Out with the Old and in with the New?

Gillian Dalley, Summer 2018

We’re told that it’s good to move on, don’t live in the past and keep up with the times and I’ve been trying to observe that maxim. To that end, I started on the cupboard in my study this morning – planning to clear shedloads of files dating back some 20 years and more. But it turned out to be less a salutary and invigorating exercise and more a bittersweet angst-laden encounter between past and present. It made me sit down and think hard.

I’d forgotten how experienced – and even competent – I had been in my earlier life. The realisation came as a surprise. Although I’ve written my CV many times, rehearsing the catalogue of posts I’ve held, the lists of articles, reports and books I’ve written, and organisations I’ve worked for, I’ve never really dwelt on their significance as a record of a ‘career’. But coming across the written record of those times now made me see things rather differently. The hard evidence – the research papers and other publications, the minutes of countless meetings chaired or attended, all types of other work-related ephemera – sat there in sealed boxes waiting to be shredded. While I had remembered much of it in the abstract, the detail surprised me. Reading some of it now, 20 years on, I confess I was impressed. What – me? I asked.

But that led to greater reflection. I realised it’s been a part of me that I’d consigned to the back of my memory – perhaps associated with the growing public invisibility that most women in their seventies experience (and writing those words now alerts me to this absence of a presence). Those younger than us are unaware of our past, our experience, our views, our value. We are started on the slope to oblivion, unable or unwilling to knock sharply on the table and say – hang on! stop! listen to us – our lives may have something to tell you and our knowledge and insight may be useful! Scientific progress may be built by standing on the shoulders of giants according to Newton – but, who knows, at a less exalted level, even on the bent backs of old women.

Identity and its Discontents

The recent furore over anti-semitism in political circles in the UK pushes me back again into that circle of identity: Jew. When asked why he called himself a Jew, though he didn't adhere to any practices or beliefs, the open-hearted thinker Isiah Berlin responded 'because they won't let me forget.' 'They' is anyone who singles out the Jew as Other, projecting onto that screen ugly traits deserving of annihilation. It's wearying, and I wish not to engage. But present tensions compel me to once again examine the knots of my own Jewishness , striving to make peace with its contradictions.

On one hand, the tentacles of Jewishness form immense bonds of warmth and clarity. When my mother died, Jewish mourning rituals--covering household mirrors, sitting on a low stool, tearing a piece of clothing--were immensely comforting as was the support of the community. On the other, the communal grip can strangle, squeezing out those not deemed acceptable to the tribe. When I chose a non-Jewish mate, my then rabbi refused to take part in our ceremony.

Perhaps Jewish particularity and insistence on maintaining non-adulterated ties at any cost comes from the small number of Jews in the world. Hard as it is to believe, Jews are only 0.15% of the world population and about 0.5% in the UK[i]. Current demographics indicate that right-wing religious Jews will soon be the majority UK Jewish culture. For a secular Jew like me, this shift towards a rigorous, 19th century Judaism as touchstone of legitimacy is troubling, pushing me further into seeing myself primarily as a rootless London cosmopolite, grateful to live in this city-state's diverse cacophony.

Israel has only made things worse regarding the vexed issue of Jewish identity. Irony of ironies, the existence of the so-called Jewish state both feeds anti-semites and starves those of good will who see Israel as a nation-state accountable to norms governing any country. Israel and many of its supporters want it both ways: Jewish and a nation; a democracy yet one permitting its priestly class, the rabbinate, to decide matters of public policy; an occupier of other's lands and a defender of the rights of a beleaguered people --so long as those people are Jews.

Rage against Israeli policies is one of the hardest challenges for a Jew like me who wishes to loosen long outworn ties whilst not adding to the chorus of Jew hatred. The line between opposing Zionist policies (using Zionist as a descriptor of those who define Israel as the legitimate homeland of only the Jews) and being anti-semitic is a thin one.[ii] Boundaries keep getting crossed. Anger at Israel often gets conflated with dirty words used to insult and threaten Jews. Jews who are critical of Israel are often accused of being self-hating. Jewish self-righteousness rears its head, insisting that the age-old slaughter of Jews can only be avoided if Israel is implacably unyielding and if Jews everywhere give Israel unquestioned support.

It's a mess, and the noisy and ugly non-conversation is exhausting. I struggle to be clear. I want institutional anti-semitism rooted out. I want Israel held responsible for its inhumane and immoral human rights violations. I want my fellow Jews to insist that Israel is a nation-state and not allow it to move further into a theocracy answerable to a god but unaccountable to international law. I want Israel to take its chances as an open culture, federated with neighbours Jordan and Palestine. I want to shut out the voices in my head that tell me I'm betraying the Jews by thinking this way.

As the ancient Hebrew priests invoked, 'ken yehi ratzon': Let it be so.

[i] www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-population-of-the-world

[ii] See the London Review of Books, Vol. 40 No.01-4, January 2018; page 18: The 'New Anti-Semitism' by Neve Gordon, an excellent discussion disentangling the threads of so-called anti-semitism from criticism of Israeli policies.

-Rose Levinson

Beginnings

A traditional Jewish saying cautions "all beginnings are difficult." It's an apt reminder for my first blog post. I've written a book,  published essays and articles. I've thought for years about a blog. Now I begin, grateful for the support of my friend Gillian.

It's fitting I start with a Jewish reference, since much of how I think about and interpret the world comes from living as a Jew. It's been central to my identity. But that Jewish identity has shifted over the years. I'm far less comfortable defining myself through that lens. It's like casting off clothing which has become too tight. Shucking the garment has been a long, gradual process. I'm still groping with the loss of a central identifying anchor point: Jew.

Other transitions in the way I order my universe are also in play. I moved from northern California to London just over fifteen months ago.  Uprooting from the place I lived for thirty-five years, I question my assumptions: how can I have  been so wrong when I was sure I knew what was true? how does discarding previous lives make me both stronger and more vulnerable? by what compass do I navigate now?

These knotty questions entwine with the reality of being in my mid-seventies. Age is indeed a different country. Examining the arc of my life. I consider accomplishments, failures, loss, blank spaces. I recognize the arc is finite, stretching itself towards completing the circle.  I see things now through the looming presence of eternity. Not a comforting notion but less frightening than when the days seemed endless and delay was of little consequence.

Words have always been my saviours as I continually struggle to make some kind of sense of things. Now I share these precious objects. T.S. Eliot, whose poetry is brilliant on notions of time and death wrote in The Waste Land: "These fragments I have shored against my ruins”. These blog posts are my fragments, a bulwark I erect to offset the ruins which are to come.

- Rose Levinson, Spring 2018