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 #31 "I am always a Jew; a Lesbian Hebrew Jew", with Jewish Gay Rights activist Dawn Cohen
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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Are you interested in issues affecting Jews in Australia, the Middle East and the world at large? But a little bit ashamed that you're barely keeping up to date.
Speaker 2:Well, you've come to the right place. I'm Dash Lawrence and, in this podcast series, your slightly chaotic third cousin, tammy Sussman, and I call on experts and each other to address all the ignorant questions that you might be too ashamed to ask.
Speaker 1:Join us as we have a go at cutting through some seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Jewish Independent Podcast. Ash, shame to admit. Hello everyone, I'm Dash Lawrence, Executive Director here at the Jewish Independent.
Speaker 1:And I'm Tammy. At first I was afraid I was petrified. At first I was afraid I was petrified, sussman.
Speaker 2:At first you were afraid and petrified. And what about now?
Speaker 1:Well, dash, I grew strong and I learned how to get along. Do you know what song I'm heavily referencing? Dash?
Speaker 2:I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.
Speaker 1:How do you pronounce it, Gaynor?
Speaker 2:Oh sorry.
Speaker 1:No, it's fine, I say Gaynor.
Speaker 2:Gaynor Gaynor.
Speaker 1: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, referencing the song I Will Survive by good old Gloria. It's an iconic song. It's a queer anthem. It's a Jewish anthem in many ways. Did you know that? No, I didn't, why, so it's been embraced by both the LGBTQIA plus community and the Jewish community. It's been adapted into Purim and Passover parodies because of the strong themes about survival and resilience.
Speaker 2:Love it, love it. So, tammy, I'm assuming that all of this is on your mind, because this weekend, living in Sydney as you do, you're going to be getting out your glitter, your costume for Mardi Gras, aren't you?
Speaker 1:I am. It's Mardi Gras this weekend for those of us in Sydney, and this is our Mardi Gras special episode. I am so excited to announce this week's guest Dash. Our prophet today is the awe-inspiring Dawn Cohen. Now, I saw Dawn speak at Emanuel Synagogue a few weeks ago at an event that was organised to celebrate 25 years of Dayenu, and, for those of you who aren't aware, dayenu is Sydney's Jewish, lgbtqia plus dedicated organisation.
Speaker 2:And if the word Dayenu sounds familiar to you, that's because it's best known as the Passover Seder song. You know, you know, Tammy, don't you?
Speaker 1:I know what you're trying to do. You're trying to get me to sing Diana when I'm not going to.
Speaker 2:But you can. No, you go ahead. Can we do it together?
Speaker 1:No, I think you, as the non-Jew at the Seder who loves belting out Diana, you should give it a little bit.
Speaker 2:Come on, do it with me.
Speaker 1:Five, six, seven, eight. Diana, Diana, diana, diana Diana.
Speaker 2:Diana, diana, diana. It's the song which lists a series of miracles, with each verse concluding that any single one of those blessings would have been enough.
Speaker 1:Dianel. Dawn Cohen co-founded Dianel in 2000. Dawn became the public face of Jewish homosexuality in Sydney back in 1990 when she debated two rabbis at Australia's first Jewish public forum on homosexuality at the old Hakkoa Club in Bondi, winning the day with her passionate call not just for inclusion and acceptance of Jewish homosexuals but for a warm welcome home.
Speaker 2:In the years that followed, dawn repeated that call in talks, articles and debates in both queer and Jewish settings, culminating in her co-founding of the groundbreaking and at the time, controversial first Mardi Gras Shabbat dinner at Shalom College in 2000. And, of course, the aforementioned Dayenu float at the Mardi Gras parade.
Speaker 1:These days, Dawn has another passion to add to her list exposing the rejection and isolation that many Jews have been experiencing in their left-leaning, anti-Israel circles since October 7, and helping them to carve out a safe community. I know you'll gain so much from our chat with Dawn Cohen.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for joining us. Dawn Cohen, it's wonderful to meet you. Welcome to the Ashamed to Admit studio.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Now Dawn. Our listeners will pretty quickly tell that your accent is potentially not native to Australia. Yeah, I'm assuming you were born and raised in South Africa, Is that right?
