tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16940443844046881432024-02-01T19:05:35.965-08:00Shira SebbanShira is a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia. A former journalist, Shira previously taught French and worked in publishing. She has served on the Board of her children’s school for the past 12 years, including three terms as vice-president. She can be contacted at sebban@tpg.com.auAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-67114741638361963422017-06-12T05:53:00.000-07:002017-06-12T05:53:18.637-07:00Vietnamese families recognised as refugees in Jakarta: Story Published in Sydney Morning Herald and The Age today<br />
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Turned back by Australia, Vietnamese recognised as refugees in Indonesia</h1>
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Shira Sebban</h5>
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Ever since they were forcibly returned by Australia to Vietnam two years ago, mother-of-four Tran Thi Thanh Loan and mother-of-three Tran Thi Lua have lived in constant fear of a harsh jail sentence.</div>
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They did not know whether Indonesia – where they applied for recognition as refugees earlier this year – would follow Australia's example and return them too.</div>
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<img alt="The three youngest children of Tran Thi Thanh Loan and Tran Thi Lua play in the detention centre in Kuningan, South Jakarta." src="https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/o/e/z/g/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwn475.png/1497193023202.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 620px;" title="" /><figcaption class="media__caption" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4286; margin: 5px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The three youngest children of Tran Thi Thanh Loan and Tran Thi Lua play in the detention centre in Kuningan, South Jakarta. <cite style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #777579; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Photo: Shira Sebban</cite></figcaption></figure><div style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.625; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px 60px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Now, however, the two mothers can breathe a little easier: officials from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees have visited the group of 18 Vietnamese asylum seekers, including 12 children, currently in detention in Jakarta to tell them they have been granted refugee status.</div>
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Loan and Lua had been facing lengthy prison terms in Vietnam for helping to organise "illegal" departures to Australia on family-owned fishing boats in 2015.</div>
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<img alt="Women and children, including Tran Thi Thanh Loan (centre), in their cell at the detention centre." src="https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/o/e/z/f/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gwn475.png/1497193023202.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;" title="" /><figcaption class="media__caption" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4286; margin: 5px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Women and children, including Tran Thi Thanh Loan (centre), in their cell at the detention centre. <cite style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #777579; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Photo: Shira Sebban</cite></figcaption></figure><div style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.625; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px 60px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
At the end of January 2017, they fled Vietnam for Australia again, only to be rescued 10 days later from their sinking boat off the Java coast by Indonesian authorities.</div>
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The families were among 92 Vietnamese asylum seekers intercepted in two separate incidents by the Australian navy in 2015.</div>
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Assessed at sea and found not to warrant protection, they were forcibly returned after the Australian government received written assurance from its Vietnamese counterpart that returnees would not be punished. Several members of the two groups were subsequently incarcerated, including Lua, who has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-21/vietnam-asylum-seeker-returned-by-australia-speaks-of-beatings/8288226" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #78777a; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">complained of being severely mistreated in prison</a>.</div>
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Both she and Loan were facing up to 15 years' jail as repeat offenders under the recently amended Vietnamese penal code. The women maintain police had threatened to beat them in jail for having spoken out to foreigners in the past. They had also told their lawyer, Don An Voh, they would rather commit suicide by jumping into the sea than be jailed in Vietnam.</div>
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<img alt="Retired US ambassador Grover Joseph Rees visits the Vietnamese families in detention." src="https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/o/e/z/d/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gwn475.png/1497193023202.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 300px;" title="" /><figcaption class="media__caption" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #666666; font-family: 'Source Sans Pro', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4286; margin: 5px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Retired US ambassador Grover Joseph Rees visits the Vietnamese families in detention. <cite style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #777579; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Photo: Shira Sebban</cite></figcaption></figure><div style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.625; margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px 60px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
According to Loan, her family had originally left in 2015 because the state had seized their land, they had lost their livelihood due to Chinese incursions into fishing grounds, and also because of institutionalised discrimination against Catholics.</div>
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Taken into Australian custody and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-25/australia-confirms-vietnamese-asylum-seekers-detained-at-sea/6496290" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #78777a; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">held at sea for almost a month</a>, they underwent "enhanced screening" by two officials. While Australian authorities claimed they were fairly assessed, Loan said a translator was not provided for the group, none of whom spoke English. They only realised they were being returned when they reached port in Vietnam.</div>
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Loan's husband, Ho Trung Loi, was sentenced at the time to two years' jail in Vietnam, seven hours away from the family home. He was subsequently moved to a harsher prison in the Vietnamese jungle, and told he would never be released unless his wife and children return. Frequent beatings damaged his sight in one eye; he suffered a stroke and lost considerable weight.</div>
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Last week he was released, after being forced to sign a document stating that he had not been mistreated. He is now seeking medical treatment and is under police watch for the next six months, forbidden to leave his local area without express permission.</div>
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The family's desperate situation first came to international attention in mid-2016 when Loan lost her appeal for leniency despite being the sole carer of her four children, then aged between four and 16, who were set to be forced to leave school and live in an orphanage. Donations from ordinary Australians subsequently ensured the children could stay at school and be cared for by relatives. Both Loan and Lua were eventually granted a temporary reprieve from jail.</div>
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Meanwhile, however, Australia has continued to return Vietnamese intercepted in the Timor Sea. Last December, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton signed a <a href="http://www.minister.border.gov.au/peterdutton/Pages/Australia-and-Vietnam-further-cooperation-to-stamp-out-people-smuggling.aspx" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #78777a; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">formal agreement</a> with Vietnam's public security minister, Lieutenant-General To Lam, to return "Vietnamese nationals with no legal right to enter or remain in Australia".</div>
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Ineligible for resettlement under current Australian immigration policy, the families in Jakarta now hope to find another country which will offer them a safe haven. "UNHCR said they would soon work with the International Organisation for Migration and the Indonesian Immigration Department to get us out of here," Loan said.</div>
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Canada, which is prepared to take 300,000 immigrants this year, is a serious option.</div>
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"Despite their assurance that refugees would face no sanctions or retributions for leaving the country, the government of Vietnam continues to jail, beat, torture and prosecute refugees returned to them by the Australian government," Canadian senator Thanh Hai Ngo said. "The occurrence of these violations of basic human rights and civil liberties are at the core of why many are choosing to flee and are well known by the Canadian and Australian governments."</div>
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The first Canadian senator of Vietnamese origin, he has agreed to "discuss and bring this re-occurring issue on Vietnamese refugees to the attention of the Australian High Commission and to the appropriate authorities here in Ottawa". He has also requested full documentation and an update on each of the refugee claimants to help bring their cases forward.</div>
<div style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1rem; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 1.625; padding: 0px 60px 0px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shira Sebban is a Sydney writer and editor and a member of Supporting Asylum Seekers Sydney. </span> </div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-91421688019748500232017-03-30T21:27:00.000-07:002017-03-30T21:27:41.786-07:00Assaulted by Hells Angels in VIllawood: Asylum Seeker Speaks Out<div style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">An asylum seeker seriously assaulted in detention speaks out, writes </em><a href="https://independentaustralia.net/profile-on/shira-sebban,675" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Shira Sebban</em></a><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">.</em></strong></div>
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AN ASYLUM SEEKER seriously assaulted recently while in detention in<a href="http://www.border.gov.au/about/immigration-detention-in-australia/locations" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;"> Villawood</a> has decided to speak out “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">even if they kill me</em>” because “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">too many asylum seekers are being bashed by </em><a href="http://www.border.gov.au/about/corporate/information/fact-sheets/79character" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">501s</em></a>”.</div>
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<a href="https://independentaustralia.net/_lib/slir/w900-h600/https://independentaustralia.net/i/article/img/article-10164-hero.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://independentaustralia.net/_lib/slir/w900-h600/https://independentaustralia.net/i/article/img/article-10164-hero.jpg" /></a>An influx into detention centres around Australia of <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ma1958118/s501.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">501 Visa holders</a> – non-citizens, many with substantial criminal records, awaiting deportation on character grounds – over the past few years is known to have exacerbated tensions with asylum seekers, leading to a steep increase in violence.</div>
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At the end of January 2017, 420 detainees were being held in Sydney’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villawood_Immigration_Detention_Centre" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Villawood Immigration Detention Centre</a>, including 149 "501s" and 84 "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/illegal_immigration_to_Australia" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">illegal maritime arrivals</a>", according to the latest <a href="http://www.border.gov.au/about/reports-publications/research-statistics/statistics/live-in-australia/immigration-detention" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) statistics.</a></div>
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Among them is Afghani <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazaras" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Hazara</a> asylum seeker, Sayed Akbar Jaffarie, who alleges that he was assaulted on the evening of 12 March 2017 by members of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hells_Angels" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Hells Angels</a> bikie gang, at least one of whom was armed with a knife. Detained in Villawood since 2013, Mr Jaffarie had recently been moved, due to construction work, to the high security <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/photos-2011-immigration-detention-villawood" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Blaxland compound</a>, where the alleged assault took place. He has since been relocated to another compound, but only after a second altercation with gang members, this time involving a friend who was visiting him. Meanwhile, a fellow asylum seeker, who was a witness to the original assault, remains in the high security compound, with Mr Jaffarie concerned for his safety.</div>
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Forced down from his top bunk while trying to sleep, Mr Jaffarie said the bikies</div>
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“... <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">put their feet on my left hand, fracturing my ring finger. I was shouting for an officer, but no one came. They started smashing my thigh and hit me in the stomach. They told me I had to give them $200 a week and that I had to give up my points and buy them whatever they wanted</em>.”</div>
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Detainees earn points through the “<a href="http://www.border.gov.au/about/immigration-detention-in-australia/detention-facilities" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">individual allowance program</a>”, supplemented by participating in authorised activities, allowing them to buy personal and recreational items, including newspapers and snacks, from outlets within the facility.</div>
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<a href="http://www.serco-ap.com.au/our-services/our-work/immigration-services/" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Serco</a> officers, responsible for the management of Australian immigration detention centres, subsequently interviewed Mr Jaffarie, who identified the alleged perpetrators. After making a police statement, he was taken to hospital overnight. Serco ‘<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">provides tailored services to detainees that support their wellbeing and personal security</em>’, according to <a href="http://www.border.gov.au/about/reports-publications/reports/annual" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">DIBP’s latest annual report</a> (2015-16).<br />
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In 2015-16, an <a href="https://www.border.gov.au/australian-border-force-abf/who-we-are" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Australian Border Force</a> <a href="http://www.border.gov.au/about/reports-publications/reports/annual" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">report</a> stated</div>
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‘... <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">efforts ensured that more than 100 non-citizen motorcycle gang members, associates or organised crime identities had their visas cancelled or refused on character grounds or under the </em><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ma1958118/" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Migration Act 1958</a>.'</em></div>
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<a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ma1958118/s501.html" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Section 501</a> of Australia’s <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Migration Act</em> allows for the deportation of non-citizens who fail the “<a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ma1958118/s501.html" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">character test</a>”, the threshold for which includes any prison sentence longer than 12 months. Whereas in June 2015, 23 per cent of those in immigration detention had their visa cancelled on character grounds, the <a href="http://www.border.gov.au/about/reports-publications/research-statistics/statistics/live-in-australia/immigration-detention" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">number had increased</a> to 31 percent by June 2016. In contrast, the percentage of "illegal maritime arrivals" had decreased over the same period, from 61 per cent in June 2015 to 32 per cent a year later.</div>
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“<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Introducing hardened and violent criminals into detention centres, without separating them from asylum seekers, is criminal in itself</em>,” said longtime visitor to Villawood detainees, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2015/09/04/4306292.htm" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Dr Graeme Swincer</a> OAM, a member of the <a href="http://www.bmrsg.org.au/" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Blue Mountains Refugee Support Group</a>.</div>
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“<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Repeated calls for a change in these arrangements have fallen on deaf ears. The underlying trauma of sustained and punitive detention should not be exacerbated by having to live in constant fear,</em>” he continued.</div>
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Mr Jaffarie has been in Villawood since 19 June 2013, when his <a href="http://www.workpermit.com/immigration/australia/australian-spouse-visa" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Spousal Visa</a> was cancelled, based on an allegation that he was involved in <a href="http://www.afp.gov.au/what-we-do/crime-types/people-smuggling" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">people smuggling</a>. He has not been charged, let alone convicted, of that offence, but is currently fighting attempts to deport him to Afghanistan, which he left with his family as a young child, escaping to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetta" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Quetta</a>, Pakistan. He came to Australia by plane after his marriage to an Australian in 2006, but eventually offered his wife release from the marriage due to his uncertain future.<br />
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<span class="arItems" style="border-right-color: rgb(238 , 238 , 238); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; margin-right: 10px; padding: 3px 10px 3px 0px;"><span class="glyphicon glyphicon-user" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: "glyphicons halflings"; line-height: 1; position: relative; top: 1px;"></span> <strong itemprop="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #444444;"><a data-original-title="View all of this authors articles" href="https://independentaustralia.net/profile-on/shira-sebban,675" rel="tooltip" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;" title="">Shira Sebban</a></strong></span><span class="arItems" style="border-right-color: rgb(238 , 238 , 238); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #999999; margin-right: 10px; padding: 3px 10px 3px 0px;"><span class="artTimeTag" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px; margin-top: 10px;"><span class="glyphicon glyphicon-calendar" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-family: "glyphicons halflings"; line-height: 1; position: relative; top: 1px;"></span> <time content="2017-03-16T15:30:00+10:00" itemprop="datePublished" style="box-sizing: border-box;">16 March 2017, 3:30pm</time></span></span> <span data-placement="bottom" rel="tooltip" style="box-sizing: border-box;" title="Total Comments"></span><br />
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<figure class="articlesHeroCaption" style="background-color: #f6f6f6; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 20px 20px; max-width: 50%; padding: 10px;"><img src="https://independentaustralia.net/_lib/slir/w900-h600/https://independentaustralia.net/i/article/img/article-10117-hero.jpg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 333px;" /><figcaption style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #690909; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; font-style: italic; padding-top: 10px; text-align: center;"><span class="heroTextCaption" style="box-sizing: border-box;">'What will happen to the 12 children caught up in this saga? At worst, they will be returned to Vietnam, where their mothers risk longer prison sentences as repeat offenders under the Vietnamese penal code.' (Image supplied)</span></figcaption></figure><br />
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">A group of Vietnamese asylum seekers, including 12 children, have tried to reach Australia by boat for the second time, writes <a href="https://shirasebban.wordpress.com/about/" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Shira Sebban</a>.</em></strong></div>
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I HAD BEGGED THEM never to try to reach Australia by boat from Vietnam again. Through an interpreter, I had warned them about our country’s tough border protection policies and we had made it clear that any money raised was to be used to feed, clothe and educate their children in Vietnam.</div>
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They had agreed, sending messages of gratitude, or photos of their children with their new school supplies, each time we transferred a few hundred dollars from the <a href="http://www.gofundme.com/NeverTearUsApart" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">online crowd funds</a> launched last year.</div>
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So when they embarked on their second attempt to seek asylum in Australia, they did not tell us.</div>
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All we knew was that they had disappeared from Facebook and were no longer answering their phones. Concerned, we asked their lawyer, <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008231020747" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Don An Vo</a>, to find out what happened.</div>
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Imagine our shock to read his announcement that three failed asylum seeker families, including 12 children, had fled Vietnam again and were heading for Australia.</div>
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As it turns out, they never made it here. Ten days into their journey, the engine failed, their boat hitting rocks and beginning to sink. Rescued off the Java coast by Indonesian authorities, they have since been interviewed by the <a href="http://www.unhcr.or.id/en" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">UNHCR</a> and are applying for refugee status in Indonesia.</div>
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<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/may/24/vietnamese-asylum-seekers-forcibly-returned-by-australia-face-jail" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Tran Thi Thanh Loan</a> and her four children <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/kids-orphaned-as-vietnam-jails-parents-over-asylum-bid/news-story/fdb6751c38007ea02371b802315e57a9" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">made headlines last year</a> when she lost her appeal against a three-year jail sentence imposed by the Vietnamese government for helping organise an “illegal departure” to Australia in the family-owned fishing boat in March 2015. Her children, aged 4-16, were set to be forced to leave school and live in an orphanage, their father, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/may/24/vietnamese-asylum-seekers-forcibly-returned-by-australia-face-jail" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Ho Trung Loi</a>, having already received a two-year sentence. He is not due for release until April 2017, although that now appears out of the question.</div>
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The Vietnamese authorities have said “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">he will never be released unless we return</em>,” Loan said from the Indonesian motel where she and her children are staying.</div>
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<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/kids-orphaned-as-vietnam-jails-parents-over-asylum-bid/news-story/fdb6751c38007ea02371b802315e57a9" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><img alt="" src="http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/03cbff4d941eed7c33dcdf32c1af502e?width=650" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 282px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 500px;" /></a></div>
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Loan continued:</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">"At first they told him we died at sea because the boat sank. He nearly went crazy with grief. Then they put him in solitary confinement, refusing to let my sister visit or send him food or medicine. She had to bribe them to see him and only managed to say we are safe before the police took him away. They told the family he will be punished for ‘my mistake’ and so we believe he may be beaten."</em></div>
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Loi has since been moved to a harsher prison in the Vietnamese jungle, where he is forced to do hard labour and is not given enough to eat, Loan alleged.</div>
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She accused the Vietnamese police of “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">terrorising</em>” her extended family, preventing them from operating their fruit stall: </div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">“I’m worried the police will destroy their only source of income as pay-back and to ensure they have no money to help me and provide for my husband.”</em></div>
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Pressure had been mounting on Loan in the weeks leading up to her decision to flee. Also among the group of 18 asylum seekers is mother-of-three, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-26/asylum-seekers-jailed-in-vietnam-despite-no-retribution-promise/7449516" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Tran Thi Lua</a>, who last year too lost her appeal against a 30-month jail sentence for helping organise another “illegal” departure to Australia in July 2015.</div>
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While the two women had been granted a temporary reprieve, they were both facing imminent, lengthy sentences.</div>
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“<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">They asked what would happen if they went back to Australia</em>,” <a href="http://www.vietnamvoice.org/voice-la-ai-our-team/" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Doan Viet Trung</a>, president of Vietnamese human rights organisation, <a href="http://www.vietnamvoice.org/su-menh-voice-our-mission/" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">VOICE Australia</a>, said.</div>
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<img alt="" data-img-desk="/_lib/slir/w700/https://independentaustralia.net/sc/default/children in Indonesia1.jpeg" data-img-tablet="/_lib/slir/w500/https://independentaustralia.net/sc/default/children in Indonesia1.jpeg" src="https://independentaustralia.net/_lib/slir/w700/https://independentaustralia.net/sc/default/children%20in%20Indonesia1.jpeg" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 480px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 568px;" /></div>
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<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 12px;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The children in Indonesia (Image supplied)</em></span></div>
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He added:</div>
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<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">"I told them they'd be sent back or detained indefinitely. Lately they expressed fears that when in jail they'll be beaten badly for speaking out, officials have threatened them so. I told them they should record the threats to show their fears are grounded. Lua told me she had recorded something."</em></div>
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Both women had also told their lawyer Vo they would rather commit suicide by jumping into the sea than be jailed in Vietnam. Lua had already spent ten weeks in prison in 2015, before being charged, which had traumatised her, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-21/vietnam/asylum-seeker-returned-by-australia-speaks-of-beatings/8288226" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">describing</a> being beaten and sworn at by female guards, who forced prisoners to drink, wash and cook with filthy water.</div>
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The Vietnamese court has now revoked its deferral of the two women’s jail terms, so if they are returned, they will go straight to prison.</div>
