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
ASHAMED TO ASK! With special guest Van Badham & special co-host Elise Esther Hearst
Are you interested in issues affecting Jews in Australia, the Middle East and the world at large but a little bit ashamed that you don’t know much about it all … because you’re like … not Jewish ? Well you’ve come to the right place!
For the next few episodes, we’ll be inviting someone who isn’t Jewish, to raise all the awkward questions you might be too ashamed to ask.
First up in this week’s spin-off, Tami and co-host Elise Esther Hearst (filling in for Dash) are joined by writer & dramaturg Van Badham who asks them some questions about their experience as Jewish people and creatives. Expect to hear about Jewish mythology, arts community politics + Tami & Elise’s speciality: intergenerational trauma!
Welcome to Ashamed to Ask
If you liked this episode, you’ll like:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/when-they-ask-about-the-tooth-fairy
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/the-best-jewish-cultural-moments-of-2024
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/jews-and-the-occult-five-myth-busting-insights
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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 Elise Esther Hurst, filling in for Dash Lawrence, and in this special episode of Ashamed, to Admit your, are we distant enough to shtup third cousin Tammy Sussman and I will be inviting someone who isn't Jewish to raise all the awkward questions you might be too ashamed to ask.
Speaker 1:Join me, and Elise, as we have a go at cutting through some seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Jewish Independent Podcast. Ashamed to Ask.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone, welcome to this very special episode of Ashamed. To Admit, we're calling it A Shame to Ask. Joining me today in the studio while Dash is away is Elise Esther Hurst.
Speaker 2:Hi Elise, hey Tammy, how are you? I'm okay. How are you doing? I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me Pleasure.
Speaker 1:Elise. You're an award-winning Melbourne-based playwright, author and performer. Stop. Your debut novel, one Day we're All Going to Die, was shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year Award 2024. Your work has appeared at various theatres around Australia, including a very Jewish Christmas Carol which was at Melbourne Theatre Company Yentl, the winner of the Green Room Award for Outstanding Writing. It was first shown at the Malthouse Theatre and the Arts Centre at Melbourne and then it came to Sydney and was shown at the Sydney Opera House. How else shall I identify you to our listeners? How?
Speaker 2:else shall I identify you to our listeners. Just call me the.
Speaker 1:Jewish Nicole Kidman with a side of dill pickle Perfection. Some of our listeners might also recognise you from Instagram, where you rate pickles. You have family members rate your Seder nights, your Friday night dinners, you do a little bit of unboxing matzah matzah, unboxing, amongst other things and, of course, you are the other half of.
Speaker 2:Shaw and Bo yeah and occasionally more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So, happy that you're here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you for having me, my pleasure.
Speaker 1:We will now be retiring the South African accent. I think that's for the best, yeah, yeah, okay. So, elise, you're co-hosting with me today, and the structure of this episode is a little bit different to how Dash and I would normally do A Shame to Admit this episode. We've invited someone into the studio to ask us the questions that they're ashamed to ask, and that person is ashamed to ask, and that person is Van Badham.
Speaker 2:Van Badham is a writer and dramaturg from regional Victoria. Van has had a successful international career as an award-winning playwright, critic and screenwriter. She's been called a major talent by the Guardian and one of the leading voices of her generation by Time Out London. In addition to writing books, plays, screenplays and criticism, she writes and performs for music, theatre and cabaret and has had an extensive career in radio. Wow, how do you feel?
Speaker 1:Anxious, of course, baseline.
Speaker 2:Where to go from here.
Speaker 1:Are you feeling a little bit nervous that she's going to ask a question that you don't know how to answer?
Speaker 2:Well, obviously I am a bad Jew, as all the good Jews are. Yeah, I'm worried, I'm on edge. Spilkers, I need to go to the toilet Spilkers.
Speaker 1:And you? I'm on edge, I need to go to the toilet. And you, when I'm in non-Jewish spaces, I'm usually the token Jew who is assumed to have all the knowledge and I feel really bad when I don't have the answers to things. I hope she doesn't ask me any questions that require textual knowledge. Yeah, I fumble over like is it Torah, is it Gemara? There are just so many books, so many. So I do hope she asks about digestive issues, because I feel like that's where I'm, yeah, that's where you excel, yeah, that's where I thrive.
