Isaac and Ishmael

Steve is an ocker Aussie. Likes his footy and his four and twenty meat pies. Speaks with an accent that would make Kath and Kim wince with embarrassment and has even called one of his kids Kiely. Steve is also Jewish and I only realised this when I asked him what he thought of bacon butties as a hangover cure. He’s not a fan needless to say but he was more than willing to fill in the gaps in my simplistic mindset.

Jews have been in Australia as long as Europeans have been here. The early arrivals fulfilled the stereo-types of all those first fleeters. While the Irish on those prison ships were there for various crimes involving animals (stealing them usually as opposed to acts for which New Zealand is now famous) and the English were there for pick-pocketing and other Dickensian crimes, the occasional Jew was being punished for forgery. This made them highly sought after in the new colonies when legal documentation was in its infancy. It also made them popular among the other prisoners because they could knock together a “Ticket of Release” form in a jiffy.

Later Jewish migration followed the periodic upheavals in European history, right up to the fall of the Soviet Empire. Australia opened its doors in particular after World War II, which means that it must be the only country in the world with sizable populations of both Holocaust survivors and Nazi war criminals.

Being Irish of course, I have very little experience of meeting Jewish people. We like to pride ourselves on being the only country in Europe that didn’t persecute Jews, but the truth is we achieved this by not allowing any into the country in the first place. Until recently our only experience of Jewish people was on the pages of Ulysses. And more Irish people have been to a Bar Mitzvah than have read James Joyce’ classic about Leopold Bloom.

Nevertheless, I’ve always been fascinated by the Jewish faith. This has been inspired by my devotion to Woody Allen movies. Through Woody, I like to feel that I share in the existential neurosis of being Jewish. Steve laughed when I told him this. He said judging all Jewish people by the standards of Woody Allen would be like judging all Irish people on the activities of Father Ted.

He told me about the different communities that live here. From the secular to the Hasidic, from the Russians to the Israelis and from the ones like him who considered themselves as Australian to those who insist in speaking Yiddish and dressing like they have just walked off a 17th Century movie set. Like many secular Jews, Steve is suspicious of his Orthodox cousins. He distrusts their piety in the way that I, as a Catholic, distrust Opus Dei and Jesuits. But in the same way that the Devil makes the best music, Steve believes that the Orthodox guys are the top cooks. He suggested that I visit a bakery near where I live that does the best Matzo breakfast in Australia. The bakery is in Elsternwick which is the next suburb over. I’m in St Kilda and it doesn’t really have an ethnic majority although the recent influx of Irish backpackers is trying to change that. It could best be described as Bohemian with its eclectic mix of Italian and eastern European restaurants. It might even have people who are actually from Bohemia.

Elsternwick on the other hand is a Jewish suburb right down to the kosher section in Supermarkets and the Shul on every major intersection. It sits just on the other side of the Nepean Highway from St Kilda but it seems like continents away. Steve’s bakery is on Glenhuntly Road and the food didn’t let me down. One of the great things about living in Melbourne is the amount of fantastic places to have breakfast. I like nothing better than sitting in the window of a café on a Saturday morning and watching the world go by.

On Glenhuntly Road on a weekend morning you can sit on one side of the café window and pretend that it’s Tel Aviv or Lower Manhattan outside. The Orthodox Jews scurry along as though constantly late for an appointment. Whatever the weather is in this City of ever changing climate, they always seem to be dressed the same. Black frock coat, as seen on bouncers and undertakers, black suit with an ornamental Gartel around the waist and a wide brimmed hat keeping the rain and sun off their sumptuous beards and carefully plaited hair. And as the old Woody Allen joke goes, that’s just the women!

Their secular cousins can be found clogging the road in their gas guzzling SUVs as they scuttle between delicatessen and bakery. It’s a scene repeated in many Cities across the East coast of America and it’s indicative of the cosmopolitan nature of this City.

I brought the news of my happy breakfast back to Steve but somehow our conversation veered onto weightier matters. I made the mistake of bringing up Middle Eastern politics and that was like a red rag to a bull. For the next two hours we relived every atrocity in Israel and Lebanon in the last fifty years. Needless to say we got nowhere. Steve reckoned that if Jews didn’t exist, the Arabs would have invented them just to practice anti-Semitism.

I mentioned that Brunswick in North Melbourne is the centre of the City’s Arab population. I’d spent a wonderful Saturday morning there some months ago. We had dined on Arab cakes that day and what struck me after visiting Elsternwick was how similar they were to Jewish ones. Steve smiled and told me the story of Isaac and Ishmael. They were sons of Abraham and Isaac grew up Jewish while his brother Ishmael followed the Islamic faith. And so the troubles in the Middle East began. One thing they had in common however was that they both loved their mother’s buns.