Large Numbers Podcasts
2008-10-05 John's Baptisers: Mandaeans in Australia
Encounter
An ancient Gnostic sect which honours John the Baptist has fled persecution in the Middle East and found sanctuary in Australia. The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran bring with them a pacifist belief structure and ancient rituals based on fresh flowing water. Find out how they are grappling with their past and the challenges of Australian life in this week's Encounter. read less
Latest Episodes for this Channel
2008-10-05 John's Baptisers: Mandaeans in Australia
Sat October 04 2008
An ancient Gnostic sect which honours John the Baptist has fled persecution in the Middle East and found sanctuary in Australia. The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran bring with them a pacifist belief structure and ancient rituals based on fresh flowing water. Find out how they are grappling with their past and the challenges of Australian life in this week's Encounter. read less
2008-09-28 Music and Intimacy - A Long Street in London and Beyond
Sat September 27 2008
Susan Hawkins is an Australian composer. She is also a social worker with many years experience working with older people in London. These two worlds coincide in a rare glimpse of personal exploration into empathy and art. This Encounter also features the insights of men and women in Derby, New York and Brisbane who take the arts and compassion seriously. They join Susan in conversations about aesthetics, identity, spirituality and growing old. TRANSCRIPT: MUSIC: Pisces SUSAN HAWKINS: I´m afraid I won´t have a story to tell when I´m older. Or, if I´m more honest, that any story I did have to tell wouldn´t say anything of worth anyway. We are bombarded by stories and sounds in this media saturated society. So which stories should be told? And do people care anyway? Welcome to Encounter on ABC Radio National and a program I´ve called `Music and Intimacy - A Long Street in London and Beyond´. Sitting inside a naturally dark room across from her, I sensed her despair at her life. A loneliness that had grown stronger by the day and had bled into the dusty furniture on which we sat. She showed me photos of her husband from their early married life, reminiscing on how strong their relationship was and how they didn´t seem to need anyone else. No children, no friends. She knew that her GP was worried about how isolated she´d become, but was not interested in playing bingo, thanks anyway. I am ready to die, she says. I´ve lived long enough. Oh no, I wouldn´t do anything silly, but I´m just not interested in anything anymore. I can´t see to do any stitching or read books, and I can´t hear well enough to listen to the wireless. I´m Susan Hawkins, and a journey with my own work as a composer, sound artist and qualified social worker and an exploration with others of loss, intimacy and identity in older adults. I started my adult life as a composer, studying and working in Brisbane scoring music for primarily contemporary dance projects and musical theatre. Then I felt the need to explore internationally, and I moved to London as a newly qualified social worker. I´ve spent the last 4 and a half years working with older people while simultaneously continuing to work as a composer in Europe and North America. Now I´ve returned home to Australia to reconnect and reflect on my time away. The music you´ll hear is almost all my own work, with two pieces that I´ve collaborated with Olivia Pisani and Liz Allbee. MUSIC: Cassiopeia SUSAN HAWKINS: Why do some memories outweigh others? Trauma, joy, contentment, distress, and any other strong emotions that etch memories into muscles, image into vision. Being the one - as a social worker - who an older person can open up to and share these memories, I think is one of the most important things I´ve done in my life so far. I sometimes wonder which of my memories will survive my lifetime, and whether I would want to share them through language. I think that I´d be more content with having my music speak for itself, allowing a choice of interpretation and existence. In a way being an artist is about searching for a kind of immortality, constantly witnessing the struggle between memory and forgetting. Perhaps I would forget that I got married or had children, or forget my birthday. I might forget that I let someone in my front door 5 minutes ago, and I definitely wouldn´t remember their name or why they´re here. I might want to prove to that social worker that I can survive independently, and I certainly don´t need any help, thanks very much. A very experienced social worker once warned me that when knocking on someone´s door you´d never know what you´re about to walk in to, or the impact you´re going to have. I would remind myself of this every time I walked up the path towards a client´s home to make sure my awareness came with me off the bus that brought me there. Working for social services in the UK, or any statutory agency, carries with it a certain perception by many of members of the public that we only bring trouble and complication into people´s lives. Sure, the intrusion of an outside force with its own rules and procedures and criteria to be met always carries with it the possibility of conflict. But, if this conflict is managed in the right way, there is the possibility of really being able to empower people. This is not about `fixing´ people or their situation, but facilitating the right tools so that the person can help themselves. MUSIC: Cassiopeia MUSIC: metrics.isolation.home SUSAN HAWKINS: In some ways my work as a composer rules my life and my existence. In others, it is my social work practice that takes hold, and negotiating different systems, beliefs and ways of working. Ultimately I have a belief in the creativity of people, and have to find ways of weaving this through my personal and professional life. In some ways I live compartmentalised: my life as a social worker, my life as a composer. Ultimately it is a negotiation through both. A lot of the interactions I´ve had as a social worker remind me of the nearness of others - the shared humanity, the need for understanding, the need for an acknowledgment of our own uniqueness. I think that the intimacy of such interactions supports and propels the human condition, and shows that often beauty lies in the simplicity of small things. In the same way, the experience of music can start investigating that intimacy. The relative nearness of a musical texture or harmonic phrase can uplift, or console, or trigger emotions that can´t be put into words. The music I write not only functions as self-expression, but also correlates the triadic relationship between the listener, the performer and myself. MUSIC: that reminds me SUSAN HAWKINS: I composed that piece which I´ve called `that reminds me´ since I´ve returned from London. I´ve just met The Reverend Jenny Tymms is a Minister of the Word with the Uniting Church in Queensland. She has a keen understanding and passion for music in the church setting and in the broader spiritual domain. REV. JENNY TYMMS: Music, and music and words, I think are part of our very being. Peoples all round the world make music, we make it all kinds of ways. We our bodies with rhythm and clapping; we use our voices. I think it´s a way of giving voice to a whole range of emotions. It helps us to feel that we are participating in the whole of life, in the whole of creation - there´s a sense in which, certainly from my faith tradition, the universe was created by the voice of God, and maybe not just words, but I´d like to think it´s also through sound and music and so we are all participating in the song of life if you like. When we talk about music in the church we inevitably also have to talk about song because the Christian church, particularly the Western Christian church, and the church from which I come, is a singing church if you like. And when we gather in worship, part of being able to worship is being to lay our whole selves, our joys, our brokenness before God and with one another, and we do that by joining together in hymnody and song. So it´s an opportunity to use our whole selves - our body, our minds and our breath and our words to join together. MUSIC: moving faces REV. JENNY TYMMS: Music and song in the church setting carries multiple meanings and purposes. It´s a way of gathering together, joining from our isolation to join together. It´s about participation. Through music and song we can bypass our brains and touch our deeper selves, our emotions whether they be emotions of joy or thanksgiving or confession. It enables us to empathise with the feelings of others that we might not have ourselves simply by singing songs that might be songs of lament. Singing can be a memory trigger so that what we learn by repetition and singing and listening together in worship we will find during the rest of our days triggers, memories will emerge and often with the music comes the words, and those words will often be words of prayer. So, music carries you into different spaces and through different places, both on your own and together SUSAN HAWKINS: That was The Reverend Jenny Tymms from the Uniting Church. Fiona Vance is a registered music therapist and she made the decision to apply her passion for music in a professional context. What is the difference between social work and music therapy in her experience? FIONA VANCE: Well, music therapy is the use of music as a vehicle to help people attain and maintain their health and well being, so music is basically the active agent, if you like, within a therapeutic relationship, which helps people to express themselves and also to attain and maintain health and well being across the different spheres of human experience. It can address physical needs, social needs, emotional needs, psychological needs and spiritual needs. I´ve worked in number of different settings with older adults. I´ve worked in palliative care, and within palliative care there was a real opportunity to work in a more in depth way with people, and I also got to see really clearly just how music therapy was a very powerful way of connecting people who were at the end of their life with their families and loved ones. We used to have joint music therapy sessions and I always remember one woman, she was 69 - she basically had end stage renal failure, and I always remember doing a session with her and her daughter and just went to her home and just during the session it was a really lovely occasion where she was basically choosing the songs, and they were songs from her young adult