Speaker 2:I'm just hoping for a lot of intergenerational trauma because I feel like that's my specialty. Okay, we'll see what we can do. We'll see. No, she's amazing and I know Van is such an ally, so I'm really excited to speak to her.
Speaker 1:I hope you listeners enjoy our ensuing conversation with Van Badham. So, van Badham, thank you so much for joining us in the Ashamed to Ask studio.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm honoured to be here. How fun. Thanks for asking.
Speaker 1:Elise and I have brought you in here today to ask us all the ignorant questions, all the saucy, spicy questions about Judaism, Jewishness, all the questions you've always been too ashamed to ask.
Speaker 3:I don't know if I actually feel shame. Are you sure I should be on this program? Because I mean, I just blunder into these things. Quite honestly, you know the world's most clumsy, curious person. Do you know what I'm really interested in? And I wanted to take this opportunity to just acknowledge Elise, who is one of my favourite Australian writers. I love Elise's work. I've been a big fan for a long time.
Speaker 3:I saw a play that Elise wrote when she was a wee baby. That was at the New Theatre in Newtown. That was performed on a pile of dirt and what was so interesting about the play was that Elise just had a really interesting grasp of symbol and language and how they work together. And I saw a very Jewish Christmas Carol, which I thought was hilarious, and Evelyn Crapedrist as a gingerbread man was just literally one of the greatest theatrical moments of my life.
Speaker 3:But also I saw Yentl and could see Elisa's grasp of symbol and language and how they work together, particularly in stage format and obviously with everything that's been going on in the past year, like I was, when that horrible Doxed Creative list came out. I knew so many people on that list and had just never thought about their Jewish identity and realised that as a person who's involved in the Australian arts, who's been in the arts community for a really long time, so many of my favourite writers are Jewish Australians, and so my question is what is it about Jewish culture that creates such a vibrant sort of engagement with literature, like? I'm genuinely interested in that, because when I think about not only my favourite Jewish Australian writers but also my favourite writers full stop, so many of them come from Jewish backgrounds.
Speaker 2:Wow, first thing I have to say, besides thank you and you're amazing is that Tammy was in Dirty Land, and I don't know if you know that.
Speaker 3:No, because Tammy's wearing a hat and a big pair of sunglasses.
Speaker 1:I also had no lines in the play, so it's totally fine if Anne doesn't.
Speaker 3:You didn't play the dirt.
Speaker 2:No, she was a mute dragging a sack. Ah, you were the sack person. Oh, wow, she was the sack person. I had written that play just as a circle back, coming from living in the UK for two and a half years and I think what had really seeped into my bones from that experience of being in Europe and even just the experience of being an Australian in London, being a Jewish Australian in London, I felt that sense of otherness really profoundly and I felt that sense of the ghosts of the past being all around, the proximity of Europe, of Poland. That really informed that play and my writing. And I think for a lot of Jewish artists we're chasing ghosts. That's how we operate, because so much of our culture, our spirituality, is deeply tied to the past, to death, to searching for answers, to being othered. So that must come into. I don't know our creative flow and the way that we see the world and articulate the world.
Speaker 1:There's also a strong storytelling tradition. So we have our written stories or our written Jewish laws, but then we also have the oral debating, and talking about the law or the stories is encouraged as well. So I think it's fair to say that you'd be hard pressed to find a Jew whose ancestors haven't had everything taken from them, including books. So a lot of the stories have to be kept. I know it sounds kind of wanky to say in our hearts or in our minds, but you know we need to keep telling those stories, to remind each other of those narratives so that we don't lose them. So do you think that could play into it as well? Strong stories.
Speaker 2:It's so interesting, like we're just coming off the festival of Passover, pesach. My kids go to a Jewish school and so they have the story of Pesach the exodus, you know, being enslaved and delivered from slavery into freedom. Really, really strong imagery of death, murder, suffering, bondage. My eight-year-old is coming home and these stories just kind of fall from her mouth without you know, without a moment's pause pondering what pause is. And it's, I think, the beauty of sitting around a table and the act of telling the story. You know, we're instructed to tell the story. It is such a big part of this festival is the storytelling, and I get shivers because telling the same stories that we've been telling for thousands of years and their relevance to today and what we experience or how we can empathize with other people who are experiencing suffering, it's a huge part of our culture. So, yeah, it must, must have something to do with Jews and their creativity. I don't know if any of that rings true, van.
