Kohn talks about faith, spirituality, cults

At a preview event by organisers of Melbourne Jewish Book Week (MJBW), acclaimed Australian religion scholar Dr Rachael Kohn shared insights into the writing of her latest book The Other Side of the Story: Essays on Jews, Christians, Cults, Women, Atheists and Artists.

In a March 15 conversation session at Glen Eira Town Hall with Rabbi Fred Morgan, an emeritus rabbi of Temple Beth Israel, Kohn discussed her motivations in compiling this essay anthology – and in becoming a scholar of the world’s religions, which led her to create, produce and present more than 1700 programs on religion for the ABC.

Prompted by Rabbi Morgan, Kohn took her audience back to her childhood in Canada, the daughter of immigrant parents who had fled the Shoah. She described how her father had spent time during World War II in an Italian internment camp.

In postwar Toronto, the family, like many others, was focused on the pragmatic tasks of rebuilding their lives, and while they were traditional, religion was not a major aspect of day-to-day life.

However, in her teens, Kohn became fascinated by “the explosion of religious innovation” and the embrace by young people of eastern religions. Parallel to this was the resurgence of Chassidism, and she recalled memories of seeing “Chabad-mobiles and tefillin on the streets”.

It was also a time when mainstream culture began celebrating religion, with Broadway spectaculars such as Godspell, Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar, she noted.

Kohn admonished academics of that era who appeared “ready to excuse” cults that offered “totalitarian” cultures to their adherents. She said that the academic world, in playing along with vogue figures – she specifically recalled the uncritical praise in the West for Chinese dictator Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book – inspired her to do the opposite, “to critique cults”, which became a significant aspect of her research and a talking point in her broadcasts.

In her book, Kohn analyses the spiritual aspects of Zionism, which she described as not just a political movement of the late 19th century, born out of adversity suffered by Jews in the Diaspora, but “a continuous and millennia-old yearning and reality”.

“When I think of what it means to be a Jew, it is the Torah, it is the people and it is the land … they have always been connected,” she said. “As I argue in the book, God is inherent in all of those three things.”

MJBW festival director Nicolas Brasch previewed a line-up of events that will take place during the first MJBW since lockdowns, being held on May 28-31, and said he is looking forward to in-person activities, after MJBW’s comprehensive Zoom series over the past two years.

For more information visit melbournejewishbookweek.com.au

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