
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah Well, I was at the movies and I had my
boyfriend to my left and acompletely strange woman to my
right and I suddenly realised Ididn't want to kiss my boyfriend
, I wanted to kiss the woman tomy left.
Then I went to Jewish campmaybe 18 or 19, and there was
(08:07):
one of the circle dances and youkind of had to ask other people
to join you in an aspect of thecircle dance, and I asked a
girl and it took me years laterto realise everybody else was
asking opposite sex people andyou know there were lots of
moments like that.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Earlier, you described your parents being
quite socially progressive, orat least politically progressive
.
Did you talk about it with them, or was there a taboo around
homosexuality even with them?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
There was a taboo around homosexuality for
everybody.
I started being an activist onWITS campus about homosexuality
by writing articles anonymously,pretending to be somebody else
and doing occasional sort ofdebates that were reported in
the newspaper.
And my amazing grandmother cameto me after having read one of
(08:59):
my articles and said you know,it's totally.
But my friends are asking me Ijust want to know the answer.
Are you a lesbian or not?
And I regretted so strongly butI said no, and I was already at
university, knew that I was alesbian.
The pressure was so strong asif somehow the knowledge was out
(09:22):
.
It would be destructive, so Icouldn't respond with a yes to
my grandmother.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And with your parents .
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Eventually, I did come out to my parents when I
arrived in Australia and I waswith tremendous support from the
lesbian community in Sydney,the friends that I'd made.
And I came out to my motherfirst, I think, and of course
you know she had been suspecting.
She definitely didn't want meto be gay, but you know her
(09:56):
recall of it is that she gave mea big hug.
I can't quite remember whathappened next.
That was the start of a 30-yearjourney of educating my parents
and them, listening them, youknow, being interested with all
the usual to be expectedhomophobias that parents had
then and to some extent have now, until the moment of our
(10:19):
marriage, robin and I's marriage, in 2018, when we'd been
together already for 35 years.
And you know, at that wedding,you know, my parents kind of
walked me down the aisle and mymother made this most
extraordinary speech of totalsort of acceptance and
(10:43):
celebration of our marriage, andmy father too was utterly
supportive by that stage.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
That's beautiful.
I'm looking forward to learninga little bit about what that
was like for you to finally haveyour love accepted equally like
the rest of heterosexualAustralians.
But just go back to thatdecision to leave South Africa.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I didn't decide to migrate.
My parents decided to migrate,you know.
I just went with them.
I was 20.
My parents, you know, had beentrying to migrate since I was
seven.
Two reasons they were opposedto apartheid and also they
understood that South Africawould not be stable because of
apartheid.
There was going to be violence.
(11:28):
We went and lived on a kibbutzfor a few months when I was
seven.
Didn't work, my father didn'tlike picking oranges and various
other attempts to leave.
I did know, though, that youknow Australia, america, england
, you know had exciting lesbianfeminist movements, and in those
days lesbians tended to bealigned with the women's
(11:50):
movement and gay men certainlyin Sydney were involved mostly
in their own movements, withsome overlap.
There were some groups thatwere both women and men, but for
me my home was with lesbianfeminists when I arrived in
Australia, and that's where Ifound intellectual support and
(12:10):
emotional support and room togrow.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And just to be clear, you found support with the
Australian lesbian communityright, Not Jewish Australian.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
We couldn't find each other.
When I arrived in Australia in1978, there wasn't even a
picture of another life besidesheterosexual couple plus
children and grandchildren.
There was no sense at all ofemotional or intellectual or
even imaginative space intowhich someone like I could step.
(12:45):
So whereas other South AfricanJews migrated to a community
here, schools for their childrenor synagogue or other community
groups or even single Jewishkind of friendship networks,
there was no possibility for meof getting anything or there
being space for me in those.
But nobody was ever horrible tome, but it was just like you
(13:08):
know.
I might as well have been aTimbuktu and then I'd find the
occasional Jewish lesbian hereand there and very slowly, by
the late 80s Jewish lesbianswere beginning to find each
other here and we had tinylittle groups where you know, I
got religious education aboutJudaism from a particular woman
(13:30):
Her name is Jen Van Proctor whowas starting to run little or
organise these tiny littlegroups for us.
So slowly, slowly, we foundeach other, but that was long
after I'd arrived in thiscountry and established myself.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
And a special hello to Jen.
She's a listener of this show.
Good, so you arrive in Sydneyand you're finding Jewish
lesbians here and there, but notnecessarily in the eastern
suburbs where most of the Jewscongregated, am I right?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Well, I was very excited when I finally found my
eastern suburbs Jewish lesbianfriend, the one yeah, Hello Jude
Kell.
And he became, in fact, thefirst president of DIA after me.
So no, I did not have a home inthe eastern suburbs.
My parents lived in the easternsuburbs, but other than that it
(14:22):
was like a foreign world.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
The reason I'm bringing geography into this is
because, dawn, you've beencredited with bringing gay Jews,
queer Jews, back into theSydney Jewish community Prior to
that.
Where were they mainly livingtheir lives?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
So, look, I want to make it clear that it wasn't
just me living their lives.
So, look, I want to make itclear that it wasn't just me.
There were lots of very braveand helpful gay and lesbian
people, you know, from about thebeginning of the 80s onwards,
who would be doing importantthings to start that process up
(15:02):
in part of a process that alsowas commenced in America with
amazing people who began tryingto create a space for homosexual
Jews.
Where were most of my friendsliving in the inner west?
Where was I?
I was in Stanmore at one stage.
Balmain, leichhardt and, ofcourse, a lot of gay men were
(15:23):
around Paddington and OxfordStreet, but I didn't know them.
My world was in the inner west.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Dawn.
When you arrived in Australia,you did connect with a wider
lesbian movement and there was akind of an interrelationship
between the women's rights andthe lesbian movement, and this
was among non-Jewish Australians.
So you could have quite easilyhave just kept your community
(15:49):
there.
I'm wondering why was itimportant for you to then find
lesbian Jewish women and gayJewish people?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
It's such a good question, dash.
I'm a person who needs my wholeself.
Part of why I have fought sohard in a public way for my
lesbian self is because I can'tfunction without my heart.
My lesbian self is my heart andmy sensibility.
(16:21):
It's who I love, but there'salso something about me and how
I am that's just profoundlylesbian.
And I also can't functionwithout my history, my roots,
those ancestral roots that goback 3,000 years and are
indefinable, and deepspirituality so inextricably
(16:45):
intertwined with those ancestralroots.
And so to have my whole self, Ineed to have my Jewishness, my
lesbianism, and I guess thethird aspect of that is my
freedom of mind.
I really need freedom to thinkand of course, all of that gives
(17:07):
me a natural home in theprogressive Judaism of today.
At Emmanuel Synagogue, which ismy synagogue, I can have all of
those three things.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Wow Dawn, how did you and your crew bring Jewish
lesbians back into the Jewishcommunity?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Like I said, there was a small group of us, some
very, very Jewish-affirmingpeople, that embodied that
embracing of both.
Lyndall Katz is another veryimportant activist who refused
to give up either part ofherself, and when individuals
(17:52):
refuse to give up part ofthemselves and do that in a
loving and affirming butassertive way, it kind of opens
up the space for everybody else.
It kind of opens up the spacefor everybody else Also.
Lorraine Larry was one of them.
Those people created theinitial ground, but I noticed
(18:16):
that what was happening was thegay men and lesbians were
working separately.
So, for example, in 1998, theJewish Lesbians of Victoria who
also are an amazing group, whohelped lay the groundwork for
the changes that have happenedthey had a small, the very first
Jewish contingent in Mardi Gras.
It was a small walking group.
And then in 1999, there was asmall gay men's walking group as
(18:40):
well, I think they calledthemselves the Jewish Princesses
and we had a small lesbianwalking group.
But I understood that the Jewishcommunity would not change
until gay men and lesbiansstarted working together.
It was as if we couldn't betaken seriously or as a force to
be reckoned with until we didthat At the same time.
(19:04):
Jen and Larry and I, and maybesome others, tried to organise
the very first Mardi GrasShabbat.
We totally understand why Atthat time no synagogue could
provide us with space to houseif we tried and were turned down
, and so I understood then thatthere had to be a united men and
(19:27):
women's group.
We'd made some breakthroughs in1990 with the very first talk
on homosexuality in the Jewishcommunity in which I debated
Rabbi Kamens and Orthodox RabbiFranklin, and we'd made some
breakthroughs at that time withthat first debate.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Can you tell our listeners how that came?
To be Sure.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
So there was a remarkable man by the name of
Nick Seaman, and Nick's motherworked with me.