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Since mid-2016, I have been in regular contact with both women, having started <a href="http://www.gofundme.com/careforthechildren" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">online crowd funds</a>to help their families, who were among <a href="http://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2016/12/14/vietnam-jails-people-smugglers-deported-from-australia/" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">113 Vietnamese asylum seekers</a> intercepted in three incidents by the Australian Navy over the past two years. Assessed at sea and found not to warrant protection, they were forcibly returned after the Australian Government received <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-25/australia-confirms-vietnamese-asylum-seekers-detained-at-sea/6496290" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">written assurance</a>from its Vietnamese counterpart that returnees would not be punished. Several members of the three groups have since been incarcerated.</div>
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Last December, Immigration Minister <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Dutton" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Peter Dutton</a> signed a <a href="http://www.minister.border.gov.au/peterdutton/Pages/Australia-and-Vietnam-further-cooperation-to-stamp-out-people-smuggling.aspx" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">formal agreement</a> with Vietnam’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_People%27s_Public_Security" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Public Security</a> Minister Colonel General <a href="http://en.dangcongsan.vn/social-affairs/senior-lieutenant-general-to-lam-appointed-central-public-security-party-committee-secretary-386364.html" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">To Lam</a> to return “<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Vietnamese nationals with no legal right to enter or remain in Australia</em>”.</div>
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What will happen to the 12 children caught up in this saga? At worst, they will be returned to Vietnam, where their mothers risk longer prison sentences as repeat offenders under the <a href="http://un-act.org/publication/view/viet-nam-penal-code-1999/" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">Vietnamese penal code</a>. At best, they could be detained in legal limbo in Indonesia, unable to work or study.</div>
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An apparently hopeless choice made by increasingly desperate parents in the face of Australian intransigence, with fewer options now available to asylum seekers in what certainly seems to be a harsher world.</div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">You can read more by <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/profile-on/shira-sebban,675" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Shira Sebban</a> at <a href="http://www.shirasebban.wordpress.com/" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0054a6; text-decoration: none;">shirasebban.wordpress.com</a>.</em></strong></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-24284149323711837752016-10-18T00:42:00.000-07:002016-10-18T00:44:07.894-07:00How does Australia treat asylum seekers in court? My latest article now published on Eureka Street<h1 class="fittext" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 40px; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.15em; margin: 10px 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
<span id="ctl00_MainContent_litTitle">Asylum seeker's long wait for judgement day</span></h1>
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<span class="labelTexts-Brown" style="color: #998675; font-weight: bold;">Shira Sebban</span> | 17 October 2016</div>
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<strong>Finally he is having his day in court. After 13 months languishing in limbo in immigration detention, he has been given the opportunity to be heard. Hopefully, it won't be long now before his case is determined and his torment resolved.</strong></h3>
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<img alt="Hands in handcuffs" height="313" src="https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/uploads/image/16/50089.jpg" style="border: 1px solid black; float: right; height: auto; margin: 15px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="470" />Or so I originally thought. But in today's Australia, asylum seekers are not treated the same way as you or me. Not only must they not commit a criminal offence, but 'all adult illegal maritime arrivals' have to sign a strict code of behaviour, which describes the high standards they are expected to maintain at all times.</div>
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It expressly stipulates, for example, that they not 'engage in any anti-social or disruptive activities that are inconsiderate, disrespectful or threaten the peaceful enjoyment of other members of the community'. An ostensible breach, no matter how minor, can lead to the cancellation of their bridging visa and indefinite detention.</div>
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His trial date was set long ago. For months he has been agonising over its possible outcome. At the same time, he knows he is one of the lucky ones. Having 'arrived illegally by boat' in late 2012, at least his protection visa application is well under way — unlike later arrivals who have no chance of receiving such an invitation at all.</div>
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Moreover, assessed as 'exceptionally vulnerable', he has been fortunate enough to qualify for legal funding. His supporters — friends he made while living in the community or those, like me, who visit him regularly in detention — have cobbled together a suit, shirt and tie, belt and shoes, for his court appearance, replacing his detention centre standard-issue attire of tracksuit or t-shirt and shorts.</div>
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He scrubs up well, I think, when I see him for the first time — not as originally planned in the courtroom itself, but in the bowels of the building where, handcuffed and accompanied by two immigration detention centre guards, he has been confined for the second day in a row to a tiny cold cell behind glass.</div>
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I stand cramped with another supporter in the doorway, as his solicitor attempts to comfort him, assuring him that permission has been sought from the judge to allow him to come upstairs. After all, he is technically out on bail.</div>
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At least he is now in the courthouse. That morning as I rushed to meet him at the appointed time, he had called me from the detention centre. Apparently, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection had not notified the centre authorities that he was expected in court that day and so no provision had been made to drive him there.</div>
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"The protections provided by Australian law do not apply to immigration detainees, even if they have not been convicted of a crime."</h3>
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His barrister having successfully obtained an adjournment to the afternoon, he is eventually accorded the dignity of sitting in the courtroom like a human being. But there is another problem: his lawyers have not even had the opportunity to confer with their client face-to-face until now.</div>
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In a humane gesture, the judge offers them the use of the courtroom, retiring to his chambers until they are ready to proceed. The rest of the day passes in a flurry of discussion — everyone is aware that the precious days allotted to his court case are fast slipping away. If a way forward is not agreed upon soon, a new trial date will need to be found, which, given the busy court schedule, would mean a delay until some time next year, while he continues to wait in detention.</div>
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By the end of the afternoon, a resolution has still not been reached and it is agreed that he will need to be brought back to court for a third day. His lawyers appeal directly to the guards that tomorrow he be escorted to the courtroom as the judge has requested, rather than confined to a cell.</div>
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'You will need to put your request in writing,' comes the reply. Despite the lawyers' insistence that they have sent countless such email requests, it is apparent that unless the judge's instruction is clearly stipulated, the all-powerful Immigration Department may choose not to comply. After all, the protections provided by Australian law do not apply to immigration detainees, even if they have not been convicted of a crime.</div>
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Meanwhile like any accused, it has not been easy to live with his fate hanging in the balance. For him, however, the stakes are even higher. While he knows he can only ever be granted a temporary protection visa, the court case has introduced yet another uncertainty. How will it affect his chances of being allowed to stay, if only for a relatively short while?</div>
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Only time will tell. For now, all he can do is wait.</div>
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<img alt="Shira Sebban" height="100" src="https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/uploads/image/writers/Shira_Sebban.jpg" style="border: 1px solid black; float: left; height: auto; margin: 1px 4px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" title="Shira Sebban" width="100" /><a href="https://shirasebban.wordpress.com/" style="color: #9f0200; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Shira Sebban</a> is a Sydney writer and editor, passionate about exploring the challenges life throws at us through her writing. A former journalist, she previously taught French and worked in publishing.</div>
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Shira Sebban</h2>
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<span class="labelTexts-Brown" style="color: #998675; font-weight: bold;">Recent articles by this author</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-51768074819986552372016-10-15T17:12:00.000-07:002016-10-15T17:12:54.354-07:00My latest article about our campaign to help Vietnamese failed asylum seekers published in New Matilda<div class="breadcrumbs" style="border: 0px; color: #b1b1b1; font-family: 'Open Sans', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px 0px 14px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<article class="post-68024 post type-post status-publish format-standard has-post-thumbnail category-asylum-seekers tag-asylum_seekers tag-refugees tag-shira-sebben" id="post-68024" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><header class="post-header cf" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div class="featured" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 21px 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a class="image-link" href="https://newmatilda.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Refugees-Vietnam-Boat-1975.jpg" itemprop="image" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; border: 0px; color: #010101; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Vietnamese refugees flee after the fall of Saigon in 1975. This image was taken from the ship USS Midway, and is part of the Mike Baxter collection." class="attachment-motive-alt-slider wp-post-image" height="457" src="https://newmatilda.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Refugees-Vietnam-Boat-1975.jpg" style="border: 0px; display: block; font-family: inherit; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Saving The World, One Life At A Time" width="740" /></a><div class="caption" style="background-color: rgba(22, 22, 22, 0.6); border: 0px; bottom: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; float: right; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 6px 20px 9px; position: absolute; right: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
Vietnamese refugees flee after the fall of Saigon in 1975. This image was taken from the ship USS Midway, and is part of the Mike Baxter collection. </div>
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Saving The World, One Life At A Time </h1>
<a href="https://newmatilda.com/2016/10/15/saving-the-world-one-life-at-a-time/#comments" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; border: 0px; color: #010101; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline;"></a></header><div class="post-meta" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(230, 230, 230); border-bottom-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(230, 230, 230); border-top-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px; color: #b0b0b0; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px 0px 28px; padding: 11px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="posted-by" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">By <span class="reviewer" itemprop="author" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="https://newmatilda.com/author/shira-sebban/" rel="author" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; border: 0px; color: #010101; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Posts by Shira Sebban">Shira Sebban</a></span> </span><span class="posted-on" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">on <span class="dtreviewed" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><time class="value-datetime" datetime="2016-10-15T09:09:46+00:00" itemprop="datePublished" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">October 15, 2016</time></span></span><span class="cats" style="border: 0px; float: right; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="cat cat-color-12587" href="https://newmatilda.com/category/asylum-seekers/" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; border: 0px; color: #010101; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 21px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline;">Asylum Seekers</a></span></div>
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Social media may have changed the world, but it’s also made campaigning to make at least one life better a genuine reality, writes Shira Sebban.</div>
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I recently started an <a href="https://gofundme.com/careforthechildren" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; border: 0px; color: #017777; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline;">online crowd fund</a> to help the families of two Vietnamese citizens, sentenced to jail for trying to seek asylum in Australia. Between them, they have five children aged 4-14, none of whom will be able to attend school without the help of Australian donors.</div>
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Mother of three, Tran Thi Lua, has lost her appeal against a 30-month jail sentence imposed by the Vietnamese government for helping organise an “illegal departure” to Australia in a fishing boat last year.</div>
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Lua’s case has been complicated by the subsequent arrest of her husband, Nguyen Long, by Indonesian authorities, who accuse him of fishing in their waters. He has been detained in Indonesia, his boat and gear confiscated.</div>
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Meanwhile, the father of the other two children, Nguyen Minh Quyet, who skippered the boat on its ill-fated Australian journey in July 2015, has lost the use of both his legs while detained in jail in Vietnam.</div>
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“The prison officers refused to allow him medical treatment,” his wife, Pham Thi Thu Thanh, said. “When I protested and demanded he be taken to hospital, they threatened to paralyse his arms if I would not shut up.”</div>
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While Quyet has also lost his appeal, he has been allowed to remain at home, cared for by his wife, until he is well enough to return to jail to complete his two-year sentence.</div>
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As an Australian, I feel morally responsible for the families of these asylum seekers, who were abandoned to such a harsh fate by our government. They were among the 92 Vietnamese intercepted in two separate incidents by the Australian navy last year.</div>
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Assessed at sea and found not to warrant protection, they were forcibly returned after the Australian government received written assurance from its Vietnamese counterpart that returnees would not be punished.</div>
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Several members of the two groups have since been incarcerated. Undaunted, Australian authorities have continued to return Vietnamese intercepted in the Timor Sea under the government’s Turn Back the Boats policy.</div>
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In the face of continued government intractability, it is easy to feel overwhelmed: what can one person do to help? For help I must.</div>
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True, in the current political climate, I often feel as if I am in the minority, with most Australians seeming to agree with our government’s stance, adamant that “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances under which they come”. Whatever happened to befriending the stranger?</div>
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Thanks to the generosity of some fellow Australians from various cultural backgrounds and walks of life, I was recently able to send $1,500 to each family to help pay for school fees and other expenses, only to discover that the donation had attracted the attention of the Vietnamese police.</div>
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“They keep coming to my house to ask me about the money,” Lua said. “They ask where it comes from, what it’s for, who sent it. I told the police that it’s from foreigners who feel sorry for my situation and decided to help me so my children can go to school.”</div>
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To make matters worse, she maintains that the police have now prevented her from going to the beach to dig for clams to sell at the market, which has been her only source of income since her husband was detained in Indonesia. “I asked them why people from overseas would help me, while the Vietnamese government does nothing to help and even causes more problems…. It makes me very upset that foreigners care so much, yet the government sees them as enemies.”</div>
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Lua is only too aware how her jail sentence will impact on her children’s future, depriving them of education and work opportunities. “In Vietnam if one person commits what is considered to be a crime, the whole family pays.”</div>
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Both Lua and Thanh are now too scared to talk to me, the police having come to their homes to threaten that if they continue to speak to people overseas who will say “bad things” about the government online, then both of them will be taken to jail immediately.</div>
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The police intervention, however, has made me only more determined to help these families. It all started two months ago, when I first decided to take action, running an <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/NeverTearUsApart" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; border: 0px; color: #017777; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: all 0.4s ease-in-out; vertical-align: baseline;">online fundraising campaign</a> in support of the family of another Vietnamese failed asylum seeker. More than a hundred fellow Australians contributed to raise over $10,000 to prevent four children from having to leave school and live in an orphanage.</div>
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The children, aged 4-16, had seemingly been condemned to a dismal future after their mother, Tran Thi Thanh Loan, lost her appeal for leniency on the basis of being their sole carer.</div>
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She was set to begin a three-year jail sentence following the attempt to seek asylum in Australia. Their father, Ho Trung Loi, was already serving a two-year sentence in a jail seven hours’ drive from the family’s home and is not due for release until mid-2017. Maintaining that no-one in her family could afford to look after the children, Loan was told they should leave school and go to an orphanage.</div>
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Unable to bear the thought of this family suffering even more, and not wanting to see them further torn apart, I decided to contact their lawyer, Don An Vo, in Vietnam via Facebook, to ask how much it would cost each month for the extended family to care for the children until their father’s release from jail next year.</div>
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According to Loan, the family originally left Vietnam because the state had seized their land, they had lost their livelihood due to Chinese incursions into fishing grounds, and also because of institutionalised discrimination against Catholics. While Australian authorities claim they were fairly assessed, she said a translator was not provided for the group, none of whom spoke English. They only realised they were being returned when they reached port in Vietnam.</div>
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Initially too embarrassed to accept help, Loan calculated her children’s living and education expenses to be around AUD$425 per month, or about $5,000 for the year. Within a few weeks we had raised more than double than amount, thereby ensuring not only that Loan’s children are well provided for, but also that their parents can get back on their feet once they are released from jail.</div>
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The good news is that following an international public backlash, Loan has been granted a temporary reprieve, her sentence delayed for one year until her husband’s release. Her lawyer has since put me in touch with the families of other failed asylum seekers.</div>
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I had never believed before that one person could really make a difference. But social media has changed that, as has the possibility of making personal contact with asylum seekers, whether online or face-to-face.</div>
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A drop in the ocean? Perhaps, but we cannot give up. For as the ancients taught, “whoever saves a life is considered as if they saved an entire world”.</div>
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</article>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-55541562531072051772016-08-30T18:45:00.002-07:002016-08-30T18:45:49.890-07:00My latest article on how asylum seekers are treated in our detention centres<h1 style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; padding: 3px;">
Forging friendships in adversity</h1>
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<tr><td class="insidenewsmiddle" style="background-color: #cfcfcf; font-size: 10px; padding: 3px;">By <a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=6952" style="color: #88005b; text-decoration: none;">Shira Sebban</a> - posted Wednesday, 31 August 2016</td><td align="right" class="insidenewsmiddle" style="background-color: #cfcfcf; font-size: 10px; padding: 3px;"><br /></td></tr>
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They are a disparate, albeit tight-knit group. Laughing and chatting, they take up an entire long table, crowded together, as they eat their chicken curry customarily with their hands, the delectable aroma wafting through the air of the low security reception area.<br />
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The chef sits among them, her long, green manicured nails gleaming. The loyal, indefatigable partner of one of the detainees, she visits him and their friends daily, bringing in the traditional Sri Lankan Tamil dishes, which she cooks at home so they can enjoy a communal meal … until she was banned from Villawood Immigration Detention Centre for a month. Her crime? Apparently, she was preparing such generous quantities that the men could not finish all the food. Reluctant to let it go to waste, they were trying to sneak the leftovers into their rooms, which is against centre rules.<br />
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"Never mind," she tells me when I commiserate with her, "I'll be able to get some rest now". Over the next month she continues to prepare the curries as usual, only now giving them to a friend to take in on her behalf.<br />
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<span style="text-align: center;">Once, arriving early, I enter the reception area to find myself surrounded by a sea of welcoming faces. I am accompanying their queen, after all, who is temporarily on crutches following surgery. This is her first visit after ten days convalescing alone at home, supported by nuns and church group volunteers: Having befriended her at the centre, they have been driving her to medical appointments and bringing her meals several times a week.</span><br />
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Apologising for not having responded to messages, she explains her phone was stolen, a thief having broken into her apartment. Still unable to cook, she has brought in three pizzas and a couple of small plastic bottles of coke for the detainees to enjoy, complying with centre requirements restricting the amount of liquid allowed.<br />
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A guard approaches. "Are all these people on your list?" she asks officiously. Detainees are only allowed into the reception area if their names are recorded on a visitors application form at least 24 hours ahead of time, with a limit of four detainees per visitor. "There are only two of you and there are far too many Indians in this room." She gestures to the crowd of men waiting patiently behind the glass door behind us. "They'll have to wait until someone else arrives."<br />
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A few minutes later, she returns with the identity card of a Middle Eastern man whom I recognise. "Is he on your list too?" she asks. An affirmative response makes no difference – he still has to wait until the next visitor arrives before being allowed to join us.<br />
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One of the Tamil detainees has grown a heavy beard since my last visit. Normally impeccably neat, I originally did not feel comfortable asking this slender, soft-spoken man why he is no longer shaving, only to discover that this is his way of protesting: Try as he might, he has been unable to obtain security clearance to visit a lonely Sri Lankan friend, confined to a psychiatric hospital. The following week, the beard has vanished: a fellow detainee has told him his appearance is not appropriate in polite company, although permission to visit his friend has still not been granted.<br />
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Visitors and detainees alike, hailing from across the third world, gather to sing happy birthday to the queen's partner. The church volunteers have baked a cake - cream sponge covered in hundreds and thousands - multiculturalism is alive and well in the detention centre too.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The young couple joins in the celebrations. They have been separated by the Immigration Department for over 18 months since he was detained, his temporary bridging visa cancelled for having ostensibly breached the Code of Behaviour.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Depicted as a promise to respect Australian laws and values, the Code, which "all adult illegal maritime arrivals" must sign, was first introduced in late 2013 to alleviate concerns that asylum seekers on bridging visas were allegedly committing criminal offences. It describes how they are expected to behave, expressly stipulating, for example, that asylum seekers not "engage in any anti-social or disruptive activities that are inconsiderate, disrespectful or threaten the peaceful enjoyment of other members of the community".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In other words, unlike Australian citizens, an asylum seeker can be detained for anything from a traffic infringement to spitting in public or hosting a noisy party.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once detained, it can take a long time for a case to go through the courts. Even if an asylum seeker is ultimately found to be innocent, they still need to apply for a new visa, involving an interview, more paperwork and indefinite waiting.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One day, hopefully life will resume once more – with one difference: the couple plans to take in at least one of the other men they have befriended in detention. As 19</span><sup style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century English Reverend Charles Caleb Colton said: "The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame."</span><br />
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http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=18489<br />
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About the Author</h2>
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<a href="" name="bio" style="color: #aa0000;"></a>Shira Sebban is a Sydney writer and editor. A former journalist with the Australian Jewish News, Shira previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. She is also a director on the board of her children's school.</div>
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Other articles by this Author</h2>
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<li style="padding: 0px 5px;">» <a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15688" style="color: #88005b; text-decoration: none;">Uniting the generations</a> - November 15, 2013</li>
<li style="padding: 0px 5px;">» <a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15159" style="color: #88005b; text-decoration: none;">For the joy of it</a> - June 24, 2013</li>
<li style="padding: 0px 5px;">» <a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=15035" style="color: #88005b; text-decoration: none;">Making the most of life</a> - May 22, 2013</li>
<li style="padding: 0px 5px;">» <a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14714" style="color: #88005b; text-decoration: none;">Living between the devil and the deep blue sea</a> - February 21, 2013</li>
