Editorial introduction.

Samra, Myer

Readers will find as they leaf through this edition of the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies that, somewhat serendipitously, a common theme unites a number of the articles, that being a look at the Whitlam years, Prime Minster Gough Whitlam's policy towards issues that mattered greatly to Australian Jews, namely his attitude to Israel, particularly during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and the campaign for the right of Jews from the Soviet Union to emigrate from a polity that was marked by extreme antisemitism and the extensive abuse of human rights. With the passage of time and the release of archived documents from that era for inspection, two major researchers, one a political scientist and the other a historian, have taken up the opportunity to investigate this crucial period and the policies which have had a lasting impact on the Australian Jewish community and its political orientation. We have benefited as a result of their research, which has produced two important articles that complement one another in providing an understanding of that era-augmented in this Journal by insights from Australia's then Ambassador to Israel, F. Rawdon Dalrymple.

We begin with Chanan Reich's exploration of Australia's reaction to the war in 1973, when Egypt and Syria simultaneously attacked Israel, taking its citizens by surprise and unprepared for warfare on the most solemn day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when Jews observe a 24 hour fast and practically all activity in Israel comes to a halt. Israel suffered substantial losses in the first few days of the war, and the Arab armies penetrated deep into Israeli territory raising existential fears that Israel could be wiped off the map.

While Australia had been expected to support Israel at the United Nations, the Whitlam Government espoused a policy of "strict neutrality and even handedness", which yet appeared to support the Arab states. A request from Israel for aircraft from Australia was flatly refused. When the Soviet Union began rearming Syria and Egypt, Australia did not initially raise any objection. Only once the United States sent arms to Israel did our government invoke its "even handedness" by objecting to the arming of both sides.

Ambassador Dalrymple acknowledges the accuracy of Reich's account, revealing that he had not been informed of or given an explanation for changes in Australia's voting at the UN and when summoned by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir to clarify Australia's position, he could only offer what he surmised from reading the Australian newspapers. Dalrymple's account of Golda Meir's reaction is a delightful sideline, illustrating the strength of her imposing personality and her attitude to the term "Palestinians".

Suzanne Rutland extends this discussion by looking at Whitlam's policy to Israel more broadly, and to his attitude to the plight of Soviet Jewry. While Whitlam argued that his "strict neutrality and even handedness" was simply the implementation of the same policy that Australian governments had always had to the Middle East, Rutland shows how dramatically he had drifted from the sympathy and understanding that Israel had enjoyed and come to expect from Australia, while in regard to the plight of Soviet Jewry, it seems clear that he was reluctant to raise this as a specific issue, but rather chose to speak of human rights issues more generally.

We see clearly Whitlam's sympathy for Arab causes and an antipathy to "you people" when speaking to representatives of the Jewish community. As Rutland tries to work through the motives behind these changes, with the government effectively treating Israel as a pariah state, we see why for the first time ever Jewish organisations in Australia called for their constituents to vote against a particular political party.

The next article brings us back to the Yom Kippur War, as Heddy Shait examines four Hebrew literary pieces which feature reactions to the plight of Israel soldiers who went missing in action during the war. Each of these works has a very different though thought-provoking perspective on the situation, two of them written soon after the war while the other two were penned many years later, with religious motifs, personal and national issues brought to the fore. Interestingly, Shait finds that each piece offers "silent criticism" of the authorities responsible for the war and the lack of action to find the missing soldiers--silent because it is not directly stated but to be implied from how the actors behave. Shait draws parallels with the Bible's account of David's immoral behaviour in regard to Bathsheba: "events are presented neutrally, without comment or judgment", leaving it to the reader to reach the obvious and inevitable conclusion.

From here we move into completely different territory, with a fascinating exploration by Ephraim Nissan and Zohar Amar of the word "tsvi" in Hebrew, a term for a kind of ruminant animal, and how it was understood within different Jewish communities in Europe and the Middle East. The article begins with a novel by S. Y. Agnon, where a "tsvi" is the central feature of an elaborate wedding banquet. The authors illustrate how clearly Agnon was using the term to refer to a deer, which is how the word was understood in Eastern Europe. While Rashi in Mediaeval France speculate if the term originally referred to a mountain goat, we find that in Iraq Jews understood the tsvi to be the gazelle. Nissan and Amar show that in the Bible, tsvi in fact did refer to the gazelle and that in Iraq, even in recent times, some Jews kept gazelles in their homes, as a source of meat.