We worked in the same communityhealth centre and she was also
lovely and very open to talkingabout homosexuality, which was
fabulous for me to have someonewho was easy with the fact that
I was a lesbian, because thiswas 1990, if I'm not mistaken.
(20:14):
Yeah.
And one day she came to me andsaid Dawn, do you know?
We're looking for a gay man whowill talk in this debate that
Vic's organising onhomosexuality and we can't find
anybody.
It's going to be the firstdebate on homosexuality in the
Jewish community.
Nick's got a couple of rabbis.
Do you know anybody?
And I said I'll do it.
(20:38):
And Agnes looks a little bitworried because you know I'm a,
you know, sensitive person whocan easily be hurt.
And she said are you sure youwant to do this?
You know the Jewish Orthodoxcommunity is not that accepting
and it's never been done before.
It might get a little bitaggressive.
(21:01):
You know I'm worried they'llkind of kill you.
And I went home to Rob, who'snow my wife, and I said Rob,
should I do it?
She said yes, definitely youshould do it.
And I went to some friends andsaid gay people and said you
know, should I do this?
And I got the answer no.
Look, you know we've got tokeep the two things separate.
(21:24):
If you bring Jews and gays intothe same room, they'll kill
each other and you know it justcan't mix.
And I went back to Rob, who youknow is a 78er, meaning that she
was arrested in the GayLiberation March that resulted
in Mardi Gras.
She was thrown into jail, shewas thrown downstairs, so she
(21:46):
knew a thing or two aboutfighting for liberation.
And she said to me Dawn, ofcourse you must speak, there is
a homosexual and a Jew insideyour skin.
Of course they can get on witheach other.
Of course they can integrate.
They're doing that inside you.
And so I went ahead, and thefirst thing to be done was to
(22:09):
have all the speakers and Nickcome and have a breakfast.
And so everybody came to mytiny little Bellemain house.
I'd never met a rabbi before,by the way.
Had no idea, kind of you knowwhat does one feed a rabbi for
breakfast?
I just Pickles.
Well, I didn't know.
I made sure Rob did thecatering, not me.
(22:29):
I was really, you know, worried.
Anyway, there they are in mylittle little little Balmain
house, and, you know, worried.
Anyway, there they are in mylittle little little Balmain
house and everybody's very niceto me.
And eventually Rabbi Franklin,who was personally lovely to me,
leans over and he says Dawn,look, I personally support you.
You know, I was ananti-apartheid fighter in South
(22:50):
Africa.
But, dawn, they're going tokill you.
So my suggestion is you justtalk for a few minutes and I'll
take over, I'll protect you.
And I said thank you Rabbi.
No, I'll talk.
And also, no bloke's going totell me he'll take up my
speaking space.
(23:11):
I remember walking on the stageand looking down and there's a
sea of Jewish faces.
Now, I hadn't seen a sea ofJewish faces since I'd migrated
from South Africa because I'djust been in the lesbian
community.
Everybody looks familiar.
They look like my uncle, myauntie, my granny.
I had this experience of beingwith family.
(23:31):
I had this experience of beingwith family and then in the
front row there was a group oflesbian and gay, mostly
non-Jewish people, all lookingexcited and I thought, oh,
they're here to support me.
And then, about 10 rows back,there's my parents looking a bit
(23:52):
scared, but very brave, and mywonderful, very supportive
cousins, saul and Ilana, arealso there and I suddenly
thought I'm home and I have avoice now.
Yeah, and I opened by sayingI'm a proud Jew and a proud
lesbian and I am making Aliyahfrom Belmain to Bondi.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
And that broke the ice.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, and you know there was absolute applause.
Both rabbis, I think, were verysurprised and the hall was
packed.
And then, for one of the firsttimes, we got coverage in the
Jewish news.
Up to then we'd been mostlyinvisible, and so it broke the
ice.
It also broke the invisiblewalls that kept us out of the
(24:44):
psychological Jewish space thatthe Jewish news represented.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I'm so glad you described it with the pride it
deserves because you were alittle self-deprecating.
The first time I heard thatstory you said so many people
showed up.
I think because Sydney were alittle self-deprecating the
first time I heard that storyyou said so many people showed
up.
I think because Sydney is alittle bit boring back in the
90s it was.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
That was part of it.
So I just had a sort of insightand I've got a sense of the
elements that were needed.
Yes, men and women had to cometogether.
We had to have overseasvisitors, because every time
there was a Jewish overseasvisitor, the Jewish news covered
it.
And I thought, get somebodyfrom overseas and they will
(25:25):
cover it.
We had to make it fun andexciting, because truly Jewish
community needed fun andexciting.
We needed heterosexual peoplewalking with us so that it
modeled to the Jewish community.
This is the thing to do Be withus, walk with us, stand with us
.
And we needed to have a bigsplash and we needed a Shabbat
(25:49):
dinner under a Jewish roof.
We needed to make a spiritualbreakthrough into Jewish
community.
I truly mean it about usneeding to make a liyar, a
maliyar that involved welcomingto the community itself,
spiritual inclusion in thesynagogue, and so this was a
(26:10):
massive Jewish coming out, gayJewish coming out process.
And basically I went, went toLorraine Larry and Deb Saltman
asked if they would help me dothis.
They said yes, lorraine Larryis the one who named the
organization, dayenu.
I expected it to last about sixmonths, just enough for us to
(26:30):
create the breakthrough.
I had no idea other people notme would keep it going for the
next 25 years, and that was theformation of Dayenu.
Lots of ups and downs, allsorts of battles and challenges,
threats to me at that stage bysomebody on the Jewish Board of
(26:50):
Deputies, totally, whereas nowthe Jewish Board of Deputies is
just amazing and supportive,encouraging.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
But that was the start dawn, you mentioned the
important role of jewishheterosexuals what we would now
call allies and the role thatthey played in walking side by
side with you and your movement.
Tell us about some of thosesignificant allies that you had
in those early days and what itdoes to a movement to have
(27:22):
allyship and people brave enoughto speak up to the wider
community.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Yeah, without them there would be no Dayenu, there
would be no space for us inJewish community.
I'm profoundly grateful.
The very first person that Iapproached was Rabbi Jackie
Ninia and asked her, with Kentor Joseph Toltz, to lead the
(27:50):
Shabbat dinner and service theShalom Institute.
Actually, they were first theretoo that I approached to house
the Shabbat dinner and servicethe Shalom Institute.
Actually, they were first theretoo that I approached to house
the Shabbat dinner and RabbiNuneo said yes.
And each time you get a yes,it's like really I didn't really
expect that, you know, becausewe had been knocking on the door
for some years and hearing no.
(28:12):
The fabulous writer DianeArmstrong was one of those
people who had a family memberwho was gay at that stage, and
she and members of her familyjoined us on that march.
Now Diane's a Holocaustsurvivor.
And there was another Holocaustsurvivor by the name of Susie
Wise, and their participationmeant the world to us and I was
(28:38):
overjoyed when, after the parade, susie Wise came to me and I
think it was even reported inthe Jewish news and said it was
incredible for her to walk downthe street and be cheered as a
Jew, and so I'd been imaginingall of this was going to just be
support for us lesbian and gayJews.
(28:59):
And remembering transgender wasnot on the radar yet in Sydney,
so we were thinking lesbian andgay.
But to hear a Holocaustsurvivor say that it had helped
her around being Jewish and thatit was an absolute peak moment
for her was just such a bonus,such a bonus to feel that we'd
(29:24):
given her that.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
And there's also another ally which you haven't
mentioned I'm going to mentionhim because I try and work him
into most episodes and that'syour friend Vic Aladef, marathon
runner and fit grandpa.
So can you tell us about Vic'scontribution?
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah.
So we were very lucky that Vichappened to be the editor of the
Jewish News.
While this was happening, hewouldn't compromise his
journalistic values to give intopressures.
The pressure on him wasenormous.
He made a decision to give thefront page of the Jewish news
(30:06):
after Mardi Gras to us, to theDayenu float, and he knew that
that was going to cause a hugereaction from the orthodox
rabbinate and he knew it wasrisking his job, but he chose to
do that anyway.
He would not sacrifice being agood journalist to fit in with
(30:29):
homophobic pressure.
And then what happened was bothhe and the heads of Shalom
Institute at the time werecalled by the Beth Din to
account for themselves for thefact that they had refused to
collude with the invisibilitywith which homosexuals were
(30:51):
expected to comply with by theOrthodox Jewish rabbinate
expected to comply with by theorthodox jewish rabbinate and
both vick and I think it was,yeah, just refused to go off to
the bed in an account forthemselves and instead what vick
did, which is actually I thinkit's unprecedented in the world.
