Editorial introduction.

Samra, Myer

This is my first year as Editor of the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, having assumed the role from Professor Ziva Shavitsky and Dr Dvir Abramovich, who have retired after editing the Journal for the past eight years. My thanks to them both for having dedicated so much time and effort to this voluntary role, ensuring that the Journal maintained a high standard of scholarship that we can be proud of, as Australia's contribution to the field of Jewish Studies. I trust this edition of the Journal will be seen to build on their success and that of previous editors Dr Evan Zuesse, Dr Rachael Kohn and Dr Rodney Gouttman. Fortunately, Lucy Davey has chosen to stay on as Editorial Assistant, ensuring continuity in the presentation and appearance of the Journal and I thank her for the vital role she plays. We have also assembled an Editorial Board of scholars willing to give advice when called upon, and to offer suggestions for the peer-review of articles submitted for consideration in the Journal.

The two major activities of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies are the publication of this Journal and the staging of an annual Jewish Studies Conference. While the Journal is not a record of conference proceedings, I am pleased when papers delivered at the Conference can be published as articles in the Journal after appropriate peer review. I personally wish to see the Keynote Addresses presented at our Conferences make their way into the Journal.

Every year, a prominent academic, writer or Jewish leader is invited to present a Keynote Address at the Conference and for this purpose is given an extended session to develop the theme he or she wishes to present. These addresses are usually well reasoned, thought provoking, and relevant to a wide range of topics. I consider that we should particularly attempt to publish these stimulating addresses in the Journal.

Accordingly, the first article in this volume is based on the Keynote Address of 2009 delivered by Dr Rachael Kohn, on the topic "Is there a distinct Jewish way of thinking?" Dr Kohn answers this question affirmatively, seeing this distinctiveness as a product of engagement by ordinary Jews with the reading of the portion of the Torah that takes place in Synagogues every Shabbath, across the cycle of a year.

For Kohn, the Torah encompasses "historical memory, legal codes, ritual observances, songs of praise, prophetic utterances, humour and ethical literature"--including disturbing material when heroes behave badly. Jews have been encouraged to analyse and debate the lessons of the Torah over the millennia--creating the opportunity "to soar on angels' wings of imagination." This tradition is exemplified by the "questioning method of Talmudic discussion" and an open-mindedness to consider both the text and the world from different perspectives. To support this claim, Kohn cites the ease with which the foremost Jewish thinker of the eighteenth century, Rabbi Elijah the Gaon of Vilna, combined "religious belief, science and mysticism." Thus, whereas Darwinian theory was seen as a major challenge to Christianity, some leading Rabbis found no difficulty in reconciling it with biblical exegesis.

Kohn's thesis provides an attractive framework through which we might examine Jewish thought over the ages, and I invite readers to consider how well the various contributions to this volume conform to her predictions. At a time when ritual observance has declined markedly and weekly Synagogue attendance is not the norm for most Jews, many of whom have had but limited exposure to the Talmud, to what extent do the qualities identified by her continue to shape Jewish thinking?

I trust you will find equally stimulating the other contributions in this Journal, which represent a wide range of academic disciplines. Karen Berger's article looks at the opus of three women, secular Jewish artists of the twentieth century. Berger highlights the perspective of the "outsider" which each woman brings to her work and to understanding the societies in which they operate. One could well argue that this is a typically "Jewish" perspective borne out of the experience of Jews who have been only partially integrated as members of their host societies.

Is there however, also an aspect of the thought patterns which Kohn has identified as emerging from Jewish tradition?

Dvir Abramovich's article "Hebrew fiction in the post-Eichmann period" looks at a novel by distinguished Israeli writer, Hanoch Bartov titled Pitzei Bagrut, published in 1965 and subsequently translated into English as The Brigade. Bartov skilfully raises the moral dilemmas faced by Israeli Jews in relating to the Holocaust, in a story narrated by a young Israeli, serving in a Jewish Brigade in Europe at the end of World War II. Bartov explores the reactions of his protagonist to Jews of the Diaspora as emaciated Holocaust survivors and Jewish collaborators, and to German women, whose men folk had perpetrated atrocities.

Israel-Diaspora relations remain an important issue in the Jewish world today, surfacing as the focus of Yosef Aharonov's article "The Encounter of Shlichim with the Australian Jewish Community" which presents a sociological study of how emissaries from Israel (the Shlichim), spending a period of time teaching in Jewish schools or leading Zionist youth groups in Australia, view the local community they have come to support. It is particularly instructive to see the different expectations of the Shlichim and the communities that they serve, and the extent to which they are satisfied or disappointed in the encounter.

While relations between Jews from Israel and Jews from the Diaspora are the focus of Abramovich and Aharonov's contributions to the Journal, the articles by Richard Hawkins and Mario Kessler shed light on relations between Jews and others. In "The 'Jewish Threat' and the Origins of the American Surveillance State," Hawkins offers a fascinating account of the life of Samuel Untermyer, a prominent American Jewish lawyer who became the focus of extensive surveillance by various government agencies, including the precursor to the FBI. Certainly one sees in the article evidence of widespread antisemitism in early twentieth century USA, yet one needs to consider the extent to which Untermyer's perceived threat to the State stemmed from his Jewishness, or from his political sympathies as a supporter of Germany prior to America's entry into World War I and subsequently as a campaigner against Nazism after Hitler's rise to power. One might also consider the extent to which he was motivated by values that flow from Kohn's sources of Jewish thinking.