Speaker 3:Obviously my knowledge of this is external and quite shallow, but it's observing, like the imaginative heft in that storytelling as well, that comes from a Jewish mystical tradition Like we've just watched House of David, which I cannot recommend enough the Netflix show, it's basically Jewish Lord of the Rings, it's got a giant and it is absolute, just fun quality television entertainment, despite the truthful and biblical disclaimer at the beginning of it. But I am aware of things like the Dibbuk and giants and the Nephilim and these sort of extraordinary creatures from the Old Testament and the Prague Golem and these sort of quite powerful sort of manifestations of symbol which I don't entirely understand. But I want to understand where those come from, like dybbuks in particular I'm fascinated by Elise, this is your area, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yes, shit fuck.
Speaker 2:I had a dybbuk in my show, Like what was the symbolism of the dybbuk? They possess? They're dead and they possess the body of the living.
Speaker 1:They enter Van. This is very Jewish. What's happening right now is like we learn something in school or we know it's Jewish, and then we forget what that's all about because there's so much.
Speaker 2:We're like that prayer what is that prayer again? Well, the book. It enters the bride on her wedding night. So there are all these rituals around weddings and marriage and the bride in particular, to protect her from, you know, being entered by a demon as opposed to her husband.
Speaker 1:I had never heard of Dibuk before I met Elise. Oh, I couldn't tell you much about it though. No, but I mean it just wasn't covered. I went to a modern Orthodox Jewish primary school and high school. We had the old biblical stories the Noah's Ark, exodus, adam and Eve but that wasn't covered. No, I agree.
Speaker 3:Do you think that might be a phenomenon of what it means to be a diaspora culture, though? Because I encountered these sort of mystical and folkloric tenets? Because my sort of first experience of living around a Jewish community was in London, where I hung out with dudes who had a completely different social take on what it meant to be Jewish and came from like a British Jewish tradition that just talked about and engaged with different things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and would be different to our experience of Jewishness as well in living in Australia and living in a very post-Holocaust community. And I think, yes, I also didn't learn about it at school. But then there is that tradition, especially in Melbourne, of Yiddish theatre and Yiddish culture. There were basically the Holocaust survivors coming from Europe and performing the dybbuk and telling those stories that they were telling in Poland before the war, during the war and then surviving the war to tell those stories here. And one of my friends who's a fantastic writer, tully Lovey. I remember she wrote an article in the Jewish Quarterly about, and I just remember she talked about how they brought the Dybbuk here to Melbourne and it was kind of living amongst the spirits of the dead that all these survivors brought with them For us in a post-survivor kind of world. That is our deep book.
Speaker 3:It's a really interesting comparison that comes from a sort of post-colonial country experience. Like, as far as I'm aware and correct me if I'm wrong the majority of the Australian Jewish community comes from Holocaust survival families, whereas my experience living in Britain whether they were, you know, jewish families that had been in Britain as long as they'd been in Britain, like they're hundreds and hundreds of years of history, and the guys who I was particularly close to in London came from a really their grandfathers were Cable Street guys who had physically worked with the trade unions that they were members of to drive the black shirts out of London and came from a very different historical experience. I mean, what does that mean in terms of an international conversation around Jewishness to go, well, we carry this horror and you don't like is that an ongoing conversation?
Speaker 2:you're both looking at me like no, no, we're all family, but we're not all the same.
Speaker 3:Oh no way, are you telling me that groups of people aren't homogenous based on a couple of like common cultural identifiers?
Speaker 2:it's really surprising look, we're basically the same.
Speaker 3:A generalisation could be really destructive and inaccurate, perpetuating a stereotype that's used to further bigotry. Am I right?
Speaker 1:I can talk to that, especially because I was married to a man who was Jewish, but his maternal line is Sephardi, so originally Spanish Jews, who got kicked out during the Inquisition and went to Turkey, and his father's a Mizrahi Jew, so Middle Eastern, who then settled in Mexico, so both Jewish, and he was so excited. When he met me he was like, oh my God, it's a Jewish woman, my family's going to be so excited. Because he felt very quickly that we would get married and have kids and there was a lot of culture shock going on. There were a lot of differences and I often felt that he didn't fully understand.