years. They were also songs that her daughter remembered her singing around the house and so they were songs that basically had memories for both of them. And we´d sing those songs and they´d reminisce, and it was just a really lovely way of connecting people. And I think that particularly when you´re dealing with people who have had long-standing illnesses, family members can sometimes not know what to say to them. It can be quite awkward at times, or sometimes there´s nothing to say. So it can actually be a really lovely way of facilitating communication and interaction between people when they´ve got a shared activity, like sharing music. MUSIC: moving faces continues FIONA VANCE: It´s deepened my existential understanding, and I think really working with people at the end of their lives, or who are approaching the end of life, has made me realise that there is an end to life and it´s really brought home our mortality, my own mortality, and the fact that life is precious and that it´s certainly encouraged me to be mindful of my life and not to waste time and to take the opportunities that I´ve got. SUSAN HAWKINS: That was Fiona Vance reflecting on the impact of Music Therapy on her own life and with people who have experienced illness and loss. Peter Oakley is aged 80 and ¾ and has just released a single with a group called the Zimmers in the UK. As well as a life of being in the British Forces in WWII and later a motorcycle mechanic, Peter is now also known as the `youtube granddad´ and shares his life with an international internet audience. I spoke with Peter about his experiences with the Zimmers. MUSIC: sleep PETER OAKLEY: The BBC did a series of programs called `Power to the People´ and in the third program Tim Samuels the producer was looking at the life of old people, some of whom had been denied some privileges and had lost facilities; some of whom were in old peoples home and were very sort of sadly abused and mistreated and of course he was very upset about this and he came up with the, what seemed a crazy idea at the time, to get together some of the people he had already met, and some other people together - 40 of us in total - to do a rock´n´roll record of a song called `My Generation´ by The Who, and that is what we did. It has been very successful. It was recorded in Abbey Road studios in London, those very famous studios where the Beatles and anybody in the music world has been, and their videos of it by top class producers and the record went out to the world. MUSIC: sleep SUSAN HAWKINS: More from Peter Oakley soon on the significance of his musical adventures. This is Encounter on ABC Radio National. Music and Intimacy: A Long Street in London and Beyond, and I´m talking now with Ruth Sergel, a New York based artist who has made award-winning films working with people from communities which have no acting experience. RUTH SERGEL: Well, I have to say, before I made documentaries I made fiction films, but I made them with casts of real people, people who had not performed before. I would write the script and then spend many weeks workshopping the ideas with the communities represented in the script. For example, my last film `Belle´ I workshopped with a group of 80-93-year-old women and for me it was to both train them how to perform on a film set, but also for me to learn what their actual concerns were and where I may have been ignorant in what I had expected, and through that workshop process I was able to re-write the script to more accurately portray their real world. The process of working with these people who have not performed before is a funny mixture. I never show them the script ahead of time, I just tell them the story of the piece and then we meet each work to workshop the themes of the work. So we would meet, for example, with these older women, to workshop and do theatre games and discussion about loneliness, about body image, about sexuality, about community. And through that I would videotape the sessions and then when I re-write the script I would integrate a lot of their language in to the final script that we would use. But when we got to the actual filming of the script, it was very traditional 35 millimetre film shoot, which in a certain sense through them off because it was not the safe atmosphere of the workshop, but in some ways made them very fierce in their determination to portray the truth of their characters, so in the end I think it served the work very well. SUSAN HAWKINS: Ruth Sergel. MUSIC: comix SUSAN HAWKINS: Unlike the visual environment, music and sound can be abstract, yet at the same time our minds constantly attempt to identify a recognisable sound source and the meaning that it might convey. The composer walks a fine line between the abstract and communicative. From the composer´s viewpoint, this is the inner world occupies both the temporal and communal spaces. MUSIC: Wanderlust REV JENNY TYMMS: I believe that when music has been created and is then played or shared by people from the deepest parts of themselves it sets up a kind of resonance like the note on a string. It actually connects with us who both hear the creativity of the musicians and the artist, and even if we´re not necessarily singing or playing ourselves, we are called in to participation so there´s a great sense of intimacy down through the ages I think when music is played, if it´s music that comes from that deep and authentic true self. This is going to sound strange, but one of the most profoundest things that music can do for me is to take me into the silence beyond the music. So it can be like walking through a door into a different kind of space. MUSIC: you behind me REV. JENNY TYMS: In various contexts, in prayer, on retreat or when we are seeking to find God in deeper ways, we´ll often use music in a way that will just taper off, so we can start with music and it can acknowledge our sense of sometimes clammer and noise, but in tapering off music that can take us in to a more quieter, spacious place, so it´s ironic isn´t it that music can also be the window into the absences, the mystery, the silence, that I believe sits at the heart of all things. SUSAN HAWKINS: That was The Reverend Jenny Tymms, and you´re listening to Encounter on ABC Radio National with me, Susan Hawkins. I´m a social worker and composer looking at ideas of intimacy, loss and identity. MUSIC: the childhood machine SUSAN HAWKINS: Back in London, the wind seemed stronger and more aggressive than usual. I feel the cold easily, and am particularly uneasy when the wind blows strongly. Something about its inconsistency, its transience, its weightlessness. Coupled with the oppressiveness of low grey cloud and the constant threat of rain, I could feel the darker side of Satie´s piano works seeping through my headphones. Wrapping them up in preparation of arrival at the client´s house, I stopped to check that I had found the right place. I realised that I had been close to here before, having seen another client only 2 or 3 streets away just last week. Artist Ruth Sergel recently worked with a community of older women in New York, making both fiction films and non-fiction interactive documentaries. Ruth comments on the importance of creating work that deepens her understanding of social issues. RUTH SERGEL: There´s a lot to the process of making creative work and the process of not being overwhelmed by judging it as good or bad, but being always can I go deeper, can I go one layer down this a little bit more and a little bit more and I feel like muscles that need to be built by the artist and that kind of work is not as present, I think, in new media work as it hopefully one day will be. All of the projects I make develop out of concerns, ideas, that I´m trying to grapple with and I try to find ways to reach out to people and through the community we create figure out some of what´s going on. And I can see that a lot in that many of these communities last well beyond the life of any particular art project. I was extremely fortunate in finding the older women who are in `Belle´. I contacted, or, a friend of mine actually contacted an organisation here in New York called Elders Share the Arts who do art programs all over the city and when I called and told them about the project and that we be dealing with racism, that we would be dealing with nudity, I was really afraid they were going to hang up on me, but instead they said `Oh, we know just the group for you´, and they sent me to a wonderful woman called Marcia Gilden, who was running an autobiographical theatre workshop in a Senior Centre for a housing project in Chelsea, Manhattan, and I went and met her group and met her and she was kind enough, after having done a year work with these women, to let me step in a pull them out for a brief period to work on this film. Originally I thought that they would be just sort of the background characters of the project, but as I got to know Ethel Greenbaum more and more it was clear she had to be Belle. SUSAN HAWKINS: That was Ruth Sergel speaking about her film, Belle, which looked at issues including identity, ethnicity, sexuality and discrimination in older women. The Reverend Jenny Tymms describes her experience of working with older Indigenous women in Alice Springs through song and prayer. REV. JENNY TYMMS: I remember I was a student minister in Alice Springs and part of my role was to provide worship services in aged care facilities and I remember walking in with a group of very elderly women who didn´t speak English and who didn´t appear to understand what was going on and I didn´t know what to do, but I prayed a little and then I just started to sing some of the old songs from the Hymn book and to my astonishment the women joined in and sang with me, and that was an extraordinarily moving experience for me because it spoke to me of the power of song, the power of memory, the power of music to tap down deep beyond surface dilemmas and difficulties. I think breaking out in song was a sense of what do I do, how do I connect, is there a way to connecting with these women, conscious that it was a very ambiguous kind of context because these were women who were acculturated in to the church probably through missions and that would have been a very ambiguous experience for them , and yet aqt the same time I´d been told that these particular women who´d been gathered together for the service valued what they had learned. And so for me it was a sense of even if they don´t know what I´m doing, I, in my own worship and my offering of these old hymns would somehow be able to carry them into