<li style="padding: 0px 5px;">» <a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=14652" style="color: #88005b; text-decoration: none;">The life in our years</a> - February 5, 2013</li>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-41803836990677803382016-08-25T04:20:00.000-07:002016-08-25T04:20:15.668-07:00My article about helping the family of failed Vietnamese asylum seekers now in the Guardian<header class="content__head tonal__head tonal__head--tone-comment
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We're a disparate group of Australians doing the work our government won't</h1>
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When I heard that a woman who attempted to seek asylum in Australia but had her boat returned to Vietnam was about to be sent to jail, leaving her kids with no parent and facing life in an orphanage, I started a crowd fund</div>
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<time class="content__dateline-wpd js-wpd" data-timestamp="1472016423000" datetime="2016-08-24T15:27:03+1000" itemprop="datePublished" style="display: inline-block;">Wednesday 24 August 2016 <span class="content__dateline-time">15.27 AEST</span></time></div>
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<span class="drop-cap" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #e6711b; display: inline-block; float: left; font-family: 'Guardian Egyptian Web', 'Guardian Text Egyptian Web', Georgia, serif; height: 4.5rem; margin-right: 0.3125rem; padding-top: 0.0625rem; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="drop-cap__inner" style="display: inline-block; font-size: 5.25rem; line-height: 4.25rem; vertical-align: text-top;">T</span></span>he four children of a Vietnamese woman, who will be sent to jail for trying to seek asylum in Australia, were set to be forced to leave school and live in an orphanage. But the Australian people have done something the Australian government couldn’t – or wouldn’t – and have raised enough money to ensure the children can stay at school and be cared for by relatives.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 1rem; padding: 0px;">
The mother of the children, failed asylum-seeker Tran Thi Thanh Loan, is set to begin a three-year jail sentence imposed by the Vietnamese government for helping organise an “illegal departure” to Australia in the family-owned fishing boat last year. Their father, Ho Trung Loi, is already serving a two-year sentence following the attempt to seek asylum in Australia – in a jail seven hours’ drive from the family’s home – and is not due for release until mid-2017.</div>
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Loan recently lost her appeal for leniency on the basis of being the sole carer of her four children, aged from 4 to 16. Maintaining that no one in her family could afford to look after them, she was told they should leave school and go to an orphanage. </div>
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“They have been crying a lot and clinging to me,” <a class="u-underline" data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/kids-orphaned-as-vietnam-jails-parents-over-asylum-bid/news-story/fdb6751c38007ea02371b802315e57a9" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">she told the Australian</a>. “My youngest child keeps saying ‘Mummy, don’t go’. My older children are worried. They feel the pressure and are scared of having neither parent around. They have asked if they can be sent to prison with me.”</div>
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I could not bear the thought of this family suffering even more and did not want to see them further torn apart. So I decided to try and contact the family’s lawyer, Don An Vo, in <a class="u-underline" data-component="auto-linked-tag" data-link-name="auto-linked-tag" href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/vietnam" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">Vietnam</a> to ask him how much it would cost each month in order for the extended family to care for the children until their father’s release from jail next year.</div>
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The family was among the 92 Vietnamese asylum seekers intercepted in two separate incidents by the Australian navy last year. Assessed at sea and found not to warrant protection, they were forcibly returned after the <a class="u-underline" data-link-name="in body link" href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/may/24/vietnamese-asylum-seekers-forcibly-returned-by-australia-face-jail" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">Australian government received written assurance</a> from its Vietnamese counterpart that returnees would not be punished. Several members of the two groups have since been incarcerated.</div>
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<figcaption class="caption caption--img caption caption--img" itemprop="description" style="color: #767676; font-family: 'Guardian Text Sans Web', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; font-size: 0.75rem; line-height: 1rem; max-width: 32.5rem; padding-top: 0.5rem;"> The children of Tran Thi Thanh Loan, pictured with their new school purchases made from funds provided by a crowd fund in Australia. Photograph: Tran Thi Thanh Loan</figcaption></figure><div style="margin-bottom: 1rem; padding: 0px;">
According to Loan, the family originally left because the state had seized their land, they had lost their livelihood due to Chinese incursions into fishing grounds, and also because of institutionalised discrimination against Catholics. While Australian authorities claim they were fairly assessed, she said that a translator was not provided for the group, none of whom spoke English. They only realised they were being returned when they reached port in Vietnam.</div>
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Via Facebook and the help of a friend of the family’s lawyer, I was able to get in touch with Vo and Loan. Initially, Loan was too embarrassed to accept any help, but finally convinced by her lawyer, she calculated that her children’s living and education expenses amount to 7,000,000 Vietnamese dong per month, which is roughly equivalent to AUD$425, or about $5,000 for the year. But there was another complication – she did not have a bank account and would need to open one before I could send the first monthly payment.</div>
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There have been several reports in the media about these failed asylum seekers being sent to prison despite assurances to Australian officials they would not be punished. So far, the Australian government seems not to have done anything about this injustice. Indeed, Australian authorities have c<a class="u-underline" data-link-name="in body link" href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jun/22/vietnamese-asylum-seekers-turned-back-after-being-processed-at-sea" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">ontinued to return Vietnamese intercepted in the Timor Sea</a>. That’s why I decided I had to step in. </div>
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I had never believed before that one person could really make a difference. But social media has changed that. Earlier this month, I launched an <a class="u-underline" data-link-name="in body link" href="https://www.gofundme.com/nevertearusapart" style="-webkit-transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(220, 220, 220); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0.0625rem; color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none !important; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;">online fundraising campaign for Loan’s children</a>, with the target amount of $10,000 in order to ensure not only that they are well provided for but also that their parents are able to get back on their feet once they are released from jail. We are well on the way to achieving our goal. We are a disparate group from various cultural backgrounds and walks of life doing the work that our government won’t.</div>
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Loan has told me that she and her children are currently living with her parents after her house was destroyed and land confiscated by the Vietnamese government. She earns a few dollars a day by buying fruit from local orchards, which she sells in front of her parents’ home until lunchtime. She moves to another site in the afternoon, for which she pays rent, in order to sell the rest at a lower price because it is no longer as fresh. The good news is she has just been granted a temporary reprieve, her sentence delayed for one year until her husband is released from jail.</div>
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“Your help and kindness has made me feel much more confident and less stressed now,” Loan wrote recently on Facebook. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping my family.”</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-74279475740418428682016-08-11T23:07:00.002-07:002016-08-11T23:07:25.119-07:00new article about asylum-seekers published by Eureka Street<h1 class="fittext" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 40px; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.15em; margin: 10px 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
<span id="ctl00_MainContent_litTitle">Humanity meets bureaucracy on asylum seeker Fast Track</span></h1>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span class="labelTexts-Brown" style="color: #998675; font-weight: bold;">Shira Sebban</span> | 14 August 2016</div>
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<strong>'I just want to lead a normal life like everyone else in this room.' Sobs rack his body as he pleads with the immigration officer on whom his fate largely depends.</strong></h3>
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<img alt="Hand writes in notebook" height="313" src="https://eurekastreet.com.au/uploads/image/16/49736.jpg" style="border: 1px solid black; float: right; height: auto; margin: 15px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" width="470" />It is hard to believe that this nondescript civil servant has so much power. Clad in a jumper, briefcase in tow, he looks more like a suburban accountant than an authority figure.</div>
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Yet, under the Fast Track Assessment process now being used to clear the backlog of protection claims, he, or a fellow Australian Immigration and Border Protection officer, will most likely be the one to decide whether the trembling man seated opposite him will be allowed to stay, albeit temporarily, or forced to return 'home' or to a 'safe third country' where he has 'right of entry'.</div>
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'Should you be found not to engage Australia's protection obligations, the government may share your biographical details with the authorities of your country of origin,' the official intones.</div>
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'If you give them information about me I will be killed,' comes the chilling reply.</div>
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His support person can do nothing. She is not allowed to speak. Sitting beside the man she has come to consider a friend, she hopes that somehow she can give him the strength to endure this ordeal. As he strives to answer the probing questions about his tormented past, his growing distress is evident. He cannot help but relive the harrowing experiences of his youth.</div>
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'Is this you?' the official asks, thrusting a document in front of him. The photo is of a young, proud and handsome man. 'You look very different now.'</div>
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The support person asks permission to leave the room to bring him some tissues. Upon returning, she sits there, hand over mouth in shock. While she has been visiting him in detention for six months, he has never told her the extent of his family's suffering under the Iranian regime.</div>
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"She asks a guard if he can see his psychologist, and fortunately, her request is granted. A fellow applicant was not so lucky: told after his interview that he was to be moved to Christmas Island, he slit his throat."</h3>
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True, he had shared memories of the Iran-Iraq War, recalling rockets and warplanes overhead and being bundled into an open car boot with his siblings as the family made their escape. His hometown of Khorramshahr in Khuzestan Province, located in southwestern Iran near the Iraq border, was devastated, the 1986 census recording no one remaining from a pre-War population of about 150,000.</div>
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He had told her that Ahwazi Arabs — the largest Arab minority in Iran, who reside predominantly in resource-laden Khuzestan — are marginalised as impoverished, second-class citizens. Their oil-rich and fertile ancestral lands are expropriated without compensation, and their water supply diverted and polluted, depriving them of clean drinking water, even though they live in one of the hottest populated places on earth.</div>
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But she did not know about the arrest, torture and public execution of family members; the beatings he endured — to the point that his own mother did not recognise him — and his jail sentence for fighting for his people's political, economic and cultural rights; the hiding from authorities; his desperate escape when, helped by friends, he fled by plane to Malaysia and then by boat to Indonesia and on to Australia. By then, he no longer had a passport, Malaysian people smugglers having broken their promise to return it. He recalls the 14-day passage to Australia as a nightmare: seriously ill from the diesel fumes, he was grateful to be rescued by the Australian Maritime Authority and taken to Christmas Island.</div>
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As far as the Australian Government is concerned, that fateful journey deems him to be an 'illegal maritime arrival'. Fast Track is expressly for the approximately 30,500 'people who arrived illegally by boat' between August 2012 and December 2013. They are the lucky ones, who can still be invited to apply for a temporary protection visa. Those who arrived later will not be granted a visa at all.</div>
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The immigration official claims to know about the Ahwazi Arabs' plight, and is more interested in whether he can provide 'genuine, original' documented evidence of his 'identity, nationality and citizenship'. After all, this is probably his only chance to provide his protection claim in full.</div>
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Alternating between Farsi and English, he does his best to comply, producing a file, which the migration agent sitting next to him has helped to compile. He knows he is fortunate: only those assessed as 'exceptionally vulnerable' are now eligible for legal funding. When he has difficulty understanding, he relies on the translation provided by the interpreter seated at the end of the table. Coolly elegant, the young, sophisticated woman, originally from Teheran, seems worlds apart from her fellow countryman, with little in common aside from their shared language.</div>
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In contrast, the support person recalls having an immediate affinity with this charming, soft-spoken man whom she visits each week. Enriched by their friendship, she admires his resilience, his efforts to improve, learning English and updating his professional qualifications online. Yet, as he often reminds her, 'You have the advantages of education and freedom.'</div>
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Finally, the interview ends. He is emotionally spent. The process has been respectful, if dispassionate, his story finally heard. Promising to send the required character references, he gets up to return to his room. The support person cannot leave him like this: he is too vulnerable, his reopened wounds too raw. She asks a guard if he can see his psychologist, and fortunately, her request is granted. A fellow applicant was not so lucky: told after his interview that he was to be moved to Christmas Island, he slit his throat. 'There's only so much a person can take,' he explained while recovering.</div>
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Weeks pass in a flurry of activity as final documentation is supplied. Intended to process claims 'more efficiently', Fast Track only allows limited time to respond.</div>
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Gradually he stops asking for advice. Life returns to what passes as normal in the surreal world of the detention centre. He resumes his activities — exercise, reading, eating, sleeping — some detainees call it 'time-wasting' — while he waits in limbo.</div>
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Fear of uncertainty still troubles him: what if his application is refused? She strives to offer comfort: under Fast Track, he may still get a second chance, with some rejected claims referred for limited review by the recently established Immigration Assessment Authority. Hopefully, he will be recognised as a refugee and granted a temporary visa. Then he too will be able to realise his dream to live in freedom, if only for a short while. For as the government constantly reminds us: 'Settlement in Australia will never be an option for anyone who travels illegally by boat.'</div>
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<img alt="Shira Sebban" height="100" src="https://eurekastreet.com.au/uploads/image/writers/Shira_Sebban.jpg" style="border: 1px solid black; float: left; height: auto; margin: 1px 4px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" title="Shira Sebban" width="100" /><a href="https://shirasebban.wordpress.com/" style="color: #9f0200; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Shira Sebban</a> is a Sydney writer and editor, passionate about exploring the challenges life throws at us through her writing. A former journalist, she previously taught French and worked in publishing.</div>
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<h2 style="color: inherit; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 26px; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.15em; margin: 10px 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
Shira Sebban</h2>
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<span class="labelTexts-Brown" style="color: #998675; font-weight: bold;">Recent articles by this author</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-18228597702294864542016-07-18T04:09:00.001-07:002016-07-18T04:09:26.741-07:00Fanning the Flames: My Portrait of My Grandfather just published on Biostories.com<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" id="content-parent" style="color: black; width: 100%px;"><tbody>
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<strong style="font-family: 'arial black', 'avant garde'; font-size: x-large; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #993300;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">Featured Essay</span></span></strong></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>Fanning the Flames</strong></span></div>
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by<strong> Shira Sebban</strong></div>
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“How are you, Saba?”</div>
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“I? I am old.”</div>
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This question and answer routine would be repeated each morning like a familiar ritual when we would ring to check on the “Old Boy” as he was affectionately known, who still lived alone in a flat nearby.</div>
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I assume he appreciated our concern, although he never said so. Still we need not have worried … not then. Relishing the solitude that enabled him to read, think and write—so long as it was interspersed with alternate dinners at his son’s and daughter’s homes each evening—he was keen to preserve his autonomy for as long as possible.</div>
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Until well into his eighties, Saba (Hebrew for grandfather) would continue his exercise and diet regime, doing daily sit-ups and stretches, taking afternoon naps, munching on carrot and celery sticks, and preserving prunes in jars, which took up almost all-available bench space in his kitchen, be it at home in Melbourne, Australia, or wherever he was living overseas. I can still recall our family kitchen in London, filled to overflowing with my grandfather’s preserves, his snores emanating from the tiny bedroom next to the one I shared with my sister.</div>
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Not to say, however, that he lacked a sweet tooth. He could whip up a mean trifle and revelled in long smorgasbord lunches at fancy hotels, where he would indulge in chocolate éclairs and other treats, acknowledging his diabetes by popping a sweetener into the habitual tea with lemon he drank after every meal.</div>
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Lemons were so important to him that when he was asked to look after us as teenagers while our parents were overseas, he would dutifully arrive each evening for dinner and promptly disappear outside to water the lemon tree, which he believed would prevent the fruit’s skin from thickening. In the morning, he would depart for the peace and quiet of his apartment again, where he could spend the day in undisturbed contemplation.</div>
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Classical music was his constant companion, be it tapes he had made himself or the local classical music public radio station, with which he had a love-hate relationship, railing against the “moaning and groaning of illiterate so-called contemporary composers.” In one letter to the station, he urged such composers to test their claim to have popular support within the open market rather than “bludge on the public purse and coerce the people to listen to their incompetent noise-making.”</div>
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He was also partial to international melodramas, often joining the family in front of the television after dinner, when he would walk around jangling keys and loose change in his pockets during particularly tense moments. Keen to avoid confrontation whenever possible, he would burst into song—usually the old Russian folk tune <em>Ochi chyomye</em> (“Dark Eyes”)—whenever a family disagreement arose, which did not involve him.</div>
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Every so often, craving intellectual companionship, Saba would pack a bag, sling it over his shoulder, and head off overseas to Europe, his old home in Israel, or the United States, where cousins, who had survived the horrors of the Holocaust, were scattered. He would visit each in turn, and they would host family dinners in his honor and write him letters in English, Hebrew, Yiddish or Polish when he was back in Melbourne, sharing how they had delighted in his company.</div>
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During these trips, which could last several months or sometimes even years, he would commune with philosophers and historians at academic institutions in London, Boston, or Tel Aviv or on long walks through the Austrian Alps, even though he himself had not had a formal secular education and, to the envy of his grandchildren, had never even sat an exam.</div>
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He strove to cultivate a personal relationship with us from a young age too, asking for letters from each of his six grandchildren while he was overseas. If we were remiss in writing, he would remind our parents that we owed him a letter, and he liked nothing better than to respond to our questions, the more philosophical the better. I revelled in his attention—especially on the rare occasions when I was fortunate enough to join him on his travels—and placed him on a pedestal: my wise Saba could do no wrong.</div>
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Blessed with an inquiring and incisive mind, an insatiable desire for knowledge, and a photographic memory, he would peruse erudite tomes on a wealth of subjects in second-hand bookstores, sending crates of books back home, where he would autograph and catalogue them as part of his own library or distribute them as gifts to family and friends. As he explained in a letter to his daughter, “I will at least leave an inheritance, not in diamonds and jade, but in books, which were costly to me not only in money but in time and effort.”</div>
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I treasure that inheritance today, my study’s shelves arrayed with books my Saba gave me. The one I value most is his personal copy of <em>The Book of Jewish Knowledge</em>, an encyclopaedia of Jewish learning from the 1960s, which he presented to my husband and me during his last visit to our home, scraps of paper still marking the pages most important to him.</div>
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When bestowing a book as a gift, he would always include an inscription, ranging from a birthday wish or expression of love to an elaborate desire for social cohesion. The dedication on our last gift reads: “Wishing you success and a humane understanding of the kindness and social variety of others. Best wishes from an old octogenarian. Saba.” For he strongly believed that everyday human relations should be conducted with empathy, truth, and love.</div>
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During his travels, he would occasionally purchase a work of art for himself or as a gift. He thought that while art appreciation is subject to individual taste and values, “striving to enjoy art in all its forms” helps “a civilized person to cultivate a taste for aesthetics and so foster an understanding of beauty.”</div>
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As he wrote to my parents after buying them an antique Tibetan Buddha in Spain, “Art objects should serve as a means to inspire the most lofty thoughts. But should a collection serve only as an accumulation of wealth or to show off, to my mind it is wrong.”</div>
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<img alt="My_Saba_Berl_Gross.jpeg" height="210" src="http://www.biostories.com/images/My_Saba_Berl_Gross.jpeg" style="float: right;" title="My_Saba_Berl_Gross.jpeg" width="200" /></div>
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The patriarch of the family, Saba would preside over gatherings, regaling the table with such passions as the problems of justice and of individual freedom within the rule of law. I recall many festive dinners where the extended family would gather around the long dining room table with my grandfather at the head expounding his views. No two dinners were alike, as he could be relied upon to present his arguments from multiple angles.</div>
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Fundamentally, he believed we all face a personal choice between leading an autonomous life of rationality, integrity, and dignity in the human world of ideas or a life of emotion, imitation, and subservience in what he termed “the domesticated animal kingdom.” As he wrote to a friend, “Does a man act out of rational argument or is man an animal whose elected shepherds know best what is good for him?”</div>
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Alternatively, he might have been keen to discuss what he had read that particular day which, given his eclectic interests, could range from a biography of Galileo Galilei, or the writings of Bertrand Russell, to biblical commentaries on Abraham, Moses, or Samuel, various newspaper articles, which he would mark for others to read, or even an account of the Shakers, a utopian Christian sect, some of whose former American settlements he visited and whose virtual demise fascinated him. Even while on an otherwise disappointing holiday in Tahiti, he derived enjoyment from reading daily doses from a volume of Albert Einstein’s essays, which he had happened to pick up at the Sydney airport.</div>
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Anyone brave enough to attempt an answer to what Saba meant as a rhetorical question would usually be met with a resounding “no” or, far less frequently, an “oh” in agreement (both words pronounced with a short ‘o’ sound) and a lengthy, passionate exposition of his views. Yet he did not lack for sparring partners.</div>
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“How do you know that you know?” “What do you mean by God?” Influenced by the late eminent philosopher of science, Sir Karl Popper, whose seminars Saba attended at the London School of Economics in the 1960s and who later became a life-long friend, Saba emphasized the importance of having a skeptical outlook on life and of continuously questioning one’s premises.</div>
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In contrast to his own childhood experience within an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Poland, he argued that parents do not have the right to impose religious beliefs on their children, as such convictions are open to doubt and “It is up to parents to guide the young ones with unquestionable honesty.” At the same time, he believed that an agnostic is still free to maintain traditions as an expression of cultural and communal adherence. He continued to attend synagogue fairly regularly into old age, always ensuring he had a book to read discretely during the rabbi’s sermons.</div>
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He vigorously opposed the use of force in disciplining children, arguing that physical punishment may “influence the child to look at the world as a society where reason is not a way of life, only force is the language of grownups. The child does not accept the beating as a consequence of being wrong, but rather reflects that grownups beat children because children are weak and cannot fend for themselves.” He was speaking from personal experience, his own father having used force against him. I never recall Saba raising a hand against anyone. For him, the power of persuasion depended on one’s choice of words.</div>
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Self-deprecating and able to converse with young and old alike, he cultivated a multitude of friends around the world. Academics and thinkers enjoyed the free exchange of ideas in his company, while students wrote him letters of appreciation for helping to clarify their thinking or correct their theses. People generously opened their homes to him and upon his departure, would write, requesting another visit. He maintained a rich correspondence with many who broadly admired his values and ideas, as well as the freedom of his chosen lifestyle, which he described as that of “a man divorced of daily responsibilities.”</div>
