Ashamed to Admit
Are you ashamed to admit you're not across the big issues and events affecting Jews in Australia, Israel and around the Jewish world?
In this new podcast from online publication The Jewish Independent, Your Third Cousin Tami Sussman and TJI's Dashiel Lawrence tackle the week's 'Chewiest and Jewiest' topics.
Ashamed to Admit
Episode #23 Anti-Zionists, Elders of Zion, Half-baked Rabbis & more
Where should Ashkenazi-Israelis go when the anti-zionists tell them to ‘go back to Europe’? What is (or who are?) The Elders of Zion? What happens when (hot) Rabbis do naughty things and bad TV is made about them? All of these questions are raised and most of them are answered in this week’s episode with your besties Tami and Dash.
Articles relevant to this episode:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/dear-anti-zionist
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/when-they-know-us-they-dont-hate-us
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/i-was-the-shiksa-i-feel-misrepresented-by-nobody-wants-this
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/the-squirmy-pleasures-of-watching-jewish-matchmaking
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/a-rabbi-is-overseeing-pornhub-thats-actually-not-so-weird
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/committing-holocaust-is-not-a-verb
Email your feedback, questions, show ideas etc: ashamed@thejewishindependent.com.au
(You can also email voice memos here).
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Hi, my name is Gerald and I'm ashamed to admit that I go to Shul not to pray but for the lollies. This morning, when I went to Shul, my dad said do you want to come to Shul? And I said hmm, I don't know. Is there going to be lollies? Yeah, I think so, so I just said yeah.
Speaker 2:There's nothing to be ashamed of. We've all done it. Are you interested in issues affecting Jews in Australia and the world at large, but a little bit ashamed that you're barely keeping up to date that you just don't have enough prerequisite knowledge to hold your own at family dinners.
Speaker 3:Well, you've come to the right place. I'm Dash Lawrence and in this podcast series, your third cousin, Tammy Sussman, and I call on experts and each other to address all the ignorant questions that you may be too ashamed to ask.
Speaker 2:Join us as we have a go at cutting through some seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the Jewish Independent Podcast. Ashamed to Admit. Hi everyone, I'm Dash Lawrence.
Speaker 2:Executive Director at the Jewish Independent and I'm your local village idiot, tammy Sussman, not to be confused with useful idiot, a term I've recently learnt thanks to you, dash.
Speaker 3:Yes, I wanted you to look into the meaning of it, the history of the term. It seems to have its origins in the-.
Speaker 2:In the Cold War.
Speaker 3:Correct yeah.
Speaker 2:I looked into it because when you brought this term to my attention, I thought there might be other listeners who are similar to me and had never heard of the phrase or terminology useful idiot. So the term useful idiot refers to a person who unwittingly supports a political cause or agenda that ultimately undermines their own interests or that of their group. The research that I found says that it was originally used during the Cold War to describe Western sympathizers of the Soviet regime and has since been applied more broadly to anyone who is exploited by those in power for their own purposes without realizing it, and the phrase highlights the irony of being used for a cause that one may not fully understand or agree with. So I was trying to think of some contemporary examples of useful idiots. Can I throw something into the ring and you can tell me if I'm close? I'm not going to name names, so you don't have to worry about getting sued.
Speaker 3:Sure yeah, go on.
Speaker 2:So could a useful idiot be, like a female feminist who lives in a Western country, who supports militant Islamic movements like Hamas, even though Hamas has imposed strict interpretations of Islamic law in Gaza, leading to several limitations on women's rights and freedoms, like dress code, public behaviour, employment, economic independence, legal rights, particularly with marriage and divorce?
Speaker 3:I think that's a term that could be used in relation to those people you just described.
Speaker 2:Look at us just chewing the fat, cutting through some chewy and dewy topics. Some of our listeners have really missed this because, of course, some people listen to A Shame, to Admit, for our excellent interview subjects and others just come here because they like our banter. And season one was a lot more like this, wasn't it? We just had more opportunities to chat about general topics that resonated with us. Every so often we'd reference a piece that a contributor had written for TJI.