God through my own worship. And so to just start singing with no accompaniment and to then discover suddenly that there was a sense in which the women suddenly knew where they were, that they knew what they were doing, that they knew what they were singing, and that they were participating with a sense of joy was quite profound. MUSIC: Bleeding_a_part SUSAN HAWKINS: The rain is beating so hard now that I have to hold my umbrella at an angle to keep even just the top part of myself dry. It´s these days I wish I had a car, and was able to drive from one location to the other. Nonetheless, I fight the rain and continue to Queen Mary´s Hospital, a rehabilitation hospital in southwest London. I can´t count the number of times that I have met sons and daughters of older people who, for whatever reason, can´t return to their homes in the community. Generally people go to rehab following a stay in the acute hospital ward. Maybe they´ve broken a hip, or had an amputation, or are on that line of what some medical professionals call `acopia´ - the inability to cope at home. I find this kind of diagnosis completely unacceptable, as there are many reasons that someone can´t cope in their own home environment. By the time I´ve met them here, they had probably been admitted 6 or 8 weeks previously. The multi-disciplinary team will have now assessed that this person is no longer safe to return home, and an alternative needs to be found. This alternative is most likely a care home. Each time I´ve needed to discuss the move from home into a care facility, it´s been really important to walk very gently with the person in this process. A lot of people react with fear - fear of losing their home, their independence, their memories of a lived life. Very occasionally the person is looking forward to being looked after, which is often a great relief for them, and their family. I think of myself in that vulnerable position and realising that this will be the final phase of my life, and how I would want to be treated in that situation. I used to dread that walk from the bus to the hospital, and not only because it was about a mile long - but it was also long enough to ponder the depth and intensity of the impending discussion, the one where you try to make a person understand that they can´t go home, it´s no longer safe for them there. Finding that balance between the systemic requirements for things like financial assessment forms with the process of assisting someone cope with such a huge change to their life, and how to facilitate this person feel like they have some control over these decisions, was always a delicate line. FIONA VANCE: There are so many losses that older adults face, particularly when they´re admitted in to aged care facilities. Losses on every level of functioning and every level of themselves and their experience in the world and other people. And I think that working with them has made me aware of the power of music to act as a vehicle for emotional self expression and for the expression of feelings of grief and loss, and so I think that in my own artistic practice music is definitely a vehicle for my experiences of grief and loss and definitely in my work the grief that you witness has an impact on you, and that´d where it´s important to have professional supervision, but also it´s helped to form the person that I am, my therapeutic experiences have helped to form the person that I am and this comes out in the songs that I write Music is a preverbal and sometimes non-verbal form of communication and it basically pre-dates the ability for language. It´s processed by many different parts of the brain, whereas language tends to be processed by a central, by one particular centre within the brain. The elements of music like rhythm and pitch and harmony are all processed in different parts of the brain and emotions are tied in with music, which means that the limbic system is activated and Oliver Sacks, he basically has said that we listen to music with our muscles and that the arousal is in the brain stem and the dynamic registers are processed in the basal ganglia, and so music basically is being received and processed at that brain stem level which means that people who are in advanced stages of dementia can still process and enjoy and respond to music. And it´s really amazing when you see that, like when you´re working with people with dementia, and particularly advanced stage dementia, and you see their eyes light up because they can remember the song. Evidently the last traces to go are the memories of music and pets, and so people will forget people before they´ll forget music, familiar music, or pets. You´ll also see sometimes people start to sing, and this people in advanced stages of dementia, you´ll see them tap their foot, tap their fingers in time to the music, and you´ll see them open up in a way that you don´t ordinarily see and often times it´s been noted by a lot of people that people who have had damage - they´ve had strokes, they´ve had their language centres, they can no longer speak, but they can still sing. And Oliver Sacks in his book also talks about people who can no longer walk but they can dance, they can move to music, and basically just sort of highlighting how functioning can increase in response to music in a way that you don´t ordinarily see and that you don´t see in response to other stimuli. SUSAN HAWKINS: That was Fiona Vance. Peter Oakley is a member of the Zimmers, a band made up of older people aged between 65 and 101 in the UK and they´ve just released an album titled `Lust for Life´. Peter comments on what the music he creates means to him. PETER OAKLEY: Well, excitement, interest, but music is such a natural common thing that everybody likes and I couldn´t think that I could live without music so sometimes I might sit down with a CD and listen to it all and be moved by it, other times my radio may be going on all day long and I would prick my ears up at something that particularly attracted me but a world without music would seem a very bland place. And so to be involved in the making of music, well, is wonderful and I can´t think of the right adjectives. There is a motif behind it, in that we are trying to present ourselves to get that message out there that yes, we are old, but we´re not dead yet and we have something to contribute to society and hopefully people will recognise that. MUSIC: mine1and2 SUSAN HAWKINS: Peter Oakley. In London, the bus route 65 takes the long way around Richmond Park from Kingston, through Ham. Some parts of Ham you can walk for half an hour through the streets and not see a soul, like a living ghost town. Even the High St is deserted. The bus follows the perimeter of the park for most of the way, past expensive houses on one side of the street and council estates on the other. This kind of juxtaposed class distinction always confused me about London, in particular with older people who may have spent their whole lives confined to their class, and ultimately end up sharing the facilities of an aged care home. Every time I saw Mr B, I came away with a heavy heart. It´s not that his story was any more sad than others I had met, but he carried with him a profound sense of sadness and grief. He had been stuck up on the 5th floor of his council building since the lift had broken down a month ago. His family would visit sometimes and worry about the state of his flat, everything beginning to be run down, food rotting, stains on the walls. There was a woman staying there now, a woman half his age, known to the rest of the building. She´d been evicted from her flat for engaging in suspicious activities, and he´d thought that he´d like the company. His memory had worsened though, and she was taking advantage of his vulnerability, his loneliness and his dementia. He carried a framed photo of his wife, who´d died in the 1970s, although her death was as new and fresh to him today as it was 30 years ago. Tears welled in his eyes if she was brought up in conversation, and a guilt felt that he was unable to control, even though he was not responsible for her death. His dementia had rooted his mind strongly in that traumatic time, and his daily experience was now full of grief for his wife. He did not remember he had married again and had another son 10 years later. When he was placed in a care home it had been assessed by the multi-disciplinary team that Mr B didn´t have the capacity to make decisions about his own care, and that it would be unsafe for him to return to the community. To this day he believes that his flat burnt down, and that he is staying only until a replacement block of flats is built. As much as I initially thought compartmentalisation was the way to keep my lives as a social worker and composer separate, I learnt quickly that this wasn´t always going to be as easy as it seemed, the issue being the amount of emotional and spiritual space that both of these activities take. It´s a good lesson in creating boundaries, but allowing them to blur is a much more interesting prospect in terms of deepening my understanding of myself and others and the world in general. Perhaps it´s a form of human beauty that I am pursuing, in terms of connecting with people on that very personal level and developing a sense of a shared understanding. For me, it´s the centre of my own spirituality. MUSIC: lullaby SUSAN HAWKINS: Even my music I think is starting to explore the idea of memory and forgetting, although saturating music with image is not what I mean to do. Music I believe holds a different source, applies different connections in the brain, and has the power to soothe, question, evoke. People throughout the centuries have thought about the impact of music on emotion and its connection with memory. Even Tennessee Williams said mid-last century that `in memory everything seems to happen to music´. For me, music holds the key to understanding and empathy. The Reverend Jenny Tymms and music in the Uniting Church REV. JENNY TYMMS: Yes, hymnody, originally we sang the Psalms. The Psalms, like the prayer book of the people and in the Psalms the whole gamut of human emotions are offered to God, from joy, rage, despair, sense of abandonment, and they´ve been put to song and so in that sense when we sing we express the whole range of who we are and offer the whole range of who we are to God, and because we are singing together we´re offering it to one another as well in community. Not only do our good hymns and songs trigger memory, they trigger the hope for the future as well, so when I say trigger memory, it´s not just our own