Speaker 3:Absolutely Well picked.
Speaker 2: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:Well, I was born in 1957. And so I grew up under the apartheid regime. Both parents were staunchly opposed to apartheid, so I grew up in an atheist Jewish home with strong, you know, support for equality, liberty, anti-racism, lots of discussion around dinner tables about politics, and, although atheist, we didn't use the term secular Jew, we just used the term Jewish. And I was in a very Jewish environment.
Speaker 2:This is in Johannesburg.
Speaker 3:In Johannesburg. Yeah, and absolutely no visibility for gay people, except the headmistress of my school was a lesbian and this was a big, open secret but she wasn't allowed to mention it. She was in a relationship. Everybody thought of course I never got to check this out, but she was in a relationship with a vice headmistress and that was my first exposure. She was a very Christian lady. She didn't like me for one second because I was an atheist and I was uppity, but that was my first introduction to homosexuality of this very competent woman who didn't like me. And also you had to be very, very careful about never for a second exposing the homosexuality and of course I don't know 100% if it was true, because you so couldn't ask. But I grew up being terrified that I was homosexual. I'm not a suicidal person at all, other than when I thought I'm homosexual I thought I'd have to kill myself, and that was purely from homophobia, because it's not my natural response to life at all.
Speaker 2:Do you have a memory of when you felt attracted to women and you could sense in yourself that you were possibly gay?
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, I was at the movies and I had my boyfriend to my left and a completely strange woman to my right and I suddenly realised I didn't want to kiss my boyfriend, I wanted to kiss the woman to my left. Then I went to Jewish camp maybe 18 or 19, and there was one of the circle dances and you kind of had to ask other people to join you in an aspect of the circle dance, and I asked a girl and it took me years later to realise everybody else was asking opposite sex people and you know there were lots of moments like that.
Speaker 2:Earlier, you described your parents being quite socially progressive, or at least politically progressive. Did you talk about it with them, or was there a taboo around homosexuality even with them?
Speaker 3:There was a taboo around homosexuality for everybody. I started being an activist on WITS campus about homosexuality by writing articles anonymously, pretending to be somebody else and doing occasional sort of debates that were reported in the newspaper. And my amazing grandmother came to me after having read one of my articles and said you know, it's totally. But my friends are asking me I just want to know the answer. Are you a lesbian or not? And I regretted so strongly but I said no, and I was already at university, knew that I was a lesbian. The pressure was so strong as if somehow the knowledge was out. It would be destructive, so I couldn't respond with a yes to my grandmother.
Speaker 2:And with your parents.
Speaker 3:Eventually, I did come out to my parents when I arrived in Australia and I was with tremendous support from the lesbian community in Sydney, the friends that I'd made. And I came out to my mother first, I think, and of course you know she had been suspecting. She definitely didn't want me to be gay, but you know her recall of it is that she gave me a big hug. I can't quite remember what happened next. That was the start of a 30-year journey of educating my parents and them, listening them, you know, being interested with all the usual to be expected homophobias that parents had then and to some extent have now, until the moment of our 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 my mother made this most extraordinary speech of total sort of acceptance and celebration of our marriage, and my father too was utterly supportive by that stage.
Speaker 2:That's beautiful. I'm looking forward to learning a little bit about what that was like for you to finally have your love accepted equally like the rest of heterosexual Australians. But just go back to that decision to leave South Africa.
Speaker 3: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 been trying to migrate since I was seven. Two reasons they were opposed to apartheid and also they understood that South Africa would not be stable because of apartheid. There was going to be violence. We went and lived on a kibbutz for a few months when I was seven. Didn't work, my father didn't like picking oranges and various other attempts to leave. I did know, though, that you know Australia, america, england, you know had exciting lesbian feminist movements, and in those days lesbians tended to be aligned with the women's movement and gay men certainly in Sydney were involved mostly in their own movements, with some overlap. There were some groups that were both women and men, but for me my home was with lesbian feminists when I arrived in Australia, and that's where I found intellectual support and emotional support and room to grow.
Speaker 1:And just to be clear, you found support with the Australian lesbian community right, Not Jewish Australian.
Speaker 3:We couldn't find each other.
