We are here, publicly and proudly Jewish

Good evening, Sydney.

Welcome back to Shir for the third time, the Australian Jewish Music Festival. What a joy it is to be here at the Sydney Opera House with a full stage, a full audience, and very full hearts.

What a joy tonight to have given the international debut of Israel’s newest rising star, Daniella Gilboa.

What a joy it is, as Michaela said, to make Jewish music publicly, and also to have made music with our extraordinary friends from the Iranian, Indian and Samoan communities.

There is so much joy, hope, and love in this very large hall.

It is such a different experience to the night that generated this concert. Not different in location. It was 100 meters that way. It was Monday, the ninth of October, 2023, when I stood alone on the steps of this Opera House behind a row of police, and saw with my own eyes on the forecourt an orgy of hate, as 1000 people, half our number tonight, spewed out publicly, proudly, exultantly, the bile of their souls.

I smelt the burning flag. I heard their vitriol-soaked voices.

We were later told they were asking, “Where’s the Jews?” I can tell you that was no polite social inquiry. No, that was a battle cry. I had never felt fear in my life before that night.

But that night also lit in me a candle that burned with a desire to use music, the universal language, to wash the soul of this country. And so, Unbreakable was conceived. And after a difficult and lengthy pregnancy of three years, it’s been born with you tonight.

Unbreakable. What is unbreakable? Who is unbreakable? Well, Daniella Gilboa is unbreakable. Her will to life, l’chaim, is unbreakable. Her refusal to adopt the garment of victimhood and her urge, irreplaceably, to reclaim her life, that is unbreakable. Her innate need to build, to create, to develop, to grow, to share. That is unbreakable. She is the custodian of Am Yisrael, the people of Israel, the Jewish people. In her voice, you can hear all of this: her strength, her purity, her vulnerability, her insistence that we do not back down. She holds l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, our collective experience, because every generation we’ve had to pick ourselves up and move on.

October seven, three years ago.

December 14, less than a year ago.

We welcome and honour tonight in our midst the Britvan family, for whose Matilda we wear these tonight [points to bee pin].

Daniella is unbreakable.

When they asked, “Where’s the Jews?” We can say, “Well, some were in Hamas tunnels in Gaza, and those who survived are free now. And one of them made her international debut on Australia’s best stage tonight”.

What else is unbreakable? The bonds that bind us with our friends and allies are unbreakable. With the extraordinary artistry of our colleagues, some of whom are on stage, spanning Muslim, Hindu, Christian faiths from, as mentioned, Iran, India, and Samoa. In these colleagues, we have found true friendship that we have not found in the arts community for a very long time.

As you may have heard in my testimony at the Royal Commission, being an artist Jewishly in Australia has been a lonely experience. Friendships have become conditional. Opportunities, collaborations have come attached with caveats. Of course, as long as you’re not a Zionist. Of course, as long as you carve your identity in two and disown your ancestral homeland. Of course, as long as you join us in denouncing the genocide, the genocide we know never happened.

Of course, as long as you join us in the chorus that labels heroes like Daniella with the millennium-old libel of baby killer. Like we have not seen this before, ladies and gentlemen, like we have not seen this libel before.

As long, in other words, as you are the right kind of Jew.

This is the product of a highly successful campaign by the antizionist movement.

If you have not heard, antisemitism is no longer the thing hurting Jews the most. It is antizionism which animates through millennium-old libels an avatar, a false image of what a Zionist or an Israeli is, and piles all the worst things in humanity into that jar and whacks that jar onto our heads.

That is antizionism.

That is the way that Jews today in Australia, as we were three years ago on that forecourt and around the world, are marginalised, discriminated against, erased, and hurt the most.

So we say tonight to the antizionists who asked, “Where’s the Jews?”

The Jews are here tonight, standing shoulder to shoulder with our friends.

The relief that I have felt to be with these beautiful people who have embraced us unconditionally, who have not given us caveats. This relief has been cathartic. I cannot thank them, each and every one of them, enough from the bottom of my heart. Please thank them all.

Their presence here on this stage and through this entire process has given me renewed hope in Australia, that I did not know that I had.

What gives me also hope is the presence here tonight in the audience of Her Excellency the Governor General of this country, Sam Mostyn. We also have tonight here Federal Member of Parliament Julian Leeser. We have the New South Wales Arts Minister John Graham, and actually many more politicians. We have senior dignitaries and leaders of Creative Australia, of Multicultural New South Wales, multiple other bodies. We are grateful to every one of you for choosing to join us on this historic and deeply important night. Thank you to you all.

The thing is, music brings people together. Literally, in this hall, we are together. But sometimes we can’t physically be together.

Of course, the best way to combat hate is to meet people. That’s the best way to humanise each other. But there are so few Jews in this country, statistically, most Australians will never meet one. Nor will they fit in this concert hall.

So what do we do then? We do this. This is the value of music, arts, culture, to be our emissary of humanisation. Why? Because it is through our stories, our characters, our songs, our language that we will be lifted off the pages, off the newspaper headlines that we have languished for too long as two-dimensional characters in the annals of a foreign conflict, or as victims of local trauma.

Because music seeks, as its generating impetus, to bring humans together with humans by sharing the most human thing that there is, emotion.

This is why culture matters. This is why Shir matters. And this is why it is so important that we at Shir continue to fight the attempts, valiant as they may be, of the antizionist movement to erase Jewish expression from the Australian public cultural landscape. And that is why it is so important that you are here tonight. Because every single one of you, every tuchas on every seat tonight, is part of that army that will again reclaim our space, our right, like anyone else, like I said three years ago, to be here publicly and proudly Australian.

So when they say we’re the Jews, we say, “Why does it matter?”. We can be anywhere we want to be, and we’re here tonight.

Ben Adler is festival director of Shir: Australian Jewish Music Festival.