Dec 31 2009

Looking back on 2009 it has been a most extraordinary year. I will review the highlights and lowlights from my perspective.

January saw the Midsumma Carnival, a showcase event of the GLBT community. The Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council hosted a multicultural space at the carnival at which both Aleph Melbourne and Young Aleph had a prominent presence. As always we are grateful to the AGMC for their ongoing assistance in supporting us amongst the other muticultural GLBT groups. Whilst generally positive, one incident where a passer-by accused Jews of Nazi-style tactics in Israel clouded the day.

February saw the annual Pride March in St Kilda. This was the second year Young Aleph participated, whilst Aleph Melbourne attended for the eleventh or so time. Thanks girls and guys. Your desire to stand up and show our communities that GLBT Jews exist and that we are fantastic, normal people, as much as everyone else, is definitely something to be proud of.

March was a double celebration. Special guest at the Aleph Purim Party was Viv Cass from Perth. Viv was well known to many of the girls who turned up and unsurprisingly was a great draw-card to help make the event an even better success. We look forward to Viv's future visits to Melbourne. The other highlight in March was Nitzan Gilady's visit to Melbourne. He came to speak about his award-winning documentary "Jerusalem is Proud to Present" at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival. Meeting Nitzan was an inspiration. His passion and determination to portray the reality of a conflicted city and a conflicted people was most remarkable.

April was great because we had a visit from Pablo Cohen, involved with one of Argentina's Jewish GLBT groups. Pablo's charm and warmth of personality endeared him to all who met him.

July saw the annual Victoria Police Jewish Community dinner. Attending on behalf of Aleph Melbourne and Young Aleph both Colin and myself had the opportunity to meet with the members of the Victoria Police Diversity Unit and in particular Scott Davis and his team who work with the Gay and Lesbian community. We also introduced ourselves to Chief Commissioner Simon Overland, who will be marching in the 2010 Pride March.

Following on from the Police Dinner I took the initiative to contact John Searle, President of the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, and made arrangements to meet with him to discuss the relationship between the JCCV and GLBT Jews in the community. The meeting proved to be cordial and whilst there were no major revelations or surprises, it was good to hear that Aleph Melbourne would be welcome on the JCCV's mailing list.

July also saw a letter published in the Australian Jewish News by Rabbi Chaim Ingram, Secretary of the Rabbinical Council of NSW, in response to a discussion on why the Jewish community should support same-sex marriage. The letter unapologetically likened homosexuals to the worst of society's scum. Barely any outcry from the Jewish community in response. Imagine if someone outside the Jewish community had written a similar piece, calling Jews the worst of society's scum.

August was a black month and it bode badly for the remainder of the year. At the beginning of the month I awoke to the terrible news that two people had been killed and 15 others badly injured in a shooting at a Tel Aviv community centre. What was particularly sinister about the attack was that it happened in a "safe" GLBT meeting place and that it was a youth event. To date there has been no direct evidence the motive was a homophobic hate crime, however one fundamentalist religious fanatic has allegedly claimed responsibility.

Following on from this attack a Melbourne Jewish blogger claiming to represent the orthodox viewpoint took the liberty to comment on the attack and the GLBT community in Israel in such a totally abhorrent and vile manner that should have shamed the entire Jewish community and in fact all decent Australians. Aside from a few letters to newspapers this vitriolic and bilious outburst was effectively disregarded by the rest of the Jewish community.

Mid-August I reached out in desperation to a number of people including the president of the JCCV in an effort to discuss strategies to deal with this sort of hatred and intolerance of GLBT people. Again I met with John Searle, president of the JCCV, this time with Colin Krycer also present. We discussed the incident of the blogger and the official response from Searle was to ignore it and it will go away. Sadly this was not the case as the blogger went on to attack me personally in an as equally unpleasant and shameful manner and subsequently other gay Jews became his target. It seemed that whilst the JCCV wanted to show they were extending an olive branch, the reality of the situation was that there were no real plans to do anything meaningful.

On a momentary brighter note, August saw Aleph's Jewish transgender movie festival. It was so popular a second screening had to be scheduled on short notice.

