Howard is a doctor, marathon runner and author. He has written two non-fiction books, My Father’s Compass (2007) and Raft (2009). Carrots and Jaffas (2014) is his first novel. His latest novel is A Threefold Cord (Hybrid, 2107)
An age ago a woman of my acquaintance surprised me when she suggested I listen to the music of Nick Cave. Nick Cave, the disreputable? The woman was not young, not a member of any of the alphabet generations, old enough to be shocked. Listen to his love ballads, she said.
I trusted her. I googled Nick Cave love songs and came upon ‘Into my Arms’. Moved and much surprised and not a little abashed, I became a Cave fan, and in time my informant became premier of her state.
It is 551 days now that sons and daughters are dying in the war. 551 days since sons and daughter and mothers and fathers were taken hostage, some already dead, most of them alive. Only a few days since we learned how the captors of two smallest hostages killed them with their bare hands; just days since the small coffins were paraded by Hamas, jeered and mocked.
I listen to Cave in his wrenching interviews. I listen to him speak openly of the deaths of his two young sons. I read his ‘Faith, Death and Carnage’. I listen to Ghosteen. I need Nick Cave today. I’ve needed him these 551 days. I need him to show me his path from the further shores of grief. I need him too, as a model of holding on to belief. I want to hold on, to believe in humans, after humans have killed hostages and disgraced their remains before cheering crowds.
My friend from Rwanda has been a teacher to me. I listen to his beautiful voice: his words, exquisitely chosen, percolate unto my being. In those moments I am in harmony with my friend and with my essential self.
My friend from Rwanda lived through war in his homeland. He lost a brother in war. He watches TV images from Gaza. Children climb through the rubble.
I was one of those children, he says.
My friend from Rwanda watches TV and he sees children dying.
He cannot see Hamas putting the children in the way of harm.
My friend does not see self-defense. He does not see intent. He only sees genocide, where I am convinced of the opposite intent.
When my friend from Rwanda sends us footage that uses language of ethnic cleansing, of colonialism, he hurls me into a distance that neither of us wants. He cannot hear my words. Drenched in blood memories, clad hard in his own pain, he cannot know mine.
“Progressive” has become a label. People who identify with an underdog claim that title, people who care and work for a fairer world. That would be me.
Progressive people are derided by conservative people by the term, Woke. That would be me. The term Woke is meant to hurt and it hurts me.
Back in the times before it became a label, I used to be progressive. Of course the word progressive is an adjective, like big, or old or green. In the past I wouldn’t have called myself a Progressive, any more than I’d have called myself a Big (which I am not), or an Old (which I am), or a Green. Very many people identify as Greens. I’m green: I’m concerned for the environment and live accordingly. However in Australia, the Greens as a political party are an organised mass movement hostile to Jewish people. (The Greens will deny, hand on heart that they are anti-semitic. But I am a Jew who judges them by the harm they do, not by their ever-so-pure, who-me? intent.)
We Jews hear a Greens voice that allows our people no homeland. The Greens voice that Australians hear is not heard on Hamas terror. It’s a voice that cannot pronounce the word rape when committed by Hamas.
The Greens of course, would claim to be progressive.
So I’m not a Progressive, that proper noun that’s a self-label. In the days when I knew myself as progressive, rape was rape, and rape was always hideous, always condemned, always wrong. In the days when I was progressive, we who embraced the underdog were capable of civil agreement to disagree. In those times those who embraced Palestinian people as underdogs did not vilify those who supported Israel. They did not deny our humanity. That inhuman individual would be me, Zionist, former progressive.
Progressive people knew once the dignity of difference. We might be Zionist or non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, and we could hear each other. We could see the human face of one with whom we disagreed.
We had not learned to cancel.
Progressives have made progress. They’ve progressed to shouting where previously they’d debate; to shaming where they’d show respect; to cancelling and to doxing. Once upon a time Progressives used to be democrats. The Progressives have progressed far out of sight, so far they cannot be recognised. They have followed the logic of their self-contradiction to their present morass of moral confusion. Many Progressives – in my speculation most of them – mean well. Many are young and are uninformed and susceptible. Some become useful idiots manipulated by older persons, agitators for one cause or another or every cause de jour.