Speaker 1:Being a third generation Holocaust survivor, I would get very anxious about food waste or my neuroses. I often caught myself feeling a little bit envious about his family and how, when we went to visit them, they were just. They'd experienced their own trauma for sure, but I just felt like they were able to kind of soak up life or drink life in a way that I felt that my family and other families who had experienced those horrors couldn't. There's almost a sense that the people who have survived the Holocaust and their offspring there's a little bit of them that's still there.
Speaker 2:And there's degrees. There's the people who are in the camps and the family members of those who are in the camps and the family members of those who got out. So my family got out. Of course there were members of the family who didn't get out, but my grandparents all got out and I think, yeah, there's measures of kind of how deep that trauma runs and what we're waiting for is to see how our children and our children's children, I guess interpret that trauma. And hopefully not. How do you live with that Like?
Speaker 3:that historical anxiety as a living memory, like the burden of that, must be at times unbearable. Especially, I mean, something I have really noticed and I'm a very dedicated anti-fascist and I'm always very, very happy to make Nazis unhappy, like that's. I mean I see that as my role in life and obviously my solidarity with the Jewish community is based on. Never again means never again, like it's pretty easy and in my experience of political activism the litmus is always anti-semitism, because anti-semitism, if it's present, you know that sexism is present and you know homophobia is present, you know transph present, racism's present, like because it's a permission structure for hatred. And I'm always absolutely stunned when what I think is, you know, like acceptable post-World War II moral basis, which is Nazis are bad and we fight them and smash them and marginalise their influence and send them to jail and get them arrested. And I mean this is what we do, where there seem to be carve-outs amongst people who would tell you to your face Nazis were bad, but there are carve-outs around anti-semitic justifications, generalizations.
Speaker 3:It happened to me at the pub the other day where I was like a woman who was fairly, you know, convinced of her own left-wing self-righteousness, made a carve out and I was like, are you perpetuating an anti-Jewish bigotry? Because I mean, I'm not going to accuse you, don't you? But if I was to draw parallels with what you're saying anti-Jewish bigotry I think I could. I mean, I think I could find them fairly comprehensively, and I mean it was to put that sort of weirdness in the context of a community that's still carrying the lived communication of trauma. I mean, how is that not completely unbearable Medication? This is my privilege of not coming from a survivor community, but I just I think it kind of comes and goes in waves of unbearability.
Speaker 2:I think it kind of comes and goes in waves of unbearability. I think it's been really hard for me to witness what it's been like for my parents. They grew up in what they always felt was the most idyllic multicultural society, where they were always welcome, and it's been completely devastating and heartbreaking for them to witness the disintegration of what they saw as a safe place for Jews. That's been really devastating and you know you're in strife when your Israeli family are reading the media about what's going on in Australia and they're like are you okay in the group chat? Yeah, has that happened to you, elaine? Yeah, yeah, it's happened to me. It's like you guys, just you've got your own shit going on, we'll be right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I said to my gorgeous Israeli cousin. I said why are you worried about me, like I don't have to run to a shelter, I'm not hearing the sirens. And she said, yes, sirens and shelters, and you know shells and bombs I can handle. It's people who are scarier and you're having to deal with the people.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, seeing my parents and then also on the other end of the spectrum, that having to question whether my children are safe, is also been extremely confronting. We were driving past Caulfield Grammar and my son said do they have security guards when it's school holidays? And I said they don't have security guards any of the time. I believe why do we have security guards? It's like the birds and the bees talk. It's like having to give your kids the anti-Semitism talk. It's not easy.
Speaker 3:How do you avoid, like avoid, impending traumatic breakdown? Well, I don't.
Speaker 1:You just have them, I just have them. It's so interesting, everyone handles it differently. I mean, in my family my parents handle their intergenerational trauma by repressing and just being these amazing, resilient, robust people who just get on with it. And I think my sister got those genes too and I think there was a glitch with me. My friends would say I'm very resilient and I get on with it, but I feel like I am this sponge for emotion. And you're the artist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true, my dad has become a prolific letter writer, slash emailer. He will write to everyone and anyone, all the politicians, just unstoppable. He's been to kind of every rally and protest. That's how he's processing this experience and yeah, it's up and down. I've been fortunate enough to be continuing to work in projects that have a Jewish slant to them and being around other Jews, and it kind of feels sad to say that in a way, that's that's how I'm able to make work right now a, because it feels safe, uh, and b I don't know what work, how much work there is out there for me otherwise, just at this time.
