Keeping Australia a socially cohesive place
Courage to Care plays a vital role in countering ignorance about Jews.
It’s safe to assume if you are reading these words that the Jewish world has relevance to your life. You know what being a Jew means to you, your family and your Jewish friends.
But just imagine you are one of the vast majority of Australians who would never have knowingly met a Jew or been exposed to any Jewish touch points (be they cultural, social, political or religious), ever.
With Jews numbering less than 0.5 per cent of Australia’s population and living in mainly urban areas, the chances of being exposed to these Jewish touch points is even less if you are a school student living in a regional area.
In my role as chair of Courage to Care I am often asked to explain our mission, and how we seek to accomplish it.
Courage to Care plays a vital role in countering ignorance about Jews. Our mission is to educate Australian school students that antisemitism is a form of racism which can destroy societies, as evidenced by the Holocaust.
Much of the work of Courage to Care takes place outside Sydney. Close to 80 per cent of our work is conducted in places like Canberra, Wollongong, Newcastle, the Central Coast and regional NSW.
This work is very important as the people living in these areas have had their views about Jews – assuming they have any – shaped by what they hear at home or in their local communities, from the media and the feeds from their social media.
The first time that many Aussie school kids meet a Jewish person is when they are exposed to one of Courage to Care’s programs or regional exhibitions.
Our cherished volunteers and paid staff make up a small but dedicated army which educates students about the history of the Holocaust and the dangers to society if antisemitism is left unchecked.
Courage to Care was founded by Holocaust survivors 25 years ago to apply the lessons of the Holocaust to educate young Australians to be Upstanders. “Upstander” is an internationally recognised term used to describe a person who refuses to be a bystander to acts of discrimination, racism and bullying. An Upstander can be an ordinary person who defends and protects Jews who have been subjected to antisemitism, often at some considerable personal risk. The non-Jews who we see in the media and social media who speak out vehemently against antisemitism are Upstanders.
In the last year Courage to Care NSW delivered its face-to-face programs across Queensland, the ACT and NSW to 20,000 school students. On a national basis we impacted almost 60,000 people.
In my time on the board of Courage to Care I have observed students reacting with engagement and fascination to the first-hand accounts of Holocaust survivors who tell truly miraculous stories of survival due to the bravery of a person who wanted to help them.
The underlying message being that regular people are capable of amazing acts of bravery and moral courage to save others. It’s an inspiring story which leads me to believe we can all play a role in our everyday lives in educating people about the dangers of racism and antisemitism.
Each of us should engage, when we can, appropriately and with safety, with people who are not from our Jewish community. I have been in many situations in which non-Jewish people want to know more about who we are and what it’s like living a Jewish life in Australia. And so I tell them. We should educate people when we can because ignorance about Jews, is a vacuum which we have to fill to combat the anti-Jewish forces trying to fill it.
I know this may seem like a scary thing to do, not knowing what the reaction will be even if we feel someone has opened the door to discuss this topic, but we need to bring everyday Australians closer to us and in doing so we’ll do our bit to keep Australia a socially cohesive place in which to live and bring up a family.
Hopefully one day, anti-racism programs will be mandated as part of the school curriculums throughout Australia so that students nationwide learn this important message. In the meantime let’s try to apply and promote Upstander behaviour so that we can all enjoy an Australian society in which antisemitism is utterly rejected in social discourse.
Tom Curtis is the chair of Courage to Care (NSW).
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