Speaker 3:Yeah, firstly, who comes here for our banter?
Speaker 2:Lots of people.
Speaker 3:Do they like it a bit more when I roast you, or do they kind of like it when you poke fun at me, or is it a bit of both?
Speaker 2:Both.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, that's good, that's good. I don't know how comfortable I would feel about them. You know enjoying you regularly. Poke fun at me.
Speaker 2:But my love language is being roasted and roasting. So I love it when people take the piss out of me. It helps me feel seen.
Speaker 3:Oh good, that gives me a free pass to do more of it.
Speaker 2:It does.
Speaker 3:I'm certainly not going to call you a village idiot, though.
Speaker 2:Why not?
Speaker 3:Because that's not acceptable. Okay, I can roast you about other things.
Speaker 2:I love how you said it's not acceptable. You didn't say it's not accurate, you said it's not acceptable.
Speaker 3:That's fine. So today, Tammy, as foregrounded earlier, we're going back to our shame, to admit roots. I believe that you have a few topics that you'd like to bring to the podcast table today, inspired by some recent articles in TGI. Tell me more. What struck a chord with you?
Speaker 2:Okay, so the first piece I'd like to bring to the table is an article written by Isabel Odeberg.
Speaker 3:Hi, Izzy, Love your work. Isabel Odeberg has been writing for us since March of this year. She was one of the new columnists at Adam to the Stable when we rebranded.
Speaker 2:And she's excellent. One of her articles headline when they know us, it's harder to hate us. Byline there needs to be engagement beyond the boundaries of our community, not just on Holocaust education but on what makes us Jewish. And in this piece Izzy reflected on the small, often misunderstood Jewish community in Australia. She highlighted how the lack of personal exposure can lead to stereotyping and prejudice. Izzy also advocated for building broader connections and showed that being Jewish is about resilience, it's about having a rich cultural heritage and empathy and that those ideas or concepts are the foundation to counter anti-Semitism.
Speaker 2:There were a few parts that struck me. When she reflected on the amount of people who've said you're the first Jew I've ever met. Can I ask you a question about dot dot dot. It kind of encouraged me to reflect on the moments in my life where I was that person who was the first Jewish person they'd ever met. One memory that springs to mind was when I was getting my hair cut and the person doing my hair discovered I was Jewish and said oh my God, I've never met a Jewish before. They had lots of questions.
Speaker 2:The Jewish community in Australia probably sits around 100,000 to 120,000. That's not Melbourne or Sydney community, that's the entire Jewish population and for comparative purposes she includes the figures there are just under 1 million Aboriginal Australians, there are around 820,000 Muslim Australians, there are 920,000 Australians who identify as having Italian origins. And she says I would be surprised if there is anyone in Australia who has never heard a non-Jew make a quip about Jews and their money. And it's the next bit that I wanted to bring to you, because it brought up something that I'm ashamed to admit.
Speaker 2:So Izzy writes we all know the insidiousness of those theories that surround our community the blood libels, the allegations of government control of media, dominance of wealth and influence. We've been subjected to them long before the protocols of the elders of zion were disseminated outside russia in the early 20th century and then translated into arabic. This isn't the first time that I've heard of the elders of zion and I've always just nodded and thought that I knew what that was. And it's only recently dawned on me, like this week, that I actually I I don't know what the elders of Zion is. I thought that they were like. When I heard the term elders of Zion, I thought it was like Theodore Herzl and a gang of people who were legitimate elders of Zion who had this like monthly meetup.
Speaker 3:Yeah right, it's actually Like a crew of bearded early 20th century Zionists.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought it was like Wu-Tang Clan. You know, elders of Zion.
Speaker 3:That would be cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:A posse.
Speaker 2:Can you enlighten me?
Speaker 3:Can I enlighten you about the protocols of the elders of Zion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what is it?