In her article, Naomi Gale reports on her research concerning the self-esteem of 3 generations of women of Iraqi background, living in a remote Israeli development town. While she commenced with the hypothesis that women in each succeeding generation would have higher self-esteem, in line with the increase in the number of years that the women had attended school, she reports that she found this was not the case. The level of self-esteem was not much different between the generations, though in fact the oldest women had slightly better levels than their daughters and granddaughters, while the middle generation fared worst. I invite you to read the article for an explanation of this unexpected result.

From here we move on to book reviews. We begin with a review artcle by Mark Aarons of Leslie Caplan's The Road to the Menzies Inquiry: Suspected War criminals in Australia. Originally produced as a BA (Honours) thesis by Leslie Caplan, it was published by the Australian Jewish Historical Society this year and describes the campaign which led the Australian Government to explore the illegal entry of Nazi war criminals into Australia and to prosecute some of them. The two persons most involved in this campaign were Leslie Caplan as President of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and Mark Aarons, then an ABC Radio investigative journalist who uncovered the stories of these characters. It is fitting therefore that we have here the book written by one, reviewed and augmented by the other, recounting this important chapter of Australian history.

I am pleased to indicate that we have a large number of additional reviews, two of them books written by former presidents of this Association, Dvir Abramovich and Ziva Shavitsky, who together also edited the Journal between 2002 and 2009. Ziva Shavitsky has reviewed Dvir Abramovich's new book, Hebrew Classics, which introduces the reader to a number of major Hebrew authors, whose works have influenced later generations. I have reviewed Elana Benjamin's My Mother's Spice cupboard, an absorbing, honest account of the author's family over three generations, as they have moved from Baghdad to Bombay and on to Bondi.

Sanford H. Shudnow has reviewed In the Whirlwind, a book by Robert A. Burd, that seeks to bring together the God of the Old and the New Testaments as the same God, relating to biblical personalities through conflict, exemplified by Abraham's attempt to persuade God not to destroy Sodom and the trials that Job endures. Shudnow is particularly impressed that Burd, a law professor, should be writing such a book, which is "almost a religious text".

Palaces of Time by Elisheva Carlebach, a richly illustrated book on the development of the Jewish calendar is reviewed by Rachael Kohn, while Graeme Gill examines Isaiah Gruber's Orthodox Russia in Crisis, a history of Russia during what is known as "the time of trouble" between 1598 when Fyodor I died without issue and 1613 when Mikhail Romanov ascended the throne, initiating a dynasty that lasted until the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Immigrants make up a large proportion of the population of Australia and Israel and Immigration and Nation Building, edited by Andrew Markus & Moshe Semyonov which compares the experience of the two countries is reviewed by Gary Eckstein. Peter Wertheim explores Israel: An Introduction, edited by Barry Rubin, covering such topics as the country's land and people, society, government and politics, economics and culture and contemporary life.

John Levi has provided us with a review of Ziva Shavitsky's The Mystery of the Ten Lost Tribes: A Critical Survey of Historical and Archaeological Records relating to the People of Israel in Exile in Syria, Mesopotamia and Persia up to ca. 300 BCE--the subtitle of which indicates clearly the purpose and value of this work.

The Washington Haggadah is a reproduction of a beautiful, illustrated manuscript prepared by Joel ben Simeon during the Fifteenth Century, now housed in the US Library of Congress. Rachael Kohn examines this work, which includes an introduction and translation by David Stern, and a second scholarly introduction by Katrin Kogman-Appel.

Next, Judith Berman has reviewed The Testimony by Halina Wagowska, a child survivor of the Holocaust, who recounts her experience in the Nazi camps, and her work since her liberation in the human rights and social justice fields, while I have reviewed Nadia Abu El-Haj's The Genealogical Science--The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology, which as the title indicates, provides a fascinating look at what we can learn about the origins of Jewish groups from the burgeoning genealogical sciences that have followed in the wake of deciphering of the human genome.

I am sure you will agree with me this volume has much of interest and much to learn from. I hope you will have as much pleasure in reading the Journal as I have had in putting it together.