September saw the release of Suicide Prevention Australia's position statement on Suicide and self-harm among Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Communities. This was particularly timely as it had specific relevance to the ongoing issues of homophobic intolerance that were being felt in the Jewish community. One of the most startling pieces of research was that same-sex attracted people were up to 14 times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers, particularly in religious communities intolerant of homosexuality. Along with this came the added fact that about one in ten people were same-sex attracted. Coupling this with the results from the 2008 Monash University Survey of the Jewish community, it doesn't take much to work out that 10% of Melbourne's Jewish population of 50,000 people amounts to about 5,000 people who are likely to be same-sex attracted. Disturbingly, this population is for the most part not catered for in any way by established Jewish organisations and in large sections of the community is shunned, made invisible and completely repressed. To their credit the Progressive Jewish organisations have affirmed their ongoing support of GLBT Jews and actively include GLBT people and couples in their communities.

September also saw ABC Radio's "PM" show cover [transcript/audio] the topic of homophobic intolerance in the Jewish community and exposed to a nationwide audience the JCCV for it's lack of action in acknowledging the problem facing the community and it's lack of desire to deal with the problem.

Later in September it came to my attention, indirectly, that the JCCV had issued a media release at the beginning of the month condeming homophobic intolerance and vilification. Disappointingly this media release was only issued to the Jewish News. It was written specifically for use in a story where NSW civil rights campaigner Gary Burns had fairly accused the newspaper of publishing vilifying material in NSW, contrary to the state's anti-vilification legislation. Ingram's letter was the catalyst for this accusation. To the paper's credit they have shown fantastic support for GLBT Jews over the past 15+ years.

October saw a media release from the JCCV in relation to Mental Health Week and the effects of homophobic intolerance in religious communities. This statement contained material I had supplied the JCCV and appeared to have been included as an afterthought to the main content of the media release. It's inclusion was nevertheless welcome.

November saw Galus Australis cover the topic of the harmful effects of homophobic intolerance in the orthodox Jewish community. The web site aimed to be balanced and presented a religious perspective of the argument in tandem with the main piece. Disappointingly the religious perspective failed to address the main areas of concern. More disappointingly the majority of comments on the article were extremely homophobic and further validated the issue of homophobic intolerance in the community.

November also saw the JCCV demand an urgent meeting with GLBT Jews, so they could better understand ways to be "as inclusive as possible" of us. My level of cynicism went through the roof when I was approached to provide the people to attend this meeting. It timed nicely with the cut-off for the Victorian Multicultural Commission's December grant application process. Read into that what you wish. In good faith I acceded their request and brought together a group of GLBT Jews to meet with the JCCV. Attending this meeting was the president of the JCCV John Searle and his immediate predecessor Anton Block, along with a gay JCCV supporter Andrew Rajcher. To call the meeting a setup would be an understatement, but this tactic did not seem out of character, from what I had come to expect.

Coming out of the meeting was the startling and disturbing claim from Searle that "The Jewish religion has a specific position on homosexuality". On my suggesting to Searle that he might be talking just about the orthodox perspective both he and Block nearly ripped my head off and told me in no uncertain terms to shut up. That the President of the JCCV took this supremacist attitude toward a fundementalist branch of the Jewish religion came as a complete shock to me. The effect of taking this supremacist stance meant that he, the president of the organisation that claims to represent "the voice of Victorian Jewry", was essentially calling the Progressive and Conservative branches of Judaism not (really) Jewish. It also meant that he was actively defending the intolerance of the orthodox Jewish dogma, which was in stark violation of his claims that he was against any form of vilification and hatred directed at GLBT Jews.

December saw the JCCV refuse to engage in further discussions with Aleph Melbourne after Aleph Melbourne questioned Searle on his aforementioned supremacist language and defence of orthodox Jewish intolerance. The concept of inclusion and intolerance are mutually exclusive. Searle might like to consider this before he extends an olive branch, trojan or otherwise, in future.

December also saw a wonderfully successful Aleph Melbourne Chanukah party at Sandra's home. The hospitality was fantastic and the turn-out was great.

Looking back at 2009 a lot has happened. Some things really good, some things really bad. There is a mountain of work to do in 2010 and beyond when it comes to the issue of combatting homophobic abuse in the community. The lives of our young people are at stake and the leaders of the community seem happy to play games with them. I call on everyone to take an active interest in the matter. It may be your child, a friend's or a family member's who you save from suicide.

Regards,
Michael.