Speaker 3:Look, I don't know a whole lot about the origins of it. I do know that it was printed in the early 20th century and essentially used as propaganda to cultivate this idea of a Jewish plot for world domination. And its ideas have carried on throughout the rest of the 20th and 21st century, used by the Nazis in their propaganda but, have you know, continued to be used and adapted over time in different contexts to propagate and further the othering of Jewish people.
Speaker 2:So it's a fabricated document.
Speaker 3:I'm not surprised to hear that it's been translated into Arabic, if that's what you were wondering. Thank you for reminding me that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as I understand it, was seen to be an actual, true document that was kind of like the blueprints or the plans for Jewish global domination. And this evidence apparent evidence, was raised as like look, here are the plans, here's their intention, here's the cabal of Jewish conspirators that want to take over the world and we're going to publish it so you can see just how dangerous they really are and discredited certainly not something that the early Zionist leaders were sitting around and writing. Who wrote it? Where it actually came from?
Speaker 3:I actually don't know, I'm not sure, but presumably it was someone that was wanting to otherize and create fear around Jewish people, motivated by trying to do what they ultimately did in the Holocaust, which was remove Jews from Europe in the Holocaust which was remove Jews from Europe.
Speaker 2:Okay, thanks for that. I think another reason why I connected with this particular piece by Isabel Odeberg is because it touches on themes that are relevant to my life at the moment. Of course, just to remind our listeners, because we went on a bit of a tangent the piece is called when they Know Us, it's Harder to Hate Us, and Isabel makes a case for actually getting out and talking to people who aren't Jewish, so that they aren't just stuck in their stereotypical ideas of what a Jew is without having ever met one stereotypical ideas of what a Jew is without having ever met one. So at the moment, I'm prepping to send my eldest child to school, to big school and she's going to a public school.
Speaker 2:And I expressed to a fellow writer a few months ago and this writer has grown up children that I was feeling a little bit of guilt that I was sending my child to a public school and not a Jewish school, even though the Jewish schools are outrageously expensive, so it isn't really an option. But I still had this feeling of apprehension and I suppose because at the end of the day I feel like there's this kind of paranoia that if my child misbehaves at this public school, then it's not just my child misbehaving, it's a Jew misbehaving. And it kind of reminded me of when I was at drama school and drama school is a really interesting version of university because you spend three years with 24 people in a course. So it comes like a bit of a family or a bit of a cult, and I was one of two Jews in my class, but the other Jew was a self-hating Jew who passed for non-Jew, so he didn't look Jewish and he was the one who made the worst Jewish jokes and, yeah, definitely didn't identify as Jew, and so I felt like I was always the representative of the Jewish people and so anytime something happened in Israel.
Speaker 2:They'd come to me and ask me my opinion, which I didn't have the prerequisite knowledge to talk about it, but I always felt like my behavior wasn't just me representing Tammy and Tammy's behavior, it was me representing the Jews. So I feel like, in order to be that person out there in the community, being that representative or being that person that people can ask questions about Jews, it kind of puts this pressure or responsibility or a bit of a burden to be the perfect Jew. And this author friend who I was talking to, she was really encouraging of me to send my kids to public school because the essence of what she was saying is that the more that we jews hide away or remove ourselves or keep to ourselves, the more we other ourselves and the scarier we become. And I know that there'll be people listening who'll say, well, that's what the secular jew Jews try to do in pre-war Europe. They're like well, we need to assimilate so people don't think that we're that scary and we're so different and that didn't work out so well in their favour at all.
Speaker 2:One person left a comment on this article which I don't understand, and I was hoping that you could help me unpack. I'm not going to mention their name, but they wrote oh really, Isabel, If only they could discern the hearts of solid gold that beat under these shabby, frightening even exteriors. They would all just fall in love with us. Piffle People of goodwill. Approach others openly. No special overtures, no need to support the causes, no need to man the barricades. Just be real. Do you understand what this person is saying?
Speaker 3:No, I do not. I do not understand it.
Speaker 2:First they had to Google piffle, which means nonsense. Did you know that word?
Speaker 3:I assumed as much when I read it. But yeah, don't get it in this context.