Speaker 3:When I arrived in Australia in 1978, there wasn't even a picture of another life besides heterosexual couple plus children and grandchildren. There was no sense at all of emotional or intellectual or even imaginative space into which someone like I could step. So whereas other South African Jews migrated to a community here, schools for their children or synagogue or other community groups or even single Jewish kind of friendship networks, there was no possibility for me of getting anything or there being space for me in those. But nobody was ever horrible to me, but it was just like you know. I might as well have been a Timbuktu and then I'd find the occasional Jewish lesbian here and there and very slowly, by the late 80s Jewish lesbians were beginning to find each other here and we had tiny little groups where you know, I got religious education about Judaism from a particular woman Her name is Jen Van Proctor who was starting to run little or organise these tiny little groups for us. So slowly, slowly, we found each other, but that was long after I'd arrived in this country and established myself.
Speaker 1:And a special hello to Jen. She's a listener of this show. Good, so you arrive in Sydney and you're finding Jewish lesbians here and there, but not necessarily in the eastern suburbs where most of the Jews congregated, am I right?
Speaker 3:Well, I was very excited when I finally found my eastern suburbs Jewish lesbian friend, the one yeah, Hello Jude Kell. And he became, in fact, the first president of DIA after me. So no, I did not have a home in the eastern suburbs. My parents lived in the eastern suburbs, but other than that it was like a foreign world.
Speaker 1:The reason I'm bringing geography into this is because, dawn, you've been credited with bringing gay Jews, queer Jews, back into the Sydney Jewish community Prior to that. Where were they mainly living their lives?
Speaker 3:So, look, I want to make it clear that it wasn't just me living their lives. So, look, I want to make it clear that it wasn't just me. There were lots of very brave and helpful gay and lesbian people, you know, from about the beginning of the 80s onwards, who would be doing important things to start that process up in part of a process that also was commenced in America with amazing people who began trying to create a space for homosexual Jews. Where were most of my friends living in the inner west? Where was I? I was in Stanmore at one stage. Balmain, leichhardt and, of course, a lot of gay men were around Paddington and Oxford Street, but I didn't know them. My world was in the inner west.
Speaker 2:Dawn. When you arrived in Australia, you did connect with a wider lesbian movement and there was a kind of an interrelationship between the women's rights and the lesbian movement, and this was among non-Jewish Australians. So you could have quite easily have just kept your community there. I'm wondering why was it important for you to then find lesbian Jewish women and gay Jewish people?
Speaker 3:It's such a good question, dash. I'm a person who needs my whole self. Part of why I have fought so hard in a public way for my lesbian self is because I can't function without my heart. My lesbian self is my heart and my sensibility. It's who I love, but there's also something about me and how I am that's just profoundly lesbian. And I also can't function without my history, my roots, those ancestral roots that go back 3,000 years and are indefinable, and deep spirituality so inextricably intertwined with those ancestral roots. And so to have my whole self, I need to have my Jewishness, my lesbianism, and I guess the third aspect of that is my freedom of mind. I really need freedom to think and of course, all of that gives me a natural home in the progressive Judaism of today. At Emmanuel Synagogue, which is my synagogue, I can have all of those three things.
Speaker 1:Wow Dawn, how did you and your crew bring Jewish lesbians back into the Jewish community?
Speaker 3:Like I said, there was a small group of us, some very, very Jewish-affirming people, that embodied that embracing of both. Lyndall Katz is another very important activist who refused to give up either part of herself, and when individuals refuse to give up part of themselves and do that in a loving and affirming but assertive way, it kind of opens up the space for everybody else. It kind of opens up the space for everybody else Also. Lorraine Larry was one of them. Those people created the initial ground, but I noticed that what was happening was the gay men and lesbians were working separately. So, for example, in 1998, the Jewish Lesbians of Victoria who also are an amazing group, who helped lay the groundwork for the changes that have happened they had a small, the very first Jewish contingent in Mardi Gras. It was a small walking group. And then in 1999, there was a small gay men's walking group as well, I think they called themselves the Jewish Princesses and we had a small lesbian walking group.
