What is a Jew?

For two weeks, University leaders and distinguished professors, including those who were Jewish—especially those who were Jewish—gave evidence at the Royal Commission about who are the Jews and evidence about who hates Jews. The questions repeated over and over again, and the answers repeated over and over again left me numb, a sort of despairing numbness. From time to time, I screamed in pain and anger and frustration at the computer screen and no doubt a neighbour or two might have become alarmed at my shouts of `no, no, speak English, you know what a Jew is!’ Screaming at these intellectuals—professors!—as my father would refer to them, with an exclamation mark – saying things as if they were in an academic seminar where the language used is intelligible only to academics. Even professors. I mean words with no accepted meaning, —diversity and nuance and context, and sensitivity and context again and diversity again and how some things might be Jew hatred but depending on context, might not be, and it is impossible to say exactly what Jew hatred is and there’s a line, an invisible line that when crossed, legitimate hostility to Jews—antizionism for instance—becomes antisemitic.

But for heaven’s sake I cried, the line is invisible because you find it impossible to say exactly what antisemitism is, if it does in fact exist and that question too seemed not to be settled. It took an intervention from Anne, who offered me a whiskey, to induce in me something approaching calm.

The Jews who gave their testimony to the Royal Commission this week at least spoke words that I could understand and their stories were painful and raw, but I must admit that I felt a bit like it was Groundhog Day, the movie, back at day zero every day and no closer to any agreement on who is a Jew and who are the Jew haters. And while I did not yell at the computer, and while I tried to suppress this feeling because it was not kosher, I felt that it would be a relief when this concentration and focus and obsession with Jews was over.

And it was in this state that I went to bed two nights ago and had a strange and troubling dream. I was— literally— the late great Jackie Mason doing his shtick in Melbourne. Jackie Mason, the old cliché of a New York Jewish comedian of the 70s and 80s, brash and loud and offensive, behaving like a stereotypical New York Jew and filling theatres on Broadway.

I must admit that the dream of being Jackie Mason was only partly the result of the fact that my waking hours had been filled with talk about Jews and antisemitism and Israel and Zionism—good and bad—and the debate about where Jews came from. What part of the world I mean, or whether they were or were not God’s chosen people.

This question of where the Jews come from has been contentious ever since the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem quite a while ago and the subsequent dispersion of the Jews into what became known as the Jewish Diaspora. It became even more seriously contentious since the October 7 2023 attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza.

This means that not only is it debatable who is and who is not a Jew, but even if we could agree on a definition of Jew, where the Jew came from would still be vigorously contested. Ok, maybe there is such a thing as Jews, but where these Jews came from, about that, the Jews are telling fibs.

This week, in their appearences before the Royal Commission, Jews— Rabbis and teachers and communal leaders—talked about the Jewish connection with Israel, with what they called the ancient Jewish homeland, how Zionism was in part an expression of that connection and dream of return after thousands of years of exile.

The reporter for the Age, a senior reporter and a former deputy editor, reported this testimomy faithfully which is what you would expect from a senior journlist. But then, for reasons that are not entirely clear, he felt the need to cast some doubt on his professed connection of these Jews to their alleged ancient homeland.

“The assertion of indigenous connection to Israel is politically controversial’’ he wrote. “Pro -palestinian protesters and much of the political left, assert that the Zionist movement which began in the late nineteenth century and culminated in the Jewish state of Israel was a colonial project.’’

It was not only this relentless questioning of who I am— which I once felt was settled— that led to my Jackie Mason dream. I had developed a nightly habit of watching YouTube clips of old performers of the 80s—bands and comedians mostly— before I went to sleep. Jackie Mason made me laugh more than anyone else and going to sleep laughing is not a bad thing. But the result was that I had a dream in which I was this rather stout New York Jewish comedian.

I do not mostly remember my dreams, but Jackie Mason was so vivid that when I woke up in the morning, I did not know who I was, except that I had this thick Yiddish accented English accent and I kept saying over and over again: “You understand this? You understand this? Are you Jewish?’’

Not just that I was Jackie Mason, but I was Jackie Mason doing my shtick in front of thousands of people and I was strutting around the stage and gesticulating in my Yiddish accented English and laughing at my own jokes. People were laughing and gasping and clapping and I think some were booing.

