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
International law, Israel, and longing for Mark Baker, with Michelle Lesh
Melbourne-based international lawyer and academic Michelle Lesh has spent two decades examining Israel's use – and misuse – of international law, with a particular focus on targeted killings. In this candid interview with Dash, Michelle opens up about recent attacks on Israel's democratic institutions and reflects on the extraordinary legacy of her late husband Mark Baker, whose posthumous memoir A Season of Death was recently named a finalist for the Age Book of the Year Award.
Don't miss Michelle speaking at the Sydney Writers Festival on May 22nd, or the opportunity to experience Mark's evocative photography at the Jewish Museum—an exhibition that beautifully complements his written legacy and runs until July.
See Tami & Dash in a LIVE recording of Ashamed to Admit at Limmud Oz Melbourne Sunday, 8 June.
Articles relevant to this episode:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/my-sense-of-collective-and-personal-belonging-has-been-shaken
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/mark-bakers-photography-comes-to-light
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/tji-series/remembering-mark-baker
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/fighting-for-democracy-while-facing-my-dayenu
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Are you interested in Jewish cultural and creative events, especially those taking place in Sydney and Melbourne over the next few months? If you answered yes, then you've come to the right place.
Speaker 2:I'm Dash Lawrence from the Jewish Independent and in today's episode I'll be talking with an Australian Jewish lawyer, legal scholar, academic and editor whose work was recently announced as a finalist in the Age Book of the Year Award.
Speaker 1:Who knows if she'll be ashamed to admit anything. It's season three of the Jewish Independent podcast and we seem to be dropping our shame a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yes, some of us more so than others. Tammy.
Speaker 1:Join us as we have a go at cutting through some seriously chewy and dewy topics.
Speaker 2:Welcome to this week's episode of A Shame to Admit. Hello, I'm Dash Lawrence, executive Director here at the Jewish Independent, and back from the 2025 London Marathon in a time of three hours and 27 minutes.
Speaker 1:He has to mention the marathon. I'm Tammy, I wear bike shorts now, apparently, sussman Dash, you thought you were the only one who liked to get out their thighs. As of last month, I do too.
Speaker 2:Pray tell, I did not expect you to be ever wearing bike shorts.
Speaker 1:You're quite right, because you're in Melbourne and I'm in Sydney and usually we see each other over our podcasting software, which is just torso up, it's torso face. You never get to see me torso down, which is a relief because quite often I'm not wearing pants.
Speaker 1:I knew it, but those close to me in Sydney know that I am not a shorts wearer because I've had a lifelong fear of bike shorts an irrational fear, if you like and I discovered that a few weeks ago when a friend came over to help me set up my Hinge dating app profile.
Speaker 2:About time Tammy.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you know much about Hinge, but Hinge is different to the other apps where it's just like pictures. Hinge is like the the other apps where it's just like pictures. Hinge is like the smart person's dating app.
Speaker 2:Tell me more.
Speaker 1:Tammy. Okay, so you put your photos there. I think you get to choose six. You can put videos and they also give you funny prompts that you have to answer.
Speaker 2:You'd ace this game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the prompts what's your irrational fear? And I told my friend that my rational fear is bike shorts. I don't really like to show my legs and she said we'll work on that, but the one that I ended up going with so that I could do code my profile.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I said, my irrational fear is that you'll throw out perfectly good leftovers.
Speaker 2:Subtle. I like it Sending a bat signal to any Jewish users on Hinge.
Speaker 1:Or allies.
Speaker 2:Yes, or allies Yep.
Speaker 1:You know, I am all about subtle. So if there's one thing people say when they hear my name subtle. So if there's one thing people say when they hear my name, it's oh, tammy Sussman. Yeah, she's subtle. No, I did write that I was Jewish on my profile too, just to sift out the far left and far right.
Speaker 2:How has your venture into the world of online dating and hinge gone, Tammy?
Speaker 1:You want me to spill the tea, don't you I?
Speaker 2:do. How's it gone with the profile that you did have up there?
Speaker 1:With the venture into online dating. I know you want to know all about it. And I know our listeners do too, because they're a smart bunch, they're an empathetic bunch and they're also a nosy bunch. Okay, so you know what? How about I spill a bit of tea at our live session at Limwood Oz, melbourne, over the June long weekend?