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Nevertheless, Saba always considered himself an outsider, and although his vocabulary was highly sophisticated, he was particularly unsure of his written English expression, writing drafts of important letters and texts, which were often corrected by his daughter.</div>
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He advised those around him to do our best to enrich our lives with, what he termed, “mental-spiritual interests.” As he wrote to my teenage sister and me: “Very soon, your holidays start and you have a swimming pool, books, a piano, cello and violin, what a rich life in front of you!” Whenever his children or grandchildren would ask his advice on our future studies, he would steer us in the direction of a great body of thought such as Science or Philosophy and encourage us to be creative and aim for excellence. He set an example by striving to learn mathematics at the University of Illinois in his fifties.</div>
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Yet, he remained highly critical of academia, which he considered to have largely degenerated into “coercive systems of education,” staffed by incompetent “charlatans” who felt immune from scrutiny. Careers were not as important to him as the sheer love of learning, although he certainly emphasized the need to work, which he averred to have learned from his father. In later life, he would often tell stories of his father—the last Jew to have a full religious burial in the central Polish town of Zdunska Wola—acknowledging that he had instilled in his children a love of Jewish learning, as well as an appreciation for the importance of being responsible for oneself and one’s actions. As Saba explained, “self-reliance and self-respect are important for self-fulfilment, which is the difference between man as a person and man as a domesticated animal.”</div>
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My grandfather always remained true to his principles—until, as he put it, he lost his “I”, Alzheimer’s disease ultimately robbing him of whom he was as a person. In my mind’s eye, I can still see him sitting in the middle of his room, endlessly twisting a Rubik’s Cube around in his hands. Up to that time, however, he lived as if he was on an insatiable intellectual quest. As he wrote to me, “Life is full of exciting curiosities, joy, and deep feeling for the world’s mysteries.” Integrity, autonomy, and family were among the values he held dear and are now those I strive to instil in my children.</div>
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Saba was my mentor and anchor, who showed me that I could do anything to which I set my mind. He encouraged me to stand up for what I believe in and not be afraid to admit I had made a mistake, learn from it, and move on. My children may not have the privilege of growing up in his company, but they can still benefit from the rich and courageous legacy he left behind.</div>
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<img alt="Shira_Sebban.jpeg" height="177" src="http://www.biostories.com/images/Shira_Sebban.jpeg" style="float: left;" title="Shira_Sebban.jpeg" width="130" />Shira Sebban is a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia, who is passionate about exploring the challenges life throws at us through her writing. A former journalist, Shira previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. She has served on the board of her children’s school for the past 12 years, including two terms as vice-president. Her work has appeared in online and print publications, including <em>Eureka Street, Jewish Literary Journal, The Forward, Australian Jewish News, Alzheimer’s Reading Room, </em>and<em> Online Opinion</em>. She is currently working on a series of creative nonfiction stories based on her mother’s diary, which the family only discovered after her death. You can read more of her work at: <a href="http://shirasebban.wordpress.com/" style="color: #1a5194;" target="_blank">shirasebban.wordpress.com</a>.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-85383461251565484232016-06-25T06:10:00.000-07:002016-06-25T06:10:01.252-07:00Listening Through the SilenceWhat it's like to visit Villawood Detention Centre<br />
<i>written for the students of Emanuel School</i><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-24701709558241526182016-03-29T05:10:00.002-07:002016-04-07T03:06:14.992-07:00In My Mother's Footsteps <span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I recently experienced an amazing coincidence in Jerusalem. It is an honor for my latest piece to be published on the great philanthropy expert Danny Siegel's blog. With gratitude to his exceptional student and philanthropy consultant in his own right, </span><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=565732125" href="https://www.facebook.com/ArnieDraiman" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration: none;">Arnie Draiman</a><br />
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In My Mother’s Footsteps</h1>
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<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is a guest post, written by Shira Sebban of Sydney, Australia, who had arranged with my </em>Talmid Muvhak<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(“Exceptional Student”) <a href="http://www.draimanconsulting.com/images/resume_canva.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Arnie Draiman</a>, to take her and her family to meet the <a href="http://dannysiegel.com/HowToPrepareYourselftoBeAMitzvahHero.pdf" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Mitzvah heroes</a> and see the magic that happens when we do.</em></div>
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<img alt="shimoni" class="alignright wp-image-459587" src="http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2016/03/shimoni.jpg" height="166" style="border: 0px; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 6px 0px 0px 12px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="shimoni" width="147" />It is no ordinary building. Not for its residents, nor for me. Yet, at first glance, the three story cream apartment block looks like any other in its central Jerusalem neighborhood – apart from its ramp and lift.</div>
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<div itemprop="articleBody" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1.5em; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.4em; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The <a href="http://www.shalheveth.org/" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Shalheveth Apartments</a> complex has long been renowned for enabling adults with severe physical disabilities to live independently within the community. Unique in Israel, the project allows people in wheelchairs to reside privately in their own apartment, with a second bedroom available for a caregiver should they so choose. A large communal room and wheelchair-accessible garden provide opportunities to socialize, while a specially equipped van and driver are on hand to take residents to and from work, shopping or to appointments.</div>
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On a recent <a href="http://www.draimanconsulting.com/draiman_tzedakah_adventures.html" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Tzedakah Adventure Tour</a> led by philanthropy consultant Arnie Draiman, my family was privileged to meet with Shalheveth founder, Miriam Freier – one of Danny Siegel’s Mitzvah Heroes – and to tour the complex with director David Eliav, being introduced to several residents and visiting their homes. So popular have the apartments become – the waiting list is now very long – that additional funding is being sought for another facility.</div>
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Before its transformation, Miriam told us, the building at 36 Shimoni Street, in the “Rassco neighborhood” had been a dilapidated apartment block owned by the Jewish Agency, the only such building in the area.</div>
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Rassco – built by, and named after, the public Rural and Suburban Settlement Company – and the Jewish Agency rang a bell for me. Hadn’t my late mother stayed in the Jewish Agency-owned Anglo-Saxon Hostel in Rassco when she first arrived in Jerusalem in 1955???</div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1.5em; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.4em; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img alt="shimoni_sebban" class="alignright wp-image-459585" src="http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2016/03/shimoni_sebban.jpg" height="243" style="border: 0px; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 6px 0px 0px 12px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="shimoni_sebban" width="182" />I only knew this because it is detailed in her diary, a non-descript navy-bound volume, which my sister and I had found stashed away in a drawer while sorting through our mother Naomi’s belongings after her death in 2013 following a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. Indeed, so precious has the diary become that I have since embarked on a journey of discovery, exploring Israel of the 1950s in order to recreate stories from my mother’s vivid experiences recounted on its now yellowed pages filled with her distinctive script. While her handwriting may be familiar to me, the young passionate woman revealed by her words is a stranger with whom I am still becoming acquainted.</div>
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While in Israel to celebrate our youngest son Jonathan’s bar mitzvah, I had planned to visit several of the sites mentioned in my mother’s diary. I managed to tour the upmarket cultural, leisure and shopping center of Sarona in Tel Aviv, originally a German Templer agricultural colony, which by Naomi’s day, had become Hakirya, the central government and military compound where she would frequent the library. I also surveyed the bronze, haloed Madonna on the roof of Jerusalem’s Terra Sancta College and explored the renovated First Railway Station, now a cultural and entertainment center: my mother would usually travel by train between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where she attended classes at the Hebrew University, then located in the ornate, neo-classical surrounds of the Franciscan-owned College in leafy, affluent Rehavia.</div>
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The Anglo-Saxon Hostel, however, was not on my list. I already knew from my research that it had provided tastefully furnished accommodation for professional immigrants, offering breathtaking views of the Jerusalem Hills, a communal dining room and maid service. I had even seen a photo of it from the 1950s when it was brand new, standing alone on a recently constructed and completely deserted street without a tree or blade of grass in sight. Surely the hostel was long gone, I had assumed, surveying the now crowded, built-up neighborhood. But that was before I discovered Shalheveth.</div>
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Trembling with excitement, I stood on the entrance steps leading down to the street up which my mother had once hauled her heavy suitcase alone, abandoned by the taxi driver, who had blatantly overcharged her for the then two-hour trip from my grandmother’s home in south Tel Aviv. I took photographs of the stairwell, down which she would have tiptoed, after a night spent illegally at the hostel on an uncomfortable mattress without sheets after she had officially moved out, only deciding to return briefly when her possessions had not arrived at her new student abode!</div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1.5em; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.4em; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img alt="judy_singer_sebban" class="alignright wp-image-459584" src="http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2016/03/judy_singer_sebban.jpg" height="105" style="border: 0px; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 6px 0px 0px 12px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="judy_singer_sebban" width="140" />We spent the rest of that inspiring day, the eve of Jonathan’s bar mitzvah, meeting some of Arnie’s (and Danny’s) other Mitzvah heroes, including Judy Singer of <a href="http://www.kilya.org.il/en/" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Matnat Chaim</a>, Israel’s foremost kidney donation organization, who had donated her own kidney to a complete stranger in 2013. Since 2009, around 280 such low-risk, live transplants have taken place in Israel, where hundreds of people remain on the waiting list, kept alive by dialysis, which severely impacts their quality of life. Every year some die while waiting their turn, hence the urgency of Matnat Chaim’s work in combating the severe kidney shortage by encouraging more voluntary donations. Judy’s altruistic attitude certainly left a lasting impression on us.</div>
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We also visited Alice Jonah, who has helped established a supportive and <a href="http://handsontzedakah.org/ben/elderly/frail/diplomat.html" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">dignified community for elderly Russian immigrants residing at the Diplomat Hotel</a>, the five-star resort-turned absorption center. Some of the residents, including a pianist and a former opera singer, put on a concert in our honor, and I will never forget the charming and joyful 89-year-old lady, so elegant in her full black skirt, bounding up to us in between song-and-dance numbers, beaming from ear to ear, to tell us in stilted Hebrew about her seven great-grandchildren.</div>
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We met Moran Shelly of <a href="http://www.shachentov.org.il/#!en---home/re467" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Shachen Tov (Good Neighbor Association)</a>, founded and run by student volunteers, who distribute thousands of food baskets to needy families across Israel, as well as organizing clubs for youth at risk, tutoring centers, and mobile coffee shops for the isolated.</div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1.5em; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.4em; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img alt="shutaf_sebban" class="alignright wp-image-459583" src="http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2016/03/shutaf_sebban.jpg" height="122" style="border: 0px; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 6px 0px 0px 12px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="shutaf_sebban" width="173" />The day ended with a visit to a woodworking and art workshop at <a href="http://www.campshutaf.org/" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Shutaf</a>, which provides informal education programs for young people with special needs. Started in 2007 by dynamic mothers Miriam Avraham and Beth Steinberg, who could not find an appropriate program for their own children and so decided to create their own, the organization offers inclusive after-school activities and holiday camps where young people with disabilities have the opportunity to socialize with their more able-bodied peers.</div>
<div itemprop="articleBody" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 1.5em; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.4em; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img alt="ajd_sebban" class="alignright wp-image-459582" src="http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2016/03/ajd_sebban.jpg" height="110" style="border: 0px; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 6px 0px 0px 12px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="ajd_sebban" width="141" />Over the past five years, Arnie Draiman has led our family on three <a href="http://www.draimanconsulting.com/draiman_tzedakah_adventures.html" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Tzedakah Adventure Tours</a>, each coinciding with the bar mitzvah of one of our sons. We have distributed toys to sick children at Shaarei Tzedek Hospital, visited the border patrol unit in the Old City of Jerusalem that supports soldiers’ families in need, met with Ruth Schlossman, who having narrowly escaped a terrorist attack herself, decided to establish Gift of Comfort, providing massage and alternate healing therapies to survivors of terror. We have talked to toyshop proprietor Aryeh, who on his own initiative helps individuals in need, and with Robbie Sassoon, director of the <a href="http://crossroadsjerusalem.org/" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Crossroads Center</a>, where more than a thousand at-risk, English-speaking teens come for help each year.</div>
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In so doing, we have strived to teach our sons what becoming a Bar Mitzvah is all about, enabling them to learn from the example of Israelis working to make the world a better place. To be able to combine this with my own journey of discovery involving my mother’s past, has been a true privilege.<br />
<br />
<br />
<img alt="Shira Sebban" class="wp-image-460015 alignleft" height="120" src="http://cdn.timesofisrael.com/blogs/uploads/2016/03/Shira-Sebban.jpg" style="border: 0px; float: left; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: inherit; margin: 6px 12px 0px 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Shira Sebban" width="103" /><em style="border: 0px; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shira Sebban is a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia, who also serves as vice-president of Emanuel School, a pluralistic and egalitarian Jewish Day</em><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"> School. You can read more of her work </span><a href="http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">on her blog</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-85132802190117468842015-12-07T18:38:00.000-08:002015-12-07T18:38:31.611-08:00Another story from my mother's diary has been published<div class="navigation" id="nav-above">
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<a href="https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/pages-from-my-mothers-diary-a-bus-trip-to-ashkelon/" rel="bookmark">Pages from My Mother’s Diary: A Bus Trip to Ashkelon</a></h1>
By Naomi Gross (Tel Aviv, Israel) and Shira Sebban (Sydney, Australia)<br />
<br />
<em>My sister and I never expected to find the diary of our late
mother, Naomi Gross. Indeed, for many years, we did not even know of its
existence. It was only when we sorted through our mother’s possessions
after her death in July 2013 following a long battle with Alzheimer’s
disease, that we came across the non-descript, navy-bound volume,
stashed away and seemingly long forgotten in a drawer of her writing
desk.</em><br />
<br />
<em>The diary reads like a film script, relating experiences in the
Israel of the mid-1950s of a young woman whom I did not recognize. After
almost a decade’s absence, she had returned to her birthplace from
Australia, where she had gone to join her father after World War II,
only to discover that she had become somewhat of a stranger in her own
land.</em><br />
<br />
<em>At the same time, and especially in the wake of the most recent
deterioration in relations between Israel and the Palestinians, it is
sobering to read a personal account of the early trials and
tribulations, anguish and vulnerability of the new State of Israel.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Now, nearly sixty years later, I have decided to bring the
yellowed pages filled with my mother’s distinctive script to life once
more, recreating stories from her diary, which has become one of my most
cherished possessions.</em><br />
<br />
<em></em><em>Shira Sebban </em><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
*******</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
There was not a soul in sight. Surrounded by
orange groves, my mother expressed her growing unease, “recalling some
unfortunate encounters workers had with Arab infiltrators some months
ago.”</div>
I picture her, as she was then, an attractive and bright 20-something
student, alone – except for her cousin Miriam – in the hot afternoon
stillness. She would have been unable to get the image of those poor
workers out of her mind. What if she was attacked too?<br />
<br />
The infamous date of 4 October 1956 must have been etched in her
memory. Only six months previously, five Israeli construction workers
had been killed in an ambush in broad daylight on a desert highway near
the Dead Sea, just a few hours away from Ashkelon.<br />
<br />
Why on earth had she agreed to visit the South in the first place? It
had been sheer madness to try to walk to the 5000-year-old site of
ancient Ashkelon from the beach cafe, and they were still two kilometers
away from the excavations.<br />
<br />
The term, “infiltrator,” with its connotations of menace and evil,
has recently been revived to refer to African asylum seekers to Israel.
Its origins date back to the early 1950s, when numerous attacks on
Israeli settlements culminated in the 1954 “Prevention of Infiltration
Law,” which defined Palestinians and citizens of surrounding Arab
states, who entered Israel illegally, as “infiltrators,” punishable by
law, especially if armed or accused of crimes against people or
property.<br />
<br />
How many incidents had there been in the past 18 months since my
mother’s return to her birthplace from Australia after almost a decade’s
absence? Five people had been massacred in the previous two months
alone: on 18 February 1957, two civilians had been killed by landmines
next to Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on the southern border of the Gaza Strip; on
8 March, a shepherd from Kibbutz Beit Guvrin, not far from Ashkelon,
had been murdered in a nearby field, while just two days prior to her
excursion, on 16 April, two guards had been killed at Kibbutz Mesilot in
the North.<br />
<br />
No, she decided firmly, she and her cousin would have to miss out on
seeing the Neolithic excavations recently undertaken by French
archeologist Jean Perrot; it just wasn’t worth the risk. They would then
have joined the disorderly, long queue catching the Egged bus back to
Tel Aviv. The two-hour trip would be a nightmare, she thought as they
boarded, jostling in the narrow aisle against laborers standing cramped
two or even three abreast after a hard day’s work.<br />
<br />
It had not been as overcrowded that morning, when at least she had
managed to find a seat next to Miriam. They were taking every
opportunity to spend time together, renewing the strong bonds of their
childhood friendship. Born and bred in Tel Aviv, Miriam was eager to
inspect recent developments undertaken by the new State, remaining ever
hopeful that her enthusiasm would somehow rub off onto her more-worldly
cousin.<br />
<br />
A high-pitched voice rang out above the din of the other bus passengers:<br />
<br />
“Whose idea was it to throw Joseph into the well?”<br />
<br />
“Was it Judah?”<br />
<br />
The tentative reply was met with squeals of laughter.<br />
<br />
“Wrong! You lose a point.”<br />
<br />
My mother turned. “The seats behind us were occupied by four Yemenite
girls, 15-17 years old, probably recent arrivals to the country,” she
subsequently noted in her diary. “Full of joy of life, laughing and
continuously talking in squeaky voices, cracking small black seeds and
throwing shells on the floor of the bus. They were conducting a biblical
quiz concerning the story of Joseph and his brothers in a childish
manner, heavily taxing their minds and enjoying it tremendously.”<br />
<br />
She was recalling the rescue mission, Operation Magic Carpet, which
had airlifted most of Yemen’s 50,000 Jews to young Israel between June
1949 and September 1950 in what had been the first wave of Jewish
immigration from the Muslim world.<br />
<br />
The exuberance so evidently displayed by the girls would have
contrasted sharply with the largely discontented demeanor of most of the
other passengers. She glanced out the window and found the land “flat
and uninteresting,” the monotony of the green fields “relieved here and
there by red and yellow spring flowers.”<br />
<br />
Ashkelon itself had been a disappointment – “An old Arab town with
one main street containing the shops,” she would write, “now occupied
mainly by migrants.”<br />
<br />
That “old Arab town” was al-Majdal Asqalan, established under Ottoman rule in the 16<sup>th</sup>
century. A commercial and administrative center, it had been part of
the area occupied by the Egyptian army during the War of Independence,
when its Arab population, about 11,000 strong, had largely fled,
ostensibly temporarily, to nearby Gaza, before the town itself had been
captured by Israeli forces in early November 1948. Less than two years
later, the remaining Arab population, which had been confined to a
fenced-off “ghetto,” had been transferred mostly to Gaza.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, demobilized soldiers and new immigrants, including
survivors from the displaced persons camps in Europe and Jewish refugees
from Yemen, Iran and Iraq, had been moving into what was Israel’s first
development town. After several name changes, it had officially become
Ashkelon in 1956 – only the year before my mother’s visit with her
cousin. They had not lingered long, boarding another bus for the
ten-minute ride west to the recently incorporated seaside township of
Afridar.<br />
<br />
Touted as a South African-style garden city, Miriam had long wanted
to visit Afridar, which was being built on a large tract of land granted
to the South African Zionist Federation by Labor Minister Golda Meir.
Even its name sounded exotic, an amalgam of “Africa” and the Hebrew word<span style="text-decoration: line-through;">,</span>
“darom,” meaning “south.” But as her description reveals, my mother had
found the town center frankly uninspiring: on the right was a cinema,
while on the left stood “a museum, library, health center, city
municipality, all in one building. Likewise there is a row of about ten
shops, comprising the entire shopping center, also a café. There is a
tall tower with a clock at its top, and there, at the bottom, is the
information bureau.”<br />
<br />
The buildings, she conceded, were quite attractive, constructed of
“colored bricks, with a somewhat oriental touch,” and “surrounded by
lawns and flowers,” although multiple official notices forbidding
visitors from walking on the grass spoiled the overall effect.<br />
<br />
Looking for a place to have lunch, I picture the two women entering the information bureau.<br />
“Welcome to Afridar,” the official behind the counter – clearly a new
South African immigrant – would have intoned in stilted Hebrew. “This
is the first modern neighborhood of Ashkelon, and the first, and up to
now, only Anglo-Saxon settlement in Israel!”<br />
<br />
“It’s impossible to utter any genuine impressions or opinions in
front of the local people,” my mother would later record in her diary.
“They will bite your head off as they can’t take any criticism. Still,
the overall impression is a poor one, which might change with the
enlargement of the place.”<br />
<br />
She described the sea from a distance as appearing “beautiful, very
blue and calm.” Small single- and two-family homes with red tiled roofs,
arched front balconies, and spacious private gardens dotted the broad
dirt road, an occasional old, rickety bus ambling past. Upon closer
inspection, however, she expressed her disappointment as “the shore was
poorly looked after, the sand none too clean and quite uninviting,” the
only saving grace being the “most beautiful purple, yellow and orange
wildflowers” growing in abundance.<br />
<br />
At that time, the coastal dunes were quite deserted, save for two
buildings, one a hotel and the other a café, which stood closer to the
edge of the sandstone cliff running along the beach. The hotel was none
other than the Dagon Inn, which had been established in 1954 by the
Government-owned Afridar Development Corporation. Sharing the name of
the Philistine god Dagon, whose temple Samson knocked down in biblical
times, the Inn was one of the South’s first hotels, its then 16 vacation
cabins even attracting the Prime Minister himself, David Ben-Gurion.<br />
<br />
Its sole neighbor, Café Maurice, had proved to be the perfect place
to have lunch, which was ” beautifully prepared and exquisitely served,”
my mother wrote, although “the bill was tremendous – 12 <em>lirot</em> for both of us, which was very high for Israel, but perhaps worth it.”<br />
<br />
“The place belongs to my parents,” the waiter had told the women in
response to their compliments. “They’ve been in Israel for ten years –
lucky for me as I was kicked out of Egypt last month.”<br />
<br />
“What were you doing there? Your English is excellent,” my mother noted.<br />
<br />
“Thank you, I speak five other languages as well. I studied hotel
management in Switzerland and then owned some big hotels in Egypt. It
was a great lifestyle – working six months a year and travelling around
the world for the other six. But it’s all over now – I left with 20
pounds to my name. I’m leaving for Brazil soon. Prospects look good
there. Israel’s a lovely place for idealists, but it’s got nothing much
to offer me. Even if you have great talents to share, the country can’t
cope yet.”<br />
<br />
The waiter was part of the “second exodus from Egypt” after World War
II, an expulsion that lasted for around 20 years, reaching its peak in
the wake of the 1956 Sinai Campaign. Of Egypt’s once 80,000-strong,
multicultural Jewish community, 34,000 would immigrate to Israel, the
rest leaving for France, Brazil, North America, the United Kingdom and
Australia. Forced to leave their property behind, many of these largely
middle-class refugees were deported with little more than the clothes on
their backs, their travel documents stamped “One way – no right to
return.”<br />
<br />
On the trip back to Tel Aviv, a frail, elderly lady had squeezed onto
the bus, complaining of a sick heart, but no one was prepared to give
up their seat. Huddled in the aisle, my mother and Miriam must have
watched in disbelief as the mother of a little boy, nonchalantly sitting
next to her, vociferously stood her ground, to the loud protestations
of those around her.<br />
<br />
“I paid for his ticket! He doesn’t have to get up for anyone!”<br />
<br />
In a vain attempt to block out what my mother described as the
ensuing “lively discussion,” peppered with frequent swearing, the
cousins strove to share their impressions of the day.<br />
<br />
“Miriam was most enthusiastic with all she saw,” my mother wrote.