Speaker 3:But I understood that the Jewish community would not change until gay men and lesbians started working together. It was as if we couldn't be taken seriously or as a force to be reckoned with until we did that At the same time. Jen and Larry and I, and maybe some others, tried to organise the very first Mardi Gras Shabbat. We totally understand why At that time no synagogue could provide us with space to house if we tried and were turned down, and so I understood then that there had to be a united men and women's group. We'd made some breakthroughs in 1990 with the very first talk on homosexuality in the Jewish community in which I debated Rabbi Kamens and Orthodox Rabbi Franklin, and we'd made some breakthroughs at that time with that first debate.
Speaker 1:Can you tell our listeners how that came? To be Sure.
Speaker 3:So there was a remarkable man by the name of Nick Seaman, and Nick's mother worked with me. We worked in the same community health centre and she was also lovely and very open to talking about homosexuality, which was fabulous for me to have someone who was easy with the fact that I was a lesbian, because this was 1990, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And one day she came to me and said Dawn, do you know? We're looking for a gay man who will talk in this debate that Vic's organising on homosexuality and we can't find anybody. It's going to be the first debate on homosexuality in the Jewish community. Nick's got a couple of rabbis. Do you know anybody? And I said I'll do it.
Speaker 3:And Agnes looks a little bit worried because you know I'm a, you know, sensitive person who can easily be hurt. And she said are you sure you want to do this? You know the Jewish Orthodox community is not that accepting and it's never been done before. It might get a little bit aggressive. You know I'm worried they'll kind of kill you.
Speaker 3:And I went home to Rob, who's now my wife, and I said Rob, should I do it? She said yes, definitely you should do it. And I went to some friends and said gay people and said you know, should I do this? And I got the answer no. Look, you know we've got to keep the two things separate. If you bring Jews and gays into the same room, they'll kill each other and you know it just can't mix.
Speaker 3:And I went back to Rob, who you know is a 78er, meaning that she was arrested in the Gay Liberation March that resulted in Mardi Gras. She was thrown into jail, she was thrown downstairs, so she knew a thing or two about fighting for liberation. And she said to me Dawn, of course you must speak, there is a homosexual and a Jew inside your skin. Of course they can get on with each other. Of course they can integrate. They're doing that inside you. And so I went ahead, and the first thing to be done was to have all the speakers and Nick come and have a breakfast. And so everybody came to my tiny little Bellemain house. I'd never met a rabbi before, by the way.
Speaker 3:Had no idea, kind of you know what does one feed a rabbi for breakfast? I just Pickles. Well, I didn't know. I made sure Rob did the catering, not me. I was really, you know, worried. Anyway, there they are in my little little little Balmain house, and, you know, worried. Anyway, there they are in my little little little Balmain house and everybody's very nice to 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 an anti-apartheid fighter in South Africa. But, dawn, they're going to kill you. So my suggestion is you just talk 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 to tell me he'll take up my speaking space.
Speaker 3:I remember walking on the stage and looking down and there's a sea of Jewish faces. Now, I hadn't seen a sea of Jewish faces since I'd migrated from South Africa because I'd just been in the lesbian community. Everybody looks familiar. They look like my uncle, my auntie, my granny. I had this experience of being with family. I had this experience of being with family and then in the front row there was a group of lesbian and gay, mostly non-Jewish people, all looking excited and I thought, oh, they're here to support me. And then, about 10 rows back, there's my parents looking a bit scared, but very brave, and my wonderful, very supportive cousins, saul and Ilana, are also there and I suddenly thought I'm home and I have a voice now. Yeah, and I opened by saying I'm a proud Jew and a proud lesbian and I am making Aliyah from Belmain to Bondi.
Speaker 1:And that broke the ice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know there was absolute applause. Both rabbis, I think, were very surprised and the hall was packed. And then, for one of the first times, we got coverage in the Jewish news. Up to then we'd been mostly invisible, and so it broke the ice. It also broke the invisible walls that kept us out of the psychological Jewish space that the Jewish news represented.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad you described it with the pride it deserves because you were a little self-deprecating. The first time I heard that story you said so many people showed up. I think because Sydney were a little self-deprecating the first time I heard that story you said so many people showed up. I think because Sydney is a little bit boring back in the 90s it was.