I've never read of any otherjewish community doing this.
(31:13):
He he ran letters for weeks andweeks of people's opinions on
whether Jewish community shouldbe letting in gay people and
overwhelmingly he got letter andletter and letter of support
for us.
You'd pick up the Jewish newsand you couldn't believe it.
(31:35):
That many people were on ourside.
We hadn't really realized it.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
It was to the point where the Orthodox rabbis
thought that it was unbalancedthat he was publishing too many
letters in support and he wasn'tpublishing the ones that
opposed it.
And he said no, I'm publishingevery single letter.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
publishing the ones that opposed it, and he said, no
, I'm publishing every singleletter, In fact, to try and make
it even look more balanced,even though it was the factual
truth.
He'd actually have to inviteplease somebody who's opposed to
this, write something.
And I think that's where theRebinate was underestimating the
Jewish community.
One of the unique gifts ofJewish community is the capacity
(32:17):
for nuance and complexity inour welcome to everybody.
So it was particularly formodern Orthodox Jews.
It is completely easy to say wewelcome gay people into our
community and we also have menand women sitting separately,
for example.
You know, I'm progressive Jew,but I love that capacity to be
(32:39):
able to think in a complex way.
And so what Vic did then is notonly did it make our welcome
very, very solid into the gaycommunity, not only did it say
to Jewish leadership gay peopleare here, we belong, we have our
place.
It actually said to the Jewishrabbinate the Jewish Australian
(33:05):
community wants to make room forour rabbinate, who we respect,
but also for secularindependence, who we respect,
but also for secularindependence.
And so there was, in effect, aJewish community putting a
statement to its leadershipsaying we value you rabbis, we
value you, beth Din, we valueour leadership, and we also want
(33:29):
room for independence ofthought.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Dawn.
I'm told that a few years ago,having made all of this progress
with Dayanoo and worked so hardover many years to see the
establishment of a place, aspace for gay and lesbians in
the Jewish community in Sydney,you were all but ready, perhaps,
(33:56):
to hang up your activism boots.
But then something happened atthe end of 2023 and you saw the
need to go back out there and bean activist again.
Tell us what happened.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah, well, october the 7th happened.
You know, when Robin and I gotmarried in 2018, I really
thought, wow, this massive partof my being can go and retire
now, my activist self.
I understood at that stage thatthere was lots of room for me
in the Jewish community, butthat the gay community wasn't so
(34:32):
great for Jews.
But you know, it was all right.
It was all right.
But on October the 7th orOctober the 9th really, when the
trauma happened of us beingexcluded from the opera house
and when I saw that very few ofmy progressive, non-jewish
(34:53):
community understood howhorrible that was, I realised
that I was no longer safe as aJew.
Half of me was now safe andsecure in my gay self, but in my
precious home in non-Jewishprogressive world, I was no
longer safe.
(35:13):
There'd been intimations of this.
I'd lived in Byron Bay for 12years.
I'd been active around standingup to the anti-Semitism in
Byron Bay, writing articles forthe newspapers there, giving
talks between 2000 and 2012 orso.
But this was something else.
This was something else and Ithink we all know that.
(35:35):
But this was something else.
This was something else and Ithink we all know that.
This is the 25th anniversary ofDayenu.
It's the first time I've doneanything publicly where I've
talked about October the 7th andits consequences, because, like
most of us, I was in shock fora year and distressed for a year
, like many, many Jews.
But what I started to do wasuse the same process of
(35:58):
analyzing what was happening tome as I had used around sexism
and heterosexism to give thetalks that I had given in the
Jewish community aroundhomosexuality.
I had to understand the subtleenergies coming at me to try and
stop me.
The very first one of that wasthey'll kill you, don't do it.
(36:18):
That was the first homophobicor heterosexist invitation to
collude with my own oppression.
But there were hundreds ofothers and I had to unpick each
one with Robin's help, and itwas an ongoing process of
unpicking heterosexism,heterosexism being the term for
when heterosexuality isprivileged over homosexuality.
(36:42):
I now started applying thosesame principles to antisemitism,
and that requires aredefinition of how most people
see antisemitism.
Most people think ofSemitism aswhen people want to kill Jews
or take jobs away from us.
Now, that is anti-Semitism,that's gross anti-Semitism.
(37:03):
But there's a subtleanti-Semitism, akin to the
equivalent of sexism orhomophobia, that actually
everybody's got Just like.
Prior to the women's movement.
Everybody was sexist.
No man who was mansplainingthere wasn't a word for it then
thought I'm being horrible towomen.
(37:24):
He thought I'm just beingnormal, right, somebody had to
work out.
Ah, that's that thing where menthink they've got the right to
educate women on everything andsomebody don't know who the
fabulous person was made up theword mansplaining, so she
unpicked whoever.
That was unpicked.
An aspect of sexism, put wordsto it.
(37:46):
Now it's kind of like ithappens, but it can be unpicked
easily.
So I've understood we need to beabout antisemitism easily.
So I've understood we need tobe about anti-Semitism.
We start needing to understandthat there's gross anti-Semitism
but also subtle anti-Semitism,and it's the responsibility
particularly of progressive Jewslike myself who live at the
(38:07):
interface of the non-Jewishprogressive world and the Jewish
community, to do that job ofunpicking the subtle
anti-Semitism, because we loveour friends, we love our
non-Jewish community.
We can do this from a space oflove, but first we need to know
the subtle anti-Semitismactually exists.
(38:29):
It's very painful the processof noticing it, then at least
not colluding with it insideourselves.
So I've noticed two or three ofthe subtle anti-Semitism, but
there's a billion more and Ijust invite everybody to join in
this work.
It is so empowering because ithelps me not to collude with the
(38:57):
pressures on me to dissociatefrom my Jewish self or
dissociate from my mainstreamJewish community would now
(39:18):
broadly call the queer movementor LGBTIQ plus movement.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
In recent years, and obviously particularly since
October, the 7th 2023.
What are these manifestationsof anti-semitism that you've
you've noticed?
Speaker 3 (39:29):
the very first thing I noticed was Penny Wong.
Now, I adored Penny Wong.
I've written articles whereI'll just throw in, you know,
penny Wong for Prime Minister.
I thought she was fabulous.
I've personally interviewedPenny Wong at one stage as a
journalist Such a bright, youknow, caring, amazing politician
(39:50):
, I thought, and I still thinkshe is.
And yet the day her firstcomments about October 7th, were
utterly unempathic to thesuffering of the Jews, the
Israelis, the Israelis who hadbeen assaulted and murdered, and
(40:13):
to the Jewish community.
Her first response was aboutcautioning Israel not to respond
significantly, and shecorrected that later.
But where her heart was at wasprofoundly not with Jews and it
(40:38):
caused me immense personal painand confusion and in fact I've
only put language to this in thelast few weeks.
That lack of empathy isactually a sign of anti-Semitism
and I've noticed it manifestingrecently around the murderous,
antisemitic nurses, where I willhear people talking about it,
(41:02):
of course saying it's wrong andbad, but their heart is with the
nurses.
Actually, you know, weren'tthey silly?
If only they had.
And this lack of empathy for uswhen we have suffered greatly
is a symptom of anti-Semitism.
Now that I've got language forit, I can now name it so when it
(41:24):
happens in front of me againwith kindness and with love, I
can now articulate it.
There's two other things I'venoticed that have caused me pain
, but help me now that I'vefound words for it.
One is the necessity to blame aJew.
There is the most profound andpervasive pressure to find a Jew
(41:49):
to blame.
In some cases it will be toblame Netanyahu Now, and it's
easy to go along with this.
I mean, I don't like Netanyahu,I don't support his policies.
I'm like most progressive Jews,I'm absolutely opposed to the
settler movement.
But although it looks likereasoned argument, actually it's
(42:11):
an invitation.
Let's blame a Jew.
I've noticed when I've readarticles written by progressive
Jews, particularly in the Herald, there's almost a formula
that's followed.
The first is to establish yourJewish credentials I'm the child
of Holocaust survivors Almostnext there's a blaming, often of
other Jewish community membersfor being horrible to the
(42:34):
anti-Israel writer.
There was one article bysomeone who threw his own
grandmother under the bus abouther not being nice enough to him
, about, you know, his stand onthe Israel-Palestinian crisis.
Then there's a broadening ofwhat seems reasoned.
You know there's often a Hamaswas bad the little line, and
(42:54):
then there's a crescendo ofending of blaming Netanyahu.
Quite incredible when you readthem and know the formula's
happening.
