For Lee Kofman and Tamar Paluch, the necessity of capturing Jewish female voices following the October 7 Hamas-led massacre in Israel was palpable.
Around the time of International Women’s Day, the pair teamed up with the Lamm Jewish Library of Australia (LJLA), the National Library of Israel and the InternationALL Women’s Day platform to, as Kofman and Paluch explain, give voice to the voiceless. They put out a call to the community for submissions for A Year Like No Other.
“We encouraged women to document history as we live it, but also to work through that grief and share it with one another,” Paluch told The AJN. “We always planned to have a full collection of unpublished essays, but wanted to curate a selection so that we could share that with the world and share what the lived experience of Jewish women in Australia was at the time.”
“It feels to me that the book we created is a book that is realistic. It is often dark, but it strives for light” – Lee Kofman
As the doxxing scandal unfolded, Kofman and Paluch realised that women in the community were feeling increasingly demoralised, especially considering the “so-called feminists” who were targeting local personalities.
“That was being very deeply felt,” Paluch recalled. “So around that time, we created this online platform to give a voice to Jewish women, to encourage them to take the reins back on their narrative and their stories.”
They received 150 personal essays from women impacted by the events of October 7.
These essays were compiled and will be archived in the LJLA and the National Library of Israel’s October 7 Archive, which has been established to serve as a central repository for documents produced in the wake of the atrocities.
They had the community response, but they knew they had to do more.
And Ruptured was born.
Ruptured brings together 36 personal essays written by a diverse range of women from across Australia – young, old, Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, migrant, queer, straight, those living in regional areas and metropolitan cities – including Deborah Conway, Jemima Montag, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Kerri Sackville and Elise Esther Hearst, among others.
The intention is to preserve what has become a hugely historical time in Australia and around the world.
The project was particularly influenced by the crimes against women during and following October 7, including the holding of the female hostages.
“Women are always the ones who are at the forefront of organising and looking after their nuclear family. But then all of a sudden, also taking on the burdens of community and here it was so visceral, because we had such a horrific start,” Paluch explained. “The pain of mothers losing their children on October 7 in the most horrendous ways and losing them as hostages; the fear of daughters being kept by these terrorists. That was such a visceral starting point that it could only unravel something really deep inside all of us. And I think the essays really capture that.”
Kofman described her personal experience, saying October 7 and the years since have completely changed something in her psychologically.
“October 7 and the hostages, the sexual violence was inseparable and very strategic and a big part of it. And the barbarism of it was also quite extraordinary, even as far as wars go,” she recalled. “It has really impacted me. It still haunts me. It’s changed something in me psychologically. And I’ve spoken to some other women who spoke about similar things. And there’s the deeply personal, intimate, unexpected impact which was also amplified by us all feeling betrayed by feminist spaces, by our supposed sisters.”
Importantly, the pair said that while it’s crucial the messaging gets across to our community, it’s even more critical that it goes wider.
“One of the reasons why we felt this book was so important to have it out there, is the inward experience of doing it for ourselves – for self-therapy, for feelings, taking some power back. But I think also it was very important to us to at least attempt to join our voices to the public conversations that are raging about us, not with us,” Kofman noted.
“Women are always the ones who are at the forefront of organising and looking after their nuclear family. But then all of a sudden, also taking on the burdens of community and here it was so visceral, because we had such a horrific start” – Tamar Paluch
When choosing the essays that would make up the finished published copy, Kofman and Paluch kept a few things in mind. First, ensuring emotional sensitivities were kept in mind, and also how the essays worked together. And, as pointed out by Paluch, how the book was going to be perceived by someone from the outside.
“We didn’t want to censor anyone,” she said. “We wanted to be able to give across a very broad piece of work that represented all sides of the spectrum … we wanted it to be deeply personal, but we had a very rigorous editorial process.”
Kofman and Paluch chose some essays from the original anthology project and also commissioned a few writers from outside the community.
For Kofman, she wanted to stay true to the current situation and the emotions behind it all. This meant ensuring that the essays didn’t necessarily always finish on a hopeful note.
Saying she sometimes struggles with the “she’ll be right” mentality, Kofman explained that while some essays do finish with hope, others don’t necessarily have a happy ending.
“We have essays where there is a light. It really is a diverse collection. It feels to me that the book we created is a book that is realistic,” she said. “It is often dark, but it strives for light.”
As for the response so far, both Kofman and Paluch say the feedback has been positive and grateful.
“The response I keep hearing is that it is difficult, but it’s validating to read it,” Kofman explained. “It’s ‘I feel the same pain, but my experience is heard’. From non-Jewish people, the overwhelming response is that it’s educating for them, because they don’t understand how deeply we are all traumatised.”
Paluch agreed, saying one of the main aims was to give a window into lived experience. “What does it mean to have this experience? We use antisemitism, it’s a word that is used so often, but what does that actually feel like?”
Ultimately, it always came back to their original aim – writing as a tool for healing and writing as a very Jewish tool for documenting history while we live it.
Ruptured is published by Lamm Jewish Library of Australia.
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