Speaker 3:That was part of it. So I just had a sort of insight and I've got a sense of the elements that were needed. Yes, men and women had to come together. We had to have overseas visitors, because every time there was a Jewish overseas visitor, the Jewish news covered it. And I thought, get somebody from overseas and they will cover it.
Speaker 3:We had to make it fun and exciting, because truly Jewish community needed fun and exciting. We needed heterosexual people walking with us so that it modeled to the Jewish community. This is the thing to do Be with us, walk with us, stand with us. And we needed to have a big splash and we needed a Shabbat dinner under a Jewish roof. We needed to make a spiritual breakthrough into Jewish community. I truly mean it about us needing to make a liyar, a maliyar that involved welcoming to the community itself, spiritual inclusion in the synagogue, and so this was a massive Jewish coming out, gay Jewish coming out process.
Speaker 3:And basically I went, went to Lorraine Larry and Deb Saltman asked if they would help me do this. They said yes, lorraine Larry is the one who named the organization, dayenu. I expected it to last about six months, just enough for us to create the breakthrough. I had no idea other people not me would keep it going for the next 25 years, and that was the formation of Dayenu. Lots of ups and downs, all sorts of battles and challenges, threats to me at that stage by somebody on the Jewish Board of Deputies, totally, whereas now the Jewish Board of Deputies is just amazing and supportive, encouraging.
Speaker 2:But that was the start dawn, you mentioned the important role of jewish heterosexuals what we would now call allies and the role that they played in walking side by side with you and your movement. Tell us about some of those significant allies that you had in those early days and what it does to a movement to have allyship and people brave enough to speak up to the wider community.
Speaker 3:Yeah, without them there would be no Dayenu, there would be no space for us in Jewish community. I'm profoundly grateful. The very first person that I approached was Rabbi Jackie Ninia and asked her, with Kent or Joseph Toltz, to lead the Shabbat dinner and service the Shalom Institute. Actually, they were first there too that I approached to house the Shabbat dinner and service the Shalom Institute. Actually, they were first there too that I approached to house the Shabbat dinner and Rabbi Nuneo said yes. And each time you get a yes, it's like really I didn't really expect that, you know, because we had been knocking on the door for some years and hearing no.
Speaker 3:The fabulous writer Diane Armstrong was one of those people who had a family member who was gay at that stage, and she and members of her family joined us on that march. Now Diane's a Holocaust survivor. And there was another Holocaust survivor by the name of Susie Wise, and their participation meant the world to us and I was overjoyed when, after the parade, susie Wise came to me and I think it was even reported in the Jewish news and said it was incredible for her to walk down the street and be cheered as a Jew, and so I'd been imagining all of this was going to just be support for us lesbian and gay Jews. And remembering transgender was not on the radar yet in Sydney, so we were thinking lesbian and gay. But to hear a Holocaust survivor say that it had helped her around being Jewish and that it was an absolute peak moment for her was just such a bonus, such a bonus to feel that we'd given her that.
Speaker 1:And there's also another ally which you haven't mentioned I'm going to mention him because I try and work him into most episodes and that's your friend Vic Aladef, marathon runner and fit grandpa. So can you tell us about Vic's contribution?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So we were very lucky that Vic happened to be the editor of the Jewish News.
Speaker 3:While this was happening, he wouldn't compromise his journalistic values to give into pressures. The pressure on him was enormous. He made a decision to give the front page of the Jewish news after Mardi Gras to us, to the Dayenu float, and he knew that that was going to cause a huge reaction from the orthodox rabbinate and he knew it was risking his job, but he chose to do that anyway. He would not sacrifice being a good journalist to fit in with homophobic pressure. And then what happened was both he and the heads of Shalom Institute at the time were called by the Beth Din to account for themselves for the fact that they had refused to collude with the invisibility with which homosexuals were expected to comply with by the Orthodox Jewish rabbinate expected to comply with by the orthodox jewish rabbinate and both vick and I think it was, yeah, just refused to go off to the bed in an account for themselves and instead what vick did, which is actually I think it's unprecedented in the world.