Speaker 2:Absolutely yes. For those of you who live in Melbourne, we would love to see you. On Sunday, the 8th of June, tammy and I will be hosting our very first live recording of A Shame to Admit, 4 o'clock, linwood Oz. Jump online, check out all the details and see the rest of the fabulous program that the Linwood Committee have worked up this year, sponsored by none other than Jewish Independent.
Speaker 1:So so let's circle back to your thighs, your legs, Dash.
Speaker 2:Okay, right.
Speaker 1:What did you wear when you were running in London Marathon?
Speaker 2:I had a last minute turn towards half tights running half tights. I hadn't been a tight runner throughout my running career, but just in the last few months I've really enjoyed the aerodynamics of a good pair of running tights. So I changed my attire with just a few weeks out from the marathon I said you know what? I think I'm going to run London Marathon in a pair of running half tights because they are super comfortable.
Speaker 1:Look at us. When we started this podcast, I was heavily into passive wear didn't own a single item of active wear and you were heavily deeply into shorts, and now you've transitioned into half tights.
Speaker 2:Yep, that's me. Just so much growth and development I've bought two pairs since the marathon, in fact color black and navy blue.
Speaker 1:I may be wearing a pack, I may be wearing a pair right now, but you can't see it, so you'll never know I love how you were just so proud of like black and you're like no, no, no, not just black, I've also got navy blue. This is not a visual medium, so what I'm thinking is that the Jewish independent socials need to get a photo of you in your half tights.
Speaker 2:I don't think that's necessary.
Speaker 1:I just think there's not enough thigh chat in this podcast in general. I think that should be a recurring topic of conversation. There's also not enough beef. There's not enough conflict or tension. You were the one who said from the very beginning that the podcast duos who get the most engagement are the ones who fight. And you're in Melbourne, I'm in Sydney, don't you think we could like play more with that rivalry? We could do more with it. I know what Melburnians say about Sydneysiders.
Speaker 2:You're all lacking in culture, lacking in.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what you think you do, don't you?
Speaker 2:Of course. That's why we choose to live in Melbourne and not in Sydney. You can have all your beaches.
Speaker 1:You choose to live in Melbourne because not in Sydney you can have all your beaches. You choose to live in Melbourne because of the prices. You can't afford to live in Sydney. That's the truth.
Speaker 2:That's true, yep.
Speaker 1:Got anything mean to say about Sydney Dash? Come on, hit me Sydney Jews.
Speaker 2:Honestly, I don't think you could handle it. Okay, have a try. It could be deleterious for our relationship. There could be ramifications that I don't know I want to live with.
Speaker 1:Deleterious. Now you're just trying to patronize me with your extensive vocabulary. That's what's happening now. You've got nothing bad to say about Sydney, but you're like I'll just make her feel inadequate.
Speaker 2:Would you prefer that we talked about house prices or real estate? Is that a safer conversation when talking to someone from Sydney?
Speaker 1:I don't want the safe conversations here, Dash. Can you see what I'm trying to do?
Speaker 2:I'm trying to create an unsafe space.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am Okay.
Speaker 2:I've missed you too, Tammy.
Speaker 1:When I come to Melbourne for Limwood, I am going to exclusively wear active wear just to piss off all the Melbourne Jews. I'm going to offend them, I'm going to show up to every formal event in like my Pilates wear and I'm going to speak with a Sydney, south African twinge accent. Okay, just to trigger everyone.
Speaker 2:Looking forward to it. Tammy, we've got a show to get on with.
Speaker 1:Tammy, we've got a show to get on with Melburnians. I love you. Your coffee's great and you're cultured and that's hot. So while the Sydney Jews are spending their time at Pilates on the weekend, you guys are out there at the galleries. You're seeing art, You're seeing photography.
Speaker 2:What exhibition are you hoping to see this month? Dash Well, tammy. The Jewish Museum is currently exhibiting an exhibition that I did not anticipate. This is quite a lovely surprise. The Jewish Museum has recently opened a collection of original photographs by the late Mark Baker. The exhibition is called the Things you Cannot See Photography of Mark Raphael Baker and, for those of you who don't know Mark or don't have some understanding of who he was, mark died in 2023. Who he was Mark died in 2023. He was a renowned historian, teacher, writer, and is celebrated here in Australia and internationally for his lifelong commitment to bearing witness and exploring humanity. His exhibition of photography his first ever, in fact, showcases a vital extension of this lifelong commitment to bearing witness. The exhibition contains Mark's photographs spanning countries, cultures, decades, and offers an intimate glimpse into everyday life, emotions and relationships. The Things you Cannot See explores both the seen and the unseen and invites a deeper understanding of the shared human experience.