So I am one whose constituency has moved on. I am one left behind, marooned in a once-was world, a world of outmoded values like decency, like openness to the other, like mutual respect. I am stuck in a past where we could agree to disagree.
I guess I have to accept I am not progressive. I need a new noun. Call me a Retrogressive.
In June 2024, I flew to Israel to support my loved ones in the continuing emergency. The anniversary of my mother’s death fell during my visit, and together with my sister and brother, I went up to Jerusalem to offer prayers at the Wall in memory of our Mum.
Afterwards we meandered through the Old City on foot. Passing one of the Arab-owned shops, my eye fell on a bright red kippah. I needed to replenish my supply of such items, on account of the holy thieves – mainly my grandchildren – who borrow mine and never return them. I had a rough idea what such a kippah might cost, around AUD$15-25. I did the conversion: about 35-60 Israeli Shekels.
I picked up the kippah and tried it on. About the right size and weight, nice and lairy. I decided to buy.
How much for this one?
For you, my friend, ninety shekel.
I did the conversion. Forty bucks? Tell him he’s dreamin.
I understand the rules. We are supposed to bargain. We’re scripted to do so. The vendor is a professional at this, I a poor amateur. Further, I’m constitutionally disposed to drive a soft bargain. The vendor will surrender to my best offer and I will end up overpaying. Afterwards the vendor will celebrate discreetly, chuckling at my innocence.
I make my counter offer: I can’t pay ninety. I’ll pay forty.
No, no, my friend. This one costs me more than forty.
We look at each other, hiding our amusement. He’s sizing me up.
Tell me mister, you speak Hebrew with accent. You are maybe British?
No, not British.
The vendor’s eyes brighten. Maybe American?
Americans are richer.
No, I’m Australian.
Ahh? Tell me Mister Austria, how much you pay? Not forty…
Forty-five.
This one is very fine knit. Look at the knit, how good.
I look at the knit. Indeed it is fine. And brilliant in its contrasting red and green.
Try it on. I show you in the mirror.
Once again I try it on. I admire myself. I shake my head, remove the kippah and make to walk away.
The vendor calls, In Austria, Mister, you don’t find such a one.
Actually, I’m from Aust-ralia.
Australia? So far! …
My friend, for you, I accept forty-five.
I smile. The vendor manages to appear wounded, grieved. Money changes hands and two happy men exchange farewells and part. I realise who here is the victor. I realise my opposite number will laugh about Mister Australia.
In due course my bright kippah and I fly home.
Some months pass. I am to attend a book launch. I dress to kill, choosing my new kippah.
A friend observes: I like your Palestine Kippah.
What do you mean?
The watermelon design. It’s an emblem for Palestine.
Is it?
Later, google enlightens me. In 2007, a Palestinian artist named Khaled Kourani created a painting which he called The Story of the Watermelon. The design became a symbol of popular resistance. Further googling shows a Dutch Jew wearing the watermelon kippah together with the Palestinian keffiya. The text explains that such apparel betokens Jewish support for Palestine. In specific relation to Hamas the text is coy.
My mind returns to the shop in the Old City, where I see my vendor as he regales friends with the hilarious story of the orthodox Jew from Australia who bought the narrative of Palestinian resistance.
Nowadays I look at that kippah with discomfort. Out of respect for the wounds of my people, I cannot wear it. Perhaps in a far distant future, after longhealing, I might wear it again, to express myself as I am: a Jew, an observant Jew, one who hopes for a better future for Palestinian people.
Since its inception, this blog has proceeded on tiptoe. Ever since my own inception as a person conscious of myself, this blogger has walked on the tips of his toes. We have been moderate, fair, civil, politically correct. This blog and I don’t like stridency. Not for us the megaphone,but the voice of sweet reason. We’ve been progressive, we’ve been likeable, and we’ve been liked.
Until we ceased being likeable and started to appear tribal. Tribal is not so likeable. This blog has not been liked much since… well, since October 7 last year. Over that period we tiptoed less.