Speaker 1:We get through it by making funny videos as well. Funny content is another way of channeling that grief and anxiety into humor. Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's quite productive.
Speaker 3:I want to reassure you like overwhelmingly my experience has been that the old solidarity holds Like I want you to understand that overwhelmingly in the spaces that I'm in. It's just these outliers who turn up in spaces where you don't. It's like if somebody makes a TERF comment and you're like, hang on, you're in the wrong room, and it's just happened to me a couple of times and I've been genuinely surprised, like as if there's, like I said, a carve-out or exclusion criteria. It's like looking at something that's 1,000 years old, 2,500 years old, you know this strange sort of hateful rubric that has been carried and the idea that people wouldn't feel comfortable, like calling it out and the way that can be manipulated to inflict more trauma on people. I just find the most cynical and disgusting of contemporary sort of discourse, particularly online. In my QAnon book, obviously, if you're studying far-right conspiracy theories, it's not even a hop, skip and a jump, it's just a hop to the protocols of the elders of Zion, as you can imagine. And I went into communities on the internet because it was writing about them that I needed therapy to decompress from afterwards because they were, I'm sure you can imagine, just completely insane. But it's also the way that that anxiety is weaponized by the most bad faith actors on earth.
Speaker 3:When I wrote my QAnon book, I came across this horrendous story. There was quite a famous viral video that went around that was a woman attacking a mask stand in a Kmart in Arizona. Did you see it? No, oh, it was, you know, one of the ultimate Karen videos. And this middle-class blonde woman just absolutely melting down in a Kmart and smashed up a mask stand and said this is the new world order and all this sort of conspiracy stuff came out. That woman, as it turned out, had had a complete nervous breakdown, ended up in residential care and turned it around and a few weeks later came out the other side and talked about her story. And what had happened was her name was Melissa Raine Lively and she was actually from a family of Holocaust survivors who had settled in Arizona many, many years ago and the family had a lot of unacknowledged trauma and were trying to sort of deal with it. I mean, I have no imagination to understand how you deal with it, but she talked about what had happened.
Speaker 3:She gave a lot of interviews and one of them was about how she had been targeted by material that used manipulated Holocaust imagery to portray like masking and vaccination, as you know, front of control, and it got to her like it found this part inside that wasn't healed, that wasn't addressed and she ended up. She didn't sleep for three days. She consumed all of this propaganda. She became convinced that the end was literally nigh and smashed up a mask, stand in Kmart and got arrested. Her sort of discussion about it really had an effect on me, like, and it's that notion that communities that are dealing with such horror, like the horror that's just unimaginable to the vast majority of us in Australia, I just where do you find the resilience? Do you find it in storytelling? Do you find it in community like where do you go to be safe?
Speaker 2:both of those things, I think community and storytelling. Community has been a massive savior. And community, it gives you a sense of place in the world, it gives you a sense of belonging and meaning, and those things I mean. I feel like that's what. On the other side of it, people are missing, they don't have meaning, they're looking for meaning, they're looking for answers or community. I mean we have this culture that is not necessarily predicated on needing to believe in a God. It's so much as well about our collective history and story and togetherness.
Speaker 2:And I have to say I've made the most incredible connections with people post-October 7 in the Jewish community that I probably was not open to before. That I probably was not open to before. So for me that's one of the biggest gifts of you know. Having gone through facing an experience like no other of anti-Semitism in my own country and all the kind of you know, the small kind of moments of devastation that I experienced and that I know many of my colleagues, my peers, my friends have experienced. It's been the thing that's gotten me through.
Speaker 2:I don't know about you, tammy, I imagine it's similar. Yeah, it's similar, but, van, every bit of non-Jewish allyship, every message I receive from a non-Jewish person meeting also with you and talking with you and having those messages. You have no idea how much that meant to me and to people like me, because it's like we have been running for shelter in our own way and it's easy to forget that most Australians are not invested in perpetuating stereotypes about Jews. Do not blame the Jewish community in Australia for whatever is happening in a country far, far away. It's very easy to forget those things and every time a non-Jewish person would reach out, it was so necessary and so affirming.