personal memories, it´s in fact our collective memory as the people of God so we retell the stories of what God has done for us in song but we also sing songs of hope where we sing of a world made new; of a time when people are included, are fed, are cared for, which is why the words are really important so song can trigger our resolve and commitment to be part of the coming reign of God, the change, the transformation we are called to be part of so it carries both our past and our future. SUSAN HAWKINS: That was The Reverend Jenny Tymms. Dr Steve Dillon is a senior lecturer in music and sound at the Queensland University of Technology, and is recognised as a leading researcher in the field of positive effects of school and community music programs. He´s also recently published a book titled `Music, Meaning and Transformation´. Steve comments on the connection between music and spirituality, as he understands it. DR. STEVE DILLON: We need to have music present in the conversation about music because we´re constantly talking about music, but music is not present in the conversation and when we do have music present in the conversation we say less. Music itself is a spiritual pursuit and music connects us to our spiritual beliefs. It´s a very, very powerful understanding to see that in various cultures, even brief insights like that. The known qualities of music to actually bring people together and simple concepts, concepts that relate to time. For instance, repetition of rhythm helps us to lose track of time and then absence of rhythm also helps us lose track of time too so both of those kind of extremes of measurement or non-measurement of time often give us a transcendent experience. FIONA VANCE: People have, can have, an amazing capacity to transcend suffering and their religious or spiritual connection to God can really help them to transcend suffering and to see the meaning and value in their life even when they´re going through really difficult experiences. One particular person comes to mind, where she was someone who had obviously loved music and in fact talking to family bore this out, that she had been someone who had never had the opportunity to learn music but she loved music and used to always listen to the radio, have music on in the house, she´d often be singing around home. When I first started working with her she was in the mid to late stages of Alzheimer´s Disease and she was able to sing in the music therapy sessions. In fact I was amazed, she´d see me walk in the unit and she´d immediately begin singing and she loved the music therapy sessions and she would be able to sing, she´d remember all the words to the songs, it was incredible. You know, she was just a star when it came to remembering song lyrics and as her disease progressed, I saw how she didn´t have as ready access to remembering song lyrics but the music was still familiar to her and in terms of her anxiety and agitation she´d really calmed down, noticeably calmed down in the music therapy sessions because the songs were familiar and that was comforting for her. And then when she gradually lost the ability to speak she could still sing, and in fact outside of the music therapy sessions she drove everyone mad because she used to sing all the time and evidently she´d wake up in the middle of the night and she´d be singing, and she´d be walking up and down the corridors singing. So singing was a form of communication, a way of hearing her own voice and a way of communicating or trying to communicate with other people that didn´t leave her. MUSIC: bootes SUSAN HAWKINS: That was Fiona Vance, a registered music therapist in Brisbane. I asked Peter Oakley whether he felt that singing reinforced or created a new sense of his identity PETER OAKLEY: The song that I choose which is called `Old and Wise´ was very suitable for my personality and I don´t feel I could have done something that wasn´t in a different way, so yes, I suppose it does. SUSAN HAWKINS: The spiritual and intimate space that music holds is well known and wonderfully unquantifiable. I hold the ultimate regard for the power of music, that music is both the beginning and the end of existence. My own life is intrinsically musical, and I believe it will remain that way. Music composition as a metaphor for communication and a form of intimacy with its contours that are familiar but new will continue to develop alongside my other life as a social worker. The gaps in between definitely keep me searching. MUSIC: puntos SUSAN HAWKINS: You´ve been listening to Encounter on ABC Radio National. Thank you to my guests - The Reverend Jenny Tymms, Ruth Sergel, Fiona Vance, Peter Oakley and Dr Steve Dillon for sharing their thoughts and experiences. All of the music you heard during the program was written by my self, with the exception of `moving faces´, and `I sleep walk through windows´ written in collaboration with Olivia Pisani, and `pisces´ - written in collaboration with Liz Allbee. Technical production Peter McMurray, Jim Ussher, and Costa Zouliou. Thank you also to Series producer, Florence Spurling. For links and further information about this week´s program, visit the Encounter website at www.abc.net.au/religion where audio streaming, podcast and transcript details, including the full transcript of the Reverend Jenny Tymms full conversation, are all available. MUSIC: Pisces Thanks for your company on this week´s Encounter. I´m Susan Hawkins. Jenny Tymms Interview - full transcript Interviewer: Thanks for joining me Jenny, I really appreciate your input in the end of the program. Jenny Tymms: It´s my pleasure Interviewer: I just wanted to start by asking whether you can describe your journey to bring you where you are in the church today. Jenny Tymms: I was brought up in the church. I was a Presbyterian girl until I left school at 16 and left home and left the church, and I suppose I was a typical baby-boomer and thought that I could continue my relationship with God on my own and in private. By about the age of 30 I think I was a bit like a coal that had fallen out of the fire and was growing cold, and so I plucked up courage and went back to what had become the Uniting Church. And in the end I threw in my legal career and studied theology and I´m now a Minster of the Word within the Uniting Church and have been for 15 years. Interviewer: And you´re actually a member of the board of the Uniting Church as well, aren´t you. Jenny Tymms: I work for the synod of the Uniting Church in Queensland, which covers the state, and I´m a mission consultant and my particular role is discipleship formation and spirituality. So I help ministers and congregations engage what it means to follow Christ and to grow in the likeness of Christ and to explore their mission in the world. Interviewer: So, Jenny, what do you see is the role that music plays within your congregation and the community? Jenny Tymms: Well, when we talk about music in the church we inevitably also have to talk about song because the Christian church, particularly the Western Christian church and the church from which I come is a singing church, and when we gather in worship, part of being able to worship is to lay our whole selves, our joys, our brokenness before God and with one another, and we do that by joining together in hymnody and in song. So it´s an opportunity to use our whole selves, our bodies and our minds and our breath and our words to join together. Interviewer: So can you describe to me if there are multiple functions of music within the church setting? Jenny Tymms: Music and song in the church setting carries multiple meanings and purposes. It´s a way of gathering together, joining from our isolation to join together, it´s about participation. Through music and song often we can bypass our brains and touch our deeper selves, our emotions, whether they be emotions of joy or thanksgiving or confession. It enables us to empathise with the feelings of others that we might not have ourselves, simply by singing songs that might be songs of lament. Singing can be a memory trigger so that what we learn by repetition and singing and listening together in worship we will find during the rest of our days that triggers, memories will emerge, and often with the music comes the words, and those words will often be words of prayer. So music carries you into different spaces and through different places, both on your own and together. Interviewer: There´s a real sense of community and participation with what you were just describing. Are there particular parts within the service or...the communality of music, have you seen that bring people together, or how have you seen that bring people together? Jenny Tymms: It does in a whole variety of ways and often in unexpected places. I remember I was a student minister in Alice Springs and part of my role was to provide worship services in aged care facilities. I remember walking in with a group of very elderly women who didn´t speak English and who didn´t appear to understand what was going on, and I didn´t know what to do but I prayed a little and then I just started to sing some of the old songs from the hymn book, and to my astonishment the women joined in and sang with me. That was an extraordinarily moving experience for me because it spoke to me of the power of song, the power of memory, the power of music to tap down deep beyond surface dilemmas and difficulties. Interviewer: So in that way, how do you see music as contributing to a personal and spiritual identity? Jenny Tymms: Music, and music and words are part of our very being. Peoples all around the world make music. We make it in all kinds of ways. We use our bodies with rhythm and clapping or we use our voices. I think it´s a way of giving voice to a whole range of emotions. It helps us to feel that we are participating in the whole of life, in the whole of creation. There´s a sense in which, certainly from my faith tradition, the universe was created by the voice of God, and maybe not just words but I like to think it´s also through sound and music. So we are all participating in the song of life, if you like. Interviewer: The other day we were speaking and you were describing the metaphors of the church. Can you describe that to me again? Jenny Tymms: The beginning of our stories about God are `In the beginning was the word, and the word was God and the word was with God and God created human beings´. And when we read the very early stories of our creation as human beings, it´s God making us whole human beings, not just from the earth but by breathing God´s breath into us. So the