Now, those Jews who are writingthose things aren't consciously
thinking, oh, I'm going to throwmy grandmother under the bus.
But what they're doing isthey're unconsciously responding
to anti-Semitic invitation fromthe non-Jewish world who are
(43:19):
also unconscious of it.
They don't think they'd behorrible to Jews.
And the invitation is distanceyourself from mainstream Jewish
community.
The invitation is put all theblame on Netanyahu, make them
the bad person.
And it's quite different fromreasoned, good, strong criticism
of the Israeli government.
This lacks subtlety or nuanceand one sort of needs to tune in
(43:44):
and ask the question is this areasoned debate or is this that
subtle anti-Semitic invitation?
And I'm just talking about thesubtle anti-Semitism.
There's much more stuff that ismuch less subtle than that.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Well, the overt stuff gets reported, but the subtle
stuff doesn't, unless we talkabout it.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Dawn, as someone that has been in the wider gay and
lesbian movement now for manydecades, if you have any
explanation or any theories onhow and I could be wrong about
this but my impression is thatthere has been a twinning of the
(44:22):
pro-Palestinian cause and thepro-Palestinian movement with
the contemporary queer rightsmovement.
You see that very much in theUnited States, perhaps less so
here in Australia, but I stillsee it here in Australia.
Can you offer up anyexplanation for us on that?
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Well, the first problem is when we call those
movements pro-Palestinian.
I think that's a problematicmisnomer.
I am pro-Palestinian.
I'm also pro-Israel.
Most Jews that I know arepro-Palestinian and pro-Israel.
We want a good life, an equallife, a dignified life for all
Jews, Muslims, Palestinians andIsraelis.
(45:03):
So I think we need to stopcalling that the pro-Palestinian
movement.
I think a better name is theanti-Israel movement.
There's all sorts of complexreasons for that twinning.
One is I think it's adeliberate strategy of the
anti-Israel, anti-Zionismmovement.
Actually, it's so complex I'mnot sure whether I can do it
(45:27):
justice.
It would be a whole interview initself to show how we got there
, but the way out is theresponsibility of progressive
Jewish LGBTIQ people, people whoidentify as queer, transgender,
intersex, lesbian, gay,bisexual, non-gender, conforming
, and who have connections withboth the Jewish community and
(45:50):
the broader queer movement, arethe ones who can make the change
.
What a queer movement are theones who can make the change,
and the change comes throughbearing to look at the
anti-Semitism around and withlove and compassion,
articulating it and standingwith mainstream Jewish community
.
Don't let them cut you off.
(46:11):
Have your whole self and out ofthat we can free ourselves from
the antisemitism that dominatesthe queer movement sensibility
at the moment.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Dawn, those are inspiring words, and I was also
very inspired by a poem that youread at the end of your speech
at the 25th anniversary ofDayenu, and you've kindly agreed
to share that poem with ourlisteners in Australia and
abroad Without further ado.
(46:47):
Here's Dawn Cohen with her poem.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
And speaking to the progressive Australian movement,
I can't tone it down to pleaseyou or appease you, to invite
you or excite you.
I will not shut it down.
(47:12):
My bond with Jews, israelites,zionists, jews, theists,
atheists, pacifist, warriors Abond and a knowing Ancient,
ancient and brand new.
(47:35):
We are Hebrews, I, I'm a Jewand I will not go that down.
Am Israel Echad.
Am Israel Chai?
The people Israel are one,united, not uniform.
(47:58):
The people Israel are one,united, not uniform.
The people Israel live.
We will not tone it down everagain.
And horror, ancient and new.
(48:28):
We choose our response, chosen,chosen left, chosen right.
We can only choose our responseand I choose it anew Hebrew,
israelite, jew.
Am Yisrael echad.
Am Yisrael chai.
The people Israel are one.
What happens to us happens tome.
The people Israel live.
(48:49):
I will not be a conditional Jewbegging acceptance by blaming
Netanyahu, denying my tribe andrefusing my name.
Never, ever again, for dinnerparties, book clubs and WhatsApp
chat, for Mardi Gras, bridgegames and neighbours to our flat
.
I am always a Jew, a lover ofRobin and of Zion, a lesbian
(49:13):
Hebrew.
I will not slice my own soul'sroots Israelite, Zionist, jew.
We are Hebrews, theists,atheists, pacifists and warriors
, wise old ones, ancient,ancient and brand new, am
(49:34):
Yisrael, israel Ehad, I'm IsraelHi.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
Thank you, Dawn.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Beautiful.
Yeah, I'm bowled over by yourwisdom, dawn, and by your
courage as well, and I'velearned a huge amount today.
Thank you for sharing the storyof Dayenu and for really,
really privileged to have heardit and to learn about it.
(50:07):
I can't wait to share it withour audience.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Thank you, Dash.
I really appreciate that.
Please keep holding in mindthere is a whole network of
people.
I'm somebody who finds it easyto talk, but there's lots of
people who are doing amazing,amazing work.
I'm just one aspect of that.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Thanks, Dawn, Always humble and so generous.
Thanks for joining us on ourpodcast today.
Thank you for the opportunity.
At first I was afraid I waspetrified us on our podcast
today.
Thank you for the opportunity.
(50:50):
That was Eshet Chayil DawnCohen, and that's it for another
week.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
You've been listening to.
A Shame to Admit, with TammySussman and me, dashiell
Lawrence.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King,
with theme music by Donny Jenks.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
If you like the podcast, leave a positive review
, tell your people or encourageyour third cousin's cousin to
advertise on the show.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
You can tell us what you're ashamed to admit via the
contact form on the JewishIndependent website or email
ashamed atthejewishindependentcomau.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
As always, thanks for your support.
Remember to hydrate thisweekend and look out for us next
week.
Are you interested in issues affecting Jews in
Australia, the Middle East andthe world at large?
But a little bit ashamed thatyou're barely keeping up to date
.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, you've come to the right place.
I'm Dash Lawrence and, in thispodcast series, your slightly
chaotic third cousin, tammySussman, and I call on experts
and each other to address allthe ignorant questions that you
might be too ashamed to ask.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Join us as we have a go at cutting through some
seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Welcome to the Jewish Independent Podcast.
Ash, shame to admit.
Hello everyone, I'm DashLawrence, Executive Director
here at the Jewish Independent.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
And I'm Tammy.
At first I was afraid I waspetrified.
At first I was afraid I waspetrified, sussman.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
At first you were afraid and petrified.
And what about now?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Well, dash, I grew strong and I learned how to get
along.
Do you know what song I'mheavily referencing?
Dash?
Speaker 2 (01:18):
I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
How do you pronounce it, Gaynor?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Oh sorry.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
No, it's fine, I say Gaynor.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Gaynor Gaynor.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I'll you pronounce it Gaynor.
Oh sorry.
No, it's fine, I say Gaynor,gaynor, gaynor.
I have to look it up.
I am, of course, referencingthe song I Will Survive by good
old Gloria.
It's an iconic song.
It's a queer anthem.
It's a Jewish anthem in manyways.
Did you know that?
No, I didn't, why, so it's beenembraced by both the LGBTQIA
(01:48):
plus community and the Jewishcommunity.
It's been adapted into Purimand Passover parodies because of
the strong themes aboutsurvival and resilience.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Love it, love it.
So, tammy, I'm assuming thatall of this is on your mind,
because this weekend, living inSydney as you do, you're going
to be getting out your glitter,your costume for Mardi Gras,
aren't you?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
I am.
It's Mardi Gras this weekendfor those of us in Sydney, and
this is our Mardi Gras specialepisode.
I am so excited to announcethis week's guest Dash.
Our prophet today is theawe-inspiring Dawn Cohen.
(02:39):
Now, I saw Dawn speak atEmanuel Synagogue a few weeks
ago at an event that wasorganised to celebrate 25 years
of Dayenu, and, for those of youwho aren't aware, dayenu is
Sydney's Jewish, lgbtqia plusdedicated organisation.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
And if the word Dayenu sounds familiar to you,
that's because it's best knownas the Passover Seder song.
You know, you know, Tammy,don't you?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I know what you're trying to do.
You're trying to get me to singDiana when I'm not going to.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
But you can.
No, you go ahead.
Can we do it together?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
No, I think you, as the non-Jew at the Seder who
loves belting out Diana, youshould give it a little bit.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Come on, do it with me.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Five, six, seven, eight.
Diana, Diana, diana, dianaDiana.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Diana, diana, diana.
It's the song which lists aseries of miracles, with each
verse concluding that any singleone of those blessings would
have been enough.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Dianel.
Dawn Cohen co-founded Dianel in2000.