The show:

Loud clapping and cheering and even whistling. I (Jackie Mason) bow and smile a wide beaming smile. And I start:

I’m here in Melbourne because Melbourne, here at the end of the world where you can die of old age on the way to coming here, because Australia —and I will be in Sydney next week — is full of Jewish jokes. Australia, ek velt, with fewer Jews than are members of my synagogue in the upper west side and still, it has, this place that I thought - if I thought of it at all and you know what, I didn’t, was full of kangaroos and a few thousand gentiles and maybe two or three Jews, given me the best Jewish jokes in the world right now and some of those jokes… you there in the front, are you Jewish? Are you listening? I did it for you, for the gentiles. The Royal Commission into Antisemitism…—I am going to stop there because the rest of the title is in a foreign language.

There were questions, questions after questions. You know I was once a rabbi and this whole royal commission thing sounded to me like my old kheyder where I studied Talmud and we boys asked each other unanswerable questions. The more unanswerable the better.

So if one loves Israel is one a good Jew or a bad Jew? It depends on what is meant by love you say, yes you in the front row, you must be a student of the Talmud. And if one is not a Jew, and loves Israel? What sort of gentile is one? A nice one? What if one has time for Hamas and is a Jew. Good Jew or bad Jew? It depends, you say? What, on whether or not you eat kosher?

What about if one quite likes Hamas and is not a Jew? Is one a good gentile or a bad gentile? What about a gentile who loves Hamas, good or bad? Isn’t that easy to answer? No? Okay. But a Jew hater or not? What about a gentile who loves Jews but hates Zionists? Or a gentile who hates Jews and loves antizionists?

Now, what sort of Jew am I if I eat gefilte fish on Pesach but not kneidlach? So what about if I eat kneidlach but not gefilte fish? Good or bad? What about if I hate gefilte fish can I still be a good Jew? And if I am a Jew who hates some Jews am I still a Jew? Am I a self-hating Jew, self-hating like when a Jew stuffs himself at dinner even when he knows life is brutish and hates himself after for it? What about a gentile with a beard and olive skin wearing some sort of scarf who hates Israel, does it mean he hates Jews? Just Israelis of the Jewish persuasion. What about if I don’t eat gefilte fish or kneidlach but I eat hummus, am I an ethnic cleanser? No, not of gefilte fish eating Jews but of Palestinians? Let’s be honest, there are really bad Jews who eat hummus as if they are sticking it to the Arabs and others who just happen to like hummus every now and then. Can bad Jews love Israel and can good Jews not like it much at all? What sort of Jew doesn’t eat kneidlach by the way.

Now what about Jews who say `I’m sick of all this Jew stuff and I wish I wasn’t a Jew?’ I mean how many Jews are there in the world anyway, and you know what, very few gentiles in Australia have met a Jew of any shape or form, and have no reason to want to meet one.

As the morning passed, the dream began to fade. I went for a walk, alone, on a sunny windless cloudless morning. The dream is fading even as I write. I walked down Acland Street and there were throngs of people outside the cake shops and sitting at little tables outside the cafes. After the dream, with the ghost of Jackie Mason hovering above me, I stopped where the Sheherazade Cafe had once been, where on Sunday mornings a crowd of old Jews would pack the cafe and spill out onto the footpath shouting and cursing in Yiddish.

I wanted to ask some of the people gathered on the footpath where the Jews had once stood, whether they knew where they were standing, whether they knew that the long- gone Jews of Acland Street never wondered who a Jew was and who was a Jew hater. They were Holocaust survivors.

You understand what I’m saying, you mister, there in the front row. Are you Jewish. You don’t look Jewish. Yes you, you rather attractive lady in fashionable clothes, are you Jewish? I notice you have not smiled, not once. Are you a Jew…no? You’re a gentile? Not laughing? You understand this? Gentiles don’t laugh. So why are you here? Okay, I don’t want to persecute a gentile. Not you anyway. And you paid for a ticket? You didn’t? You got a freebie? Maybe you’re a bit Jewish?’

And then it came to me, the woman in my dream, who wore attractive clothes and had a gentle and thoughtful demeanour, was Commissioner Virginia Bell.

No wonder she wasn’t laughing.