“Perhaps patriotism makes one so. As for me, I couldn’t work up a spark
of enthusiasm or particular pleasure. Pity, I seem to be missing
something vital.”<br />
<br />
<em>For other stories based on my mother’s diary see:</em> <a href="http://jewishliteraryjournal.com/creative-non-fiction/blood-in-the-market/">http://jewishliteraryjournal.com/creative-non-fiction/blood-in-the-market/</a> <em>and</em> <a href="http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/sordid-beauty.html" target="_blank">http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/sordid-beauty.html</a><br />
<em>Shira Sebban is a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia. A former journalist with the</em> Australian Jewish News, <em>she
previously worked in publishing and taught French to university
students. She now serves as vice-president of Emanuel School, a
pluralistic and egalitarian Jewish Day School. Her work has appeared in
online and print publications including</em> <em>the</em> Jewish
Literary Journal, Jewish Daily Forward, Australian Jewish News, Times of
Israel, Eureka Street, Alzheimer’s Reading Room <em>and</em> Online Opinion, <em>as well as </em>The Jewish Writing Project. <em>You can read more of her work at</em> <a href="http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/">shirasebban.blogspot.com.au</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-65026236946945966732015-08-20T19:40:00.000-07:002015-08-20T19:40:24.004-07:00"Sordid Beauty"<span style="background-color: white; color: #373e4d; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">After we lost our mother, my sister and I discovered her diary in a desk drawer. Her diary entries read like a film script, inspiring me to bring them back to life as stories. Today the Australian Jewish News has published one of them, "Sordid Beauty". You can also read another story from the diary here http://jewishliteraryjournal.com/creative-non-fiction/blood-in-the-market/</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Garishly painted faces leered at Naomi as
she scurried nervously down Jaffa’s dark, unpaved lanes. She shuddered as
strange, shadowy figures darted urgently past the workshops, factories, stores
and cafes, where the smoke of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nargilehs</i>
mingled with a heady aroma of spice and perfume. Police seemed to be on guard
everywhere. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Passing a police car, she noticed some
prostitutes sitting in the back, mostly young girls in skimpy clothes. “They
were waiting to be taken to the station and charged,” she would later note in
her diary. She had known of course that prostitutes, both Jewish and Arabic,
had long been plying their trade in brothels on the roads between Tel Aviv and
Jaffa, but this was the first time she had been so close to the action and her
discomfort was evident.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">“Let’s go!” she urged her companions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Reluctantly, Aliza nudged Motke, raised her
eyebrows and shrugged wryly. “You’re not much of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sabra</i> anymore, are you?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The evening had not been meant to end this
way. Aliza, fun loving and capricious as ever, had been keen to hear Aris San,
a 17-year-old, short Greek singer, who had recently arrived from Athens and was
already making quite a name for himself. Motke had been only too happy to
oblige, driving the women to the well-known Arianna nightclub.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The sharp metallic sounds of the bouzouki
wafted through the thick, sweltering May night air as they approached the
Salonican Jewish-owned Arianna, the bastion of Greek popular music in
Israel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Constructed on the ruins of an
Arab building, it was not far from Jaffa’s old central bathhouse, which had
been converted into another nightclub known as the Hamam.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">“The Arianna looks very ordinary from the
outside,” Naomi would subsequently record, “but is situated in beautiful
surroundings by the sea and close to mosques, towers and ruins of a house –
charming indeed”. A few years later, by the 1960s, the Arianna would have
become a favorite haunt for army officers and members of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mapai</i> Government, the forerunner of
Israel’s Labor Party. The crowds, which would line up around the Jaffa Clock Tower
to get in, included such luminaries as Major General Moshe Dayan and his wife
Ruth, who would go there to dance on a Friday or Saturday night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">For Naomi, however, the spell was broken.
The chaotic commotion of Jaffa was too much for her. Perhaps Aliza was right … she
had become too Australian. At any rate, she preferred Jaffa by day. Hadn’t she
and her cousin Miriam battled through the bustling maze of winding alleys just
over a month ago to visit the home of the late War of Independence hero Yitzhak
Sadeh? She recalled stopping at the end of the street now known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Zichron Kedoshim</i> to see the house that
had belonged to the first commander of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Palmach</i>,
the elite strike force of the pre-state underground Jewish army, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Haganah.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Perched near cliffs, with panoramic views,
it had been easy to picture the charismatic Major General-turned writer,
nicknamed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">HaZaken</i> (The Old Man) while
still only in his fifties, hosting his disciples and fellow warriors, Yigal Allon
and Yitzhak Rabin, in the enormous, blossoming garden, with stairs leading down
to the sea. Naomi could even visualize the goat that Sadeh had kept tethered to
a tree in defiance of then new Israeli laws.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">His room was just as he had left it in 1952
– a modest bed and wooden desk, books and photographs, many of him in action
against the Egyptians, a collection of military maps and guns, swords and
daggers amassed during his military exploits – all as you would expect of one
of the founders of the Israel Defense Forces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">That had been a wonderful afternoon, Naomi
thought, remembering how they had earlier visited Tamar, lingering over tea and
luxuriating in the stunning surrounds.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Tamar had been most hospitable, and the
large garden around her Arab limestone villa overlooking the azure sea far
below was exquisite, the hilly lawn carpeted with the purple and yellow
wildflowers so typical of the Mediterranean coast. Shaded by pine trees and
cooled by sea breezes, the stone slabs and fountains taken from the recent
excavations in Ashkelon had glistened in the sunny Friday stillness. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">“A most ideal place to live,” Naomi would
later pronounce. Indeed, situated south of Old Jaffa, Ajami – the neighborhood
where Tamar resided – had been founded as a small, wealthy, upper middle class
residential settlement by Maronite Christians in the late 19<sup>th</sup>
century under Ottoman rule.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Since the establishment of the Israeli
State, however, the roughly 4000 Arabs who had remained in and around Jaffa
were now concentrated in Ajami, where many buildings had been demolished.
Meanwhile, Tamar’s family had been among the thousands who had settled in homes
vacated by the 70,000 or so Arabs who had fled or been displaced.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Ultimately, Ajami would rapidly deteriorate
to become a cramped and dilapidated home to the destitute, both Jewish and
Arabic … facts that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sabra</i>-turned-outsider
Naomi seemed blissfully unaware of during her visit on that day in 1957. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*******<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My
sister and I never expected to find Naomi’s diary. It was only when we sorted
through our late mother’s possessions after her death in July 2013 following a
battle with Alzheimer’s disease, that we came across the non-descript,
navy-bound volume, seemingly long forgotten in a desk drawer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
diary reads like a film script, relating the experiences of a young woman I did
not recognise in the Israel of the mid-1950s. After almost a decade’s absence,
she had returned to her birthplace from Melbourne, only to discover that she
had become somewhat of a stranger in her own land. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Now,
nearly 60 years later, I have decided to bring the yellowed pages filled with
my mother’s distinctive script to life once more, recreating stories from her
diary, which has become one of my most cherished possessions. For it provides
the key to unlocking a part of her past with which I was unfamiliar, a past
that I thought had been lost forever. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-US">A former AJN journalist, Shira
Sebban is a Sydney-based writer and editor. She also serves as vice-president
of Emanuel School. Her work has appeared in online publications including the
Jewish Literary Journal, Jewish Daily Forward, Eureka Street, Times of Israel,
The Jewish Writing Project, Alzheimer’s Reading Room and Online Opinion. You
can read more of her work at shirasebban.blogspot.com.au</span></i></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #373e4d; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-24370332584039748622015-05-06T05:57:00.000-07:002015-05-06T05:57:43.505-07:00My article on the Jewish View of Happiness has just been published in Tell Magazine
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<span style="color: rgb(49.400000%, 4.800000%, 43.000000%); font-family: 'Arial'; font-size: 14.000000pt; font-weight: 800;">FINDING HAPPINESS
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">I recently surprised myself
by turning down a rare
opportunity to attain what
I had long considered to
be my dream job. Having
compromised my career for
motherhood for many years,
I had often compared myself
to those I consider high
achievers, judging myself as
coming up short.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">Yet here I was saying no. For
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">weeks I had toyed with the
proposal, feeling flattered. At last, I felt needed by someone
other than family and community. I could contribute to
society at large. After all, my children were older now and
surely able to cope. Doubts lingered, however. The job would
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">be all consuming. Was this really what I wanted?
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">Then the realisation hit me. I rather liked my life. True, I had
to juggle work and family and never got the balance quite
right. But I suddenly saw how much I cherish the time I have
to write and the precious hours I spend with my children,
who are growing up so fast, not to mention the importance
I place on my voluntary work. I was not prepared to sacrifice
any of them for another job, which I now recognised was no
longer even my dream vocation.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">That realisation has been a major step in my finding happiness.
Not necessarily the emotional state of happiness, which Hugh
Mackay in his 2013 book, </span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt; font-style: italic;">The Good Life</span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">, dismisses as “the
most elusive and unpredictable of emotions”, but rather
happiness in its original sense, meaning to flourish.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">While Mackay doesn’t like using the word “happiness”, lest it
be confused with its modern, more selfish meaning of how
you may feel at a particular moment, I don’t see any problem
in striving to discover ‘the happy life’, becoming fully and
meaningfully engaged in whatever is on offer.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">Like many of us, I have often thought that what really matters
is what makes us happy. We’re all going to die some day and
few will long be remembered. So why not make the most
of life? Indeed, didn’t the Americans think so highly of the
pursuit of happiness that they enshrined it as an inalienable
right in the Declaration of Independence?
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">Rather than seeking external factors such as pleasure, wealth,
or honour, Mackay, however, argues that we should aim to
live ‘the good life’, by which he means being motivated largely
by compassion, treating others according to the Golden Rule
of how we would like to be treated ourselves.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">‘We ought to pursue goodness for its own sake...No one can
promise you that a life lived for others will bring you a deep
sense of satisfaction, but it’s certain that nothing else will.’
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">In contrast, observant Jews seem able to find an opportunity
for growth and meaning in every good deed they do and each
bit of wisdom they acquire, apparently experiencing true
happiness along the way. No wonder the 2011 Gallop survey
found that religious Jews are amongst the happiest in the US!
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">Those ultra-Orthodox Jews who identify as Chassidim go further
still, promoting spirituality and joy through Jewish mysticism. As
Rabbi Shloma Majeski explains: “Their radiant life and energy
stems from their profound spiritual awareness and absolute
clarity of direction. These are people who live for a purpose and
derive vitality from it” (</span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt; font-style: italic;">The Chassidic Approach to Joy</span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">).
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">In other words, doing good can make you happy and when
you’re happy, you do more good. So happiness is actually a
moral obligation.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">Indeed, Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, who calls himself a ‘student of
joy’, has an answer for the mother of young children, who
is unable to pursue her career as planned. In his book, aptly
titled Gateway to Happiness, he maintains that caring for
family is an ‘act of kindness’ of the highest order since it
usually goes unappreciated. By making the effort to remind
herself how meaningful her God-commanded work really
is, the mother will overcome her frustration and find true
happiness. Oh to have that level of faith!
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">But what about the doubters or non-believers among us? Don’t
we deserve the prospect of finding peace of mind and happiness
too? Bertrand Russell thought so, maintaining ‘the happy life is
to an extraordinary extent the same as the good life’.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">As a child, my family urged me to find an interest in life to
sustain me. Indeed, my grandfather lived as if on an insatiable
intellectual quest, telling me, ‘life is full of exciting curiosities,
joy and deep feeling for the world’s mysteries’. My family’s
view of life involved plenty of struggle towards a noble
cause – a view Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has identified as a form
of happiness in Judaism: ‘the happiness that comes from
challenge...there is fulfilment...passion...and moments of
exhilaration’.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">Today my children are taught a broader idea of happiness.
Influenced by positive psychology, their teachers get them to
identify their ‘signature strengths’, which they are to use to
lead engaged and meaningful lives. This reflects the ancient
wisdom: ‘Raise a child according to their way’ (</span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt; font-style: italic;">Proverbs </span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">22:6).
In other words, you need to concentrate on what works for
you. As 20th century philosopher Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler
said, ‘Every man was created with a unique personality,
strengths and challenges...and therefore everyone has a
unique slice of heaven that is completely their own’.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">My children are also taught gratitude. As the Talmud says,
“Who is rich? The one who appreciates what he has” (</span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt; font-style: italic;">Ethics
of the Fathers </span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">4:1).
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">Developing positive relationships is another area of focus.
After all, we are social creatures who need connection
through family, friendship and community. Surely such
‘social happiness’ is crucial to a society’s survival. In fact,
the principle to “love your neighbour as you love yourself”
(</span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt; font-style: italic;">Leviticus </span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">19:18) has been called the most important in all of
Judaism and the earliest form of the Golden Rule.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">I certainly intend to continue focusing on relationships,
finding meaning and purpose through work and community,
and hopefully savouring many emotionally happy moments
along the way.
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700;">Shira Sebban </span><span style="font-family: 'Calibri'; font-size: 10.000000pt; font-style: italic;">is a writer and editor, a congregant of Emanuel
Synagogue, and vice-president of the Board of Emanuel School.
</span><br />
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<span style="color: rgb(49.400000%, 4.800000%, 43.000000%); font-family: 'ArialMT'; font-size: 10.000000pt;">www.emanuel.org.au </span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-48769148520927853602015-02-15T03:12:00.003-08:002015-02-15T03:12:58.782-08:00My take on the Jewish view of happiness has now been published<h2 class="title" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(226, 226, 226); border-bottom-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(226, 226, 226); border-top-style: solid; border-width: 3px 0px 1px; font-family: Arial; font-size: 25px; letter-spacing: -0.05em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 5px 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Finding Happiness</h2>
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<span class="left" style="border: 0px; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">February 13, 2015 – 4:52 am</span><span class="right" style="border: 0px; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://galusaustralis.com/2015/02/8517/finding-happiness-2/#respond" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">No Comment</a></span></div>
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<img alt="happiness image" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-8502" height="225" src="http://galusaustralis.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/happiness-image-300x225.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); display: inline; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 7px 2px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 4px; vertical-align: middle;" width="300" /></div>
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By <a class="local-link" href="http://galusaustralis.com/2015/02/8517/finding-happiness-2/galusaustralis.com/category/author/shira-sebban/" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shira Sebban</a>:</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I recently surprised myself by turning down a rare opportunity to attain what I had long considered to be my dream job. Having compromised my career for motherhood for many years, I had often compared myself to those I consider high achievers, judging myself as coming up short.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Yet here I was saying no. For weeks I had toyed with the proposal, feeling flattered. At last, I felt needed by someone other than family and community. I could contribute to society at large. After all, my children were older now and surely able to cope. Doubts lingered, however. The job would be all consuming. Was this really what I wanted?</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Then the realisation hit me. I rather liked my life. True, I had to juggle work and family and never got the balance quite right. But I suddenly saw how much I cherish the time I have to write and the precious hours I spend with my children, who are growing up so fast, not to mention the importance I place on my voluntary work. I was not prepared to sacrifice any of them for another job, which I now recognised was no longer even my dream vocation.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
That realisation has been a major step in my finding happiness. Not necessarily the emotional state of happiness, which Hugh Mackay in his 2013 book, <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Good Life</i>, dismisses as “the most elusive and unpredictable of emotions,” but rather happiness in its original sense, meaning to flourish.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
While Mackay doesn’t like using the word “happiness,” lest it be confused with its modern, more selfish meaning of how you may feel at a particular moment, I don’t see any problem in striving to discover “the happy life,” becoming fully and meaningfully engaged in whatever is on offer.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Like many of us, I have often thought that what really matters is what makes us happy. We’re all going to die some day and few will long be remembered. So why not make the most of life? Indeed, didn’t the Americans think so highly of the pursuit of happiness that they enshrined it as an inalienable right in the Declaration of Independence?</div>
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Rather than seeking external factors such as pleasure, wealth, or honour, Mackay argues that we should aim to live “the good life,” by which he means being motivated largely by compassion, treating others according to the Golden Rule of how we would like to be treated ourselves.</div>
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“We ought to pursue goodness for its own sake… No one can promise you that a life lived for others will bring you a deep sense of satisfaction, but it’s certain that nothing else will.”</div>
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In contrast, observant Jews seem able to find an opportunity for growth and meaning in every good deed they do and each bit of wisdom they acquire, apparently experiencing true happiness along the way. No wonder the 2011 Gallop survey found that religious Jews are amongst the happiest in the US!</div>
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Those ultra-Orthodox Jews who identify as <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Chassidim</i> go further still, promoting spirituality and joy through Jewish mysticism. As Rabbi Shloma Majeski explains: “Their radiant life and energy stems from their profound spiritual awareness and absolute clarity of direction. These are people who live for a purpose and derive vitality from it” (<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The Chassidic Approach to Joy</i>).</div>
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In other words, doing good can make you happy and when you’re happy, you do more good. So happiness is actually a moral obligation.</div>
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Indeed, Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, who calls himself a “student of joy,” has an answer for the mother of young children, who is unable to pursue her career as planned. In his book, aptly titled <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Gateway to Happiness</i>, he maintains that caring for family is an “act of kindness” of the highest order since it usually goes unappreciated. By making the effort to remind herself how meaningful her God-commanded work really is, the mother will overcome her frustration and find true happiness. Oh to have that level of faith!</div>
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But what about the doubters or non-believers among us? Don’t we deserve the prospect of finding peace of mind and happiness too? Bertrand Russell thought so, maintaining “the happy life is to an extraordinary extent the same as the good life.”</div>
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As a child, my family urged me to find an interest in life to sustain me. Indeed, my grandfather lived as if on an insatiable intellectual quest, telling me, “life is full of exciting curiosities, joy and deep feeling for the world’s mysteries.” My family’s view of life involved plenty of struggle towards a noble cause – a view Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has identified as a form of happiness in Judaism: “the happiness that comes from challenge … there is fulfillment … passion … and moments of exhilaration.”</div>
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Today my children are taught a broader idea of happiness. Influenced by positive psychology, their teachers get them to identify their “signature strengths,” which they are to use to lead engaged and meaningful lives. This reflects the ancient wisdom: “Raise a child according to their way” (<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Proverbs</i> 22:6). In other words, you need to concentrate on what works for you. As 20<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> century philosopher Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler said, “Every man was created with a unique personality, strengths and challenges… and therefore everyone has a unique slice of heaven that is completely their own.”</div>
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My children are also taught gratitude. As the <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Talmud</i> says, “Who is rich? The one who appreciates what he has” (<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Ethics of the Fathers</i> 4:1).</div>
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Developing positive relationships is another area of focus. After all, we are social creatures who need connection through family, friendship and community. Surely such “social happiness”is crucial to a society’s survival. In fact, the principle to “love your neighbour as you love yourself” (<i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Leviticus</i> 19:18) has been called the most important in all of Judaism and the earliest form of the Golden Rule.</div>
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I certainly intend to continue focusing on relationships, finding meaning and purpose through work and community, and hopefully savouring many emotionally happy moments along the way.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-775068259326032922014-12-01T16:44:00.000-08:002014-12-01T16:44:31.728-08:00My latest article on my grandfather, who led an amazing life and was the patriarch of our family <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisC_CLGEy3IiIoxPzJyxVUTwlEs3qcpgYM-gAY2bdfO6rM3TajZn1rw9G1kFtncG_CCJtIjHT8zhlKC3nuD25p-zFJI25qhGPu3JUsv8F0N_vurlYaYn9_elSmUjuOKy8BHSn_A7p4VuaT/s1600/Portrait+of+Saba.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></div>
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Painting of my grandfather, Berl Dov Gross, by Polish-French artist Jacob Markiel (1911-2008)</div>
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<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />DECEMBER 1, 2014 · 7:00 AM</div>
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<a href="https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/2014/12/01/a-passionate-life-portrait-of-my-grandfather/" rel="bookmark" sl-processed="1" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A Passionate Life: Portrait of My Grandfather</a></h1>
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by Shira Sebban (Sydney, Australia)</div>
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“Retain integrity without succumbing to authority.”</div>
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So my beloved Saba advised me on my 18<span style="border: 0px; bottom: 1ex; font-size: 10px; font-style: inherit; height: 0px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> birthday. “Don’t let anyone interfere with your endeavors to develop an independent way of thinking,” he told me. “Think first; afterwards argue or act. Don’t lose your countenance under duress.”</div>
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Saba (Hebrew for grandfather) was my mentor and anchor, who encouraged me to strive for excellence and showed me that I could do anything to which I set my mind. He taught me to be humble, ethical and empathic and encouraged me to stand up for what I believe in and not be afraid to admit I had made a mistake, learn from it and move on.</div>
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After all, that was the way he always behaved. Saba underwent many transformations in his long life, from Jewish scholar to Zionist rebel, laundryman, world traveler, benefactor, thinker, writer and friend to many. He lived throughout as if he was on an insatiable intellectual quest. As he wrote to me, “life is full of exciting curiosities, joy and deep feeling for the world’s mysteries”.</div>
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Saba was the second son born to an Ultra-Orthodox family of textile manufacturers and fur merchants in the central Polish town of Zdunska Wola near Lodz. He was named Berl Dov Gross – one of about 50 Berls in the Gross family! His birth date was given as 16 December 1906, although a question mark always remained over that date, the family joking that he had changed it to make himself slightly younger than his future wife Chana.</div>
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His mother died while giving birth to him, and his father then married her younger sister, who sadly would not prove to be a good stepmother to Saba and his older brother. This second union would produce three more sons and a daughter, all of whom were to perish in the Holocaust. Indeed, Saba’s father would be the last Jew to have a full religious burial in Zdunska Wola.</div>
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Years later, a study of local Jewish cemetery records would reveal that Saba’s mother had actually died in 1905, proving the family’s suspicions to be correct all along.</div>
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He had had good reason to make himself younger than he really was, helping him to escape Polish military service and immigrate to the then British Mandate of Palestine in 1925 – one of only a few members of his extended family to escape the subsequent reign of Nazi terror.</div>
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For many years, Saba would beg his family to flee, but no one would listen. Tragically, when they later turned to him to help them escape, he was no longer in a financial position to do so. It was a heavy legacy, which he bore stoically but did not allow to hamper his zest for life and all it had to offer.</div>
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The family belonged to the <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gerrer Hasidic</em> movement, then probably the largest and most important <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hasidic</em> group in Poland. While <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Hasidism</em> generally promotes spirituality and joy through Jewish mysticism, the <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gerrer Hasidim</em>emphasize religious study and the objective service of God. Forbidden to learn anything but sacred texts as a child, Saba nevertheless managed to sneak secular books under his bedclothes, learn violin, and even find a tutor to teach him mathematics and other worldly subjects.</div>