Speaker 1:Mark Baker's memoir Dash A Season of Death, as you know, was published in 2024. It was edited by his wife, michelle Lesh, and her stepfather, raymond Gator. Now Michelle will be appearing at this year's Sydney Writers Festival Dash, a cultural event in Sydney. Better believe it. Michelle's event is this Thursday, the 22nd of May, at 11am. She'll be in conversation with the delightful Michaela Kolowski.
Speaker 2:Michelle Lesh is an international lawyer, has taught at the Melbourne Law School and the London School of Economics and worked at the United Nations, and is a member of the International Bar Association War Crimes Committee.
Speaker 1:She has written for a variety of academic and non-academic publications. Loveliest person and she's our special guest, but in particular your special guest, dash, because you interviewed her for today's a shame to admit interview.
Speaker 2:So, Michelle, I'd like to learn a little bit about your entry into the law. How is it that a young woman from Melbourne ends up interning for one of the most famous, most important jurists in Israel's history, Aaron Barak, and ultimately ends up working for one of its most important human rights organisations?
Speaker 3:Well, I really got interested in this during my law degree at Monash University and I'd always had a deep personal and family connection to Israel. My mother is nine generations Israeli. One side of her family is 22 generations Israeli. They've been there since the Spanish Inquisition and my grandfather was a Holocaust survivor and he fought in 1948 and he always taught me about the land, his love of it and his awareness that there were other people there, that the land was shared with the Palestinians, and he instilled that in me and while I was studying law. It was during the second intifada, so quite a long time ago, and there were serious questions about how to fight what was called asymmetrical wars.
Speaker 3:Now that question has been in international for a long time.
Speaker 3:It didn't start with Israel but because of that connection and interest I had in Israel, I was wondering how the law could respond adequately to the morally and politically complex realities and circumstances of that complex. And I was troubled by the increasing civilian suffering and I continue to be about in relation to that conflict and global conflicts around the world. So I went during my undergraduate years and I did a internship at an Israeli human rights organisation called Bet Selem and at the time the organisation was really thinking and questioning the adequacy of international law and how you deal with asymmetrical warfare and protect civilians on the one hand and also deal with questions of who is a civilian, who are considered fighters when you're dealing with a non-traditional army. And then I went back to Israel a couple of years later and I worked at the Supreme Court with Chief Justice Aron Barak and it was a real honour to work with Barak because at the time it was a really serious question about whether the law was adequate to the realities of the ground.
Speaker 3:Because, as I said, it raised these questions about how the category of civilian works in the law and whether there actually was this equivalence between, for example, a mother and a daughter walking down the street on the footpath and the commander of Hamas, who organized the suicide bombing but may also be deemed a civilian under the law because they're not wearing a uniform or carrying arms openly.
Speaker 3:So at that time, the question of civilian raised all these questions about whether innocent bystanders on the street were considered the same as a commander, and that's what interested me and I continued that work in my PhD.
Speaker 3:And then, when we think about how the law has evolved and circumstances has evolved in the time of targeted killings, at that time, during Barak's judgment in 2006, you could honestly say that, however terrible that expression is, that the mother and the child could have been deemed what we call collateral damage because it wasn't intentional and that it was seriously regretted. But when we look now at what's going on in Gaza, there doesn't seem to be any comparison because the situation is so inflated. We see that there are one ton, 100 ton bombs being dropped on a Hamas commander. That's killing 100 people, not one or two people, and we keep hearing things that it's regrettable. Yet it's a kind of legitimate action and it's hard to say this is anything but cynical, because with it is Israel's continued existence during this war that it's following international law, even though we're all watching day-by-day images of what is happening there and can see that there's this complete contempt of international law.
Speaker 3:So what I find interesting and really important is that the target of killing judgment however important it was at the time, is not really relevant to this war in Gaza, because it's such a radically different war. It's on a different plane, it's of a different scale and it's of a different kind. You know, know, at the time of the targeted killing case, people were really concerned about what it meant to be a civilian and I feel like this conflict is different for Israel from all its previous wars, even from the 1948 war, from what the Nakba was for the Palestinians, because of the way the war has completely mocked international law. And you know, when we talk about things like proportionality, when we see the destruction now it kind of feels like a bit of an obscenity and that proportionality isn't relevant, which is a, you know, really important concept of the law, because what we see before us is the complete destruction of Gaza.
