My Life as a Jew by Michael Gawenda; Melbourne, Australia: Scribe Publications © 2023; ISBN 9781957-363707; 268 pages plus index; $20
SAN DIEGO — The author, who is the retired editor of The Age, one of Australia’s largest news publications, grew up in the Jewish Bundist movement. That is to say, he was brought up as a secular and non-Zionist Jew, who believed true socialism throughout the world would bring about peace and an end to antisemitism.
But as he grew older, he became alienated from leftist dogma and became more curious about organized Jewish religion. All the while, as a self-identified Jew and a journalist with a national reputation, he was constantly under the microscope of critics who wondered whether he could be fair when assigning and editing stories about Israel and the Middle East.
In lengthy, brilliant, and painfully introspective essays, he examines not only conflicts between Jews and their non-Jewish detractors, but also delves deeply into the sometimes- internecine divisions among Jews themselves. The book begins, for example, with the termination of his own friendship with Australian publisher Louise Adler, whom Gawenda indicts for her anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian premises. Later in the book, he delves into the reasons why the relationship between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt similarly deteriorated.
The book was published prior to the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli declaration of war against Hamas.
Yet, I thought he was prescient when he wrote the following paragraph: “…(T)here is incontrovertible evidence that anti-Semitism in Europe, the US, and even in Australia is on the rise, including assaults and threats of violence, and mountains of Jew-hatred on social media. And yet many on the left refuse to even acknowledge any of this. Instead, Jews who call out left-wing anti-Semitism are accused of being Zionist shills, defenders of apartheid and colonialist Israel. This is particularly painful and disempowering when much of the left is committed to allowing the victims of racism to say what is and what is not racist about how they are treated. None of this applies to Jews and anti-Semitism. Jews who say they have been the victims of anti-Semitism are often accused of having ulterior motives – of deflecting criticism of Israel, or trying to deny their ‘white privilege.’”
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via sdheritage@cox.net