language of breath is also the language of spirit, and so in a way when we sing we are using the breath, when we speak or play the flute we are using the breath, and in that sense you could say we are participating in the song of God or in God´s creation. Part of our liturgy is when we say `We join in praise with the choirs of angels and the whole of creation in the eternal hymn´, so it´s a kind of sense in which singing and music is one of the most profound ways in which we can acknowledge to whom we belong, and that is God, the Lord of song, if you like. Interviewer: Can you describe a little bit the significance in hymnody of emotional connection? Jenny Tymms: Yes, hymnody...originally we sang the psalms. The psalms are like the prayer book of the people, and in the psalms the whole gamut of human emotions are offered to God, from joy, rage, despair, sense of abandonment, and they´ve been put to song. So in that sense, when we sing we express the whole range of who we are and offer the whole range of who we are to God, and because we are singing it together we are offering it to one another as well in community. Interviewer: Can you describe a scenario where you´ve seen music play a part in connecting people and their experiences, particularly in times of loss? Jenny Tymms: I think when we perform funerals and in having conversations with families who have suffered that loss, very often one of the profound things is in the selection of the music, in the selection of the song, because of course songs carry memories and when songs are sung all the memories of a person or a place or a context come to the surface. So in the choice of songs in funerals, a person who has died can become present once again. Or in singing songs of grief we are able to say goodbye to people and context through the expression of our sorrow, and sometimes that´s very hard to speak about. I think men in particular often find it hard to give voice to their full feelings and often it´s through hearing song that their deeper selves can be touched in ways that can be healing. Interviewer: Just connected with that, can you comment on the idea of intimacy? What you were just describing suggests quite a strong form of intimacy between people and the music. Can you comment on that kind of human connection with music and the intimacy that arrises? Jenny Tymms: I believe that when music has been created and then is played or shared by people from the deepest parts of themselves, it sets up a kind of resonance, like the note on a string, it actually connects with us, who both hear the creativity of the musicians and the artist. And even if we´re not necessarily singing ourselves or playing ourselves, we are called into participation. So there´s a great sense of intimacy down through the ages, I think, when music is played, if it´s music that comes from that deep and authentic and true self. Interviewer: You spoke, again, the other day about music being a carrier to God. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Jenny Tymms: The primary context in which, from my tradition, we use music and we sing is in the context of worship in which we name to whom we belong and we sing songs of joy and thanksgiving, so in that sense when we are singing we are orienting ourselves once more to God. It is, I think, a very countercultural practice because we are no longer living just for ourselves or out of our own strength but in the presence and facing towards God, if you like. So our singing is like lifting our voices to the `other´ who is in our midst, and that´s a very powerful and releasing experience. Interviewer: Jenny, how has your own connection with music deepened your spiritual understanding? Jenny Tymms: That´s a very difficult question because there are times when I immerse myself in music and other times when I don´t. So, this is going to sound strange, but one of the profoundest things that music can do for me is actually take me into the silence beyond the music. So it can be like walking through a door into a different kind of space. Interviewer: That´s a beautiful metaphor for a spiritual space which it can take you to and it being the carrier to get you there. Jenny Tymms: And we do, in various contexts, in prayer and on retreat or when we´re seeking to find God in deeper ways, we´ll often use music in a way that will just taper off. So we can start with music and it acknowledges our sense of sometimes clamour and noise, but in tapering off music, that can take us into a much quieter, spacious place. So it´s ironic, isn´t it, that music can also be the window in the absences, the mystery, the silence that I believe sits at the heart of all things. Interviewer: Carrying that dual function of the communality and the intentionally intensely personal and spiritual spaces as well. Jenny Tymms: Yes, that´s right. Interviewer: Is there any other metaphors or any other aspects of particularly the music´s role in the church and spirituality that you´d like to share? Jenny Tymms: I´m reminded of the countercultural and rather revolutionary work of John and Charles Wesley back in the early to mid 1700s when they took music that was unaccompanied sung hymnody psalms, and in their desire to bring God to people who no longer felt comfortable with church, they developed music from pub tunes and very secular music and livened it up and made it boisterous, and put words to these very boisterous, vigorous songs that were the carriers of their theology. So they began to sing about sinners being saved and the grace of God, and of course it was not at all acceptable at the time but was a vehicle for bringing God into places where God seemed absent. I think we can learn a lot from that today in terms of the kind of revolutionary, vigorous, social justice oriented music that can change lives, and so we´d better sing and listen to songs that are life-changing because they are the things that we often remember and can hold us together in interesting times. Interviewer: How does that connect in with the intergenerational music wars that we spoke about? Jenny Tymms: We do sometimes talk about the music wars in church because younger people are wanting to have music that they can sing, that is more akin to the music they hear on the radio. Our older people are often more familiar with the older hymns that, mind you, have slowed down over the years, they´ve tended to get slower and slower. They didn´t start off slow. And songs and hymns are carriers of theology and there are different belief systems that are often played out through the songs we sing, and so often the fights about music and song that should be sung in church are not just about the music but about; what are we saying about God? What are we saying about ourselves when we sing these hymns? Yes, it´s an interesting process that we go though in trying to work out what is acceptable and what´s not, what carries what we really want to carry, and what do we need to leave behind. Interviewer: And is there also an argument in there about the communal versus the private forms of faith? Jenny Tymms: Yes, one of the more recent debates is a growing critique about songs that are sung in church that talk about `my Jesus´, `my Saviour´, `my experience´, because we each come with our own experience, but when we join together in song it is primarily a communal experience. So throughout our religious texts and throughout our earlier songs it´s `our Lord´, `our Jesus´, `our God´, us together. And so there is a conversation around the over-individualisation of our faith, and so that becomes private and separate when at the heart of our faith is that it´s about the whole body of God which is all people together. Interviewer: You mentioned before, when people sing they make their connection with the music and the words to trigger memory. Is there any more that you can comment on that? Jenny Tymms: Not only do our good hymns and songs trigger memory, they trigger the hope for the future as well. So when I say `trigger memory´ it´s not just our own personal memories, it´s in fact our collective memory as the people of God. So we retell the stories of what God has done for us in song. But we also sing songs of hope where we sing of a world made new, of a time when all people are included, are fed, are cared for, which is why the words are really important. So song can trigger our resolve and our commitment to be part of the coming reign of God, the change, the transformation that we are called to be part of. So it carries both our past and our future. Interviewer: To go back to your experience with the older people in Alice Springs, can you describe how that situation came about? Jenny Tymms: I was rostered to go every fortnight or every three weeks to one of the homes in Alice Springs, primarily where older indigenous women lived. So English was their third, fourth language. They were suffering from Alzheimer´s, and I think breaking out in song was a sense of `What do I do, how do I connect, is there a way of connecting with these women´, conscious that it was a very ambiguous kind of context because these were women who were acculturated into the Christian church, probably through missions, and that would have been a very ambiguous experience for them. And yet at the same time I´d been told that these particular women who´d been gathered together for the service valued what they had learned. And so for me it was a sense of even if they don´t know what I´m doing, I in my worship and in my offering of these old hymns would somehow be able to carry them into God through my own worship. And so to just start singing, with no accompaniment, and then to discover suddenly that there was a sense in which the women suddenly knew where they were, that they knew what they were doing, that they knew what they were singing and that they were participating with a sense of joy was quite profound. Interviewer: Was that your first experience of meeting people, being around people with dementia or Alzheimer´s who have lost a lot of their verbal communication skills and they´re left with music and still can get that moment of clarity with music? Jenny Tymms: That was my first time, and it´s interesting that since then I have spoken to a number of ministers who have been in similar contexts and have told similar stories around the clearing of the fog that comes through music. One of my friends told me that he could sit some music on a piano and a man who was quite withdrawn and not overly conscious of who he was and where he was could place his hands on the keyboard and play. He could remember when all else