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Although he rebelled against his religious upbringing, it would stand him in good stead in later life, enabling him to cite Jewish textual sources with ease. He would often recall being taken as a young boy to another town to meet the Rebbe or leader of the <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Gerrer Hasidim</em>, describing a crowded room where he and other boys literally hung from the rafters to see what was happening.</div>
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As an adolescent, Saba became a member of a local Zionist movement and announced his desire to join the pioneers in Palestine. His father would only agree on condition he enter into an arranged marriage. His bride Chana was from the nearby city of Lodz, and the young couple was married in 1924 and left the following year for Tel Aviv. Chana’s parents and sister also decided to follow their lead and move to Palestine, only to make the fateful decision to return to Poland when their money ran out soon afterwards.</div>
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Arriving in Tel Aviv without a trade, Saba learned about textiles and proceeded to combine study, both secular and religious, with work. He and Chana would come to have two children, Naomi (my mother) and Moshe. A generous man, Saba was happy to share the little he had with those less fortunate. His strong individualist moral convictions and sense of justice, however, also placed him on a collision course with the powerful <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Histradrut</em> or Labor Union, finally resulting in him returning his membership card.</div>
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He set up his own laundry business in Jaffa, but it was destroyed by fire during the Arab riots of the late 1930s, which were protesting against Jewish immigration and land transfers. Thus, the family was left without a source of income, but as Saba would later reflect in a letter to a friend, he would come “through the hardest years of 1929-39 unscathed, not having bowed at any time to any person”.</div>
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According to family legend, Saba had no option but to go down to the harbor, where he found one ship departing for South America and another for Australia. It was July 1938, and fortunately, he chose the vessel heading for Melbourne, promising his young family that he would send for them as soon as he could.</div>
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War, however, was to intervene, and it would be several years before he could afford to purchase even one ticket for a family member to join him. Meanwhile, back in Tel Aviv, Chana was forced to resort to housecleaning to feed her children. Having arrived in Melbourne without a word of English, Saba worked hard whenever he was able. When unemployed, he spent his time reading in the public library and listening to records in a local music store. He would then, at times, feel obliged to spend his meager income on classical music records instead of food.</div>
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Eventually, he managed once again to establish his own laundry business, sweating over hot machines and lugging heavy sacks of laundry up and down stairs. A recent letter from the daughter of one of my grandfather’s former employees vividly describes the tough work and conditions: “It was extremely hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. No such thing as heating or cooling and the dust from the washing was thick on all the beams… They were happy times but you had to work for what you got.”</div>
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After the War, Saba was finally able to bring his family out to Australia, starting with his teenage daughter Naomi. By then, he had begun to travel overseas, and over the years, he would visit exotic places before it became fashionable to do so, such as Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the Pacific Islands and even Dutch Guiana (Suriname) by freighter, maintaining a travel schedule that would exhaust someone half his age. He reveled in the adventure of being an independent traveler of modest means, although as he grew older, the advent of mass tourism with its package tours and controls disillusioned him considerably.</div>
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In 1946, he spent the entire year in China, shortly before Mao Zedong came to power, only returning to Australia when his family and friends lied to him that his factory had burned down. While in Shanghai, he assisted European Jewish refugees with their emigration to Australia. In Melbourne too, he would help newcomers from Poland and Israel to become established.</div>
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He and Naomi enjoyed a warm relationship and were well matched intellectually, spending long hours in discussion. Saba was a handsome man, and many, upon seeing her on his arm, found it hard to believe they were father and daughter.</div>
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Eventually, his son Moshe joined Saba in the laundry, and by the late 1950s, had taken over management of the business. Chana by then was living in Melbourne too. Although separated from Saba since 1938, they never officially divorced. He had a home built for her in Tel Aviv and continued to support her in Australia. For the rest of her life, Chana would live with Moshe and his wife Yona, helping to raise their growing family.</div>
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Now free to focus on his intellectual pursuits, Saba moved to London for a while, where he eventually set up house with a Hungarian-Australian artist. The relationship would last for some years during which they traveled widely, but by the late 1960s, it was over, although they remained friends.</div>
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Fascinated by the ancient world, Saba spent about thirty years studying Israelite society and in particular, Abraham and Moses. The result was his book, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Before Democracy</em>, in which he attributed the Israelites’ survival to their tribal way of life based on family and individual responsibility. He controversially argued that their transition to a centralized monarchy was an ill-conceived and retrograde step “but a stone’s throw away from despotism”.</div>
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Reluctant at first to have his life’s work published, Saba preferred, as he wrote to a friend, to “preserve my integrity and end my life as an individual who refrained from partaking in the rat race of publish or perish”. He ended up, however, battling unsuccessfully to have the book published for several years. Finally offered a contract, he withdrew his work before it had seen the light of day, refusing to make the major changes the publisher required.</div>
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In the end, he never found the “daring publisher” he hoped for, and the family ended up self-publishing the book, although sadly, by the time it appeared, he was too ill to appreciate it fully.</div>
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Saba endured several bouts of ill health, which on occasion left him scarred, but not beaten. He was like a cat with nine lives, rebounding from each episode with renewed vigor. Eventually, however, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease – the same illness, which tragically, would later come to afflict Naomi too. “I am losing my ‘I’,” he told his daughter, by which he meant he was losing what made him whom he was as a person.</div>
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My last memory of my brilliant Saba is of him sitting in the middle of his room, endlessly twisting a rubix cube around in his hands. He passed away on 8 July 1994. To this day, I still regret that I did not learn more from him about my Jewish heritage while I had the chance.</div>
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Almost ten years earlier, he had given me a pair of silver candlesticks from Israel as a wedding gift, fondly expressing the hope that I would remember him each time I lit the Sabbath candles.</div>
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Every Friday evening and on numerous other occasions, I remember him as my beloved Saba, my teacher and my friend, from whom I learned to question, to reason and to explore. In my mind’s eye, he remains the invincible hero of my youth, strong and independent, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder and striding away, as he did when we bid each other farewell at the airport for the last time.</div>
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May his memory be a blessing.</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shira Sebban is a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia. A former journalist with the</em> Australian Jewish News, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">she previously worked in publishing and now serves as vice-president of Emanuel School, a pluralistic and egalitarian Jewish Day School. Her work has appeared in online publications including</em> <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">the</em> Jewish Literary Journal, Jewish Daily Forward, Times of Israel, Eureka Street, Alzheimer’s Reading Room <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and</em> Online Opinion, <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">as well as </em>The Jewish Writing Project. <em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can read more of her work at</em> <a href="http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/" sl-processed="1" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">shirasebban.blogspot.com.au</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-88869592846200054952014-11-17T18:43:00.000-08:002014-11-17T18:43:12.056-08:00My article on Finding Happiness has been published by Eureka Street<h1 class="fittext" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 40px; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.15em; margin: 10px 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">
<span id="MainContent_litTitle">Doing good and being happy</span></h1>
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<span class="labelTexts-Brown" style="color: #998675; font-weight: bold;">Shira Sebban</span> | 18 November 2014</div>
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<em><img alt="The Pursuit of Happiness in the Declaration of Independence" height="313" src="http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/uploads/image/14/42274.jpg" style="border: 1px solid black; float: right; height: auto; margin: 2px 6px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" title="The Pursuit of Happiness in the Declaration of Independence" width="470" /></em></div>
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<span class="s1">I recently surprised myself by turning down a rare opportunity to attain what I had long considered my dream job. Having compromised my career for motherhood for many years, I had often compared myself to those I consider high achievers, judging myself as coming up short.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Yet here I was saying no. For weeks I had toyed with the proposal, feeling flattered. At last I felt needed by someone other than family and community. I could contribute to society at large. After all, my children were now older and surely able to cope. Doubts lingered, however. The job would be all consuming. Was this really what I wanted?</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then the realisation hit me. I rather liked my life. True, I had to juggle work and family and never got the balance quite right. But I suddenly saw how much I cherish the time I have to write, and the precious hours I spend with my children, who are growing up so fast, not to mention the importance I place on my voluntary work. I was not prepared to sacrifice any of them for another job, which I now recognised was no longer even my dream vocation.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">That realisation has been a major step in my finding happiness. But not necessarily the emotional state of happiness, which Hugh Mackay in his 2013 book <em>The Good Life</em>, dismisses as ‘the most elusive and unpredictable of emotions’, but rather happiness in its original sense, meaning to flourish. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">While Mackay doesn’t like using the word ‘happiness’, lest it be confused with its modern, more selfish meaning of how you may feel at a particular moment, I don’t see any problem in striving to discover ‘the happy life’, becoming fully and meaningfully engaged in whatever is on offer. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Like many of us, I have often thought that what really matters is what makes us happy. We’re all going to die some day and few will long be remembered. So why not make the most of life? Indeed, didn’t the Americans think so highly of the pursuit of happiness that they enshrined it as an inalienable right in the Declaration of Independence? </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Rather than seeking external factors such as pleasure, wealth, or honour, Mackay, however, argues that we should aim to live ‘the good life’, by which he means being motivated largely by compassion, treating others according to the Golden Rule of how we would like to be treated ourselves. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">‘We ought to pursue goodness for its own sake… No one can promise you that a life lived for others will bring you a deep sense of satisfaction, but it’s certain that nothing else will.’ </span></div>
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<span class="s1">In contrast, people of faith seem able to find an opportunity for growth, spirituality and meaning in every good deed they do and each bit of wisdom they acquire, apparently experiencing true happiness along the way. No wonder the 2011 Gallup survey found that the very religious are amongst the happiest in the US!</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In other words, doing good can make you happy and when you’re happy, you do more good. So happiness is actually a moral obligation. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">As a child, my family urged me to find an interest in life to sustain me. Indeed, my grandfather lived as if on an insatiable intellectual quest, telling me, ‘life is full of exciting curiosities, joy and deep feeling for the world’s mysteries’. My family’s view of life involved plenty of struggle towards a noble cause – a view former Commonwealth Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks has identified as a form of happiness: ‘the happiness that comes from challenge, … a life that has its setbacks … there is fulfilment, passion … and moments of exhilaration’.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Today my children are taught a broader idea of happiness. Influenced by positive psychology, their teachers get them to identify their ‘signature strengths’, which they are to use to lead engaged and meaningful lives. This reflects the ancient wisdom: ‘Raise a child according to their way’ (<em>Proverbs</em> 22:6). In other words, you need to concentrate on what works for you.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My children are also taught gratitude. As the ancients explained, ‘Who is rich? The one who appreciates what he has’ (<em>Ethics of the Fathers</em> 4:1). </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Developing positive relationships is another area of focus. After all, we are social creatures who need connection through family, friendship and community. Surely such ‘social happiness’ is crucial to a society’s survival. I certainly intend to continue focusing on relationships, finding meaning and purpose through work and community, and hopefully savouring many emotionally happy moments along the way. </span></div>
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<em><img alt="Shira Sebban" height="100" src="http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/uploads/image/writers/Shira_Sebban.jpg" style="border: 1px solid black; float: left; height: auto; margin: 1px 4px; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle;" title="Shira Sebban" width="100" /></em></div>
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<span class="s1"><a href="http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/" style="color: #9f0200; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><em>Shira Sebban</em></a></span><span class="s2"><em> is a Sydney writer and editor who is vice-president of the Board of her children’s school.</em></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-53226962607204354132014-10-01T20:10:00.001-07:002014-10-01T20:10:38.695-07:00My first creative non-fiction piece has just been published in the Jewish Literary Journal. It is based on my mother's diary.<div class="wrapper" id="main">
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<article class="post-611 page type-page status-publish hentry" id="post-611" style="-webkit-hyphens: auto; border-bottom-color: rgb(237, 237, 237); border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-width: 4px; margin-bottom: 5.142857143rem; padding-bottom: 1.714285714rem; word-wrap: break-word;"><header class="entry-header" style="margin-bottom: 1.714285714rem;"><h1 class="entry-title" style="clear: both; font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Blood In The Market – Shira Sebban</span></span></h1>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">With a terrible cry, the young man let go of the knife and fell to the ground, blood oozing from his throat.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Naomi froze in horror in the late spring morning sun, jostled by the bustling market around her. A boisterous crowd was starting to mill about the young Arab trader, now stretched prone in the dirt, surrounded by Israeli police.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He had slashed his own throat; that much was clear. But why?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Moments earlier she had passed by an old Arab basket-seller being arrested. Her ears still rang with his yells of protest. Bystanders had explained that he was allowed to sell his products in the main street, but not in the <em>shuk </em>itself.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Normally her Sunday shopping expedition to <em>Shuk HaCarmel</em> (the Carmel Market) was a highlight of her week. She would linger over the colorful, long alley of stalls packed tight with hundreds of vendors on both sides, each vying for attention, hocking their wares by seeing who could shout the loudest. Dazzled by the array of spices, pastries, and other culinary treats, she would stop to purchase the fruits and vegetables her mother had requested, slipping in an extra juicy peach or crisp apple for herself.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Now she noticed two officers wheeling away a cart full of vegetables.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“They’re taking it to the police station!” someone shouted.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Apparently the young trader too did not have a permit to sell in the market.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Her routine shattered, Naomi made her way through the dusty, dry streets of south Tel Aviv to her mother’s home, where she was staying during her visit to her birthplace. She had not finished her shopping but her heart was just not in it anymore.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I cannot say who is right or wrong,” she later wrote in her diary, “but I do feel that something must be very wrong for such a thing to have occurred. You don’t cut your own throat just for the pleasure of it, or as an idle demonstration.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Her thoughts were interrupted by the cries of a watermelon seller. “<em>Avatiach al a sakin</em>!” (“Watermelon on the knife!”), he shouted from his perch atop his horse-drawn wagon, challenging potential customers to test the ripeness of the fruit. At least she would bring home something fresh for lunch, she thought, as he sliced off a red glistening portion for her.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Tensions had been rife between the local populations of downtown Tel Aviv and Jaffa long before that memorable Sunday in May 1957. Indeed, <em>Shuk HaCarmel </em>owed much of its growth to the Arab riots particularly of the late 1930s, which were held in protest against Jewish immigration and land transfers. As a result, Tel Aviv’s Jewish population had tried to end its commercial dependence on Jaffa. The violence had continued in the years before the establishment of the State of Israel, Arab snipers shooting at Jewish shoppers from the nearby <em>Hassan Bek</em>Mosque, the well-known Ottoman-style building, which still adorns the road to Jaffa by the Mediterranean Sea.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Naomi’s family, like many others, had been personally affected by the riots. Her father Berl’s laundry in Jaffa was burned to the ground, leaving him struggling to support a wife and two young children without a source of income.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">According to family legend, he had no option but to go down to the harbor, where he had found one ship departing for South America and another for Australia. It was July 1938, the eve of World War II, and fortunately, he had chosen the vessel heading for Melbourne, promising his young family that he would send for them as soon as he could.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">War, however, was to intervene, and it would be several years before he could afford to purchase even one ticket for a family member to join him. Meanwhile, back in Tel Aviv, his wife Chana was forced to resort to housecleaning to feed her children.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It was late 1946 before Naomi, by then a teenager, had finally been chosen to make the weeks-long journey to Australia by herself. Now, some ten years later, she was back, living with her mother – the only member of her immediate family still in Israel – in the sunny, whitewashed house her father had built in the south Tel Aviv suburb of <em>Shechunat Brenner</em>. She traveling each week to Jerusalem, where she had won a research scholarship to the Hebrew University.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Having changed considerably during her decade-long absence, the shy and reserved teenager blossomed into an attractive and bright 20-something woman, fluent in English, armed with a Commerce degree, and schooled in Australian social mores and customs. Nevertheless, she had never been able to recover completely from the fears and instability of her childhood, recalling as if it were yesterday, the sirens in the middle of the night, at the first sound of which she and her family would rush to their cousins’ apartment in downtown Tel Aviv, further away from the center of the action.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Now, as she unlatched the low front gate and entered her mother’s simple but neat front yard, the grass freshly mowed and the lemon tree bursting with fruit, her mind wandered back to an incident that had occurred just over a year earlier, in April 1956, which she had also recorded in her diary: “Some people spread panic, saying five Arab terrorists were caught in the market next to us. I was really scared, as that would have meant we were all in real danger. Radio programs didn’t mention anything – probably somebody’s imagination. Still, to be on the safe side, we closed all windows and shutters, bolted doors and stayed inside – horrible feeling.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That had been a particularly anxious time, when the newspapers were full of alarming reports about shootings and attacks. On one day alone – 7 April 1956 – an Israeli woman was killed when attackers threw hand grenades into her house in Ashkelon in southern Israel; two kibbutz members died when their car was fired upon; and there were other attacks on homes and cars in which one person was killed and three others wounded.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Disheartened, Naomi had written in her diary: “Had some very disturbing news concerning the killing of citizens by Fedayeen-Arab groups. It is a horrible feeling being stabbed in the back when one is least aware.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Four days later gunmen opened fire on a synagogue filled with children in the farming community of Shafir in southern Israel, killing three children and a youth worker and wounding five, including three seriously.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">By “Fedayeen” – a term that has since fallen out of use – Naomi meant Arab terrorists, who infiltrated Israel to strike targets in the years after the establishment of the new State. At their peak, four years earlier in 1952, there had been about 3000 such border incursions, ranging from property destruction to murder.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Hastily, Naomi tried to dismiss the memories, striving to quell the familiar anxiety stirring in the pit of her stomach. She would not tell her mother about this morning’s events in the market. It would only frighten her and life was hard enough… How she wished her Australian papers would come through so her mother could finally leave Tel Aviv and join the rest of the family!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Meanwhile, she brightened, they would go to the movies. A new comedy was showing at the Mograbi Cinema. And perhaps tonight, she would accept Yaacov’s invitation and join him for the munitions exhibition? Even though she was not really interested in ammunition…</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">My sister and I never expected to find Naomi’s diary. Indeed, for many years, we did not even know of its existence. A non-descript, navy-bound volume, it had been stashed away in a drawer of the massive wooden study desk at which our late mother had worked for so many years. Perhaps she had simply forgotten writing it? Or perhaps she had chosen not to share her youthful passions and agonies, hopes and fears with her daughters… We will never know.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I had long abandoned any hope of uncovering more details of my mother’s past, her memories having been gradually extinguished by Alzheimer’s disease, which had afflicted her for the last decade of her life. Now, nearly 60 years later as I turn the diary’s yellowed pages filled with her distinctive script, I feel grateful for the opportunity to discover her anew, albeit in a younger form, becoming acquainted with the person she once was before I was born.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">At the same time, and especially in the wake of the most recent deterioration in relations between Israel and Gaza, it is sobering to read a personal account of the early trials and tribulations, anguish and vulnerability of the new State of Israel.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The ravages of disease had prevented my mother from recounting her memories long before her death last year. Her diary provides a portrait of her, as I never knew her: a young woman dealing with fears and insecurities so foreign to me. It provides the key to unlocking a part of her past with which I was unfamiliar, a past that I thought had been lost forever.</span></div>
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<em style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Shira Sebban is a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia. A former journalist with the “Australian Jewish News,” she also serves as vice-president of Emanuel School, a pluralistic and egalitarian Jewish Day School. Her work has appeared in online publications including “Jewish Daily Forward,” “Times of Israel,” “Jewish Writing Project,” “Eureka Street,” “Alzheimer’s Reading Room” and “Online Opinion.” You can read more of her work at <a href="http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/" style="outline: none;" target="_blank">shirasebban.blogspot.com.au</a></em></div>
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<footer id="colophon" role="contentinfo" style="border-top-color: rgb(237, 237, 237); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; clear: both; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 1.714285714rem; max-width: 68.571428571rem; padding: 1.714285714rem 0px;"></footer>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-5382262510057508572014-07-20T22:06:00.001-07:002014-07-20T22:06:34.559-07:00My article on finding my mother's diary now published by Wonder Women with photos<header style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #696868; float: left; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 723px;"><h1 class="title single-title" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(241, 241, 241); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; color: #555555; font-family: 'Antic Didone', sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 28px; margin: 0px 0px 8px; min-height: 40px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 723px;">
Unlocking the Past</h1>
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Shira discovers her late mother’s diary from the 1950s.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="more-2039" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><a href="http://wonderwomenglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Shira-Sebban.jpeg" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; border: 0px; color: #722f8f; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Shira Sebban" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-895" height="150" src="http://wonderwomenglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Shira-Sebban-128x150.jpeg" style="border: 0px; display: block; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0.3em 1.571em 0.5em 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="128" /></a>Shira Sebban</strong></div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
We did not expect to find the diary. A non-descript, navy-bound volume, it had been stashed away in a drawer of the massive wooden study desk at which our late mother had worked for so many years. Perhaps she had simply forgotten writing it? Or perhaps she had chosen not to share her youthful passions and agonies with her daughters … We will never know.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="http://wonderwomenglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Naomi-in-May-1952-on-an-excursion-to-Wattlesea-Farm.jpeg" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; border: 0px; color: #722f8f; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Naomi in May 1952 on an excursion to Wattlesea Farm" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2042" height="300" src="http://wonderwomenglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Naomi-in-May-1952-on-an-excursion-to-Wattlesea-Farm-228x300.jpeg" style="border: 0px; display: block; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em 1.571em; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="228" /></a>I had long abandoned any hope of uncovering more details of my mother’s past, her memories having been gradually extinguished by Alzheimer’s disease, which had afflicted her for the last decade of her life. Now, as I turned the diary’s yellowed pages filled with her distinctive script, I felt grateful for the opportunity to discover her anew, albeit in a younger form, becoming acquainted with the person she once was before I was born.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Written in English in the mid-1950s, when a postgraduate traveling scholarship had taken her back from Melbourne, Australia, to her birthplace of Israel for two years, the diary provides a glimpse of what life was like then for a single, 20-something woman. Attractive and bright, she was courted by a host of mostly unsuitable admirers, although occasionally, one would become the focus of her hopes and dreams. After all, as she notes, her mother had advised her to “secure a future” for herself, urging her to work hard to accomplish her purpose: in other words, “get married”.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="http://wonderwomenglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/IMG_2055.jpeg" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; border: 0px; color: #722f8f; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="IMG_2055" class="size-medium wp-image-2041 alignleft" height="300" src="http://wonderwomenglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/IMG_2055-224x300.jpeg" style="border: 0px; display: block; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0.3em 1.571em 0.5em 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="224" /></a>Part-travelogue and part-social commentary, the diary reads like a film script, the vividly portrayed characters flitting in and out of various settings. One moment my mother is at a party or concert, describing the dating scene: “Noticed some very good looking men in the audience. Wonder where they usually hide.” The next, she is on a crowded bus, discussing the four young Yemenite girls seated behind her: “probably recent arrivals to the country. Full of joy of life, laughing and continuously talking in high pitched voices, cracking small black seeds and throwing shells on the floor of the bus.”</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