Mario Kessler's article examines the situation of Jewish socialists who, as the Poale-Zion, wished to preserve their Jewish particularity, while seeking to be accepted as part of the international socialist movement, specifically the Comintern or the Communist International in the period immediately following World War I. Unfortunately for them, the movement which they aspired to join insisted that there was no place for an ethnically based organisation within the Communist movement, and regarded Zionism as "a tool of British colonialism, and saw Poale Zion as an essentially anti-communist political movement under socialist or even communist disguise." Kessler highlights the irony of these debates in the light of the Nazi decimation of European Jewry which none could foresee at the time. Again, I would invite the reader to consider the extent to which Jewish values and traditions borne out of the sources of "Jewish thinking" influenced the moral perspective of these secular, indeed anti-religious Jews.

Rev. Dr Fergus King's contribution to this volume leads us once again to the consideration of relations between Jews and others. In this instance the setting is in ancient times, as Christianity was beginning to distinguish itself from its Jewish antecedents. King looks to the words attributed to Jesus on the cross in Luke's gospel, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," and suggests a connection between these sentiments and the prayers and rituals associated with Kol Nidre. While there is an interesting parallel to be noted here, as King points out, it is not possible to determine that there was a direct relationship between the Kol Nidre rituals as they have emerged and Jesus's utterance, though both may have had their source in the distinction between wilful and unintentional sins found in the Torah.

Rabbi Dr Sanford Shudnow's article on the Biblical commandment to "Love thy neighbor" returns us to the wellsprings of Jewish thinking, as he takes to task Dr John Hartung for an article that asserts the commandment applied to members of one's group as "neighbors," whereas outsiders did not warrant respectful consideration from the perspective of the Torah. Shudnow shows how the Torah uses the term "neighbor" to refer to non-Israelites as much as to Israelites, and indeed calls for love of the stranger "for you were strangers in Egypt." He suggests that understanding the love of others in the Torah is predicated upon the fact that all are God's creation, a fact often overlooked when the commandment is read out of context.

Along with the articles discussed here, we have a goodly crop of reviews of recently published books. I am delighted that our Association's long-serving Treasurer and Honorary Secretary, Sister Dr Marianne Dacy, has recently published her book The Separation of Early Christianity from Judaism, and that Ruth Sheridan Fernandes has taken the opportunity to review the work for the Journal, revealing the complexity of the relationship between the two faiths. As we see from King's article, this is an area of perennial interest.

Jewish interest in Communism, discussed in Kessler's article, appears once again in Henry Felix Srebrnik's book reviewed by Philip Mendes, Jerusalem on the Amur, concerning the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement's interest in "the strange Soviet plan to establish a Jewish national homeland in the isolated far east region of Birobidzhan." It seems ironic in the extreme that while the Comintern had opposed Zionism in part because of its nationalist/ethnic dimension, the Soviet Union was prepared to consider the creation of a Jewish "homeland" inside Soviet territory.

Philip Mendes, Vice-President of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies, makes quite a mark in this edition of the Journal. His work is cited in the articles of both Hawkins and Aharanov, and he has reviewed two books for the Journal, the second of which is Al-Farhud: The 1941 Pogrom in Iraq edited by Shmuel Moreh and Zvi Yehuda. The Jews of Iraq were subjected to a pogrom during World War II when over 170 Jews were killed in the course of two days of rioting, partly inspired by Nazi propaganda from the German ambassador, Fritz Grobba, and partly out of Arab resentment of events in Palestine. The failure of the British military, who had marched on Baghdad and witnessed the attacks on the Jews, to take any steps to limit the slaughter is a telling indictment of--if I might use the term-"perfidious Albion".

Of special significance to Australian readers is the book Hand in Hand: Jewish and Indigenous People Working Together, by Anne Sarzin and Lisa Miranda Sarzin, reviewed by Linda Briskman. The record of the Aboriginal leader William Cooper who in 1938 led a march in protest to the German Consulate in Melbourne against the Nazi attacks on Jews and Jewish businesses throughout Germany and Austria on Kristallnacht is an inspiring event chronicled in this book. In turn, the book also covers the record of many Jews who have contributed to the fight for indigenous rights and social welfare. Briksman notes the Jewish experience of oppression, and how Jews have striven to overcome this, affording most with a comfortable life in Australia. She confronts us to consider how this experience, combined with the values that stem from the Biblical tradition, create for Jews "an imperative to work in partnership with those who have had less fortunate lives," to overcome oppression.

The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture, edited by Australian born Professor Avrum Ehrlich, is reviewed for the Journal by Hilary Rubinstein, who finds the work "a very well-produced, valuable, and rather unusual three-volume encyclopedia of Jewish life in the Diaspora," observing that "apart from the main article on the Jewish community of each nation, there are also, usually, several others about that community, often of a fascinating but offbeat nature."

Yoram Bilu's The Saints' Impresarios: Dreamers, Healers and Holy Men in Israel's Urban Periphery which I have reviewed is a well researched ethnographic study of religious developments among Moroccan Jews living in development towns in Israel's periphery. There they have created new shrines for popular figures from Morocco and the wider Jewish world. Using both psychological analysis to understand the behaviour and motivation of the individuals who created these shrines, and an explication of the changing cultural, political and social milieux in Israel and Morocco, Bilu helps us understand these people, their hopes and fears, and how they see the world. Here we have a community of committed though poorly educated Jews, infused with a knowledge of the Torah and living in a world where the supernatural is "natural." To what extent do they exhibit the distinct Jewish way of thinking which Kohn has presented us?

With so much interesting and thought-provoking material in this Journal, I trust you will enjoy the opportunity to read through it all.'