Allow me to explain what I mean by tiptoe, and why we do it. By ‘we’ I mean Jewish Australians. But I could just as easily refer to minority Australians of all stripes. We walk on tiptoe, careful, so careful not to tread on the toes of others. We walk on tiptoe as an act of self-humbling, as an act of apology really. We understand how a turban or a hijab or kippah marks us as different. We understand how difference piques discomfort. We don’t wish to offend or confront. We tiptoe so we’ll be excused for being not entirely the same.
From very early in our lives as minority Australians we know we represent our tribe. As children starting school, we know that all of us Sikhs, all of us Moslems, all of us Jews, all of us Africans, Asians of every origin, all of us Indigenous people – we all must behave nicely in public, because we kids stand for all of us. If one of us misbehaves or offends or speaks our foreign language too loudly in public, we all will be judged. Our entire group will be judged by the worst of us. Speaking only for myself, this self-consciousness has weighed but lightly. It feels good to behave likeably because Australian people broadly reward us with affection.
There’s a very good reason for anyone – for everyone – in Australia to tiptoe. Once they see past the difference, once they see you’re just like them, Australians embrace you. You feel the love, you return the love.
Over the decades that I have worked among AboriginaI people I have witnessed much conduct that seems placatory in nature: voices normally loud, lowered for the whitefella; rage directed at their own people rather than at the dispossessor; humble acceptance of the Gap that never closes. It’s at once excruciating and absurd that a First Owner might feel obliged to live a life of apology.
Tiptoeing can be detected, I think, in highly unexpected places. Have a look at photos of women in public life. Note how many face the camera with head held a little aslant. You don’t see this posture in the public male. When I see this, the woman’s face is invariably smiling. The posture and the smile win trust; they say, ‘Yes, I am successful, I am known, but don’t worry, I’m not a threat.’ In a country where a woman dies every week at the hands of a man, such tiptoe might be ingrained in childhood. I like the images of a woman facing the camera squarely, without the obligatory smile.
Until the turn of this century, my tiptoeing was unnecessary. If I tiptoed, I did so, not on account of outside hostility, but on account of my own native timorousness. Until about the year 2000, I had tiptoed beneath my public kippah. But tremors, intimations, opinions, voices, all drove my kippah into hiding. I walked the ways and byways of this beloved country with my kippah in hiding beneath a non-sectarian hat. Only within Aboriginal communities was my kippah nakedly seen. My mob was much honoured by their mob.
Was I being over-sensitive in the mainstream? Possibly so. But come October 8 last year, when the mob outside the Opera House howled and burned flags and hunted Jews, there was no mistake. Look online where hatred of Jewish people has found its voice, where all shame has been shed, and know why I might walk on tiptoe.
But I’ve stopped apologising for being Jewish. My kippah can be seen again wherever I go now. It asks Australia a question. And Australia answers with a nod or a smile or a pat on the back, as I guessed it would. But not so on this blog: I suspect I have confused my readers, whom I guess are mainly of progressive mind. Since October last year I have written as a Zionist – albeit as a supporter of Palestinian aspiration – and I sense progressive peoplefind this confronting. I think my readership feels nonplussed. Hence the likeable bogger is no longer ‘liked’. I imagine also that my gentle readers wish to protect my feelings by their reticence.
Hence, silence.
But I’m not afraid of civil debate. We can agree to disagree. Most days I disagree with myself.
Awful conflict in the Middle East has polarised Australians. A hush has fallen. For many, feelings are too strong for calm utterance. I understand this, because my own feelings are so strong and so painfully conflicted. But that conflict on other shores need not silence us on racism on our own shores. I feel confident the silent majority of Australian people detests anti-semitism. The majority is nonplussed, often offended and irritated by this hatred and wishes us well. The great problem here is the very silence of the silent majority. Anyone who is offended by racism and who remains silent misses a precious opportunity to protect and repair harmony in our community.
When the loudmouth clown on TV declared he’d run for president, I snorted.
When he said he’d outlaw abortion, I knew he had no chance. Women, I said, are not stupid.
When his gropeboasting video went public, I knew decent America would repudiate him.
I knew he had befouled the language.
The man insulted every group in the American polity.
America elected him and I reeled, incredulous.
Every single group that he’d mocked, insulted or abused voted for him.