A picture builds of what life was like in what was then the recently established State of Israel. Many of those she meets are keen to move elsewhere, believing there is more opportunity overseas. A certain unease lurks behind the pages too, and on one occasion, she even has to identify a suspect at the police station after an elderly woman is raped across the street from her home. More often, however, she is scared to walk alone in isolated areas, having heard about “some unpleasant and unfortunate encounters with Arab infiltrators”.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The term, “infiltrator”, with its connotations of menace, danger and evil, has recently been revived to refer to African asylum seekers to Israel. Its origins date back to the early 1950s, when there were several attacks on Israeli settlements, resulting in around 100 casualties and culminating in the “Prevention of Infiltration Law” of 1954, which defined those citizens of surrounding Arab states, as well as Palestinians, who entered Israel illegally, as “infiltrators”, punishable by law, especially if they were armed or had committed crimes against people or property.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Emotions certainly ran high within Israel itself too. On a morning walk through the Carmel market near the family home in south Tel Aviv, my mother describes police arresting an “old Arab who was selling baskets … He was yelling his protests. Bystanders said he was allowed to sell his products in the main street, but not in the market.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
“Further on I heard terrible cries, saw a young fellow who had slashed his own throat in protest at having had his cart full of vegetables taken to the police station. Apparently, he too had no permit to trade in the market.”</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I had long known that after leaving Israel, my mother had undertaken an epic sea voyage to Italy, also visiting Paris and working in London before deciding to make her way to Montreal, where she would ultimately meet her future husband and my father. Until now, however, I had thought that those often-recounted stories had been buried with her. So imagine my delight to discover that the diary also contains a record of the first part of the journey she undertook by ship from the northern Israeli port of Haifa to Venice via Greece and then on to Milan by train.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Penniless, she could only gaze longingly at the elegant Italian shop window displays, but could “afford nothing no matter how cheap the prices were”.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Arriving in Milan and not wanting to stay on her own, she was on the verge of boarding the night train to Paris with nothing to eat bar a box of biscuits, when she finally managed to contact the aunt and uncle of one of her best friends in Tel Aviv, who invited her to stay with them. Successful furriers, my mother writes, they had “made a name for themselves”, their shop frequented by “a good class of clientele”, including members of the aristocracy and movie stars.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Although most of the numerous names that appear in the diary remain unfamiliar to me, the family name of my mother’s good friend stood out. Hadn’t I gone to school with a boy of the same name?</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
It so happens I had been reminded of that particular family at the beginning of this year – before we discovered the diary — while on holiday in Israel, when I had learned that Michael, my old school friend, was staying in the same hotel. We spent some time catching up and also exchanged contact details.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<a href="http://wonderwomenglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Naomi-in-1950-official-portrait.jpeg" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; border: 0px; color: #722f8f; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Naomi in 1950 (official portrait)" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2045" height="300" src="http://wonderwomenglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Naomi-in-1950-official-portrait-239x300.jpeg" style="border: 0px; display: block; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0.3em 0px 0.5em 1.571em; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="239" /></a>Now, as I turned the pages of the diary, I realized that the characters so vividly depicted by my mother included various members of Michael’s extended family. My mother’s friend was Michael’s aunt, meaning the Milan furriers must have been his great aunt and uncle. I sent an email to Michael, who immediately put me in touch with the Italian branch of his family and all was confirmed. Even better, his elderly and frail aunt in Tel Aviv could still remember my mother and recalled the deep friendship between various generations of our families.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
As it transpires, our familial ties date back at least a century to Poland via Tel Aviv and on to Australia: A tale of friendship and support, harking back to the days of our great grandparents, with the diary key to piecing together the puzzle of just how we are connected.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The ravages of Alzheimer’s disease had prevented my mother from recounting her memories long before her death last year. Her diary provides a portrait of her, as I never knew her: a young, passionate woman searching for intelligent companionship and the man of her dreams. It provides the key to unlocking a part of her past with which I was unfamiliar, a past that I thought had been lost forever.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shira Sebban – Life Issues</em><br /><em style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shira is a Sydney-based writer and editor, who is passionate about exploring the challenges life throws at us through her writing. A former journalist with the Australian Jewish News, Shira previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. The mother of three sons, she also serves as vice-president on the board of her children’s school. You can read more of her work at <a href="http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; border: 0px; color: #722f8f; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/</a></em><br /><em style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Life Balance = Abandoned. The. Search. </em></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-86582749613027607602014-06-16T18:22:00.002-07:002014-06-16T18:22:53.869-07:00My latest piece on finding my mother's diary... a glimpse into what life was like in Israel in the 1950s<div class="entry-meta" style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; color: #333333; display: inline; float: left; font-family: Georgia, 'Bitstream Charter', serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 6px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">
JUNE 16, 2014 · 8:36 AM</div>
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by Shira Sebban (Sydney, Australia)</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
We did not expect to find the diary. A non-descript, navy-bound volume, it had been stashed away in a drawer of the massive wooden study desk at which our late mother had worked for so many years. Perhaps she had simply forgotten writing it? Or perhaps she had chosen not to share her youthful passions and agonies with her daughters… We will never know.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I had long abandoned any hope of uncovering more details of my mother’s past, her memories having been gradually extinguished by Alzheimer’s disease, which had afflicted her for the last decade of her life. Now, as I turned the diary’s yellowed pages filled with her distinctive script, I felt grateful for the opportunity to discover her anew, albeit in a younger form, becoming acquainted with the person she once was before I was born.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Written in English in the mid-1950s, when a postgraduate traveling scholarship had taken her back from Melbourne, Australia, to her birthplace of Israel for two years, the diary provides a glimpse of what life was like then for a single, 20-something woman. Attractive and bright, she was courted by a host of mostly unsuitable admirers, although occasionally, one would become the focus of her hopes and dreams. After all, as she notes, her mother had advised her to “secure a future” for herself, urging her to work hard to accomplish her purpose: in other words, “get married”.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Part-travelogue and part-social commentary, the diary reads like a film script, the vividly portrayed characters flitting in and out of various settings. One moment my mother is at a party or concert, describing the dating scene: “Noticed some very good looking men in the audience. Wonder where they usually hide.” The next, she is on a crowded bus, discussing the four young Yemenite girls seated behind her: “probably recent arrivals to the country. Full of joy of life, laughing and continuously talking in high pitched voices, cracking small black seeds and throwing shells on the floor of the bus.”</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
A picture builds of what life was like in what was then the recently established State of Israel. Many of those she meets are keen to move elsewhere, believing there is more opportunity overseas. A certain unease lurks behind the pages too, and on one occasion, she even has to identify a suspect at the police station after an elderly woman is raped across the street from her home. More often, however, she is scared to walk alone in isolated areas, having heard about “some unpleasant and unfortunate encounters with Arab infiltrators”.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
The term, “infiltrator”, with its connotations of menace, danger and evil, has recently been revived to refer to African asylum seekers to Israel. Its origins date back to the early 1950s, when there were several attacks on Israeli settlements, resulting in around 100 casualties and culminating in the “Prevention of Infiltration Law” of 1954, which defined those citizens of surrounding Arab states, as well as Palestinians, who entered Israel illegally, as “infiltrators”, punishable by law, especially if they were armed or had committed crimes against people or property.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Emotions certainly ran high within Israel itself too. On a morning walk through the Carmel market near the family home in south Tel Aviv, my mother describes police arresting an “old Arab who was selling baskets… He was yelling his protests. Bystanders said he was allowed to sell his products in the main street, but not in the market.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
“Further on I heard terrible cries, saw a young fellow who had slashed his own throat in protest at having had his cart full of vegetables taken to the police station. Apparently, he too had no permit to trade in the market.”</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
I had long known that after leaving Israel, my mother had undertaken an epic sea voyage to Italy, also visiting Paris and working in London before deciding to make her way to Montreal, where she would ultimately meet her future husband and my father. Until now, however, I had thought that those often-recounted stories had been buried with her. So imagine my delight to discover that the diary also contains a record of the first part of the journey she undertook by ship from the northern Israeli port of Haifa to Venice via Greece and then on to Milan by train.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Penniless, she could only gaze longingly at the elegant Italian shop window displays, but could “afford nothing no matter how cheap the prices were”. Arriving in Milan and not wanting to stay on her own, she was on the verge of boarding the night train to Paris with nothing to eat bar a box of biscuits, when she finally managed to contact the aunt and uncle of one of her best friends in Tel Aviv, who invited her to stay with them. Successful furriers, my mother writes, they had “made a name for themselves”, their shop frequented by “a good class of clientele”, including members of the aristocracy and movie stars.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Although most of the numerous names that appear in the diary remain unfamiliar to me, the family name of my mother’s good friend stood out. Hadn’t I gone to school with a boy of the same name?</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
It so happens I had been reminded of that particular family at the beginning of this year – before we discovered the diary — while on holiday in Israel, when I had learned that Michael, my old school friend, was staying in the same hotel. We spent some time catching up and also exchanged contact details.</div>
<div style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Now, as I turned the pages of the diary, I realized that the characters so vividly depicted by my mother included various members of Michael’s extended family. My mother’s friend was Michael’s aunt, meaning the Milan furriers must have been his great aunt and uncle. I sent an email to Michael, who immediately put me in touch with the Italian branch of his family and all was confirmed. Even better, his elderly and frail aunt in Tel Aviv could still remember my mother and recalled the deep friendship between various generations of our families.</div>
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As it transpires, our familial ties date back at least a century to Poland via Tel Aviv and on to Australia: A tale of friendship and support, harking back to the days of our great grandparents, with the diary key to piecing together the puzzle of just how we are connected.</div>
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The ravages of Alzheimer’s disease had prevented my mother from recounting her memories long before her death last year. Her diary provides a portrait of her, as I never knew her: a young, passionate woman searching for intelligent companionship and the man of her dreams. It provides the key to unlocking a part of her past with which I was unfamiliar, a past that I thought had been lost forever.</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shira Sebban, a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia, worked as a journalist for the Australian Jewish News. She previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. She also serves as vice-president on the board of Emanuel School, a pluralistic and egalitarian Jewish Day School. You can read more of her work at: </em><a href="http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13636" sl-processed="1" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="We are all boat people">http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13636</a><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, as well as</em><a href="https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/category/australian-jewry/" sl-processed="1" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="Building Community with Soul">https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/category/australian-jewry/</a><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </em><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and</em><em style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </em><a href="http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/" sl-processed="1" style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="Shira Sebban">http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/</a></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-65625132787650728352014-06-09T17:52:00.000-07:002014-06-09T17:52:08.440-07:00My speech comparing the sad situation of asylum seekers in Australia and IsraelOn the eve of Shavuot, I gave a speech at my synagogue, at the request of my rabbi. Here is the transcript:<br />
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<span lang="EN-US">Where has our humanity gone?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Shira Sebban<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">“Were you not refugees all over the world?
… I live here like a dog. Without any rights… And no one treats me like a human
being.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(From “Reflections of a Refugee”
by Yardena Schwartz, <a href="http://www.ryot.org/african-refugees-marching-streets-israel/545185">http://www.ryot.org/african-refugees-marching-streets-israel/545185</a>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">“How long am I going to stay in here? Five
years, six years … no one knows. Honestly, my life is like a hell in here… it’s
a torture for children … We are looking for freedom … honesty, justice and
safety. We are not criminals. We are same people like you.” (From “Interview
from the Inside” by GetUp and ChillOut, “Out of Sight In Our Minds”, <a href="http://outofsight.org.au/">http://outofsight.org.au</a>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Two brave voices speak out – the first, an
Eritrean asylum seeker in Israel, the other, a young asylum seeker detained by
the Australian government on Manus Island.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">As an Australian Jew, I am ashamed by the
treatment of asylum seekers in both Australia and Israel. I watch bewildered as
the two countries I love descend further in what I really believe is a harsh
morass of immorality. Where has our humanity gone? Weren’t many of us, or our
families, refugees once too?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">On a trip to Israel in January, we found ourselves
in the middle of a protest march in Tel Aviv, involving thousands of African
asylum seekers. It marked the beginning of a three-day national strike – the
largest such demonstration ever held in Israel (you may have seen it in the
media at the time) – and was really the first time that the plight of African
asylum seekers was brought to national attention in Israel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Sadly, as an Australian, their treatment is
only too familiar to me, being reminiscent of what has been happening to asylum
seekers who attempt to arrive by boat here – with one difference: Australia
tends to lock up its boat people, who are not free to protest on the streets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">True, the Israeli government is now authorised
under an amendment to what is known as the Infiltration Prevention Law to
detain asylum seekers for up to a year without trial – it used to be three
years until the Supreme Court intervened – in the remote Holot “Open” Detention
Centre in the Negev. They can then be placed in indefinite detention until the
State decides it’s safe to deport them. Detainees have to present for roll call
three times a day and are not allowed out at night.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Nevertheless, the Australian system is more
severe still, with hapless boat people detained in harsh conditions on the now
infamous Manus Island or Nauru, with no hope of ever being settled here. In the
past few weeks, the first asylum seekers to be granted refugee status on Nauru
have been released into the community there and given five year visas, after
which they are to be permanently resettled in a third country, which could end
up being a country like Cambodia – among the poorest in Asia – if a
resettlement deal between Australia and Cambodia is signed as expected.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">All officialdom seems to agree that such treatment
is necessary to deter further boat arrivals. Moreover, since December, boats
have been turned or even towed back to Indonesia, and I quote, “when it is safe
to do so”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a result, our government
proudly proclaims that it is well on the way to achieving its popular promise
to “stop the boats” all together, with the added advantage, it boasts, of
having slashed the number of asylum seekers reaching Indonesia too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Yet, as pointed out by Indonesian
presidential advisor and former long-time foreign minister, Dr Hassan Wirajuda,
and I quote, “who can guarantee that next year they will not try again because
the root causes, like conflicts, war, poverty, push people to migrate”?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Isn’t that why our families chose to leave
their birthplace too? What about our grandparents or parents, who left Eastern
Europe or North Africa, in quest of a better life elsewhere? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">While Australia has now seemingly succeeded
in blocking the arrival of boatloads of asylum seekers, the Netanyahu
Government’s erection of the US$400 million fence on the Egyptian border in
2012 has practically ended the entry of African asylum seekers who, since 2006,
had been making the often harrowing trek from war-torn, dictatorial,
famine-ridden Eritrea and Sudan. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Everyone knows that Israel was founded by
and for refugees and that Australia too has benefited tremendously from their
contribution. True, by world standards, numbers of asylum seekers to both
countries are now low: Israel is contending with about 55,000 African asylum
seekers – less than one percent of Israel’s population – while in 2012-13, just
over 24,000 asylum seekers arrived in Australia by boat.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Contrast this with the more than 45 million
people worldwide – an 18-year high – forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict,
violence and human rights abuses, including more than 15 million
internationally displaced refugees and close to a million asylum seekers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of it
all, it can seem easier to bury our heads in the sand. But haven’t we been
taught that to save a single life is as if we had saved the entire world?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The Australian government claims to be
acting out of kindness: unseaworthy boats have to be stopped to prevent
unscrupulous people smugglers from taking advantage of the desperate, luring
them to their deaths. After all, the statistics are stark: more than 1000
people have perished at sea, while the lives of more than 6000 children have
been put at risk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Moreover, what about the 13,750 protection visas
– down from 20,000 last year -- on offer to those whose places under
Australia’s humanitarian programs have been “usurped” by “self-selecting asylum
seekers”, those so-called “queue jumpers”, who, or so the argument goes, are
really “economic migrants” with enough money to buy a place via people
smugglers?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The Australian government’s military
“Operation Sovereign Borders” brands such “maritime arrivals” as “illegal”,
just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses African asylum seekers of
being, and I quote, “illegal infiltrators looking for work” – despite the fact
that the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, to which Australia and Israel are both
signatories, clearly recognises the right to seek asylum from persecution no
matter how you arrive (article 31). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Denied legal status, neither country allows
those asylum seekers still able to live in the community, albeit provisionally,
basic civil rights, such as the official right to work. Issued with only
temporary visas and denied any chance of family reunion, a poverty-stricken
underclass is being created under our eyes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">And yet, until recently around 90 percent
of boat people have ended up being recognised as refugees in Australia. In another
cruel move, the government has decided that refugees who arrive by boat will no
longer be eligible for a permanent visa. Meanwhile, in Israel, only 0.2 percent
of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers have been granted refugee status,
despite the fact that many more of their countrymen have been recognised as
such elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">While Israel’s principle of non-return
prevents sending individuals back to a country where their lives or freedom are
at risk, the Israeli Government has begun using cash inducements to fly asylum
seekers – ostensibly “voluntarily” although with the threat of indefinite detention
hanging over their heads – home or to third countries, notably Uganda and
Rwanda, where there are no clear guarantees that their security and freedom
will be preserved. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Being cruel to be kind? Or rather, out of
sight, out of mind? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Of
course we cannot expect every asylum seeker to end up in Israel, Australia, or
another first world country. Moreover, one day, circumstances may even improve so
they can return home. Meanwhile, however, there must be another option to
indefinite prison or ultimate deportation for those requiring protection. Surely
the ends never justify the means.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Indeed,
a recently released report by the Israeli State Comptroller calls on the
Netanyahu Government to, and I quote, “guarantee adequate treatment of
foreigners and especially the needy and weakest among them”. The report
continues: “This action is also necessary considering the values of the State
of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, the Jewish heritage of treating the
underprivileged including the foreigner among us, and the international law of
immigration, refugees and human rights.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">As Jews,
we are constantly reminded not to mistreat strangers because we ourselves were
strangers in the land of Egypt … and Poland … and Algeria ... So why not,
particularly on Shavuot, when we read the Book of Ruth with its central theme of
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chesed</i> or loving kindness, work
towards a humane resolution of this global crisis, which respects the inherent
dignity of our fellow human beings and treats others as we would like to be
treated ourselves?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-18490929998831837172014-05-04T20:08:00.002-07:002014-05-04T20:08:32.079-07:00My comparison of the sad situation of asylum seekers in Australia and Israel now on Galus Australis<span id="map" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #505050; font-family: Arial, Helvetica; font-size: 11px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://galusaustralis.com/" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Home</a> » <a href="http://galusaustralis.com/category/author/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="View all posts in Author">Author</a>, <a href="http://galusaustralis.com/category/politics/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="View all posts in Politics and Media">Politics and Media</a>, <a href="http://galusaustralis.com/category/author/shira-sebban/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="View all posts in Shira Sebban">Shira Sebban</a>, <a href="http://galusaustralis.com/category/today/" rel="category tag" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="View all posts in Today">Today</a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #505050; font-family: Arial, Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 21px;"></span><br />
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Where Has Our Humanity Gone?</h2>
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<span class="left" style="border: 0px; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">May 5, 2014 – 12:33 pm</span><span class="right" style="border: 0px; float: right; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://galusaustralis.com/2014/05/8293/where-has-our-humanity-gone/#respond" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">No Comment</a></span></div>
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By <a class="local-link" href="http://galusaustralis.com/category/author/shira-sebban/" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shira Sebban</a>:</div>
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<a class="local-link" href="http://galusaustralis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/refugee4.jpg" style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="refugee4" class="size-medium wp-image-8294 alignleft" height="300" src="http://galusaustralis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/refugee4-253x300.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); display: inline; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px 7px 2px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 4px; vertical-align: middle;" width="253" /></a>As an Australian Jew, I am ashamed by the treatment of asylum seekers in both Australia and Israel. I watch bewildered as the two countries I love descend further in a harsh morass of immorality. Where has our humanity gone? Weren’t many of us, or our families, refugees once too?</div>
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On a trip to Israel in January, we found ourselves in the middle of a protest march in Tel Aviv, involving thousands of African asylum seekers. Sadly, as an Australian, their treatment is only too familiar to me, being reminiscent of what has been happening to asylum seekers who attempt to arrive by boat here – with one difference: Australia tends to lock up its boat people, who are not free to protest on the streets.</div>
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True, the Israeli government is now authorised to detain asylum seekers for up to a year without trial – it used to be three years until the Supreme Court intervened – in the remote Holot “Open” Detention Centre in the Negev. They can then be placed in indefinite detention until the State decides it’s safe to deport them.</div>
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Nevertheless, the Australian system is more severe still, with hapless boat people detained seemingly indefinitely in harsh conditions on the now infamous Manus Island or Nauru, with no hope of ever being settled here.</div>
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All officialdom seems to agree that such harsh treatment is necessary to deter further boat arrivals. Moreover, since December, boats have been turned or even towed back to Indonesia “when it is safe to do so”. As a result, our government proudly proclaims that it is well on the way to achieving its popular promise to “stop the boats” all together, with the added advantage, it boasts, of having slashed the number of asylum seekers reaching Indonesia too.</div>