Dawn became the public face ofJewish homosexuality in Sydney
back in 1990 when she debatedtwo rabbis at Australia's first
Jewish public forum onhomosexuality at the old Hakkoa
(04:06):
Club in Bondi, winning the daywith her passionate call not
just for inclusion andacceptance of Jewish homosexuals
but for a warm welcome home.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
In the years that followed, dawn repeated that
call in talks, articles anddebates in both queer and Jewish
settings, culminating in herco-founding of the
groundbreaking and at the time,controversial first Mardi Gras
Shabbat dinner at Shalom Collegein 2000.
And, of course, theaforementioned Dayenu float at
(04:38):
the Mardi Gras parade.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
These days, Dawn has another passion to add to her
list exposing the rejection andisolation that many Jews have
been experiencing in theirleft-leaning, anti-Israel
circles since October 7, andhelping them to carve out a safe
community.
I know you'll gain so much fromour chat with Dawn Cohen.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Thank you so much for joining us.
Dawn Cohen, it's wonderful tomeet you.
Welcome to the Ashamed to Admitstudio.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Thank you very much.
I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Now Dawn.
Our listeners will prettyquickly tell that your accent is
potentially not native toAustralia.
Yeah, I'm assuming you wereborn and raised in South Africa,
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Absolutely Well picked.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Tell us about your emergence into the world, that
South Africa that you grew up in.
What was life like for you,your formative years in South
Africa?
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well, I was born in 1957.
And so I grew up under theapartheid regime.
Both parents were staunchlyopposed to apartheid, so I grew
up in an atheist Jewish homewith strong, you know, support
for equality, liberty,anti-racism, lots of discussion
(06:13):
around dinner tables aboutpolitics, and, although atheist,
we didn't use the term secularJew, we just used the term
Jewish.
And I was in a very Jewishenvironment.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
This is in Johannesburg.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
In Johannesburg.
Yeah, and absolutely novisibility for gay people,
except the headmistress of myschool was a lesbian and this
was a big, open secret but shewasn't allowed to mention it.
She was in a relationship.
Everybody thought of course Inever got to check this out, but
(06:48):
she was in a relationship witha vice headmistress and that was
my first exposure.
She was a very Christian lady.
She didn't like me for onesecond because I was an atheist
and I was uppity, but that wasmy first introduction to
homosexuality of this verycompetent woman who didn't like
(07:09):
me.
And also you had to be very,very careful about never for a
second exposing thehomosexuality and of course I
don't know 100% if it was true,because you so couldn't ask.
But I grew up being terrifiedthat I was homosexual.
I'm not a suicidal person atall, other than when I thought
(07:30):
I'm homosexual I thought I'dhave to kill myself, and that
was purely from homophobia,because it's not my natural
response to life at all.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Do you have a memory of when you felt attracted to
women and you could sense inyourself that you were possibly
gay?
Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah Well, I was at the movies and I had my
boyfriend to my left and acompletely strange woman to my
right and I suddenly realised Ididn't want to kiss my boyfriend
, I wanted to kiss the woman tomy left.
Then I went to Jewish campmaybe 18 or 19, and there was
(08:07):
one of the circle dances and youkind of had to ask other people
to join you in an aspect of thecircle dance, and I asked a
girl and it took me years laterto realise everybody else was
asking opposite sex people andyou know there were lots of
moments like that.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Earlier, you described your parents being
quite socially progressive, orat least politically progressive
.
Did you talk about it with them, or was there a taboo around
homosexuality even with them?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
There was a taboo around homosexuality for
everybody.
I started being an activist onWITS campus about homosexuality
by writing articles anonymously,pretending to be somebody else
and doing occasional sort ofdebates that were reported in
the newspaper.
And my amazing grandmother cameto me after having read one of
(08:59):
my articles and said you know,it's totally.
But my friends are asking me Ijust want to know the answer.
Are you a lesbian or not?
And I regretted so strongly butI said no, and I was already at
university, knew that I was alesbian.
The pressure was so strong asif somehow the knowledge was out
(09:22):
.
It would be destructive, so Icouldn't respond with a yes to
my grandmother.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
And with your parents .
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Eventually, I did come out to my parents when I
arrived in Australia and I waswith tremendous support from the
lesbian community in Sydney,the friends that I'd made.
And I came out to my motherfirst, I think, and of course
you know she had been suspecting.
She definitely didn't want meto be gay, but you know her
(09:56):
recall of it is that she gave mea big hug.
I can't quite remember whathappened next.
That was the start of a 30-yearjourney of educating my parents
and them, listening them, youknow, being interested with all
the usual to be expectedhomophobias that parents had
then and to some extent have now, until the moment of our
(10:19):
marriage, robin and I's marriage, in 2018, when we'd been
together already for 35 years.
And you know, at that wedding,you know, my parents kind of
walked me down the aisle and mymother made this most
extraordinary speech of totalsort of acceptance and
(10:43):
celebration of our marriage, andmy father too was utterly
supportive by that stage.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
That's beautiful.
I'm looking forward to learninga little bit about what that
was like for you to finally haveyour love accepted equally like
the rest of heterosexualAustralians.
But just go back to thatdecision to leave South Africa.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I didn't decide to migrate.
My parents decided to migrate,you know.
I just went with them.
I was 20.
My parents, you know, had beentrying to migrate since I was
seven.
Two reasons they were opposedto apartheid and also they
understood that South Africawould not be stable because of
apartheid.
There was going to be violence.
(11:28):
We went and lived on a kibbutzfor a few months when I was
seven.
Didn't work, my father didn'tlike picking oranges and various
other attempts to leave.
I did know, though, that youknow Australia, america, england
, you know had exciting lesbianfeminist movements, and in those
days lesbians tended to bealigned with the women's
(11:50):
movement and gay men certainlyin Sydney were involved mostly
in their own movements, withsome overlap.
There were some groups thatwere both women and men, but for
me my home was with lesbianfeminists when I arrived in
Australia, and that's where Ifound intellectual support and
(12:10):
emotional support and room togrow.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
And just to be clear, you found support with the
Australian lesbian communityright, Not Jewish Australian.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
We couldn't find each other.
When I arrived in Australia in1978, there wasn't even a
picture of another life besidesheterosexual couple plus
children and grandchildren.
There was no sense at all ofemotional or intellectual or
even imaginative space intowhich someone like I could step.
(12:45):
So whereas other South AfricanJews migrated to a community
here, schools for their childrenor synagogue or other community
groups or even single Jewishkind of friendship networks,
there was no possibility for meof getting anything or there
being space for me in those.
But nobody was ever horrible tome, but it was just like you
(13:08):
know.
I might as well have been aTimbuktu and then I'd find the
occasional Jewish lesbian hereand there and very slowly, by
the late 80s Jewish lesbianswere beginning to find each
other here and we had tinylittle groups where you know, I
got religious education aboutJudaism from a particular woman
(13:30):
Her name is Jen Van Proctor whowas starting to run little or
organise these tiny littlegroups for us.
So slowly, slowly, we foundeach other, but that was long
after I'd arrived in thiscountry and established myself.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
And a special hello to Jen.
She's a listener of this show.
Good, so you arrive in Sydneyand you're finding Jewish
lesbians here and there, but notnecessarily in the eastern
suburbs where most of the Jewscongregated, am I right?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Well, I was very excited when I finally found my
eastern suburbs Jewish lesbianfriend, the one yeah, Hello Jude
Kell.
And he became, in fact, thefirst president of DIA after me.
So no, I did not have a home inthe eastern suburbs.
My parents lived in the easternsuburbs, but other than that it
(14:22):
was like a foreign world.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
The reason I'm bringing geography into this is
because, dawn, you've beencredited with bringing gay Jews,
queer Jews, back into theSydney Jewish community Prior to
that.
Where were they mainly livingtheir lives?
Speaker 3 (14:41):
So, look, I want to make it clear that it wasn't
just me living their lives.
So, look, I want to make itclear that it wasn't just me.
There were lots of very braveand helpful gay and lesbian
people, you know, from about thebeginning of the 80s onwards,
who would be doing importantthings to start that process up
(15:02):
in part of a process that alsowas commenced in America with
amazing people who began tryingto create a space for homosexual
Jews.
Where were most of my friendsliving in the inner west?
Where was I?
I was in Stanmore at one stage.
Balmain, leichhardt and, ofcourse, a lot of gay men were
(15:23):
around Paddington and OxfordStreet, but I didn't know them.
My world was in the inner west.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Dawn.
When you arrived in Australia,you did connect with a wider
lesbian movement and there was akind of an interrelationship
between the women's rights andthe lesbian movement, and this
was among non-Jewish Australians.