Speaker 3:I've never read of any other jewish community doing this. He he ran letters for weeks and weeks of people's opinions on whether Jewish community should be letting in gay people and overwhelmingly he got letter and letter and letter of support for us. You'd pick up the Jewish news and you couldn't believe it. That many people were on our side. We hadn't really realized it.
Speaker 1:It was to the point where the Orthodox rabbis thought that it was unbalanced that he was publishing too many letters in support and he wasn't publishing the ones that opposed it. And he said no, I'm publishing every single letter.
Speaker 3:publishing the ones that opposed it, and he said, no, I'm publishing every single letter, In fact, to try and make it even look more balanced, even though it was the factual truth. He'd actually have to invite please somebody who's opposed to this, write something.
Speaker 3:And I think that's where the Rebinate was underestimating the Jewish community. One of the unique gifts of Jewish community is the capacity for nuance and complexity in our welcome to everybody. So it was particularly for modern Orthodox Jews. It is completely easy to say we welcome gay people into our community and we also have men and women sitting separately, for example. You know, I'm progressive Jew, but I love that capacity to be able to think in a complex way. And so what Vic did then is not only did it make our welcome very, very solid into the gay community, not only did it say to Jewish leadership gay people are here, we belong, we have our place. It actually said to the Jewish rabbinate the Jewish Australian community wants to make room for our rabbinate, who we respect, but also for secular independence, who we respect, but also for secular independence. And so there was, in effect, a Jewish community putting a statement to its leadership saying we value you rabbis, we value you, beth Din, we value our leadership, and we also want room for independence of thought.
Speaker 2:Dawn. I'm told that a few years ago, having made all of this progress with Dayanoo and worked so hard over many years to see the establishment of a place, a space for gay and lesbians in the Jewish community in Sydney, you were all but ready, perhaps, to hang up your activism boots. But then something happened at the end of 2023 and you saw the need to go back out there and be an activist again. Tell us what happened.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, october the 7th happened. You know, when Robin and I got married in 2018, I really thought, wow, this massive part of my being can go and retire now, my activist self. I understood at that stage that there was lots of room for me in the Jewish community, but that the gay community wasn't so great for Jews. But you know, it was all right. It was all right. But on October the 7th or October the 9th really, when the trauma happened of us being excluded from the opera house and when I saw that very few of my progressive, non-jewish community understood how horrible that was, I realised that I was no longer safe as a Jew. Half of me was now safe and secure in my gay self, but in my precious home in non-Jewish progressive world, I was no longer safe.
Speaker 3:There'd been intimations of this. I'd lived in Byron Bay for 12 years. I'd been active around standing up to the anti-Semitism in Byron Bay, writing articles for the newspapers there, giving talks between 2000 and 2012 or so. But this was something else. This was something else and I think we all know that. But this was something else. This was something else and I think we all know that.
Speaker 3:This is the 25th anniversary of Dayenu. It's the first time I've done anything publicly where I've talked about October the 7th and its consequences, because, like most of us, I was in shock for a year and distressed for a year, like many, many Jews. But what I started to do was use the same process of analyzing what was happening to me as I had used around sexism and heterosexism to give the talks that I had given in the Jewish community around homosexuality. I had to understand the subtle energies coming at me to try and stop me. The very first one of that was they'll kill you, don't do it. That was the first homophobic or heterosexist invitation to collude with my own oppression. But there were hundreds of others and I had to unpick each one with Robin's help, and it was an ongoing process of unpicking heterosexism, heterosexism being the term for when heterosexuality is privileged over homosexuality.
Speaker 3:I now started applying those same principles to antisemitism, and that requires a redefinition of how most people see antisemitism. Most people think ofSemitism as when people want to kill Jews or take jobs away from us. Now, that is anti-Semitism, that's gross anti-Semitism. But there's a subtle anti-Semitism, akin to the equivalent of sexism or homophobia, that actually everybody's got Just like.
Speaker 3:Prior to the women's movement. Everybody was sexist. No man who was mansplaining there wasn't a word for it then thought I'm being horrible to women. He thought I'm just being normal, right, somebody had to work out. Ah, that's that thing where men think they've got the right to educate women on everything and somebody don't know who the fabulous person was made up the word mansplaining, so she unpicked whoever. That was unpicked. An aspect of sexism, put words to it. Now it's kind of like it happens, but it can be unpicked easily.