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Yet, as pointed out by Indonesian presidential advisor and former long-time foreign minister, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, “who can guarantee that next year they will not try again because the root causes, like conflicts, war, poverty, push people to migrate”?</div>
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Isn’t that why our families chose to leave their birthplace too? What about our grandparents or parents, who left Eastern Europe or North Africa, in quest of a better life elsewhere?</div>
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While Australia has now seemingly succeeded in blocking the arrival of boatloads of asylum seekers, the Netanyahu Government’s erection of the US$400 million fence on the Egyptian border in 2012 has practically ended the entry of African asylum seekers who, since 2006, had been making the often harrowing trek from war-torn, dictatorial, famine-ridden Eritrea and Sudan.</div>
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Everyone knows that Israel was founded by and for refugees and that Australia too has benefited tremendously from their contribution. True, by world standards, numbers of asylum seekers to both countries are now low: Israel is contending with about 55,000 African asylum seekers – less than one percent of Israel’s population – while in 2012-13, just over 24,000 asylum seekers arrived in Australia by boat.</div>
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Contrast this with the more than 45 million people worldwide – an 18-year high – forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence and human rights abuses, including more than 15 million internationally displaced refugees and close to a million asylum seekers.</div>
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Overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of it all, it can seem easier to bury our heads in the sand. But haven’t we been taught that to save a single life is as if we had saved the entire world?</div>
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The Australian government claims to be acting out of kindness: unseaworthy boats have to be stopped to prevent unscrupulous people smugglers from taking advantage of the desperate, luring them to their deaths. After all, the statistics are stark: more than 1000 people have perished at sea, while the lives of more than 6000 children have been put at risk.</div>
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Moreover, what about the 13,750 protection visas – down from 20,000 last year — on offer to those whose places under Australia’s humanitarian programs have been “usurped” by “self-selecting asylum seekers”, those so-called “queue jumpers”, who, or so the argument goes, are really “economic migrants” with enough money to buy a place via people smugglers?</div>
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The Australian government’s military “Operation Sovereign Borders” brands such “maritime arrivals” as “illegal”, just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses African asylum seekers of being “illegal infiltrators looking for work” – despite the fact that the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, to which Australia and Israel are both signatories, clearly recognises the right to seek asylum from persecution no matter how you arrive (article 31).</div>
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Denied legal status, neither country allows those asylum seekers still able to live in the community, albeit provisionally, basic civil rights, such as the official right to work. Issued with only temporary visas and denied any chance of family reunion, a poverty-stricken underclass is being created under our eyes.</div>
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And yet, until now around 90 percent of boat people have ended up being recognised as refugees in Australia. In its latest cruel move, the government has now decided that refugees who arrive by boat will no longer be eligible for a visa. Meanwhile, in Israel, only 0.2 percent of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers have been granted refugee status, despite the fact that many more of their countrymen have been recognised as such elsewhere.</div>
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Being cruel to be kind? Or rather, out of sight, out of mind?</div>
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Of course we cannot expect every asylum seeker to end up in Israel, Australia, or another first world country. Moreover, one day, circumstances may even improve so they can return home. Meanwhile, however, there must be another option to indefinite prison or ultimate deportation for those requiring protection. Surely the ends never justify the means.</div>
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As Jews, we are constantly reminded not to mistreat strangers because we ourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt … and Poland … and Algeria … So why not work towards a humane resolution of this global crisis, which respects the inherent dignity of our fellow human beings and treats others as we would like to be treated ourselves?</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-74924290339361231112014-04-08T23:53:00.000-07:002014-04-08T23:53:02.837-07:00My article comparing the sad situation of asylum seekers in Australia and Israel now on J-Wire<br />
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Where has our humanity gone?…asks Shira Sebban</h1>
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As an Australian Jew, I am ashamed by the treatment of asylum seekers in both Australia and Israel.<span id="more-41841"></span></div>
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<a href="http://jwire.com.au.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/Shira-Sebban-200.jpg" style="color: #a91b33; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Shira Sebban" class="size-full wp-image-41844" height="243" src="http://jwire.com.au.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/Shira-Sebban-200.jpg" style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px;" width="200" /></a><div class="wp-caption-text" style="font-size: 11px; line-height: 12px; padding: 0px;">
Shira Sebban</div>
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I watch bewildered as the two countries I love descend further in a harsh morass of immorality. Where has our humanity gone? Weren’t many of us, or our families, refugees once too?</div>
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On a trip to Israel in January, we found ourselves in the middle of a protest march in Tel Aviv, involving thousands of African asylum seekers. Sadly, as an Australian, their treatment is only too familiar to me, being reminiscent of what has been happening to asylum seekers who attempt to arrive by boat here – with one difference: Australia tends to lock up its boat people, who are not free to protest on the streets.</div>
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True, the Israeli government is now authorised to detain asylum seekers for up to a year without trial – it used to be three years until the Supreme Court intervened – in the remote Holot “Open” Detention Centre in the Negev. They can then be placed in indefinite detention until the State decides it’s safe to deport them.</div>
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Nevertheless, the Australian system is more severe still, with hapless boat people detained seemingly indefinitely in harsh conditions on the now infamous Manus Island or Nauru, with no hope of ever being settled here.</div>
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All officialdom seems to agree that such harsh treatment is necessary to deter further boat arrivals. Moreover, since December, boats have been turned or even towed back to Indonesia “when it is safe to do so”. As a result, our government proudly proclaims that it is well on the way to achieving its popular promise to “stop the boats” all together, with the added advantage, it boasts, of having slashed the number of asylum seekers reaching Indonesia too.</div>
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Yet, as pointed out by Indonesian presidential advisor and former long-time foreign minister, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, “who can guarantee that next year they will not try again because the root causes, like conflicts, war, poverty, push people to migrate”?</div>
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Isn’t that why our families chose to leave their birthplace too? What about our grandparents or parents, who left Eastern Europe or North Africa, in quest of a better life elsewhere?</div>
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While Australia has now seemingly succeeded in blocking the arrival of boatloads of asylum seekers, the Netanyahu Government’s erection of the US$400 million fence on the Egyptian border in 2012 has practically ended the entry of African asylum seekers who, since 2006, had been making the often harrowing trek from war-torn, dictatorial, famine-ridden Eritrea and Sudan.</div>
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Everyone knows that Israel was founded by and for refugees and that Australia too has benefited tremendously from their contribution. True, by world standards, numbers of asylum seekers to both countries are now low: Israel is contending with about 55,000 African asylum seekers – less than one percent of Israel’s population – while in 2012-13, just over 24,000 asylum seekers arrived in Australia by boat.</div>
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Contrast this with the more than 45 million people worldwide – an 18-year high – forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence and human rights abuses, including more than 15 million internationally displaced refugees and close to a million asylum seekers.</div>
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Overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of it all, it can seem easier to bury our heads in the sand. But haven’t we been taught that to save a single life is as if we had saved the entire world?</div>
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The Australian government claims to be acting out of kindness: unseaworthy boats have to be stopped to prevent unscrupulous people smugglers from taking advantage of the desperate, luring them to their deaths. After all, the statistics are stark: more than 1000 people have perished at sea, while the lives of more than 6000 children have been put at risk.</div>
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Moreover, what about the 13,750 protection visas – down from 20,000 last year — on offer to those whose places under Australia’s humanitarian programs have been “usurped” by “self-selecting asylum seekers”, those so-called “queue jumpers”, who, or so the argument goes, are really “economic migrants” with enough money to buy a place via people smugglers?</div>
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The Australian government’s military “Operation Sovereign Borders” brands such “maritime arrivals” as “illegal”, just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses African asylum seekers of being “illegal infiltrators looking for work” – despite the fact that the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, to which Australia and Israel are both signatories, clearly recognises the right to seek asylum from persecution no matter how you arrive (article 31).</div>
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Denied legal status, neither country allows those asylum seekers still able to live in the community, albeit provisionally, basic civil rights, such as the official right to work. Issued with only temporary visas and denied any chance of family reunion, a poverty-stricken underclass is being created under our eyes.</div>
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And yet, until now around 90 percent of boat people have ended up being recognised as refugees in Australia. In its latest cruel move, the government has now decided that refugees who arrive by boat will no longer be eligible for a visa. Meanwhile, in Israel, only 0.2 percent of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers have been granted refugee status, despite the fact that many more of their countrymen have been recognised as such elsewhere.</div>
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Being cruel to be kind? Or rather, out of sight, out of mind?</div>
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Of course we cannot expect every asylum seeker to end up in Israel, Australia, or another first world country. Moreover, one day, circumstances may even improve so they can return home. Meanwhile, however, there must be another option to indefinite prison or ultimate deportation for those requiring protection. Surely the ends never justify the means.</div>
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As Jews, we are constantly reminded not to mistreat strangers because we ourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt … and Poland … and Algeria … So why not work towards a humane resolution of this global crisis, which respects the inherent dignity of our fellow human beings and treats others as we would like to be treated ourselves?</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-31021234650634804002014-03-19T22:48:00.000-07:002014-03-19T22:50:39.522-07:00Where Has Our Humanity Gone?<br />
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As an Australian Jew, I am ashamed by the treatment of asylum seekers in both Australia and Israel. I watch bewildered as the two countries I love descend further in a harsh morass of immorality. Where has our humanity gone? Weren’t many of us, or our families, refugees once too?</div>
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On a trip to Israel in January, we found ourselves in the middle of the protest marches in Tel Aviv, involving thousands of African asylum seekers. Sadly, as an Australian, their treatment is only too familiar to me, being reminiscent of what has been happening to asylum seekers who attempt to arrive by boat to my home country – with one difference: Australia tends to lock up its “boat people”, who are not free to protest on the streets.</div>
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True, the Israeli government is now authorized to detain asylum seekers for up to a year without trial – it used to be three years until the Supreme Court intervened – in the remote Holot “Open” Detention Centre in the Negev. They can then be placed in indefinite detention until the State decides it’s safe to deport them.</div>
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Nevertheless, the Australian system is more severe still, a hardline change in official policy under the previous government in mid-2013 sending hapless boat people – including Syrians fleeing terror and torture – for “offshore processing” on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG) or on the Pacific island of Nauru, where they are detained seemingly indefinitely in harsh conditions with no hope of ever being settled in Australia. Just recently, Manus was in the spotlight again as violence flared within the Australian detention center, with an Iranian asylum seeker killed and dozens injured.</div>
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Both the Australian government and the opposition seem to agree that such harsh treatment is necessary to deter further boat arrivals. Moreover, since December, boats have been turned or even towed back to Indonesia “when it is safe to do so”. As a result, the Australian government proudly proclaims that it is well on the way to achieving its popular promise to “stop the boats” all together, with the added advantage, it boasts, of having slashed the number of asylum seekers reaching Indonesia too.</div>
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Yet, as pointed out by Indonesian presidential advisor and former long-time foreign minister, Dr Hassan Wirajuda, “who can guarantee that next year they will not try again because the root causes, like conflicts, war, poverty, push people to migrate”?</div>
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Isn’t that why our families chose to leave their birthplace too? What about our grandparents or parents, who left Eastern Europe or North Africa, in quest of a better life elsewhere?</div>
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While Australia has now seemingly succeeded in blocking the arrival of boatloads of mostly Afghan, Sri Lankan, Iranian, Pakistani or Iraqi asylum seekers, the Netanyahu Government’s erection of the US$400 million fence on the Egyptian border in 2012 has practically ended the entry of African asylum seekers who, since 2006, had been making the often harrowing trek from war-torn, dictatorial, famine-ridden Eritrea and Sudan.</div>
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Everyone knows that Israel was founded by and for refugees and that Australia too has benefited tremendously from their contribution. True, by world standards, numbers of asylum seekers to both countries are now low: Israel is contending with about 55,000 African asylum seekers – less than one percent of Israel’s population – while in 2012-13, just over 24,000 asylum seekers arrived in Australia by boat.</div>
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Contrast this with the more than 45 million people worldwide – an 18-year high – forcibly displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence and human rights abuses, including more than 15 million internationally displaced refugees and close to a million asylum seekers.</div>
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Overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of it all, it can seem easier to bury our heads in the sand. But haven’t we been taught that to save a single life is as if we had saved the entire world?</div>
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The Australian government claims to be acting out of kindness: unseaworthy boats have to be stopped to prevent unscrupulous people smugglers from taking advantage of the desperate, luring them to their deaths. After all, the statistics are stark: more than 1000 people have perished at sea, while the lives of more than 6000 children have been put at risk.</div>
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Moreover, what about the 13,750 protection visas – down from 20,000 last year — on offer to those whose places under Australia’s humanitarian programs have been “usurped” by “self-selecting asylum seekers”, those so-called “queue jumpers”, who, or so the argument goes, are really “economic migrants” with enough money to buy a place via people smugglers?</div>
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The Australian government’s military “Operation Sovereign Borders” brands such “maritime arrivals” as “illegal”, just as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuses African asylum seekers of being “illegal infiltrators looking for work” – despite the fact that the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, to which Australia and Israel are both signatories, clearly recognizes the right to seek asylum from persecution no matter how you arrive (article 31).</div>
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Denied legal status, neither country allows those asylum seekers still able to live in the community, albeit provisionally, basic civil rights, such as the official right to work. Issued with only temporary visas and denied any chance of family reunion, a poverty-stricken underclass is being created under our eyes.</div>
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And yet, until now around 90 percent of boat people have ended up being recognized as refugees in Australia. In its latest cruel move, the Australian government has now decided that refugees who arrive by boat will no longer be eligible for a visa. Meanwhile, in Israel, only 0.2 percent of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers have been granted refugee status, despite the fact that many more of their countrymen have been recognized as such elsewhere.</div>
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Being cruel to be kind? Or rather, out of sight, out of mind?</div>
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Of course we cannot expect every asylum seeker to end up in Israel, Australia, or another first world country. Moreover, one day, circumstances may even improve so they can return home. Meanwhile, however, there must be another option to indefinite prison or ultimate deportation for those requiring protection. Surely the ends never justify the means.</div>
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As Jews, we are constantly reminded not to mistreat strangers because we ourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt … and Poland … and Algeria … So why not work towards a humane resolution of this global crisis, which respects the inherent dignity of our fellow human beings and treats others as we would like to be treated ourselves?</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 10px; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /><br />Read more: <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/where-has-our-humanity-gone-2/#ixzz2wTlZqMTW" style="border: 0px; color: #003399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Where Has Our Humanity Gone? | Shira Sebban | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel</a> <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/where-has-our-humanity-gone-2/#ixzz2wTlZqMTW" style="border: 0px; color: #003399; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/where-has-our-humanity-gone-2/#ixzz2wTlZqMTW</a><br />Follow us: <a href="http://ec.tynt.com/b/rw?id=da7qt6C20r440iacwqm_6l&u=timesofisrael" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">@timesofisrael on Twitter</a> | <a href="http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=da7qt6C20r440iacwqm_6l&u=timesofisrael" style="border: 0px; color: #346f99; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">timesofisrael on Facebook</a></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08326424976602816521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694044384404688143.post-56756812823155060802014-02-24T16:48:00.002-08:002014-02-24T16:48:51.477-08:00Our son's recent bar mitzvah experience in Sydney and Jerusalem now on Wonder Women<header style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #696868; float: left; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 723px;"><h1 class="title single-title" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(241, 241, 241); border-bottom-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; clear: both; color: #555555; font-family: 'Antic Didone', sans-serif; font-size: 22px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 28px; margin: 0px 0px 8px; min-height: 40px; padding: 0px 0px 8px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 723px;">
Making Miracles</h1>
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‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ becomes a reality for Shira.</div>
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<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></strong><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span id="more-1836" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><a href="http://wonderwomenglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Shira-Sebban.jpeg" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; border: 0px; color: #722f8f; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Shira Sebban" class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-895" height="150" src="http://wonderwomenglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Shira-Sebban-128x150.jpeg" style="border: 0px; display: block; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; height: auto; line-height: inherit; margin: 0.3em 1.571em 0.5em 0px; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="128" /></a>Shira Sebban</strong></div>
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Two ceremonies, each on a different continent; a family reunion in Jerusalem for 50, spanning four generations from Israel, France and Australia; a Moroccan lunch in Israel and a Friday night dinner in Sydney for family from Melbourne and Brisbane.</div>
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My aunt maintains that I make a fuss of my sons’ bar mitzvahs because it’s the only major function organized solely by their parents, which happens once in their lifetime. After all, they may get married more than once (God forbid) and their future wives will also want their say in the proceedings.</div>
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More important to me, however, are the spiritual, familial and social action dimensions involved in the coming of age ritual in Judaism. As each of our three sons begins to take responsibility for his actions, my husband and I strive to impress upon him the value of exploring traditions, contributing to community, and appreciating the family ties embracing him from across the globe … Which is how we ended up spending a morning picking 400 kg of beetroot on a kibbutz outside Tel Aviv…</div>
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Our children describe themselves as “<i style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Ashkefardi</i>”, a term they have invented to sum up their complicated cultural heritage. My side of the family comprises Ashkenazi Jews, with roots stretching back to Poland and Russia via Canada and Israel to Melbourne. In contrast, my husband’s side is Sephardic, tracing their origins from Algeria (and probably Spain prior to the Jewish expulsion of 1492) on to France and Israel, only his immediate family having gone on to make the brave trek to Brisbane.</div>
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We regard our local Jewish community like our extended family, and so there was never any question of not celebrating our children’s bar mitzvahs here in Sydney, particularly since some family members are too elderly or unwell to travel far, while others cannot afford to do so.</div>
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At the same time, my husband’s French and Israeli family could not make the trip to Australia, and so we decided to take the bar mitzvah to them. “Next year in Jerusalem” – we would make this spiritual hope, so often repeated in Judaism, a reality this year. True, it would mean that our son would have to learn how to chant two different portions of the Torah (five books of Moses), but by holding the Israeli ceremony on a weekday, the second portion would be shorter. And a little more learning never hurt anyone.</div>
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Reading from the Torah at Robinson’s Arch, Jerusalem</div>
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While the only requirement of a bar mitzvah is to turn 13, it is traditional to be called up to read from the weekly portion to mark entry as a fully-fledged member of the community. He may also discuss philosophical aspects of what he has read and lead prayer services. All of this takes time to learn, especially since there are ritual ways of chanting the Torah in Hebrew. It’s like learning a whole new musical notation system and in a foreign language to boot.</div>
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So 15 months ahead of the big day, we set out to find our son a teacher, prepared not only to impart new skills, but to delve into the meaning behind them. I decided to join the class, my own bat mitzvah having consisted of a school pageant, in which I recited a couple of lines and sang and danced along to tunes from <i style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fiddler on the Roof</i>. While I had no intention of using my newly acquired skills in public, at least I would be able to revise the weekly lessons with my son.</div>
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Another major issue was how to accommodate the spiritual needs of our extended family, ranging in practice from Ultra Orthodox to Progressive Judaism. We settled on a weekend program: prayers at home for those who wished to attend, followed by a Friday night family dinner; Saturday morning services at our Conservative (<i style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Masorti</i>) synagogue, which integrates tradition with modernity, allowing us to sit together as a family; and Sunday lunch where everyone could feel included.</div>
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Our children’s Jewish Day School encourages students to participate in a <i style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mitzvah Project</i>. Initiated and coordinated by parents, it involves donating a sum of money, half of which is given to the bar or bat mitzvah, while the other half goes to a charity of their choice. Our son chose to support <i style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Leket Israel</i>, the National Food Bank and leading food rescue network, for which we also volunteered during our visit, gleaning beetroot for distribution to the needy.</div>
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While in Israel, we also celebrated at Robinson’s Arch (or the <i style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Masorti Kotel</i>) within the Jerusalem Archaeological Park. Situated at the southern end of the Western Wall, this area has come to be used for egalitarian services.</div>
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Family photo on the Southern Steps, Jerusalem</div>
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Standing on a first century street, surrounded by ancient stones ostensibly pulled down by the Romans in the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, our son marked his coming of age supported by family and friends.</div>
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My Brisbane-based mother-in-law cried tears of joy as she was reunited with her siblings, their spouses, children and grandchildren. A cousin from the southern Israeli city of Ashdod thanked us for giving him the first opportunity in 20 years to see his cousins from Lyons.</div>
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As we posed for a family photo on the ancient, uneven Southern Steps, which used to lead to the main entrances of the Temple Mount, it was not hard to picture our robed ancestors, ascending those very steps and pausing to reflect on the solemnity of the occasion – just like us.</div>
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Albert Einstein said: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”</div>
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As we went our separate ways after our celebratory Moroccan lunch, we promised ourselves another miracle – next year in Jerusalem. After all, it’s only another 23 months until our youngest son’s bar mitzvah …</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shira Sebban – Life Issues</em><br /><em style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Shira is a Sydney-based writer and editor, who is passionate about exploring the challenges life throws at us through her writing. A former journalist with the Australian Jewish News, Shira previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. The mother of three sons, she also serves as vice-president on the board of her children’s school. You can read more of her work at <a href="http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/" sl-processed="1" style="-webkit-transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; border: 0px; color: #722f8f; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: background-color, color 0.2s linear; vertical-align: baseline;">http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/</a></em><br /><em style="border: 0px; font-family: georgia; font-size: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Life Balance = Abandoned. The. Search. </em></div>
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