seemed to have gone. So that seems to speak to me of something quite profound about what happens with music. Interviewer: Yes, and especially when it´s put into a worship function of music as well, it´s interesting that these people would still be able to remember the words of the hymns and still be able to connect with their faith in that way, if that´s possible. Jenny Tymms: Yes, it is, which raises a completely differently point that we haven´t talked about at all but which I think is really important and that is because of it´s power, it´s potential for abuse and manipulation. So how often do we, when we´re going about our ordinary life, in fact what we remember are the advertising jingles and the words of an advertisement, sometimes just as readily as we might remember a song of praise or thanksgiving to God. Because of the way in which we remember music and song and because it can tap into our emotions can be a means for manipulation and we do need to be very careful about that, both in our wider world and in the context of worship and spirituality. We can misuse this great gift as well as use it as a vehicle for something that´s pure and good. Interviewer: Yes, it´s interesting that a lot of the composers that do a lot of the jingles have to have that understanding of human psychology and emotive behaviour and understand what the hooks are and what people will remember. I wonder actually if John Wesley did the same thing in some ways. Jenny Tymms: Oh he did, and he gave very clear instructions to people because he wanted his songs to be the carriers of his new theology; they had to learn it, they had to sing it all without parts missing or change, they weren´t to change it because he was seeking to form a people with a new kind of consciousness about God and about themselves. His hymns were a key part of his ministry in this way. Interviewer: You mentioned that they´ve all slowed down now as time has gone on... Jenny Tymms: Yes. Interviewer: ...and have become a little bit of a dirge along the way. How do you see that changing in the future? Jenny Tymms: This is maybe a bit naughty to say this but I think it will happen when the organs disappear and we continue to take up contemporary instruments again, because our hymns were originally devised to be sung with guitars and drums and lutes and were very rollicking. And it was when the pipe organs were the new instrument that they took over, and simply because of the mechanics of how you play those instruments the music was slowed down and I think over a period of time it´s got slower and slower. There´s a place for slow music, where what you are seeking to sing is reflective. But when the words of the hymns are about joy and abundant life and creativity, there´s a sense in which it needs to be more upbeat. That´s already happening, that´s happening now with contemporary drums and guitars and so on in church. Interviewer: And is that an influence also of other disciplines of faith in terms of using contemporary music and how that´s used? Jenny Tymms: I think what happens is that we´re always seeking to make the connections between what we do in worship and what is in the world, and so there´s a flow and I think there needs to be a flow, and I think music and instruments in the songs we sing are a carrier of contemporary culture, and it can move both ways, both from within our context of worship but back out into the world. We need to learn and listen, listen, listen to what´s happening in the world, and part of that is the songs that we can sing in new ways, singing new songs, new forms of expressions of faith. Interviewer: What would you like to imagine the music would be that would carry you into old age? Jenny Tymms: One of the most profound songs that I´ve heard in recent years is from the Choir of Hard Knocks, and it´s the song called `Hallelujah´ where the words there as well as the music for me in some ways captures who I´d like to be or what I´d like to believe as I grow older. There are phrases like...I don´t know whether you remember...`There´s a blaze of light in every word, it doesn´t matter what you´ve heard, the holy or the broken, hallelujah´. There´s another line, `And even though it all went wrong, I´ll stand before the Lord of song with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah´. So there´s a sense in which no matter what life throws up, the `hallelujah´ is sung, whether it be broken or holy, the kind of sense of the whole of life, both suffering and joy, somehow coming together, and the courage to sing `hallelujah´ though it all...that´s how I´d like to go into old age. Interviewer: What a fantastic note to end on. Thank you very much, Jenny. read less
2008-09-21 Ties That Bind: Jewish Australians and New Zealanders in Israel
Sat September 20 2008
On the occasion of Israel's 60th anniversary and the opening of the Australian Memorial Park in Be'er Sheva, commemorating the Australian Light Horse Brigade in World War 1, Rachael Kohn travels with a group of Australian and New Zealander Jews to Israel. The spiritual leader of the group is Rabbi John Levi, AM, who reflects on the profound Australian ties to Israel. Members of the group relate their spiritual, familial and historical connection to Israel, and in the lead up to Independence Day they join in the Holocaust Remembrance Day prayers under the spiritual guidance of Rabbi Levi. Visit The Ark which includes pictures from 5 programs on archaeology in Israel with Walter Zanger. Programs broadcast in June 2008. Special Audio DownloadsDownload additional interviews with members of a group of Jewish Australians and New Zealanders travelling to Israel to celebrate its 60th anniversary reflect on the meaning of Israel to them. DownloadRoselle Peltz is originally from South Africa and her memories go back to her school days DownloadProminent wine grower, John Tate, is at the Western (Wailing) Wall in Jerusalem DownloadElizabeth Ridge from Melbourne says each time she travels to Israel its different TRANSCRIPT: MUSIC/PEOPLE Rachael Kohn: Celebrations on Ben Yehuda Street at Zion Square in Jerusalem on May 8th, 2008, sixty years since Israel was voted into statehood by the United Nations, and more than 120 years since Jews in the modern period returned to the land of their forefathers. Hello, I´m Rachael Kohn; welcome to Ties that Bind, on Encounter, here on ABC Radio National. Although its borders are disputed, Israel is a beacon of hope for most Australian Jews, but Australia also has a special place of honour in Israel, where many ANZAC war sites and memorials commemorate the contribution and the sacrifices of Australian soldiers in Palestine during both World Wars. I am travelling with a group of Australian and New Zealander Jews and our first stop is the Mount of Olives, where the spiritual leader of our group, Rabbi John Levi, leads us in prayer, overlooking one of the most spectacular views of Jerusalem. It´s also a popular place for Arabs hawking postcards. Hawker: Shalom Geveret (lady), 10 bookmarks for a dollar, 4 postcards for a dollar. God bless you. Woman:We´re actually here just to make a prayer, not to buy .... Hawker: God bless you. 30 for a dollar is very cheap. John Levi: I don´t think there´s a more beautiful view in the whole of the world. It is a view filled with so much history and so many different communities, and they´re all there together, all the colours. And here we are in Jerusalem, really in our first hour, so let´s first of all say a blessing for happiness, the blessing for the wine, right? HEBREW John Levi: And now, from Psalm 122. I´ll begin the psalm. HEBREW Let´s read it all together: I rejoice when they said to me, `Let us go up to the house of the Lord. Now we stand within your gates, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem restored, the city united and whole. Jerusalem built to be a city where people come together as one. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May those who love you prosper, let there be peace in your home, safety within your borders; for the sake of my people, my friends, I pray you find peace. For the sake of the house of the Lord I will seek your good. Rachael Kohn: The Jewish connections to Israel are religious, historical and familial, but every story is unique. The people on this tour have come for different reasons. Some have been here often, others are first-timers. Diana Hoskin:I´m Diana Hoskin, I´m from Auckland and I´ve come yesterday and today. Rachael Kohn: Is this your first time? Diana Hoskin:Very first time, yes, very excited. Rachael Kohn: Have you been thinking about coming to Israel a long time? Diana Hoskin:Always, yes I thought "one day in Jerusalem", as you do, but I thought well it´s sort of now or never, because my husband´s just died, so it´s now. Rachael Kohn: So it´s a real pilgrimage for you. Diana Hoskin:Yes, very. Very important. Rachael Kohn: I guess you wish he was here with you. Diana Hoskin:Well, yes. Yes, but I probably would never do it if I left it any longer, so it´s very, very important. Rachael Kohn: Tell me what Jerusalem means to you, or Israel? Diana Hoskin:Well it´s everything, isn´t it? I mean it´s got to be, it´s so important for the whole world. I mean we´ve got to have Israel, haven´t we? Extremely important. Helen Twerski: My name is Helen Twerski, and I´m from Adelaide. We are active members of Beit Shalom, have been members since its inception in 1963, but one of my great-grandfathers came to Australia from London in 1849. He took the first service at the Adelaide Hebrew Congregation. My other great-grandfather and that´s the one whose tombstone I´m pointing out now in the Mount of Olives, in I think 1986 I had it repaired, and then we visited it again four years ago. Unfortunately escorted by an armed guard, and it is one of these top tier ones in this cemetery at the Mount of Olives. Rachael Kohn: And why were you escorted by an armed guard? What was going on at the time? Helen Twerski: Because at that time there was a lot of interaction and dissent within the Jerusalem area, and the rabbi told me we could not go there alone. So we came and I´m very pleased we did and I plan to come again this visit, but we´ve already pre-empted that. Rachael Kohn: By coming here today looking down on it! So how many times have you been to Israel? Helen Twerski: Oh, goodness, probably five or six I would think. I don´t count exactly. Rachael Kohn: So what does Israel mean to you as an Australian Jew? Helen Twerski: Israel, oh that´s one of the most constant and thoughts within our mind. I can´t imagine our life without the context