Speaker 3:We're talking about things like humanitarian access being denied and starvation, and I don't think anybody at the time that the targeted killing judgment was written would ever have believed that it would come to this. Whatever have believed that it would come to this. So I feel like there's a big difference between where we were then and what's going on now in Gaza.
Speaker 2:You cite the example of Gaza, but what about the example of the attacks in Lebanon directed at Hezbollah's leadership? Those attacks were seen by many, including people that would often be very critical of Israel, as commendable, that is, that they removed the threat that Israel faced from Hezbollah, crippled that threat and for some it was an act to be applauded because it achieved the intention of removing the Hezbollah leadership. How did you look on it?
Speaker 3:The targeted killings in Lebanon. What happened in Lebanon, the targeted killings in Lebanon, what happened in Lebanon, are different in kind from what's happening in Gaza for different reasons. One of them is legally it's different, and you know I'll talk about that a bit. But I think something that's important to remember is that, even though something might be considered successful or politically legitimate, that is often irrelevant when we talk about the law. And international law is quite complex and on the one hand, you know it might seem pedantry to talk about distinctions, about what type of conflict is occurring, but it's actually important when you go into it, and I won't go into the details and the nitty-gritty of the law now, but how you classify a situation legally has important implications about whether it is permissible under the law, and I'll give one example is Gaza know, how that conflict is classified, whether it's international or non-international, has implications.
Speaker 3:It makes it controversial about whether you say Israel acts in self-defense in going into Gaza, which, when you think about it politically or from a non-legal perspective, that seems strange. And with Lebanon, similar issues arise because of the fact that you're doing a cross-border attack into another country. It raises issues whether there was a just cause to carry out those attacks, whether it created, whether there was existing in a type of internationalized armed conflict and basically the use of force is dependent on what legal rules apply. So when you breach the sovereign territory of another country, that then raises a whole lot of legal issues. And another example that I just want to give, because I think it's important to understand why legal rules and the legal regimes are important, is Gaza.
Speaker 3:When I worked at the commission of inquiry at the UN on the protests along the Gaza fence in 2018 and 2019, which I ultimately resigned from that commission of inquiry, which wasn't an easy thing to do, and in the end I resigned, not because I necessarily disagreed with the conclusions of the commission about Israel's conducts and its potential violations of international law, but because of the way they got to those conclusions and the integrity of international law. It was assumed, without much argument at the Commissioner of Inquiry, that the relevant law that would apply to assessing the conduct at the protest was human rights law. It was a law enforcement situation and it had the kind of absurd consequence that if 10,000 people were to break through the fence the only response available would be arresting those people. And that's the consequence of assuming that the protest was a civil disobedience, a kind of a civil protest rather than arms resistance.
Speaker 3:But there was at the time clear concern and good reason to believe at the time, but the commission chose not to investigate it, even though it was later confirmed that Hamas were there and ready to encourage and exploit surges of the French to break down the fence in which thousands of people could have gone into Israel, and no one believes that they would have walked in peacefully into the neighbouring kibbutzim with placards saying peace now.
Speaker 3:So, we see the way different legal regimes affect how you carry out. You know the response and then the legality of that response and you know it sounds technical, but it actually has implications in how we view situations and those legal implications then have political implications too.
Speaker 2:So, like Lebanon and Gaza are just two examples of how complex international law can be, and it's important that we, you know, understand it and it's applied rigorously and accurately let's um zoom out for a moment, because we're talking about laws, both international, but also Israel's laws, and the legal system in Israel that offers some form of a bulwark against the misuse and the abuse of power and also has ultimately served Israel very well since its establishment. In the last few years, that legal system, the institutions of democracy have come under enormous attack and you are someone that has dedicated your working life to contributing to those democratic institutions, your working life to contributing to those democratic institutions. What has it been like for you, michelle, sitting here in Melbourne looking at afar on what has been happening within Israel with regard to the attacks on the democratic institutions?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it's devastating. A lot of us for the last 18 months have been carrying a lot of pain for different reasons, but also there is a commonality. Often, I think the concerns about Israel's democratic institutions, as you kind of alluded to, existed long before Gaza. But what Gaza? What the war in Gaza has done is it's undermined those institutions even more so the government you could hardly call it a functioning government Since October 7, it's refused to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate why October 7 was able to occur. Who bears responsibility? Who bears responsibility? Events after October 7, the war in Gaza and allegations of violations that are occurring there.