Speaker 2:Maybe they're angry about the fact that we are identifying as people who are scary and different and that we feel this responsibility to explain ourselves or justify our existence, and that it's not worth doing that for people who don't come to us in good faith.
Speaker 3:Right, I see. I see that's one way of looking at it. I don't know. It feels tricky for me to be in this conversation away because I'm not Jewish, so I'm the goy here.
Speaker 2:Because you're ashamed to admit that you are a Gentile.
Speaker 3:I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Gentile. It's just that you know. The truth of the matter is that I read Izzy's article, but it didn't resonate with me in the same way that it's obviously resonated for you and for others in the community that are wrestling with these questions.
Speaker 2:Well then, let me throw to you what article has struck a chord with you.
Speaker 3:Okay, First have a guess. What has been one of the most highly read articles this year on the Jewish Independent website? One of the ones that's received the most hits unique views, as they're called in internet jargon.
Speaker 2:Was it one about anti-Zionism?
Speaker 3:No, it was the one about the rabbi that owns Pornhub.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure it is the most highly read article.
Speaker 2:I haven't read it. Tell me more.
Speaker 3:You haven't read it, okay? Well, I have to acknowledge that it's not a TJR original. We have a deal with the Forward, the American Jewish publication, who do offer some great articles, and we do curate them and sometimes add them to our website. The headline is just wait a second.
Speaker 2:Is your computer frozen because you've had Pornhub open for research?
Speaker 3:The rabbi who owns Pornhub. Solomon Friedman, ordained as an Orthodox rabbi but his day job is a lawyer and he has a passion for making pornography ethical is a lawyer and he has a passion for making pornography ethical. So we carried that story the end of September and it lit up the internet. We had lots of engagement on that one. And look, you know the story is, yes, he's ordained as a rabbi, but I don't think he's practiced as a rabbi, certainly doesn't have a congregation. Imagine that, doing your service and then just letting your congregation know that you've got to get back home and monitor all of the traffic on the old porn hub. So that story's a pretty quirky one. It's not my favourite. I just thought you'd find that funny and hopefully I haven't offended anyone by sharing the story of Solomon Friedman.
Speaker 2:That's excellent.
Speaker 3:Let's move on. I want to mention one which has particularly struck a chord is I'm not Jewish, but I too lost my tribe this year. So this was an article written by Matthew Sortino, who is head of humanities at Bialik College. So he's a teacher at one of Melbourne's Jewish day schools. And Matthew has been a teacher at Bialik for the last few years and this piece reflects on his concern, his distress at the way that he has seen inner parts of Melbourne, inner parts of Melbourne.
Speaker 3:The left progressive part of Melbourne that he identified with and presumably has many friends in and has long felt at home in, has become such a hotbed of anti-Israel, anti-semitic graffiti activity in the wake of October 7th and I totally understand where he's coming from, and he makes some broader points that I think are really important. So a broader point about an inability to hold multiple truths at once ie you know there is suffering for Jewish Israelis and suffering for the Palestinians and a point around the failure of us to be able to hear each other and the loss of dialogue, the loss of an ability to have kind of civil discourse. I think that was an important element to what he had to say, in addition to saying in effect, I've lost my tribe, my left-wing tribe.
Speaker 2:Has that happened to you, Dash?
Speaker 3:Look, it hasn't happened to me and I guess I have the privilege of being able to avoid these conversations. But there are certain friends that I wouldn't spend a lot of time talking about the conflict with because it's not going to be fruitful grounds for conversation. I mean, there are some friends whose views on this I disagree with, but we've got an ability to talk about it and discuss it and debate it, and there is an ability to hear each other. There are a few weeks there, after October 7th, when our neighbourhood was literally covered, almost, you know, pole after pole, bike rack after bike rack, tree after tree just about was covered with the flag of Israel and the Magadan David crossed out in big red lettering.