So you could have quite easilyhave just kept your community
(15:49):
there.
I'm wondering why was itimportant for you to then find
lesbian Jewish women and gayJewish people?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
It's such a good question, dash.
I'm a person who needs my wholeself.
Part of why I have fought sohard in a public way for my
lesbian self is because I can'tfunction without my heart.
My lesbian self is my heart andmy sensibility.
(16:21):
It's who I love, but there'salso something about me and how
I am that's just profoundlylesbian.
And I also can't functionwithout my history, my roots,
those ancestral roots that goback 3,000 years and are
indefinable, and deepspirituality so inextricably
(16:45):
intertwined with those ancestralroots.
And so to have my whole self, Ineed to have my Jewishness, my
lesbianism, and I guess thethird aspect of that is my
freedom of mind.
I really need freedom to thinkand of course, all of that gives
(17:07):
me a natural home in theprogressive Judaism of today.
At Emmanuel Synagogue, which ismy synagogue, I can have all of
those three things.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Wow Dawn, how did you and your crew bring Jewish
lesbians back into the Jewishcommunity?
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Like I said, there was a small group of us, some
very, very Jewish-affirmingpeople, that embodied that
embracing of both.
Lyndall Katz is another veryimportant activist who refused
to give up either part ofherself, and when individuals
(17:52):
refuse to give up part ofthemselves and do that in a
loving and affirming butassertive way, it kind of opens
up the space for everybody else.
It kind of opens up the spacefor everybody else Also.
Lorraine Larry was one of them.
Those people created theinitial ground, but I noticed
(18:16):
that what was happening was thegay men and lesbians were
working separately.
So, for example, in 1998, theJewish Lesbians of Victoria who
also are an amazing group, whohelped lay the groundwork for
the changes that have happenedthey had a small, the very first
Jewish contingent in Mardi Gras.
It was a small walking group.
And then in 1999, there was asmall gay men's walking group as
(18:40):
well, I think they calledthemselves the Jewish Princesses
and we had a small lesbianwalking group.
But I understood that the Jewishcommunity would not change
until gay men and lesbiansstarted working together.
It was as if we couldn't betaken seriously or as a force to
be reckoned with until we didthat At the same time.
(19:04):
Jen and Larry and I, and maybesome others, tried to organise
the very first Mardi GrasShabbat.
We totally understand why Atthat time no synagogue could
provide us with space to houseif we tried and were turned down
, and so I understood then thatthere had to be a united men and
(19:27):
women's group.
We'd made some breakthroughs in1990 with the very first talk
on homosexuality in the Jewishcommunity in which I debated
Rabbi Kamens and Orthodox RabbiFranklin, and we'd made some
breakthroughs at that time withthat first debate.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Can you tell our listeners how that came?
To be Sure.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
So there was a remarkable man by the name of
Nick Seaman, and Nick's motherworked with me.
We worked in the same communityhealth centre and she was also
lovely and very open to talkingabout homosexuality, which was
fabulous for me to have someonewho was easy with the fact that
I was a lesbian, because thiswas 1990, if I'm not mistaken.
(20:14):
Yeah.
And one day she came to me andsaid Dawn, do you know?
We're looking for a gay man whowill talk in this debate that
Vic's organising onhomosexuality and we can't find
anybody.
It's going to be the firstdebate on homosexuality in the
Jewish community.
Nick's got a couple of rabbis.
Do you know anybody?
And I said I'll do it.
(20:38):
And Agnes looks a little bitworried because you know I'm a,
you know, sensitive person whocan easily be hurt.
And she said are you sure youwant to do this?
You know the Jewish Orthodoxcommunity is not that accepting
and it's never been done before.
It might get a little bitaggressive.
(21:01):
You know I'm worried they'llkind of kill you.
And I went home to Rob, who'snow my wife, and I said Rob,
should I do it?
She said yes, definitely youshould do it.
And I went to some friends andsaid gay people and said you
know, should I do this?
And I got the answer no.
Look, you know we've got tokeep the two things separate.
(21:24):
If you bring Jews and gays intothe same room, they'll kill
each other and you know it justcan't mix.
And I went back to Rob, who youknow is a 78er, meaning that she
was arrested in the GayLiberation March that resulted
in Mardi Gras.
She was thrown into jail, shewas thrown downstairs, so she
(21:46):
knew a thing or two aboutfighting for liberation.
And she said to me Dawn, ofcourse you must speak, there is
a homosexual and a Jew insideyour skin.
Of course they can get on witheach other.
Of course they can integrate.
They're doing that inside you.
And so I went ahead, and thefirst thing to be done was to
(22:09):
have all the speakers and Nickcome and have a breakfast.
And so everybody came to mytiny little Bellemain house.
I'd never met a rabbi before,by the way.
Had no idea, kind of you knowwhat does one feed a rabbi for
breakfast?
I just Pickles.
Well, I didn't know.
I made sure Rob did thecatering, not me.
(22:29):
I was really, you know, worried.
Anyway, there they are in mylittle little little Balmain
house, and, you know, worried.
Anyway, there they are in mylittle little little Balmain
house and everybody's very niceto me.
And eventually Rabbi Franklin,who was personally lovely to me,
leans over and he says Dawn,look, I personally support you.
You know, I was ananti-apartheid fighter in South
(22:50):
Africa.
But, dawn, they're going tokill you.
So my suggestion is you justtalk for a few minutes and I'll
take over, I'll protect you.
And I said thank you Rabbi.
No, I'll talk.
And also, no bloke's going totell me he'll take up my
speaking space.
(23:11):
I remember walking on the stageand looking down and there's a
sea of Jewish faces.
Now, I hadn't seen a sea ofJewish faces since I'd migrated
from South Africa because I'djust been in the lesbian
community.
Everybody looks familiar.
They look like my uncle, myauntie, my granny.
I had this experience of beingwith family.
(23:31):
I had this experience of beingwith family and then in the
front row there was a group oflesbian and gay, mostly
non-Jewish people, all lookingexcited and I thought, oh,
they're here to support me.
And then, about 10 rows back,there's my parents looking a bit
(23:52):
scared, but very brave, and mywonderful, very supportive
cousins, saul and Ilana, arealso there and I suddenly
thought I'm home and I have avoice now.
Yeah, and I opened by sayingI'm a proud Jew and a proud
lesbian and I am making Aliyahfrom Belmain to Bondi.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
And that broke the ice.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
Yeah, and you know there was absolute applause.
Both rabbis, I think, were verysurprised and the hall was
packed.
And then, for one of the firsttimes, we got coverage in the
Jewish news.
Up to then we'd been mostlyinvisible, and so it broke the
ice.
It also broke the invisiblewalls that kept us out of the
(24:44):
psychological Jewish space thatthe Jewish news represented.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I'm so glad you described it with the pride it
deserves because you were alittle self-deprecating.
The first time I heard thatstory you said so many people
showed up.
I think because Sydney were alittle self-deprecating the
first time I heard that storyyou said so many people showed
up.
I think because Sydney is alittle bit boring back in the
90s it was.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
That was part of it.
So I just had a sort of insightand I've got a sense of the
elements that were needed.
Yes, men and women had to cometogether.
We had to have overseasvisitors, because every time
there was a Jewish overseasvisitor, the Jewish news covered
it.
And I thought, get somebodyfrom overseas and they will
(25:25):
cover it.
We had to make it fun andexciting, because truly Jewish
community needed fun andexciting.
We needed heterosexual peoplewalking with us so that it
modeled to the Jewish community.
This is the thing to do Be withus, walk with us, stand with us
.
And we needed to have a bigsplash and we needed a Shabbat
(25:49):
dinner under a Jewish roof.
We needed to make a spiritualbreakthrough into Jewish
community.
I truly mean it about usneeding to make a liyar, a
maliyar that involved welcomingto the community itself,
spiritual inclusion in thesynagogue, and so this was a
(26:10):
massive Jewish coming out, gayJewish coming out process.
And basically I went, went toLorraine Larry and Deb Saltman
asked if they would help me dothis.
They said yes, lorraine Larryis the one who named the
organization, dayenu.
I expected it to last about sixmonths, just enough for us to
(26:30):
create the breakthrough.
I had no idea other people notme would keep it going for the
next 25 years, and that was theformation of Dayenu.
Lots of ups and downs, allsorts of battles and challenges,
threats to me at that stage bysomebody on the Jewish Board of
(26:50):
Deputies, totally, whereas nowthe Jewish Board of Deputies is
just amazing and supportive,encouraging.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
But that was the start dawn, you mentioned the
important role of jewishheterosexuals what we would now
call allies and the role thatthey played in walking side by
side with you and your movement.