Speaker 3:And one of the things I worked on when I was in Israel was I was a legal advisor for the Turkle Commission, which was a commission of inquiry that was set up to try and revamp Israel's military justice system and put in place different safeguards and mechanisms to ensure that when there were allegations of violations of international law, they were investigated in a way that was independent and impartial and in keeping and in line with international law. And it's an over 1,000-page report that kind of did comparative studies of six different military justice systems around the world. It interviewed military legal advisors, political legal advisors, ngos, international lawyers. It had members on the commission who were experts internationally from outside Israel, a former Supreme Court judge at the head of it and it was considered a serious and rigorous report that the government at the time accepted and in fact implemented changes within the military justice system to ensure those steps were taken. And when you think about the fact that since the war in Gaza following October 7th, there haven't been serious investigations into violations of international law, when we see the most flagrant violations of international law happening every day in Gaza and the terribleness of that it's just it's hard to express how devastating it is because Israel, under the Netanyahu government, has shown complete contempt for international law, contempt for international law.
Speaker 3:And you know we're seeing now that there's within Israeli society there's a refusal to serve. That's both open dissent and what they're calling quiet refusal, which is not showing up, just not turning up for duty. I read today that soldiers are arguing that it actually serves their country better or at least their families better if they don't serve. And I know that quiet refusal doesn't, and in most cases doesn't, actually have to do with the justice or the legality of the war, but it's to do with the kind of degree of the complete lack of sensitivity by some military commanders and politicians in regard to this enormous sacrifice they're asking of ordinary citizens, what we call citizen soldiers. Amos Harrell, the military correspondent for Haaretz, has been warning against the demoralization of the IDF for over a year now, and nobody believes Israel could get enough soldiers into Gaza now to do what Netanyahu wants to do. And I just see this as another example of contempt that the Netanyahu government has for ordinary soldiers that they've so exhausted and, in some cases, demoralized them. And it's a case of this government showing the same kind of disdain for its citizens as it's shown in its actions against the Supreme Court, its savage attacks against the IDF, the Shin Bet, the Attorney General, undermining the government's respects for institutions that are fundamental to democracy and what a lot of Israelis are now seeing as an unwinnable, forever war.
Speaker 3:And I know I get asked all the time about Mark in relation to this Mark's voice, the absence of his voice. People have a craving, a longing to know what he might say, and obviously I can't speak for Mark. I can't say what I think he would say. I know he'd be horrified and devastated about what's going on. Generally, we did share similar opinions on Israel. Obviously there were some differences too. One of his wishes for me was to instil in our daughter, malila, a love for Israel and a fierce criticism of it. Mark, you know, deeply loved Israel and was criticised at two, which made him this figure in the community, which was often considered a controversial voice, but it always came from a place of love. I think he'd be, you know, obviously deeply concerned about anti-Semitism, but I don't think his concerns about anti-Semitism would be in conflict with criticism he may have of Israel, severe criticism possibly. I think he would have felt that he could do both and he wouldn't have to choose.
Speaker 2:But yeah, you know, I also would love to know what Mark would be thinking now and have his guidance, like many of us, For those of us who either grew up in or called the Melbourne Jewish community home or just had professional encounters with Mark Baker, as I did, over the years, you will know him well or as well as you can ever really know someone. I guess everyone felt as if they kind of knew Mark Baker because he brought a sort of an intimacy to everything he did professionally personally he was a very open, very warm person and you felt in some ways as if you knew him. His life and his career was really without peer in the Melbourne Jewish community. He made so many contributions to the community, to cultural life, to religious life and obviously to academia. Can you give us some idea of who he was?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean that was a beautiful description and I think his signature grin that he always had on his face I mean from the minute he woke up in the morning, he he always had that grin, even through his 13 months of you excruciating illness. Whenever he saw family or people he loved or connected to, he had that grin which I think gave him that openness and allowed people to feel like they knew him and connected to him. On a personal level, on a more professional level, mark was as he mentioned. He was a historian, a writer, a teacher, a community leader. He was in many ways groundbreaking. Sometimes he was referred to as a rule breaker rather than a rule maker.