Speaker 3:And my son, who understands, you know, the meaning of the Magadan David and understands that when there's a crossover, something that means no, not allowed, not okay, and he, completely unprompted, when he first saw this, he said Daddy, look, there are people that don't like Jewish people. And yeah, that makes me pretty angry that we live in a time now where a child sees an image like that and makes the very natural and direct connection with what they're seeing and these images like they're still there. I mean that one has kind of gone down and they've been replaced by others, zionists or terrorists. If you're not with the Palestinians, you're a psychopath. The worst one stayed up there for two weeks. There was a sign there that said Zionists are pedos.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 3:And you know, like I just I get that people a lot of problems with this Israeli government. I get that people think that Israel has taken their response to the October 7 attacks too far. I get that Hamas that you know. People feel that a more careful strategic attack on Hamas would have been more effective. I can tolerate some of those views. I might not agree with them in their extremes, but I think there's a defence there. There is no defence for this language and just this outright hatred towards Israel, towards Zionists, because we really know what that means. It means Jewish people. They're using that word. Mark Dreyfus said this last week in his address at our Colin Tatt's oration. They really just mean Jewish people. They don't purely and simply mean Zionists. And I think Matthew's article gets at that very point that if you live in the inner north of Melbourne, all of a sudden you've just been assailed by these sorts of messaging.
Speaker 2:It's painful.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, for Jewish people in this area it is painful, it's distressing and, as is the case for my five-year-old, it's confusing.
Speaker 2:It made me think about something which crosses my mind quite a bit, and that's I wonder what the non-Jewish teachers at Jewish schools are thinking, or have been thinking since October 7. How awkward would it be for them if they were anti-Zionists.
Speaker 3:Well, they wouldn't be in those schools in the first place. Most of the Jewish day schools have a pretty strong connection with, and identification with, israel and Zionism, some more so than others, but almost all of them, I think, with the exception of the religious schools, the ultra-Orthodox schools. So I would be very surprised if you were, say, a non-Jewish teacher at Bialik and all of a sudden October 7th happened and you decided it was actually too Zionistic for you. I don't think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I just mean for a lot of teachers pre-October 7, they wouldn't have even known what Zionism was or really looked into it too much. But perhaps after October 7, especially if they're on social media when they've been served all this stuff. Whether that stirred something up for them. Anyway, we should perhaps move on. I did really enjoy reading Matthew's article. Thank you for bringing that to the table, dash.
Speaker 3:My pleasure, your choice now.
Speaker 2:Okay, dear Anti-Zionist is the headline of Kate Lewis's article that was published last week, byline. I have a question for you. Is this really about Israel? Are you anti-Zionist or just anti-Jew?
Speaker 3:Oh, did this one stir up some debate, Tammy? This one really got the comment section going.
Speaker 2:It really did so. For those listeners who haven't read the piece, I encourage you to. We'll leave a link in the show notes, but I'm just going to read the opening so you get a bit of a taster. Dear Anti-Zionist, yes, you, living peacefully and freely here in Australia on stolen land, you seem to really enjoy the freedoms afforded to you in this colonial country, while Indigenous people experience lower rates of health and education and higher rates of incarceration and untimely death.
Speaker 2:Dear anti-Zionist, your hypocrisy is palpable. Your infographics and comment sections tell us to go back to Europe. Does that mean you'll be buying a one-way ticket to your ancestral homeland? Or is your white guilt adequately offset with an acknowledgement of country in your email signature? Dear anti-Zionist, you say violence is resistance. After the genocide and displacement of European Jews in World War II, should my surviving grandparents have embarked on a barbaric uprising in the name of freedom fighting? Dear anti-Zionist, you talk about the right to return. On my next trip back to Poland, should I be asking for the keys to my grandfather's childhood home in Radom? Then it goes on from there to Kate's experience of a friend or friends who have not only distanced themselves from her but outright sent her the most horrific messages on social media. After this article came out, kate actually posted a link to the article and then posted the comments, the DMs that people were sending her after this Okay, which just proved her point completely.
Speaker 3:Former friends.
Speaker 2:Former friends, that's right.