Speaker 3:So I've understood we need to be about antisemitism easily. So I've understood we need to be about anti-Semitism. We start needing to understand that there's gross anti-Semitism but also subtle anti-Semitism, and it's the responsibility particularly of progressive Jews like myself who live at the interface of the non-Jewish progressive world and the Jewish community, to do that job of unpicking the subtle anti-Semitism, because we love our friends, we love our non-Jewish community. We can do this from a space of love, but first we need to know the subtle anti-Semitism actually exists. It's very painful the process of noticing it, then at least not colluding with it inside ourselves. So I've noticed two or three of the subtle anti-Semitism, but there's a billion more and I just invite everybody to join in this work. It is so empowering because it helps me not to collude with the pressures on me to dissociate from my Jewish self or dissociate from my mainstream Jewish community would now broadly call the queer movement or LGBTIQ plus movement.
Speaker 2:In recent years, and obviously particularly since October, the 7th 2023. What are these manifestations of anti-semitism that you've you've noticed?
Speaker 3:the very first thing I noticed was Penny Wong. Now, I adored Penny Wong. I've written articles where I'll just throw in, you know, penny Wong for Prime Minister. I thought she was fabulous. I've personally interviewed Penny Wong at one stage as a journalist Such a bright, you know, caring, amazing politician, I thought, and I still think she is.
Speaker 3:And yet the day her first comments about October 7th, were utterly unempathic to the suffering of the Jews, the Israelis, the Israelis who had been assaulted and murdered, and to the Jewish community. Her first response was about cautioning Israel not to respond significantly, and she corrected that later. But where her heart was at was profoundly not with Jews and it caused me immense personal pain and confusion and in fact I've only put language to this in the last few weeks. That lack of empathy is actually a sign of anti-Semitism and I've noticed it manifesting recently around the murderous, antisemitic nurses, where I will hear people talking about it, of course saying it's wrong and bad, but their heart is with the nurses. Actually, you know, weren't they silly? If only they had. And this lack of empathy for us when we have suffered greatly is a symptom of anti-Semitism. Now that I've got language for it, I can now name it so when it happens in front of me again with kindness and with love, I can now articulate it. There's two other things I've noticed that have caused me pain, but help me now that I've found words for it.
Speaker 3:One is the necessity to blame a Jew. There is the most profound and pervasive pressure to find a Jew to blame. In some cases it will be to blame 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 like reasoned argument, actually it's an invitation. Let's blame a Jew.
Speaker 3:I've noticed when I've read articles written by progressive Jews, particularly in the Herald, there's almost a formula that's followed. The first is to establish your Jewish credentials I'm the child of Holocaust survivors Almost next there's a blaming, often of other Jewish community members for being horrible to the anti-Israel writer. There was one article by someone who threw his own grandmother under the bus about her not being nice enough to him, about, you know, his stand on the Israel-Palestinian crisis. Then there's a broadening of what seems reasoned. You know there's often a Hamas was bad the little line, and then there's a crescendo of ending of blaming Netanyahu. Quite incredible when you read them and know the formula's happening.
Speaker 3:Now, those Jews who are writing those things aren't consciously thinking, oh, I'm going to throw my grandmother under the bus. But what they're doing is they're unconsciously responding to anti-Semitic invitation from the non-Jewish world who are also unconscious of it. They don't think they'd be horrible to Jews. And the invitation is distance yourself from mainstream Jewish community. The invitation is put all the blame on Netanyahu, make them the bad person. And it's quite different from reasoned, good, strong criticism of the Israeli government. This lacks subtlety or nuance and one sort of needs to tune in and ask the question is this a reasoned debate or is this that subtle anti-Semitic invitation? And I'm just talking about the subtle anti-Semitism. There's much more stuff that is much less subtle than that.
Speaker 1:Well, the overt stuff gets reported, but the subtle stuff doesn't, unless we talk about it.