Speaker 3:His literary achievements kind of reflect the fact that Mark was a writer at heart. At only 37 years old he wrote a family memoir which was one of the first of its kind of second generation Holocaust narrative. That was the 50th Gate, which was very much ahead of its time. It received high praise by Holocaust scholars such as Christopher Browning, who said that it's the gold standard of second generation Holocaust memoirs. It won the New South Wales Premier's Award. It was studied by thousands of university and school students and, as well as the 50th Gate. He wrote 30 Days and he wrote A Season of Death, and they were also memoirs, also deeply personal, also grappling with memory and with grief in their distinct ways, and those three books formed what he saw as a trilogy 30 Days is about his marriage to Karen, her diagnosis with terminal cancer and her death, and A Season of death is about Mark's own diagnosis with cancer and his dying.
Speaker 3:And as well as his writing, as he mentioned, he had academic achievements. He was the inaugural Jewish studies lecturer at Melbourne University and his lectures quickly became legendary there. When he moved over to Monash University, he was director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation for 10 years and under his direction the centre expanded. It became this world-class hub for Jewish studies and it was this venue where internationally distinguished speakers could come and give these public lectures, which were very important in the life of the Jewish community and beyond. And Mark's calling to be a teacher was really central to his engagement with the world. He opened young minds. He encouraged them to think big and hard, to be alive to the world, by reflecting on the atrocities of the past while being hopeful about the future. And I've recently. I'm in the process of moving, so I was temporarily packing up a lot of the books at home to put in storage.
Speaker 2:He had an enormous book collection as well.
Speaker 3:He did, yes, and this is just his Jewish book collection. It's just an immense scholarly library, and what I was so overwhelmed with was just the breadth and depth of how much one mind can absorb in a life and how much he had to offer the world. Yeah, it's quite remarkable.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm Avid is a word that comes to mind when I think about him.
Speaker 2:He just seemed to have an insatiable appetite for an interest and ability that was rare, striking.
Speaker 2:I've been actually wanting to interview you for quite a while, michelle, but part of the prompt was realising that it was the outside of Mark a couple of weeks ago. So it's been just over two years since he died and in that time we've had two books released A Season of Death, which was posthumously released last year, and we'll talk about that in a moment and an exhibition at the Jewish Museum and a book that accompanies it as well. So it really does feel, on the one hand, as if, amazingly, he is still with us and reading a season of death. He's just so present, he's so alive, reading the book, and yet on the other hand, as you said before, we feel his absence because we know that he would have had so much to say about what is going on in Israel and that his voice is so absent from conversations in Australia but also online, where I know he was a very avid contributor to in his latter years. What does it feel like for you, that feeling of his presence but also, clearly, his absence?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean. It's obviously extremely painful. The grief is still raw. I have our daughter who is three and a half. Malila is three and a half. She misses her dada every day. He's a strong presence in her life.
Speaker 3:Marking the second Yoritzite was. We marked it at shirah hadashah, the orthodox egalitarian shul that mark was one of the founders of, with the, a beautiful community that he. His presence is still very much there and you can, you can feel that, which for me is a big comfort. So Mark's now been gone longer than the time that he had with Malila and Malila had with him. She was 20 months old when he died, so that's obviously a big part of the grief.
Speaker 3:Working on Mark's books since he died, which is what he asked me to do, has been a cathartic and important process of the grief for me.
Speaker 3:I've spoken before when talking about a season of death in the year I spent editing it with Ray Gator, my stepfather, that it was at times addictive because I felt like I had Mark's voice with me, even though I know how the story ends and I'm living it every day.
Speaker 3:Just working with his words and hearing his voice was consoling and comforting. And then, in a different way, making the photography book In Love With the World that I edited together with Esther Justin, miriam Cowpey and Carlo Occhioni, was another dimension and medium of Mark's work, and in all of his work there's his ability to capture the beauty and the brokenness. So because Mark had such a massive output in his life and in his plans for the future, which unfortunately he himself wasn't able to carry out, that is a big part of my life. There is still a novel that is going to be published soon that he was working on. So his work that he did while he was alive is presence in my life and his absence I feel daily, obviously in my life and in Malila's. So there is this juxtaposition that's there always.
Speaker 2:A Season of Death is, as you've mentioned, about his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and his eventual death. If you're listening to this and you haven't read it, you must read it, because it is devastating, it is compelling, it is just brilliant, and it's no surprise that it was a finalist in the Age Book of the Year prize for this year. What did this last project represent for Mark? Why did he throw himself into it and why did he want you and Ray to finish it for him?