Speaker 3:Right, wow, I'm seeing a connection between the two articles that we've just discussed. We've got Matthew feeling that loss of sense of identity and belonging in the sort of progressive left-wing milieu of inner Melbourne. And then here this counterpart of Kate's, a Jewish woman who has lost a lot of friendships and has had to endure, obviously, some pretty nasty feedback from those friends in the wake of October 7th.
Speaker 2:So I think the thing that stood out to me the most at least from the beginning of the article, is a question that I ask people all the time and no one's been able to give me an answer. So I'm confused as to why those Australians who are making public pleas or demands for Ashkenazi Jews to vacate Israel and go back to whatever insert European country, why haven't they booked tickets to go back to whatever insert Anglo country that their family comes from? How are they able to get away with saying that, like how are they able to get away with?
Speaker 2:saying that while they are a white person in Australia. Why haven't they been called out for that by anyone other than Jews?
Speaker 3:Yeah, look, I have a theory that the timing of October 7th and the loss of the referendum result is a curious thing. That happened there where there was a lot of hope that was invested in the possibility of this voice to parliament and a feeling that it was time that Aboriginal people were recognised with this voice to parliament and that this would be a really important moment in the ongoing struggle for not just reconciliation but recognition and giving Indigenous Australians an opportunity to be equal in this country. That was the view that many progressive, many left-wing people had in this country. But when that campaign came to a very resoundingly defeated and it was an emphatic defeat, it was a devastating loss. There was no state in Australia that the yes folk got up in. I think there were a lot of people that were very distressed and very angry and I understand that anger, or at least I understand that feeling of disappointment and that feeling that Australians had made the wrong choice.
Speaker 3:But, I think what happened was that there were a lot of particularly activists that then projected that anger in other directions and then we had Israel's war on Hamas and I feel like a lot of energy has gone. A lot of the anger that people were feeling in the wake of the voice has been projected now onto Israelis and onto- yeah, misplaced rage.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, time and time again, israel is decried as attacked, as a settler, colonial state, forgetting that this was a state that was established with the support of the United Nations, forgetting that the vast majority of those people that settled in the state of Israel came from persecution, they were refugees, they had suffered the extermination of their people, forgetting that this wasn't some sort of imperial outpost, that this was a state that was forged under the most horrific of circumstances. And I just have felt that there's been a sort of a rage that has been projected onto Israel and I would also say now, onto the Jewish people, by people that feel angry about and feel aggrieved about what happened in October last year and I'm not talking about October 7th, but about the loss of the voice campaign and the referendum that did not go their way.
Speaker 2:I think what a lot of these people also forget is that if the Ashkenazi Jews were to go back to Poland and should I be asking for the keys to my grandfather's childhood home Dash, I actually did go back to my paternal grandfather's village in Kreschenko, a town of 3,000 residents in Poland near the border with Slovakia. This was back in 2010. And as I was prepping to go there, I spoke to a cousin shout out to Cousin Ruth, listener of this show who warned me. She said you know, if you go back there and you meet the people who are now occupying the home and the shop front of my grandfather and my great-grandfather they were butchers, so they had a butcher shop she said you might not be given a warm welcome because they might be scared that you're actually coming back to get your land back, so to speak.
Speaker 2:So I did go to Kreschenko. I knocked on the door. An old, almost dead man opened up the door. The place was in complete disarray. Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:There was junk everywhere and he saw me and I said Sussman. I pointed to myself and I said Sussman, and he looked at me and he said Sussman. I pointed to myself and I said Sussman, and he looked at me and he said Sussman. And he pointed to this little figurine made out of clay at the top of top shelf with all this junk, and there was this little clay figurine, handmade of a Hasidic Jew, and he said Sussman there was this little clay figurine handmade of a Hasidic Jew.