Speaker 3:I just want to remind you, with my disinformation scholar hat on, that extremism gets clicks and it creates a distortion effect. Absolutely. I mean this horrible, hateful nonsense is not. We know this because we're polling people and going. You don't really. You know, I mean no. And overwhelmingly we know that insane majorities of Australians 85%, 90% think this is outrageous and, you know, have no predilection for political bigotry and it doesn't matter what side they're on, it doesn't matter if they're on the left or on the right.
Speaker 3:But I started seeing stuff on my social media and it attracts attention because it's a pattern, interruption and going hang on. Like, what's this, what are you saying? Like, and I think that that gives the impression obviously that works in the interest of bad faith actors to encourage that and some of the stuff I saw. Like you might know, I go around the country doing counter disinformation workshops and I brought out this amazing American scholar who was in my book last year, nina Yankovic, who's one of the foremost counter disinformation people in the world and talking about these sort of trauma baits and like extremist attention harvesting. And part of it was because I'd seen people I know share material that they hadn't sort of. You know, the material itself was sort of neutral, but didn't realize where it was coming from and not understanding that. You know you share something that's sort of understanding, that you know you share something that's sort of generic and you know like it's about solidarity and human rights and all of these things, all of which, obviously, I'm a huge fan of solidarity and human rights Strangely enough, this is why I am here and yet it was being used as sort of a lure to get people into more extremist conversations or at least to witness extremist content.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's the front that I'm choosing to fight on, is to talk about that and expose that, because I've got to say, elise, when I met up with you for coffee last year, I had never seen you look that fragile and I was really concerned. I came home and talked to my husband about it and was like I don't understand why this is happening, why it's hurting my community and my friends, and I think there's been parts of that in the arts community that have been really difficult, I think, for the majority of us to even look at and just go. Are you serious?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really those casual kind of shares that your, your peers in the arts community were, the posts that were going around, which I feel like came from a good place from their perspective, that they were sharing things that made them feel like they were showing solidarity, as you said, and support for people who were suffering, but also, on the other side of the coin, not seeing that parts of those things they were sharing, they were spreading misinformation that that was having a follow-on effect for our community.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, there was one image in particular that was shared by an actual American Nazi and I'm like you really need to check who puts this stuff out, you know.
Speaker 1:Why do you think that intelligent, educated, empathetic people in the arts community do share that kind of stuff or do still follow the bad faith actors?
Speaker 3:Not everybody in the arts community is intelligent or empathetic. Of course they aren't. There are people who are attracted to the arts because they want an audience and they want people to pay attention to them. I mean, come on, what do we think that artistic practice excludes people with narcissistic personality disorder or social dysfunction? Of course it doesn't. And the internet makes it very easy to get an audience by being an extremist as opposed to doing the work. You know Like it's hard to write a play. It's easy to be a knob on TikTok. You know like, quite honestly, and there's our promo clip.
Speaker 3:And let's be really honest, there's a lot of rivalry that goes on in the arts community as well. I mean, elise had a massive hit with Yentl, she's running a television show, she's received awards and support, she had the Christmas show at the Melbourne Theatre Company. But do you think that is not going to provoke envy from people, like something that I've come to learn because I have to absorb all this just trolling all the time? Is that often it's about? You know, there are people who go off on the self-righteous side of the now that your career progression or your talent or your hard work is cancelled out by the fact that I'm morally superior to you and so therefore you haven't earned your opportunity. I mean, you and I will lead, all three of us will literally scrape you two in particular, scrabbling around in the dirt to make art you had to haul dirt into the new theatre to do a show, you know and finding a criteria that cancels you out or promotes them.
Speaker 3:I mean, we can't pretend that that doesn't happen. Of course it does, you know like, and if it's not one thing it's another, and we've all met those people like the more morally holy than now, and this is true across conspiracy theories, wherever they are, if they're anti-semitic in nature, or you know, about lizard people from space, or hillary clinton, or maria abramovich, the grand witch of the west, and the idea which is still one of my absolute favorites, but this idea that the reason why you're not successful is because there's, you know, an evil underground conspiracy of people who are plotting to destroy you. Like I'm getting anti-Semitism by proxy, like apparently I only have a career because I'm in with Big Jew and I'm like, well, guys are really into Bob Dylan. It's pretty funny. I mean, it's funny for me because obviously it's not my generational trauma based in, you know, like mass execution or you know, a deliberate program of extermination. Sorry if that was a bit insensitive, jesus.