Speaker 3:Well, I think in first instance he wrote this book for Malila so that when she's old enough, she'll be able to read it and, through it, understand her father and his love for her. So his primary reason and focus was for Melilla, but it was also a gift for me and for all of us. In the book he wrote, I'm overwhelmed by how much I love this world. That is what inspired the title that we gave the Photography Book In Love With the World and in A Season Of Death. Mark details, in all its personal details of our life, this kind of what I experienced with Mark, which was his love of life, his sense of how wonderful the world is and his determination to start a new life after karen died, in our marriage and in our miracle child, malila, who was born after 22 rounds of ivf. And mark was unreservedly open to life. And even though, as the title of the book suggests, a Season of Death, this is a book that carries in a lot of sorrow and pain. Mark saw his death in the context of the death of three other members of his family in the previous seven years Keren's death, his brother, johnny's death, and his father Yossel's death. Years Keren's death, his brother Johnny's death and his father Yossel's death, but he manages to couple that sorrow and his confronting of death with a lot of love and a lot of laughter.
Speaker 3:During that year of editing I sent one of the versions of the manuscript to Ray and he said to me do you realize what you titled this document? And I said no, and he said you called it A Season of Love, which was my subconscious really telling me how much love I felt is in the book and feel from Mark. And it's just also astonishing to me is the incredible discipline that he had to produce a book that, as you said, was shortlisted as the age book of the year. Under the conditions that he did that he could write a book of that kind of quality in the excruciating pain he was in the chemotherapy, the pain he felt for us, his family, his three adult children, his baby daughter, his now 90-year-old mother and me and his friends and family. So for me it's a gift, this book for his family and for his readers.
Speaker 2:One of the book's core themes, it seems to me, is the human condition and its ephemerality and the cyclical nature of how we live and, ultimately, how we die as well, and this is no better represented in the passage from Ecclesiastes which is included at the start of the book. There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens, and it also caught my imagination when I was thinking about Mark and his love of Joni Mitchell and the song the Circle Game, which is also alluded to in the final chapter. We're captive on the carousel of time. We can't return, we can only look behind from where we came. Can you talk about Mark's preoccupation, if you like, with time, because I think it also goes back to the first book, the 50th Gate, that he wrote?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think in the case of a season of death, it's connected to what's at the core of the book, which is about living authentically the life of a mortal being and being truthful about your mortality and how you live. And there's a story that Mark discusses in the book, which is about Reb Zusha, who told his disciples as he was dying that he wasn't concerned that when he died, god would ask him have you been like Moses, for example? What Reb Zusha was really frightened about was that God would ask him why weren't you like Reb Zusha? And this is a story that affected Mark and he returns to it three times in a season of death and he asks himself have I been Mark Baker? And this relates to his anxiety about memory and it being non-linear. As he saw it.
Speaker 3:He writes in the book I can barely construct a narrative of my life, and I think this idea that that you've referred to it's a poetic image that is expressed in all his writings. It's a haunting illusion that resonates in in all his work. In the 50th Gate begins and it ends with the same line. It's always there, but it's also, I think, how he felt that he lived his life and his openness to life.
Speaker 2:This is new to me. I did not know that Mark not only had an interest in photography, but that he was also, apparently, a very skilled photographer, skilled enough to have a beautiful book released In Love With the World. A collection of his photos, which I understand, appear in the exhibition. Tell us about this interest that Mark had in photography and how the exhibition and the book came about.
Speaker 3:Well, as you said, mark's photography, which is until now largely unknown to the public, introduces this new dimension to his life's work. And what has been really touching, through the exhibition and through the book, is just how many people have been astonished by his talent. People have been astonished by his talent. Mark had this ability to penetrate through the visible and the invisible barriers of the world and it allowed him, I think, as I mentioned before, to document its beauty and its brokenness. And he often did his photography while he was traveling, solo or in a group, and it was a way to discover people, to connect with them and the landscape around him. He also photographed locally in St Kilda, the suburb he lived in, and Holocaust survivors, which again relates to a central theme of memory and trauma in his life's work, and it was actually a photographer and a friend, carlo Oggioni, work. And it was actually a photographer and a friend, carlo Oggioni, who suggested the idea of this exhibition and book to honour Mark. He initiated the twin projects and it would never have happened without him, and we thought that the Jewish Museum of Australia, the Gandalf Collection, judaica Collection, would be the perfect home for it. So that exhibition is currently at the Jewish Museum and will be until the beginning of July. So the title of the exhibition at the Jewish Museum is the things you cannot see.