America was playing a practical joke on itself.
Briefly I enjoyed feeling superior to American voters.
That feeling staled and soon soured.
The president played practical jokes on allies, fawned on autocrats, betrayed loyalists.
The now former president was brought to account in courts of law, where he was convicted repeatedly.
The president’s nation came to know his mendacity.
The people of the world knew his mendacity and feared the now, once again president, would be found truthful when speaking of his intentions.
I wondered at the people of America. People in the main are not stupid. Free people prize their freedom. American parents love their children to whom they wish to bequeath a livable planet.
Do American people know things I do not? Do they see things I do not see?I bethought myself: a majority of American voters have chosen. But a majority of Americans did not vote for him. Not all voters exercise their franchise. Not all Americans have the vote.
And yet. Am I smarter than those who chose him?
A thought experiment: imagine they chose wisely. Imagine their chosen person is better for America. Imagine he is better for the world.I labour with this experiment, I struggle with it.
In this experiment I detach myself from the world as I have known it.
I detach myself from all my ideas, all my values, hopes and fears.
Only in this state of obliteration of past and present world and self, can I see what that majority of voters see.
Meanwhile, the self that I know, the world that I know, gazes into a darkening void.
The righteous are called myrtles, likened to a good tree with a pleasant smell…
Rabbi Shmuel Eliezer Edels, the Maharsha
On my way to Hadassah Hospital, I mused on its name. Hadassah is the alternative name of the biblical Queen Esther. As a humble, common noun it means myrtle, a modest shrub with a pleasant scent. To the Persians, Arabs and Jews, myrtle was a symbol of paradise, of purification and rebirth.
A tall thin bloke called Nir and a wider tall man called David, met me at the entrance of the Gandel Rehabilitation Centre of the hospital. We entered by the car park. It looked like any car park. The men opened a great door nearly a metre thick and led me deeper into concrete catacombs. They turned on some lights. I found myself facing underground wards of hospital beds, each equipped with all the fittings of an intensive care department. The great door, the hundreds of beds, Nir told me, have been very recently prepared in frantic haste against the fearful prospect of bombardment by Iran or Hizbullah.
The Gandel Rehab Centre isn’t finished. It wasn’t supposed to be operational yet. Suddenly there was war, instant improvisation followed and this underground place of grim realism was the fruit.
We ascended.
We emerged into a place of brightness. Here was a functioning rehabilitation ward in full swing. Room after room for Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy, Psychological Therapy. Wide gyms equipped with exercise machines adapted to the limbless and the weakened; to those ravaged by plain civilian disease as well as those torn apart by the machines of war. The equipment, its conceptual ingenuity, the human imaginativeness are marvels. But these were not what I marvelled at. Marvellous is the spirit abroad in these wards of happiness and hope.
I looked around and I saw old people, young people, wounded or weakened by illness, with their clinical attendants, all smiling as they chatted and worked. I’ve never seen such a happy hospital. The hospitals I know reduce their patients to subjects. They erode agency. As patients, we all regress, we’re infantilised. Here at Hadassah I had entered a level community. Hierarchy of authority must surely exist, but I could not detect it. Everywhere I looked, I saw worker greeting worker greeting doctor greeting therapist greeting mother, father, spouse of the afflicted. And the afflicted showed no bearing of affliction. Here was a team and the patient was a member of the team, looking forward.
The palpable harmony and camaraderie cross all lines. I saw Jewish Israelis and Arab Israelis working together, joking together, conferring earnestly about the care of patients. The patients themselves were Jewish and Arab, some whose dress identified them as strictly religious. When I looked I saw difference. The workers looked and they saw only people. David said, the Director of Emergency Medicine at Hadassah is an Israeli Arab. The Chief of Surgery is an Israeli Arab. Outside, a war is raging. People who work here love others who are being hurt or killed. Yet everyone turns up to work. Everyone works to repair people who are damaged.
I wondered how these people hold within themselves their personal pain or sorrow or rage. I marvelled at their tranquillity. Is it their work, their knowledge of purpose, that sustains them? Does the repair of others somehow repair them?