Speaker 2:No, it's not just like breakfast talk over here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, tell me who your favourite Jewish writers are. Who illuminates the world for you and why?
Speaker 1:Elise Esther Hurst.
Speaker 3:She's pretty good. She is pretty good.
Speaker 1:We're all very proud of her. It's so funny when you said who's your favourite Jewish author or writer, I just like thought of Fran Drescher straight away.
Speaker 2:She is your spirit animal.
Speaker 3:She is a good union woman and a comrade of mine.
Speaker 2:And she's a writer. She wrote the Nanny Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Co -creator, co-writer. She has been such an inspiration to me my entire life. She was the only Jewish representation on TV when I was growing up and she was loud and her family were eccentric and annoying but lovable, and I feel like she was such an important creative reference point for me at a young age, the nanny was so Jewish.
Speaker 2:When I re-watch it now I'm like how was this possible that they made this show? The first episode she's talking about tchotchkes and you know they've got every Jewish holiday and festival in there with no apologies. Which is just.
Speaker 1:It's aged really well it has. When you rewatch Friends and you like get the ick from all the homophobic stuff in there. You don't get that. In the nanny there's a bit of fat phobia, which I don't like.
Speaker 3:But other than that beautiful van, who's your favorite jewish writer, besides so many sussman and elisa, so many, I mean I'm a massive billy wilder fan, I think, and it's hard though, because I do really really love the early Woody Allen stuff and he's now in the problematic category. The Broadway Danny Rose remains one of my favorite movies just about haven't seen.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's hilarious with me a pharaoh yeah, a penguin skates in dressed as a rabbi. It's hilarious, like it's. The humor is so strange and just because I was such a weird kid and they used to put all the Woody Allen movies on SBS and I watched all of them and sort of found this way of looking at the world, which was obviously really really problematic later on. Obviously I really love Kafka as well. I I do like Philip Roth. I think he's very funny.
Speaker 3:Rachel Berger from Melbourne was a huge inspiration to me when I was a young person as a stand-up comedian and I met her when I did a sort of stand-up five minutes in Melbourne when I was maybe 23 or something. I just couldn't believe she would talk to me. I just couldn't believe she would talk to me, you know, and so funny. I love that Self-deprecating and about storytelling and those kind of things like the language and the debate. And I even like the original Barbara Streisand Yentl movie, you know, because it's about wanting your brain to be awake and engaging and having. I mean, I'm so argumentative I don't know if you've noticed and I never shut up and Yentl is the ultimate argumentative women who never shut up movie Like, come on, yeah.
Speaker 1:She knew what she wanted. She really did. I'm sorry, van, I just nodded and pretended to know half the authors you mentioned. Yeah, same Van Vadim. Thank you so much for joining us today on A Shame to Ask even though you have no shame.
Speaker 3:I have no shame, but I just I want to remind you. You know your friends are with you, you have solidarity and the overwhelming majority of Australians are not going to let anything happen to you.
Speaker 2:Okay, Thank you, thanks, van. I feel like you're watching over us. I love you and you're an inspiration to me and our people. We thank you On behalf of our people. People we thank you On behalf of our people. That was Van Badham and that's it for this week.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to A Shame to Ask, a shame to admit sister podcast with me, Tammy Sussman and Elise Esther Hurst, who is filling in for Dash Lawrence. This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King, with theme music by Donovan Jenks.
Speaker 2:If you like the podcast which I'm sure you do, leave a positive review, tell your people or encourage your third cousin's cousin to advertise on the show.
Speaker 1:You can tell us what you're ashamed to admit or ashamed to ask via the contact form on the Jewish Independent website, or you can just email ashamed at the jewishindependentcomau.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening and for having me and look out for another instalment next week.
Speaker 1:And now for some bloopers.
Speaker 2:The other one is and in this special episode of a shame to admit, you're available to emcee your next four weddings and a bar mitzvah. Third cousin tammy susman and I will be inviting someone who isn't jewish to raise all the awkward questions you might be too ashamed to ask. Also, brilliant will be hard to pick you ready for the third. Yes, and in this special episode of Ashamed to Admit, your and I hear she's single third cousin, tammy Sussman and I will be inviting someone who isn't Jewish to raise all the awkward questions you might be too ashamed to ask.