Speaker 3:And we decided on this title based on what Mark referred to as one of the themes in the sites that he took students to, on the intensive units he created at Monash University, where he took students to South Africa and Rwanda, eastern Europe and Israel, palestine, and it was as much about what they saw before them as what once stood and is no longer. And this had to do with Mark's understanding of witnessing, the idea of it's what you see before you, what you cannot see, and a mixture of the seen and the unseen. And he captured this insight, which really revolutionized his teaching, through the lens of a camera. And the book which, as I mentioned, we titled In Love With the World, really pairs Mark's images with his writings. So we have taken quotes out of Mark's different books and we've put them against images, and these images are from all over the world Williamsburg, athens, havana, cambodia, moscow, melbourne and it's been really beautiful to see, to bring into the world this other kind of medium that Mark has expressed his ideas and themes in and see the links between them.
Speaker 2:Michelle, you have been on quite the journey, not just the last two years, but from the day that you and Mark first became lovers and then eventually married and then had a child, and it, just as the book beautifully captures it has been just an extraordinary period of your life, but filled with unfathomable sadness and grief to make your life's work. In terms of the protection of its democratic institutions, its legal system has been unravelling and has been suffering a form of death as well. In these moments, in these times, what has been a salvation for you? Where have you drawn hope?
Speaker 3:Well, when I think about what's happening in Israel, particularly in the world generally, in my personal life, but if we take and look at Israel specifically, I feel like there are two ways of proceeding. One is to say, look, this is what Israel's done and what its citizens have supported, and there's no way back for years, for generations. It's going to take generations to recover from this. And the other way to look at it is to say that we can commit ourselves to seeing what can be done and help whatever forces there are that exist to create change and an attempt to kind of speak truth in the country. I don't think that serious change will happen unless there is that serious attempt from within Israel to face up to what has happened, to what it has done, and any hope that is remotely realistic has to face that fact. What I keep returning to is that there are organisations and there are people inside and outside Israel that are trying to do this, and you know, I've read about them, I have met them. I have had difficult and inspiring conversations with leaders of Israeli human rights organizations, with organizations in the diaspora, with, you know, members of A Land for All, omar Dajani, gideon Bromberg. You know Noah Sattath from ACRI, rachel Goldberg, conversations with her, the mother of Hirsch Goldberg. All of them are doing what they can, based on their own convictions and visions, not to turn their back, to keep going.
Speaker 3:And when I think about Mark, mark would never turn his back on Israel. He would never say, oh, this was just an illusion and that's it. He would keep going, in whatever form that is. You know, he was actually quite sceptical of a two-state solution and I think that one of the things he would insist on was that if there is talk amongst governments of the world that a two-state solution is the only way forward, that we need to take a hard and sober look of seeing how that's possible. Otherwise, it's just kind of pushing the whole issue away and it's about trying to respond and be part of the future in a way that's truthful, often painful, and creating change bit by bit, step by step, rather than turning our backs.
Speaker 2:Michelle, thank you for the work that you and Ray did to bring Season of Death to readers and for the other work that you do to keep Mark's memory available. So thank you for that and for the time that you've given us today and going over this recent period of your life. I don't expect this has been easy, but I feel really grateful that you're willing to talk to us today.
Speaker 3:Thank you. That was a sensitive and open and thoughtful conversation that I feel was very much in the spirit of honouring Mark and thanks.
Speaker 1:That was Michelle Lesch, and a reminder that you can see her at Sydney Writers' Festival in Sydney this Thursday 22 May. We'll leave ticket information in our show notes.
Speaker 2:Mark's memoir A Season of Death is available wherever good books are sold, and his photography exhibition at the Jewish Museum will be on until July, and you can also pick up a copy of the accompanying photography book that Michelle mentioned in the conversation.
Speaker 1:If you're listening to this while you're driving, pull over now and book your tickets to see me and Dash live. Do you live in another state? It might be prudent to book flights as well, then. Okay, enough plugs. That's it for this week. You've been listening to A Shame to Admit with me Tammy Sussman.
Speaker 2:And me, Dash Lawrence.
Speaker 1:This episode was mixed and edited by Nick King, with theme music by Donovan Jenks.
Speaker 2:If you like the podcast, forward it to a mate. Tell them it's even more enjoyable than Shabbat leftovers.
Speaker 1:As always, thanks for your support and look out for us next week. Thank you.