(no subject)

I want to thank the wonderful friends and their families who let me share their Christmas. I have had a totally fabulous day and a half. One of the best 24 and 25 December ever.

I might have to nap a bit tonight before I get back to work (celebrating is so very tiring) but before I do any work I have presents to tally up. I have a box of chocolates, two terrific evil black wax skull candles, a book voucher, two lovely Egyptian perfume glasses and more. I even managed to reduce painkillers for the duration due to the awesome neck massage James gave me.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am incredibly lucky in my friends.

My part of today's lunch was to bring a vegetarian dish. I was going to make my favourite chickpea dish (onions and garlic and chickpeas and potato and tomato paste), but I ran into trouble with the chickpeas. This worked out very nicely, because I cooked some pasta, toasted lots of almond flakes, added some marinated artichoke hearts and 3 big spoons of pure cream melted and deep yellow from lots of saffron, then seasoned with cayenne and a little bit of ginger. It was filling, but very yummy. Given I put it all together at the last minute (literally) from ingredients I just happened to have to hand, I was happy.

PS Don't tell my mother, but I got to carve a ham. This has become a regular feature of my Christmas visit to one of my close friends. I don't touch the ham or eat it, but they set it up for me and I carve it. Today I didn't do as good a job as usual and we all agreed I need more practice.

(no subject)

Colour me amused. The ABC just showed a special on how three different faiths see Christmas. The interviewer asked the Christians what they thought of Christmas and the Moslems what they thought of Christmas. The Jewish family was only asked about Chanukah. Chanukah - as you know - is only related to Christmas by being near it some years according to the common calendar.

The ABC presenter also explained that all three festivals just celebrated were about peace.

Um. Yes. Well.

Obviously the ABC and I read different things into the story of Chanukah. Freedom of worship, yes. Standing up for your rights, yes. Children's festival, yes. But peace? Wrong festival.

While I fully agree that pig-sacrificing in ancient times should have been kept outside Jewish places of worship (and especially the Temple) ie that respecting other peoples' rights are *important*, I can't equate fighting to achieve that goal (even if the fighting was entirely essential) with peace.

I really wish the ABC had explored the very mixed relationship most Aussie Jews have with Christmas.

I had an amazing Christmas this year, because friends reached out and took me into their families. Not very many years ago, however, one of my most beloved relatives was at a State primary school and was denied the end-of-year party and the end-of-year presents because she was following through what she had been taught during Chanukah. "I want the party," she explained to me (she must have been eight or nine at the time), "But they say I have to get the presents from Santa and tell him what I want for Christmas." She couldn't see how Santa was either Jewish or non-denominational and she stood up for her beliefs and missed out every scrap of celebration with her friends that day.

Being invited in as a friend is perfect and joyous and helps create a better universe. Being strong-armed to do something can contradict one's own beliefs and undermine self and happiness.

This is why big thing I missed in the documentary was obviously why the ABC didn't ask about what Christmas means to Jewish children. Looking for peace and happiness meant they left out the most interesting question of all.

This isn't a whinge. This is a reflection.

All our cultures have boundaries. When you reach a boundary you can be encouraged to extend it in a way that's sympathetic to your self and your own beliefs; you can be encouraged to leave it standing and unchanged; or you can be thrown against it until it hurts. It's fascinating to see just how far the public culture of a place will go to meet the family or religious cultures of its people.

Australia still doesn't actually see minority cultures, on the whole. Programs like that ABC documentary mask the uncomfortable bits while acting as if they're showing everything important. Many watchers often go round thinking "I understand this," when the public vision misses the boundary entirely (I get this a lot in my classes when the classes cross those boundaries). Tonight's obscured boundary was "What do Australian Jews think of Christmas?"

Most people here obtain their understanding of Jewish festivals from the US, through films and US TV. There are millions of Jews in the US and only a little over 100,000 here, so the US TV notion of Judaism quite overwhelms Australian public understanding of Australian Judaism. I love it that Jewish culture is such a broad church (I just had to make a bad religious joke, didn't I?) but I'm Anglo-Australian Jewish and totally love the snarky foodie secular intellectual argumentative tradition I was born into. I don't want it obscured.

I love it that I can see a wildlife documentary (or friends' travel pictures today) and automatically categorise animals into kosher or not. This afternoon my friends and I were watching their pictures of an amazing safari they went on in Africa. We worked out that giraffe is theoretically kosher, but that it would be almost impossible to kill it correctly. They're teaching me to carve ham, too. I don't eat it or touch it, but I cut a plate of morsels every year and then ring my mother later and stir her about it. This is not the same kind of discussion the ABC raised. We all extended our boundaries, however.