Tell us about some of thosesignificant allies that you had
in those early days and what itdoes to a movement to have
(27:22):
allyship and people brave enoughto speak up to the wider
community.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Yeah, without them there would be no Dayenu, there
would be no space for us inJewish community.
I'm profoundly grateful.
The very first person that Iapproached was Rabbi Jackie
Ninia and asked her, with Kentor Joseph Toltz, to lead the
(27:50):
Shabbat dinner and service theShalom Institute.
Actually, they were first theretoo that I approached to house
the Shabbat dinner and servicethe Shalom Institute.
Actually, they were first theretoo that I approached to house
the Shabbat dinner and RabbiNuneo said yes.
And each time you get a yes,it's like really I didn't really
expect that, you know, becausewe had been knocking on the door
for some years and hearing no.
(28:12):
The fabulous writer DianeArmstrong was one of those
people who had a family memberwho was gay at that stage, and
she and members of her familyjoined us on that march.
Now Diane's a Holocaustsurvivor.
And there was another Holocaustsurvivor by the name of Susie
Wise, and their participationmeant the world to us and I was
(28:38):
overjoyed when, after the parade, susie Wise came to me and I
think it was even reported inthe Jewish news and said it was
incredible for her to walk downthe street and be cheered as a
Jew, and so I'd been imaginingall of this was going to just be
support for us lesbian and gayJews.
(28:59):
And remembering transgender wasnot on the radar yet in Sydney,
so we were thinking lesbian andgay.
But to hear a Holocaustsurvivor say that it had helped
her around being Jewish and thatit was an absolute peak moment
for her was just such a bonus,such a bonus to feel that we'd
(29:24):
given her that.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
And there's also another ally which you haven't
mentioned I'm going to mentionhim because I try and work him
into most episodes and that'syour friend Vic Aladef, marathon
runner and fit grandpa.
So can you tell us about Vic'scontribution?
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah.
So we were very lucky that Vichappened to be the editor of the
Jewish News.
While this was happening, hewouldn't compromise his
journalistic values to give intopressures.
The pressure on him wasenormous.
He made a decision to give thefront page of the Jewish news
(30:06):
after Mardi Gras to us, to theDayenu float, and he knew that
that was going to cause a hugereaction from the orthodox
rabbinate and he knew it wasrisking his job, but he chose to
do that anyway.
He would not sacrifice being agood journalist to fit in with
(30:29):
homophobic pressure.
And then what happened was bothhe and the heads of Shalom
Institute at the time werecalled by the Beth Din to
account for themselves for thefact that they had refused to
collude with the invisibilitywith which homosexuals were
(30:51):
expected to comply with by theOrthodox Jewish rabbinate
expected to comply with by theorthodox jewish rabbinate and
both vick and I think it was,yeah, just refused to go off to
the bed in an account forthemselves and instead what vick
did, which is actually I thinkit's unprecedented in the world.
I've never read of any otherjewish community doing this.
(31:13):
He he ran letters for weeks andweeks of people's opinions on
whether Jewish community shouldbe letting in gay people and
overwhelmingly he got letter andletter and letter of support
for us.
You'd pick up the Jewish newsand you couldn't believe it.
(31:35):
That many people were on ourside.
We hadn't really realized it.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
It was to the point where the Orthodox rabbis
thought that it was unbalancedthat he was publishing too many
letters in support and he wasn'tpublishing the ones that
opposed it.
And he said no, I'm publishingevery single letter.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
publishing the ones that opposed it, and he said, no
, I'm publishing every singleletter, In fact, to try and make
it even look more balanced,even though it was the factual
truth.
He'd actually have to inviteplease somebody who's opposed to
this, write something.
And I think that's where theRebinate was underestimating the
Jewish community.
One of the unique gifts ofJewish community is the capacity
(32:17):
for nuance and complexity inour welcome to everybody.
So it was particularly formodern Orthodox Jews.
It is completely easy to say wewelcome gay people into our
community and we also have menand women sitting separately,
for example.
You know, I'm progressive Jew,but I love that capacity to be
(32:39):
able to think in a complex way.
And so what Vic did then is notonly did it make our welcome
very, very solid into the gaycommunity, not only did it say
to Jewish leadership gay peopleare here, we belong, we have our
place.
It actually said to the Jewishrabbinate the Jewish Australian
(33:05):
community wants to make room forour rabbinate, who we respect,
but also for secularindependence, who we respect,
but also for secularindependence.
And so there was, in effect, aJewish community putting a
statement to its leadershipsaying we value you rabbis, we
value you, beth Din, we valueour leadership, and we also want
(33:29):
room for independence ofthought.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Dawn.
I'm told that a few years ago,having made all of this progress
with Dayanoo and worked so hardover many years to see the
establishment of a place, aspace for gay and lesbians in
the Jewish community in Sydney,you were all but ready, perhaps,
(33:56):
to hang up your activism boots.
But then something happened atthe end of 2023 and you saw the
need to go back out there and bean activist again.
Tell us what happened.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah, well, october the 7th happened.
You know, when Robin and I gotmarried in 2018, I really
thought, wow, this massive partof my being can go and retire
now, my activist self.
I understood at that stage thatthere was lots of room for me
in the Jewish community, butthat the gay community wasn't so
(34:32):
great for Jews.
But you know, it was all right.
It was all right.
But on October the 7th orOctober the 9th really, when the
trauma happened of us beingexcluded from the opera house
and when I saw that very few ofmy progressive, non-jewish
(34:53):
community understood howhorrible that was, I realised
that I was no longer safe as aJew.
Half of me was now safe andsecure in my gay self, but in my
precious home in non-Jewishprogressive world, I was no
longer safe.
(35:13):
There'd been intimations of this.
I'd lived in Byron Bay for 12years.
I'd been active around standingup to the anti-Semitism in
Byron Bay, writing articles forthe newspapers there, giving
talks between 2000 and 2012 orso.
But this was something else.
This was something else and Ithink we all know that.
(35:35):
But this was something else.
This was something else and Ithink we all know that.
This is the 25th anniversary ofDayenu.
It's the first time I've doneanything publicly where I've
talked about October the 7th andits consequences, because, like
most of us, I was in shock fora year and distressed for a year
, like many, many Jews.
But what I started to do wasuse the same process of
(35:58):
analyzing what was happening tome as I had used around sexism
and heterosexism to give thetalks that I had given in the
Jewish community aroundhomosexuality.
I had to understand the subtleenergies coming at me to try and
stop me.
The very first one of that wasthey'll kill you, don't do it.
(36:18):
That was the first homophobicor heterosexist invitation to
collude with my own oppression.
But there were hundreds ofothers and I had to unpick each
one with Robin's help, and itwas an ongoing process of
unpicking heterosexism,heterosexism being the term for
when heterosexuality isprivileged over homosexuality.
(36:42):
I now started applying thosesame principles to antisemitism,
and that requires aredefinition of how most people
see antisemitism.
Most people think ofSemitism aswhen people want to kill Jews
or take jobs away from us.
Now, that is anti-Semitism,that's gross anti-Semitism.
(37:03):
But there's a subtleanti-Semitism, akin to the
equivalent of sexism orhomophobia, that actually
everybody's got Just like.
Prior to the women's movement.
Everybody was sexist.
No man who was mansplainingthere wasn't a word for it then
thought I'm being horrible towomen.
(37:24):
He thought I'm just beingnormal, right, somebody had to
work out.
Ah, that's that thing where menthink they've got the right to
educate women on everything andsomebody don't know who the
fabulous person was made up theword mansplaining, so she
unpicked whoever.
That was unpicked.
An aspect of sexism, put wordsto it.
(37:46):
Now it's kind of like ithappens, but it can be unpicked
easily.
So I've understood we need to beabout antisemitism easily.
So I've understood we need tobe about anti-Semitism.
We start needing to understandthat there's gross anti-Semitism
but also subtle anti-Semitism,and it's the responsibility
particularly of progressive Jewslike myself who live at the
(38:07):
interface of the non-Jewishprogressive world and the Jewish
community, to do that job ofunpicking the subtle
anti-Semitism, because we loveour friends, we love our
non-Jewish community.
We can do this from a space oflove, but first we need to know
the subtle anti-Semitismactually exists.
(38:29):
It's very painful the processof noticing it, then at least
not colluding with it insideourselves.
So I've noticed two or three ofthe subtle anti-Semitism, but
there's a billion more and Ijust invite everybody to join in
this work.