Emerging from the ward into a communal area where people played electronic games and drank coffee, I found myself on a high balcony overlooking semi-arid valleys and gullies and wadis. If I lifted my gaze I could see Jordan. I looked out from this place of repair and allowed myself to hope.
Today my brother and I went south into the Negev to prune a farmer’s lemon trees. We arose early, leaving home at 6.00 and arriving at the farm by 8.00. We volunteers were a mixed group, some from Jerusalem, some from nearby towns. The Brothers Goldenberg appeared to be the sole foreigners. None of us looked agricultural. But I have learned not to underestimate Israelis, their stamina, their drive, their idealism.
The orchardist hadn’t expected us until 10.30; we hung about, some of us disgruntled, others philosophical. At 9.15 the farmer arrived in his lemon grove where he found uswaiting, sweating, gruntling. He addressed us at length. His heart, full of pain, had a message to discharge. He spoke first for himself: You might imagine it’s a small thing that twelve volunteers come here to work for a short time. It is not a small thing. Since October 7, I have no agricultural workers. The Thai people have been ordered home by their government. The other workers who worked outside in the field have not been replaced. Without volunteers like you, I would despair.
The farmer then took on the voice and the persona of Israeli Agriculture. He embodied its agony, its crisis. He had a smooth baby’s face, bronzed by the sun. He spoke for the State, he spoke for the soil, its crops and its custodians. His pain was palpable, and we, we few, we city slickers, wewere his hope. The baby face looked as if it might, at any moment, melt and weep.
We knew nothing about the task ahead of us. We received instructions in Hebrew, which we hoped we understood. We were to prune away the wild spring growth that looked so fresh and green. Apparently these so-promising andexuberant suckers would never bear fruit, but would drain the soil and the lemon tree of its life, meaning water.
At first we set about this task with bare hands. Lemon trees grow a myriad of thorns which pierce the skin of city folk. This is how the countryside punishes us for the soft lives we live in the metropolis. Many scratches and pinpricks later we received gloves; now our hands were somewhat protected. Later still, secateurs arrived. Suddenly the job seemed possible. The temperature rose and rose, we sweated and we drank, we pruned away delinquent growths, we cursed thorns whenever necessary, we turned a disorderly grove into rows of orderly lemon trees that would now turn precious water into precious fruit.
At intervals the sound of aircraft flying high above reminded me of our proximity to a war. I found myself singing those hopeful and elusive lines of the prophet Isaiah,
lo yissa goy el goy herev,
lo yilmedu ohd milhama…
Nation shall not lift up the sword against nation,
Neither will they learn war anymore…
As thought leads on to thought I realised I was replacing manpower in a time of war.
Now the words I heard were:
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
when will they ever learn…
Was I enabling a conflict, or simply helping a farmer to grow lemons? I could not escape a sobering truth. I came here to help the State. The State was defending its people, it was defending my people, my relatives. It was fighting for me, and, lemon by lemon, I was enabling it.
I realised that among all the great losses in this region, losses that hurt all the children of Abraham, there exists a further tragedy, personal in scale, and timeless. It is the tragedy of the reluctant recruit, the one who finds herself a participant in a conflict. People on campuses who mean well, who think little for themselves, and who know less than little, might read this and decide I am a war criminal. So be it.
After a little longer than three hours of hacking away the green, we were commanded to stop. The reason? It’s 37 degrees. In truth we had not noticed.
On the way back to Jerusalem, our minibus made a bladderstop. During this interval, a twenty-seven-year old social work student and I fell into conversation. Her name, she tells me, is Gilly.
Where do you come from Gilly?
Metullah.
(Metullah, one of the very northernmost settlements in Israel! Metullah, sitting beneath Hizbullah’s rockets, Metullah, now flattened, emptied of its residents. What Gilly did not need to tell me is her state of internal exile, continuing beyond these past eight months.)
In the old song of the early state, we sang:
mi’ metullah ad ha’negev…
from Metullah in the far north,
to the far south of the Negev…
Gilly’s exile was sung before her birth.
What do you think will happen, Howard?
I fear we will fight this fight again. And again. And again. As we’ve been forced to for the last seventy-five years.
Gilly’s face fell.
Why do you say that, Howard?