Speaker 2:Oh, and he said Sussman. And luckily his grandsons were there visiting. They had a uni break and they were able to translate and we did figure out that, yes, he remembered the Sussmans. He remembered that he was very poor in the village and the Sussmans used to, after Shabbat, would give him their leftover meat and he was really grateful to them. He loved them. It was all like warm and fuzzy. While I'm sitting there inside his home talking about these lovely memories of my grandfather, my great-grandfather, and how much he appreciated them, at the back of my mind I'm like, yeah, you just took over their butcher shop and you've been living here so I think if my relatives in Israel were to move back to little towns like these, not so sure that the townspeople would be too happy about that.
Speaker 2:So where are we meant to go is the question I'm asking.
Speaker 3:So another article which I was really surprised that it's done as well as it has, because it's a review and reviews don't typically get a whole lot of reads, but this one did. It's actually probably going to end up being in the top 10 or certainly top 20 stories this year in terms of readership. And this was I, was the shiksa. I feel misrepresented by Nobody Wants. This which Nobody Wants. This is a new Netflix series, a rom-com.
Speaker 2:Are you talking about Maggie Mae Moshe's piece?
Speaker 3:I am. So Nobody Wants this rom-com about a hot rabbi. He's identified as the hot rabbi. I'm not saying that he's hot, I mean he's an attractive man. Was it Adam Brody?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was in the OC.
Speaker 3:So a bit of a heartthrob of early 2000s television Plays. The hot rabbi in this rom-com Falls in love with a non-Jewish woman podcast host who struggles to find her place in his family in his community, navigating through all of the different cultural idiosyncrasies of Jewish life and Judaism. Maggie May is a woman in Melbourne.
Speaker 2:She is an artist. She owns the gift shop Thinkers and Makers. She's a mum, she's a wife. She's a cool person.
Speaker 3:Yes, she says I was the shiksa and I saw myself in this story. Maggie, since marrying Josh, has converted to Judaism, currently going through an Orthodox conversion, as she explains in the article, and this is not a positive review from her. She critiques the show but brings it back to her own personal experience and refers back to the challenges that she also faced in integrating into her husband's family and integrating into the wider community and the pressures that she felt as a non-Jewish woman and future mother of the children and you know the pressure of, you know, breaking the Jewish lineage and and so she talks about this in in a really, yeah, really personal, powerful manner, and I still want to watch the show, or at least at least one episode, to see what she was talking about so you haven't watched it either no well, I never get to watch anything, tammy yeah, neither do I.
Speaker 3:Because you watched the Jewish dating show. You wrote a piece for TTR about that.
Speaker 2:You're right, so I did watch Jewish matchmaking last year which I loved.
Speaker 3:That was great.
Speaker 2:I watched that one because I knew that I would be reviewing it for the Jewish Independent that I would be reviewing it for the Jewish Independent and it made me extremely anxious again, similarly to what I was saying before about Jewish representation and about non-Jewish people looking in at Jewish behaviour. I'm constantly worried that they're going to judge us for being massive weirdos. I'm not watching Nobody Wants this purely because I've only read shit reviews, particularly around the representation of Jewish women as being bitchy and witchy, and I don't like that at all. The line in Maggie's piece which just made me laugh. She said yes, I watched the whole show in an evening, not out of enjoyment but because I needed to know how they would resolve this love story between a woman who thinks she's found the first decent man to date in years and the indecisive Jewish man who has just left a serious relationship and is the half-baked challah equivalent of a rabbi. It's excellent, beautifully written. I'm really glad that she submitted that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, more articles, please, maggie. That's it for another week.
Speaker 2:You've been listening to. A Shame to Admit with me, Tammy Sussman, and you, Dash Lawrence.
Speaker 3:This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King, with theme music by Donovan Jenks.
Speaker 2:If you like the podcast, leave a positive review, tell your people or encourage your third cousin's cousin to sponsor an episode.
Speaker 3:You can tell us what you're ashamed to admit, or what you're not ashamed to admit but should be, via the contact form on the Jewish Independent website or emailing ashamed at the jewishindependentcomau.
Speaker 2:As always. Thanks so much for your support. Thank you for your positive feedback and look out for us next week.
Speaker 3:Bye for now.
Speaker 2:Bye, thank you.