It is so empowering because ithelps me not to collude with the
(38:57):
pressures on me to dissociatefrom my Jewish self or
dissociate from my mainstreamJewish community would now
(39:18):
broadly call the queer movementor LGBTIQ plus movement.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
In recent years, and obviously particularly since
October, the 7th 2023.
What are these manifestationsof anti-semitism that you've
you've noticed?
Speaker 3 (39:29):
the very first thing I noticed was Penny Wong.
Now, I adored Penny Wong.
I've written articles whereI'll just throw in, you know,
penny Wong for Prime Minister.
I thought she was fabulous.
I've personally interviewedPenny Wong at one stage as a
journalist Such a bright, youknow, caring, amazing politician
(39:50):
, I thought, and I still thinkshe is.
And yet the day her firstcomments about October 7th, were
utterly unempathic to thesuffering of the Jews, the
Israelis, the Israelis who hadbeen assaulted and murdered, and
(40:13):
to the Jewish community.
Her first response was aboutcautioning Israel not to respond
significantly, and shecorrected that later.
But where her heart was at wasprofoundly not with Jews and it
(40:38):
caused me immense personal painand confusion and in fact I've
only put language to this in thelast few weeks.
That lack of empathy isactually a sign of anti-Semitism
and I've noticed it manifestingrecently around the murderous,
antisemitic nurses, where I willhear people talking about it,
(41:02):
of course saying it's wrong andbad, but their heart is with the
nurses.
Actually, you know, weren'tthey silly?
If only they had.
And this lack of empathy for uswhen we have suffered greatly
is a symptom of anti-Semitism.
Now that I've got language forit, I can now name it so when it
(41:24):
happens in front of me againwith kindness and with love, I
can now articulate it.
There's two other things I'venoticed that have caused me pain
, but help me now that I'vefound words for it.
One is the necessity to blame aJew.
There is the most profound andpervasive pressure to find a Jew
(41:49):
to blame.
In some cases it will be toblame Netanyahu Now, and it's
easy to go along with this.
I mean, I don't like Netanyahu,I don't support his policies.
I'm like most progressive Jews,I'm absolutely opposed to the
settler movement.
But although it looks likereasoned argument, actually it's
(42:11):
an invitation.
Let's blame a Jew.
I've noticed when I've readarticles written by progressive
Jews, particularly in the Herald, there's almost a formula
that's followed.
The first is to establish yourJewish credentials I'm the child
of Holocaust survivors Almostnext there's a blaming, often of
other Jewish community membersfor being horrible to the
(42:34):
anti-Israel writer.
There was one article bysomeone who threw his own
grandmother under the bus abouther not being nice enough to him
, about, you know, his stand onthe Israel-Palestinian crisis.
Then there's a broadening ofwhat seems reasoned.
You know there's often a Hamaswas bad the little line, and
(42:54):
then there's a crescendo ofending of blaming Netanyahu.
Quite incredible when you readthem and know the formula's
happening.
Now, those Jews who are writingthose things aren't consciously
thinking, oh, I'm going to throwmy grandmother under the bus.
But what they're doing isthey're unconsciously responding
to anti-Semitic invitation fromthe non-Jewish world who are
(43:19):
also unconscious of it.
They don't think they'd behorrible to Jews.
And the invitation is distanceyourself from mainstream Jewish
community.
The invitation is put all theblame on Netanyahu, make them
the bad person.
And it's quite different fromreasoned, good, strong criticism
of the Israeli government.
This lacks subtlety or nuanceand one sort of needs to tune in
(43:44):
and ask the question is this areasoned debate or is this that
subtle anti-Semitic invitation?
And I'm just talking about thesubtle anti-Semitism.
There's much more stuff that ismuch less subtle than that.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
Well, the overt stuff gets reported, but the subtle
stuff doesn't, unless we talkabout it.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Dawn, as someone that has been in the wider gay and
lesbian movement now for manydecades, if you have any
explanation or any theories onhow and I could be wrong about
this but my impression is thatthere has been a twinning of the
(44:22):
pro-Palestinian cause and thepro-Palestinian movement with
the contemporary queer rightsmovement.
You see that very much in theUnited States, perhaps less so
here in Australia, but I stillsee it here in Australia.
Can you offer up anyexplanation for us on that?
Speaker 3 (44:41):
Well, the first problem is when we call those
movements pro-Palestinian.
I think that's a problematicmisnomer.
I am pro-Palestinian.
I'm also pro-Israel.
Most Jews that I know arepro-Palestinian and pro-Israel.
We want a good life, an equallife, a dignified life for all
Jews, Muslims, Palestinians andIsraelis.
(45:03):
So I think we need to stopcalling that the pro-Palestinian
movement.
I think a better name is theanti-Israel movement.
There's all sorts of complexreasons for that twinning.
One is I think it's adeliberate strategy of the
anti-Israel, anti-Zionismmovement.
Actually, it's so complex I'mnot sure whether I can do it
(45:27):
justice.
It would be a whole interview initself to show how we got there
, but the way out is theresponsibility of progressive
Jewish LGBTIQ people, people whoidentify as queer, transgender,
intersex, lesbian, gay,bisexual, non-gender, conforming
, and who have connections withboth the Jewish community and
(45:50):
the broader queer movement, arethe ones who can make the change
.
What a queer movement are theones who can make the change,
and the change comes throughbearing to look at the
anti-Semitism around and withlove and compassion,
articulating it and standingwith mainstream Jewish community
.
Don't let them cut you off.
(46:11):
Have your whole self and out ofthat we can free ourselves from
the antisemitism that dominatesthe queer movement sensibility
at the moment.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Dawn, those are inspiring words, and I was also
very inspired by a poem that youread at the end of your speech
at the 25th anniversary ofDayenu, and you've kindly agreed
to share that poem with ourlisteners in Australia and
abroad Without further ado.
(46:47):
Here's Dawn Cohen with her poem.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
And speaking to the progressive Australian movement,
I can't tone it down to pleaseyou or appease you, to invite
you or excite you.
I will not shut it down.
(47:12):
My bond with Jews, israelites,zionists, jews, theists,
atheists, pacifist, warriors Abond and a knowing Ancient,
ancient and brand new.
(47:35):
We are Hebrews, I, I'm a Jewand I will not go that down.
Am Israel Echad.
Am Israel Chai?
The people Israel are one,united, not uniform.
(47:58):
The people Israel are one,united, not uniform.
The people Israel live.
We will not tone it down everagain.
And horror, ancient and new.
(48:28):
We choose our response, chosen,chosen left, chosen right.
We can only choose our responseand I choose it anew Hebrew,
israelite, jew.
Am Yisrael echad.
Am Yisrael chai.
The people Israel are one.
What happens to us happens tome.
The people Israel live.
(48:49):
I will not be a conditional Jewbegging acceptance by blaming
Netanyahu, denying my tribe andrefusing my name.
Never, ever again, for dinnerparties, book clubs and WhatsApp
chat, for Mardi Gras, bridgegames and neighbours to our flat
.
I am always a Jew, a lover ofRobin and of Zion, a lesbian
(49:13):
Hebrew.
I will not slice my own soul'sroots Israelite, Zionist, jew.
We are Hebrews, theists,atheists, pacifists and warriors
, wise old ones, ancient,ancient and brand new, am
(49:34):
Yisrael, israel Ehad, I'm IsraelHi.
Speaker 1 (49:45):
Thank you, Dawn.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Beautiful.
Yeah, I'm bowled over by yourwisdom, dawn, and by your
courage as well, and I'velearned a huge amount today.
Thank you for sharing the storyof Dayenu and for really,
really privileged to have heardit and to learn about it.
(50:07):
I can't wait to share it withour audience.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Thank you, Dash.
I really appreciate that.
Please keep holding in mindthere is a whole network of
people.
I'm somebody who finds it easyto talk, but there's lots of
people who are doing amazing,amazing work.
I'm just one aspect of that.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:26):
Thanks, Dawn, Always humble and so generous.
Thanks for joining us on ourpodcast today.
Thank you for the opportunity.
At first I was afraid I waspetrified us on our podcast
today.
Thank you for the opportunity.
(50:50):
That was Eshet Chayil DawnCohen, and that's it for another
week.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
You've been listening to.
A Shame to Admit, with TammySussman and me, dashiell
Lawrence.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King,
with theme music by Donny Jenks.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
If you like the podcast, leave a positive review
, tell your people or encourageyour third cousin's cousin to
advertise on the show.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
You can tell us what you're ashamed to admit via the
contact form on the JewishIndependent website or email
ashamed atthejewishindependentcomau.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
As always, thanks for your support.
Remember to hydrate thisweekend and look out for us next
week.
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