and background of Israel and the position of the Jews within it. I think about this quite often because we´re very active in the Zionist activities, but I feel there is a responsibility for the maintenance of this wondrous generational aspect, and Andrew, my husband, who was in Hungary throughout the Second World War, came to Australia in 1948 and Jewish activities, Holocaust memorial attentions and history are very much within our constant daily life. Ruth Jacobs:I´m Ruth Jacobs. I´m from Melbourne, Victoria, my Hebrew name is Ruth Bat Tsvi. Alan Jacobs:I´m Alan Jacobs, I´m now from Melbourne, Victoria, I was originally from London, England. My Hebrew name is Avraham Yitzhak Ben Shmuel Rachael Kohn: And have either of you been here before? Ruth Jacobs:Yes, I was here about 30 years ago, and things seem very different. Much more organised, much more tourist-oriented. Alan Jacobs:I was here two years ago for the first time in my life, a very, very emotional experience. I was on my own. I walked around Jerusalem, I hired a guide, and went as far as Masada, Ein Gedi--anything that was new to me; it was a very, very emotional experience. What did I do? I cried my way around Israel for a week, because it was the experience of a lifetime, I had waited more than 50 years to be here. It was a connection to history, it was a connection to the fact that when I was four years old, my mother´s brother, my uncle made aliyah (emigrated to Israel) we never saw him again, he sent me a telegram for my Bar Mitzvah, and left me a book for my Bar Mitzvah. That´s my family connection to Israel. Rachael Kohn: So the question is, why did it take you so long to get here? Alan Jacobs:The answer is, there is no answer. I can´t tell you. I think it was just a question of family circumstances that for various reasons, made it just difficult just to go anywhere. Ruth Jacobs:I´m interested in the history of Israel. I´m not a particularly religious person, but I love the concept of the religion and the age, because being brought up in Australia, which is a new country, the concept of thousands of years of occupation in a particular location, is just amazing. And when you stand up at the Lebanese border and see the thousands of years of building and the Crusader castles, or stand at the Western Wall and see the Herodian blocks at the bottom and the Mammaluke blocks and the Ottoman blocks, it´s just incredible to think of all the people who´ve moved through here. It´s historical. Rachael Kohn: How about people back home when you tell them you´re going to Israel, how have people reacted? Ruth Jacobs:`Oh, you don´t want to go there, it´s dangerous!´. Alan Jacobs:When I have told people I´m going to Israel, to the Holy Land, particularly non-Jews, they´ve said to me, `How wonderful´. So obviously I have spoken to different people than my wife has. We arrived early yesterday; the two of us did a walking tour in the morning. I sat in the pews of the Great Synagogue which was empty, sat in the pews, and I cried. Why did I cry? I was thinking of my mother, who died nearly 40 years ago, thinking how she would feel to see me sitting in the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem. This is a special place. I was here two years ago, I´d arrived in Jerusalem, within ten minutes I said, `I´ve waited 50 years to get here, there´s nothing more certain than I´m coming back.´ And here we are two years later, I´m back. Ruth Jacobs:And this is a 25th wedding anniversary present to ourselves. Rachael Kohn: Congratulations. Alan Jacobs:Thank you. Rachael Kohn: For most Australians, who identify as Jewish, Israel has strong emotional ties. But there´s also an historical connection that goes back to the First World War. Our trip took us to the Australian Memorial Park in Be´er Sheva, a gift of the Pratt Foundation, and recently opened by Australia´s Governor-General. In pride of place is a sculpture by Australian artist, Peter Corlett. We gathered around it with Rabbi Aviva Kippin and Rabbi John Levi. John Levi: There are two central parts of this park. The first is this incredible sculpture, which I think must be the most impressive war memorial that Australia has created. It´s a horse, fiercely jumping, and one of the Light Horsemen on it, with bayonet drawn, and his rifle over his shoulder. Of course that´s the commemoration of the Australian push through the Negev from Gaza and opened the way to Jerusalem and the capture of Jerusalem and then the subsequent capture of Damascus toppled the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The other part of the park is this incredible children´s playground which has a sort of a permanent canopy because Be´er Sheva can be very, very hot in the summer, and on the top of it, as part of an integral part of the design, is the Israeli flag and the Australian flag, and I noticed when our bus driver was looking for this absolutely new park, he kept asking passers-by `Where´s the Australian park?´ and they knew. So this is very much identified with Australia, and of course so is Be´er Sheva. Rachael Kohn: Aviva, weren´t you here with the commemoration of it? Aviva Kippin:We were Rachael, and it was very exciting. This amphitheatre which we´re standing in front of the statue, was wreathed with shadecloth, and there were hundreds and hundreds of dignitaries from the local establishment and also a lot of people who´d come specifically from Australia, and it was like having a meeting of people that you knew who were all surprised to see you here. Rachael Kohn: Aviva, I guess having this park here must make you feel even more anchored to Israel, as an Australian Jew. Aviva Kippin:It´s an odd paradox really, because for children in Australia born after the Holocaust, our understanding of being Australian is to be first generation immigrants, and having found a place of safe haven with our parents and look towards Israel as an integral part of what it means to be a Jew in the Diaspora, this harkens back to a different history of Australian Jewry, which was that there were also Jews in the armed forces who fought in the First World War. So among the Anzac Corps there would have also been ancestors of the present Jewish community, who long pre-date those of us who came from Holocaust survivor background. Rachael Kohn: Can I just ask any of you, Evelyn, what´s it like for you to be here as an Australian Jew? Evelyn Perks: It makes me proud that we in the past have been able to achieve a campaign that really helped turn the tide of a war that was being lost elsewhere. Christine Lederman:I just think it is absolutely wonderful that people are remembering what went on. But the First World War was so appalling you know, and a lot of Australians I don´t think realise that they were here so long ago, and the agonies of the men and the horses, they were injured just the same. But they couldn´t bring their horses home, and they couldn´t leave them alive here, so that was very sad, I thought. Christine Lederman from the Leo Beck Centre in Melbourne. Andrew Steiner: The actual sculpture is wondrously beautiful. It was cast in Melbourne, and Peter Corlett normally works in a totally different style. This is of course monumental classical work of the highest order. So I think it will become something like the Gallipoli pilgrimage and very, very significant. And it´s extraordinarily important of course, not only to remember but never to forget. Rachael Kohn: Andrew Steiner is an artist from Adelaide. His sculpture `Remember the Holocaust´ is on display in the Hungarian Jewish Museum founded by a relative, in the town of Sephad in the Northern Galilee. Andrew Steiner: I have always cherished the thought of having a work and thus a part of me in Israel, and so that was partially fulfilled there. Today we´re talking about plans of my creating something special again for their museum, in the form of a Tree of Life. Rachael Kohn: Tell me about the sculpture. Andrew Steiner: The sculpture is extraordinarily powerful. It depicts six emaciated semi-living beings, four of them it´s impossible to tell whether they males or females, they´re just skeletons, and the remaining two female figure cradling a baby, and a little boy with his arms raised, who has been featured in many history books. His face has become synonymous with the victims because people can´t comprehend six million people. Coincidentally I could have been the little boy myself, in fact I was a little boy like that once, with hands raised and lined up to be executed. So I know perfectly well the feeling, and once that happens part of you dies there and then, which reminds me about the historical terminology `Child Holocaust Survivors´ which is a nonsense, a total misnomer. Whoever survived was not a child any more. Rachael Kohn: Evelyn Perks was the daughter of ardent Jewish Zionists who managed to escape Germany before the war. Evelyn Perks: I was born in England. My parents had managed to escape to England just before the war. To get to England you had to have a job, so my aunt went first and managed to get some jobs in domestic service in wonderful Quaker families. They were marvelous. And then when the war started, being refugees they were evacuated to the country. We lived in prisoner-of-war huts from the First World War. My father and my grandfather were interned on the Isle of Man. One grandmother was put in Holloway prison. This is in the UK. By the time all this was over in 1950, we migrated to Australia, which was the first place that accepted us. Rachael Kohn: In Israel, where the largest number of survivors of the Holocaust live, it´s remembered publicly on Yom Ha Shoah; for two minutes the sound of a siren stops traffic and people wherever they are. Memorial services are held in synagogues and in the open air. Hebrew Union College on King David Street in Jerusalem had both. SIREN/MEMORIAL SERVICE/CLARINET Man: You commanded me, O Lord, in the beginning, the very beginning, to leave my country, my home, and that of my father, to start anew in the land of Canaan. I did not know my Lord, I did not know that one day, one night, the road would end in Treblinka. John Levi: Once the sun sets and the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day all places of entertainment, all restaurants just shut down. And there was a hush in the city, and the television broadcast the central Holocaust Memorial service at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Centre, at which last night the President of Israel, the Prime Minister, and the Governor General of Australia were seated at places of honour, because he was the Head