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JEW ISH BO OK A N N U A L
• one’s relation to, and involvement in, one’s own tradition
with its values and forms;
• one’s relation to, and involvement in, the surrounding mi
lieu with
its
values and forms;
• the conflict between the generations reflecting the tensions
in seeking a modus vivendi between perpetuating the old and
advancing the new;
• and, at the extremes of the identity conflicts questions such
as intermarriage (dealt with, for example, by Judah Waten) and
conversion and proselytism (a potentially-ripe area till now
scarcely touched).
These are the stock-in-trade, as it were, o f ethnic minority writ
ers everywhere. An added dimension for the Jewish writer has
been the experience o f the two major events that have changed
the Jewish world so immensely — the Holocaust and the creation
of the State of Israel. These are not, to be sure, highly limelighted
themes. Given the relatively small Jewish population o f Australia,
some 68,000 souls, and the concomitently small number o f writ
ers overall, this is not wholly surprising. Yet the Holocaust, for
instance, has been the subject o f a number o f autobiographical
novels, most notably Maria Lewitt’s “Come Spring” (1980),
Matylda Engelman’s “Journey Without End” (1977) and “The
End of the Journey” (1979), and Sheva Glas-Wiener’s “Children
o f the Ghetto” (1983), as well as of more factually-structured
memoirs. Where not directly confronted by other writers, the
Holocaust has served as a backdrop to action played out on Aus
tralian soil, as in some of the writings of Benjamin Jubal, Stan
Marks, Harry Marks and Serge Liberman. What is still in large
measure lacking, however, is the deeper discussion o f issues
thrown up to the modern generation by the Holocaust, questions
relating to God’s existence, mercy and omniscience, questions of
good and evil, of collective guilt and punishment, o f national re
demption and prophecy; in short, the timeless questions (and an
swers) that find their inspiration in our traditional sources.
EARLY BEGINNINGS
Literature by Jews in Australia did not, o f course, begin in the
peri-War years. After all, there had been Jews before that time
who had a story to tell; Jews such as Isaiah Reginald Cohen as far
back as the 1870’s, Benjamin Farjeon in a score o f books spread