Speaker 2:Dawn, as someone that has been in the wider gay and lesbian movement now for many decades, if you have any explanation or any theories on how and I could be wrong about this but my impression is that there has been a twinning of the pro-Palestinian cause and the pro-Palestinian movement with the contemporary queer rights movement. You see that very much in the United States, perhaps less so here in Australia, but I still see it here in Australia. Can you offer up any explanation for us on that?
Speaker 3:Well, the first problem is when we call those movements pro-Palestinian. I think that's a problematic misnomer. I am pro-Palestinian. I'm also pro-Israel. Most Jews that I know are pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel. We want a good life, an equal life, a dignified life for all Jews, Muslims, Palestinians and Israelis. So I think we need to stop calling that the pro-Palestinian movement. I think a better name is the anti-Israel movement. There's all sorts of complex reasons for that twinning. One is I think it's a deliberate strategy of the anti-Israel, anti-Zionism movement. Actually, it's so complex I'm not sure whether I can do it justice.
Speaker 3:It would be a whole interview in itself to show how we got there, but the way out is the responsibility of progressive Jewish LGBTIQ people, people who identify as queer, transgender, intersex, lesbian, gay, bisexual, non-gender, conforming, and who have connections with both the Jewish community and the broader queer movement, are the ones who can make the change. What a queer movement are the ones who can make the change, and the change comes through bearing to look at the anti-Semitism around and with love and compassion, articulating it and standing with mainstream Jewish community. Don't let them cut you off. Have your whole self and out of that we can free ourselves from the antisemitism that dominates the queer movement sensibility at the moment.
Speaker 1:Dawn, those are inspiring words, and I was also very inspired by a poem that you read at the end of your speech at the 25th anniversary of Dayenu, and you've kindly agreed to share that poem with our listeners in Australia and abroad Without further ado. Here's Dawn Cohen with her poem.
Speaker 3:And speaking to the progressive Australian movement, I can't tone it down to please you or appease you, to invite you or excite you. I will not shut it down. My bond with Jews, israelites, zionists, jews, theists, atheists, pacifist, warriors A bond and a knowing Ancient, ancient and brand new. We are Hebrews, I, I'm a Jew and I will not go that down. Am Israel Echad. Am Israel Chai? The people Israel are one, united, not uniform. The people Israel are one, united, not uniform. The people Israel live.
Speaker 3:We will not tone it down ever again. And horror, ancient and new. We choose our response, chosen, chosen left, chosen right. We can only choose our response and I choose it anew Hebrew, israelite, jew. Am Yisrael echad. Am Yisrael chai. The people Israel are one. What happens to us happens to me. The people Israel live. I will not be a conditional Jew begging acceptance by blaming Netanyahu, denying my tribe and refusing my name. Never, ever again, for dinner parties, book clubs and WhatsApp chat, for Mardi Gras, bridge games and neighbours to our flat. I am always a Jew, a lover of Robin and of Zion, a lesbian Hebrew. I will not slice my own soul's roots Israelite, Zionist, jew. We are Hebrews, theists, atheists, pacifists and warriors, wise old ones, ancient, ancient and brand new, am Yisrael, israel Ehad, I'm Israel Hi.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Dawn.
Speaker 2:Beautiful. Yeah, I'm bowled over by your wisdom, dawn, and by your courage as well, and I've learned a huge amount today. Thank you for sharing the story of Dayenu and for really, really privileged to have heard it and to learn about it. I can't wait to share it with our audience.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Dash. I really appreciate that. Please keep holding in mind there is a whole network of people. I'm somebody who finds it easy to talk, but there's lots of people who are doing amazing, amazing work. I'm just one aspect of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Dawn, Always humble and so generous. Thanks for joining us on our podcast today. Thank you for the opportunity. At first I was afraid I was petrified us on our podcast today. Thank you for the opportunity. That was Eshet Chayil Dawn Cohen, and that's it for another week.
Speaker 2:You've been listening to. A Shame to Admit, with Tammy Sussman and me, dashiell Lawrence.
Speaker 1:This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King, with theme music by Donny Jenks.
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Speaker 1:You can tell us what you're ashamed to admit via the contact form on the Jewish Independent website or email ashamed at thejewishindependentcomau.
Speaker 2:As always, thanks for your support. Remember to hydrate this weekend and look out for us next week.