I look at the history of the State.
Don’t you see hope?
I considered, then I answered. Yesh Tikvah. Tamid yeshtikvah. There is hope, there’s always hope. Sometimes we have to search for it. Give me your email and I’ll send you something hopeful.
Gilly paused, then she said: I have hope. What gives me hope is this…she waved towards her fellow volunteers… After eight months, people are still volunteering.
My own contribution to Gilly’s state of mind comes from my son. I sent her the link to his story.
Jerusalem in high summer. We awaken at 4.30, depart the apartment at 5.00 and already the sky is blue, cobalt blue.
Jerusalem is quiet. The roads are quiet. Quiet is rare in this city that teems with the pious, the fervent, the urgent.
Wondering whether we’ll find people enough at the Wall for a minyan (quorum), we walk with fast steps along twisting ways. We need a quorum in order to recite Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer. Erupting from an alley into the broad square we sight the Wall. Before it, in their many hundreds, the devout, already at prayer.
We three are not in mourning, we are here to remember. We are our mother’s surviving children. An indispensable fourth is her son-in-law John, devoted to Mum now as in life. The remembering starts with the first sighting of the Old City’s perimeter wall. How ancient, these creamy stones, mutely dramatic, forever contended. So many conquerors, so many defeats, such passions, stones soaked in blood.
From the plaza, we sight many minyans of minyans, male bodies cloaked in tallithot (prayer shawls). Some wave and sway, others shake metronomically, all moving to intensify intention. One youth in front of me flings his arms to the heavens, his hands clench and unclench in his entreating to God. May his prayers be answered for the good.
Past the beggars, past worshippers of all stripes, past Haredim Caucasian, and Haredim North African, past modern orthodox, past the odd Ethiope, past a pair of the pious deeply asleep, my brother and I wind and wend to the far side where, separated by less than one metre, our sister will hear us recite kaddish.
A memory of my first visit. November 1967. It’s afternoon in early winter, the air crystalline, the skies blue. An impromptu service is in progress. I attach myself to a congregation that is the chance aggregation of the moment. Those elect who are of the line of Aharon the High Priest offer their hands for a Levite to wash, prior to giving the priestly blessing. I raise my washed hands and intone: May the Lord bless you and keep you…
An afterthought lands: here I am, delivering this blessing at the Temple. This my forebears did for centuries until the Temple was destroyed, almost precisely nineteen hundred years ago. My people went into exile. At some stage in the 1800’s my grandfather’s grandparents returned to the land, settling in Petakh Tikvah, the Gateway of Hope, far to the north of here.
Is it possible that I am now, in 1967, the first lineal priest in my family to officiate here since the year 70 C.E.?
Today, together with my brother I will offer that same blessing. The blessing concludes: May the Lord lift up His face unto you, and give you peace.
Peace!
Our mother was a serene soul. She lived a long life of love, somehow happy through all of life’s losses and afflictions. Today, I remember her and honour her, without sorrow or pain. Late in her life, Mum said to me, You know I never did anything remarkable or distinguished. I never was famous or exceptional. But I did give birth to four children and I raised them and they all love me. So I suppose I was successful.
Mum, you don’t know the half of it: so well did you love us four, that every single one of us felt sure that we were your favourite.
Mum lived her life of peace. I can imagine her in no other state than peace. She went with heart at ease. My tears today are not for Mum. I shed a few sweet tears for this son who misses her. But many are my tears for my people, detested today, deserted by fair weather friends, threatened today, abroad and at home. There is tension in the air, fear too, appalled pain and grief. And mighty resolve.
But here, at this hour of pure air and quiet, Jerusalem is at peace. Have I ever attended prayers so quiet, so ruly? We hundreds recite the words, a soft hum rises from many lips. Until the Amidah (the silent devotion). Quietnessnow, perfect and complete. Torsi swing, sway and shake, hands clench and unclench.
Prayers completed, kaddish recited, Mum honoured, I make my way to my sister Margot. We fall into a fierce hug that does not quickly end. My body heaves with sobs. I’m a good sobber. There’s much to shed tears about. Tears for the present pain, tears of hope for the future good.
howardgoldenberg 