Thoughts on handing over a precious vessel
Agreeing to lead an organisation like National Council of Jewish Women of Australia is to be handed a precious vessel, wrought over 100 years of gold and silver.
For four long years I have struggled to meet the many demands of NCJWA. Not so much the physical demands but the ideological ones. The work involved is the pursuit of justice. The centrality of valuing of all people, while prioritising Jewish women. Balancing the demands of the Australian feminist community with those of the organised Jewish community. While holding at all times the commitments of a Modern Orthodox Jew, a radical feminist and a human rights lawyer.
Agreeing to lead an organisation like National Council of Jewish Women of Australia is to be handed a precious vessel, wrought over 100 years of gold and silver. It is a responsibility to take responsibility. To serve the needs of the Jewish women of Australia and to care for those women. To recognise that each is uniquely made in God’s image and is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. Whether young or old; established or transient; educated or not; a mother, a daughter or a friend; living in the heart of the Jewish community or a person who has only found their Jewishness in the face of adversity – all these women are worthy of our care.
The responsibility to our women takes many forms. I have been intermediary between all these women and their Jewishness. I mean this in the sense that where there are issues in Judaism for women, I have tried to address them. The agunah, the chained woman who remains bonded to an undesirable man because he refuses his wife a Jewish divorce, is of ongoing concern. So we have had webinars on the development in Australian law dealing with coercive control, because this offers a new legal strategy for demanding the gett. Equally we have had a discussion of domestic violence in the Jewish community, with women who have never before spoken the evil they experienced.
Ensuring women are able to access their rights includes the right to cultural integrity. That means we attempted to infuse everything with a totally accessible Jewishness. Without judgement, we celebrated chagim from a women’s point of view. We also looked at women’s issues first from our own perspective. Our position on slavery and trafficking comes straight from our sources. Our analysis of the gender pay gap involved a Jewish as well as gender lens. One important example of this came straight after October 7. On October 13 we called a meeting in solidarity with all those murdered in Hamas’s terrorist attack. We had an incredible response, and women from every Jewish perspective led part of the service. There were Charedim and secular Jews; Reform and Yiddishist; Modern Orthodox and atheist.
When we ran educational programs we attempted to meet the needs of different learners, so we had lectures, Q&As, conversations and seminars. In our work around October 7 and beyond we provided videos daily – for the first hundred days – engaging with the war from an Australian women’s perspective. In the newsletter we provided written text, but we also shared videos to learn from and videos to nurture our spirits.
Our webinar program was also aimed at meeting the needs of every member of our community. We had quite intellectual discussions about gender issues and the analysis of victims of October 7 and from the Day After the War Forum. We had very pragmatic programs around peace-building and Women Wage Peace’s peace-building processes. We even had a sit-in – with talk, candles and music. In this we joined activists around the world demanding that peace become a focus of Israeli decision-makers rather than war.
There is one final way we reached out to the whole community. This was by taking a broad approach to Israel, which put us on the left of politics without compromising Israel’s integrity or denying antisemitism. We did this by including in our work a Palestinian perspective. It was amazing that after October 7 we have colleagues in the Palestinian community who want peace and were prepared to come and meet us virtually in Australia. We have not been afraid to discuss why groups claiming to represent the Jewish left do not do so – not by character assassination, but by turning to the truth.
My four years began with COVID, which presented challenge after challenge. The last part of this presidency has been lived in the aftermath of October 7. And I live it every minute of every day.
I know that I leave National Council in good hands. It’s a risk handing something precious to someone else’s care. Coming next is also hard. So I say to Lynda [Ben-Menashe] what Moses said to Joshua – “Be strong and courageous” (Deuteronomy 31:23).
Melinda Jones is the outgoing federal president of the National Council of Jewish Women Australia. This is an edited version of her farewell speech.
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