of State that was in the country at the time because of the dedication of the Light Horse Brigade Memorial in Be´er Sheva a few days ago. So it´s all mixed up together, the whole week is an extremely emotional one, and even before the Independence Day, there will be a very sad Commemoration Day. A bit like Anzac Day, because it´s there people who died in their wars; this is in memory of those who died for no reason whatsoever. Man: You brought my descendents home, pray for Isaac in Majdanek, pray for Jacob in Auschwitz, pray for those who pray, and for those also who are too weak to pray. Alan Jacobs:I´m very moved, of course you´ve heard me say already how moved I am by being here. I have no, to my knowledge, no connection with Ha Shoah, I have no, to my knowledge, no members of my immediate family were involved in the Holocaust, and yet being in that service this morning has moved me very much, very deeply. I just feel once again emotional and am crying, even though for some reason there´s no need for me to be personally involved, but we´re members of the Jewish community and as members of the Jewish community, we are all together, we are one people. How can one not be moved? Judith Hunt:I´m Judith Hunt from Beth Shalom in Auckland, New Zealand. Rachael Kohn: And what brings you to Israel this time? Judith Hunt:The chance to travel with a scholar, to travel with Rabbi John Levi and to hear his wisdom associated with this land that we belong to. Rachael Kohn: How long have you felt that you belong to Israel? Judith Hunt:Probably since I was 16 years old, and I´m nearly 60, but I am a converted Jew, and I converted when I was 40. Rachael Kohn: And yet you felt the connection before you converted? Judith Hunt:Oh yes, yes, for a very long time, and I did a lot of personal study. Rachael Kohn: Why do you think you felt that? Was there something in your own background? Judith Hunt:Well I think definitely my family has no history, we cannot trade our history and I´m convinced that it is something that´s from very deep within me that we do have Jewish connection. So I´ve been through the full process of conversion and I am a Jew. Rachael Kohn: And this morning at the Yom Ha Shoah service you were saying the prayers in Hebrew. Judith Hunt:Absolutely. That´s part of it. I feel a converted Jew-- I have noticed most converted Jews are very determined to learn the language. We put a lot of work into it and yes, enjoy Judaism very much. Rachael Kohn: And the service this morning, the Yom Ha Shoah service, is that the first time you´ve been here during that time? Judith Hunt:Yes, it is. It´s my third trip to Israel. I enjoyed the service this morning, I thought it was appropriate. I also found it very emotional. I just felt a deep sense of loss, and always I still feel outrage. I´m not at peace with that terrible crime myself, but somehow we have to learn to live with it, because they attempted to wipe the nation out, the people out, and it didn´t work, so it´s very important that Israel continues. Rachael Kohn: Does your love of Israel come into conflict with some of the people you know? Judith Hunt:Yes, it does. It´s not always apparent, but they´ll move away from me, or a wall will come up. A lot of people don´t want to discuss it, and a lot of people feel uncomfortable that I´m Jewish, still, which is quite sad. Rachael Kohn: Yes, sad for you as well. Judith Hunt:Yes, but more sad for humanity. Rachael Kohn: I guess being here in Israel then is quite a relief in some sense. Judith Hunt:It´s a great joy for me. I´m very happy to be here. Yes, very happy. Rachael Kohn: Rabbi John Levi, when did you first come to Israel? John Levi: I was here for Israel´s seventh birthday, and as we´ve just celebrated its sixtieth, that´s a long time ago. I left university in Melbourne, having done some years of classical Hebrew, and I couldn´t ask anyone to pass the butter form the table, or even to buy a ticket for the bus. So I knew that I had to come to Israel and learn some modern Hebrew, ordinary Hebrew, normal Hebrew, before going on to America to study at the Rabbinical College that I had chosen to go to. So they looked at me and said, `Oh, you´re an Australian´ at the kibbutz where I was, `you must know how to look after the horses.´ I became the wagon driver for six months, and saddled up my horses and we ploughed the vineyards and took the milk around to the children´s cottages and picked up the dirty laundry. Rachael Kohn: So you had a real kibbutz experience, but tell me, where was the kibbutz? John Levi: Oh, the kibbutz was fantastic. It was situated on the ruins of Caesarea a kibbutz called Siddot Yam, the Fields of the Sea, and every now and again my plough would turn up antiquities and they´d all say, `Oh, shush, don´t tell anybody, we´ll have to pull the bananas out´. And every time it rained, down to the beach I would go with some of the kibbutz children, and look for coins that were washed up on the beach. So that was the beginning of my fascination with archaeology, which after all, is about as opposite to growing up in Australia as you can get. Because Israel has so many layers of occupation and it´s so fascinating that Israel is the source of a historical sense of identification for me, and always has been. Rachael Kohn: That sense of it being a historical identification, is it also a sense of home? John Levi: Well it´s not home like Australia is. It is home certainly in a spiritual sense, and I love reading the Hebrew newspapers, and listening to the news in the morning, and watching Hebrew becoming a language that´s really alive and has its own identity. And that is absolutely fascinating. It is an extraordinary thing for a language to be re-born. Rachael Kohn: Well you´ve shepherded quite a few groups here to Israel, and I guess most of them would be Jewish groups. You must have therefore been witness to a great many personal responses to this land. John Levi: It´s true that most of the groups I´ve taken have been Jewish groups, and most of the people in the groups have been members of my own congregation. There´s also been non-Jewish groups that I´ve escorted to Israel, not being the guide, because you need a professional guide. But the same impact I´ve seen on non-Jewish people as on Jewish people, this sense of connection with the places in the Bible and the wonder at the modern State, which anybody can see is developing at an extraordinary rate year by year, you don´t have to have been here before to see that this is an extremely modern avant-garde country. It might be very little, but it´s up there up at the front. Rachael Kohn: Politics certainly does figure in a major way in Israel, and most particularly because of the ongoing tensions with the Palestinians, and you´ve actually been here during the time of an unprovoked attack on Ashkalon in a supermarket, a medical centre got hit. What did you perceive was the reaction of the group that you were shepherding? John Levi: Well I think people became very interested in what the headlines of each morning´s newspaper said. And maybe they caught that prevailing atmosphere. Listening to the radio and watching the Hebrew press, people who live in the south of the country are very disturbed, they don´t want a katyusha rocket landing on their heads, and two people have been killed recently because Gazans are getting better at shooting rockets and it´s reported that hundreds of Gazans made their way to Iran to be trained in more efficient use of their weaponry. So this is very much a feature of today´s debate. Rachael Kohn: Rabbi John Levi in the garden of Jerusalem´s King David Hotel, where I´ll return with him later. You´re listening to Encounter on ABC Radio National with me, Rachael Kohn, and I´m with a group of Australian and New Zealander Jews who travel to Israel, almost as a pilgrimage, because they have deep ties to it that go back a long way. SONG by Shoshana Damarai (translated as "Ring Twice") from Shoshana Damari in Concert 1980. Rachael Kohn: Lily, from Melbourne, was on her own, and I sensed she had a very personal connection to the place. Lily, how old were you when you first learned about Israel? c I think about ten. I come from China originally, that´s where I heard about Israel. I was very happy in China, I had a happy childhood, until the Communists came in, and actually I had to leave China as a teenager, and I came to Israel to some of my relatives. I came actually December 27th 1949. I came from China by boat for two months around the Rock of Gibraltar and Capetown, and we were not allowed to put our feet down in any country. I went into the Army and I think all my Zionist feelings were developed in the Army, because I was adopted into a huge family. I was in the Air Force for two years. It wasn´t easy for me because I didn´t know Hebrew, but at that time there was one thing, (D´bri Yvrit) which means `Speak Hebrew´, and people from taxi-drivers to people in the street whom you addressed, were insisting that you use the Hebrew language at that time. I don´t think it´s at present the same way. But in those days, it was. Rachael Kohn: So you lived in Israel. For how long? Lily:I lived in Israel for about eight years. I met my husband in Israel. I was married in Israel and I didn´t want to leave Israel but my husband couldn´t settle here. It was very hard times, it was in 1957-58 and it was very hard to make a living here. Then I came to Australia with my husband and I had my children, and thank God, the grandchildren, and I´ve been living in Australia for a very long time. I love Australia and I think it´s a wonderful country, but when I come to Israel I come home. I love it, and I love the language, and I think I stop people sometimes and take the opportunity to speak Hebrew, because to me, it´s a very beautiful language, and I somehow connect to the country through the language and through the people. For me, whenever I come here, it´s like coming home, although Australia´s my home for the last 45, 50 years. Rachael Kohn: So how many times have you come back to Israel? Lily:I´ve been here five times. I haven´t been now for 18 years, mainly because my husband died 10 years ago and I didn´t have the guts to face the circumstances without him. So I travelled to every other country except Israel. Rachael Kohn: Was it a special place for him too? Lily:Yes, his father actually died her, his father. His father, it´s a long story, they were in Germany and they were sent visas for Australia, and his father didn´t have the visa, he had to sit in the German camp. It was an open camp, it was in Bavaria. The father met a Roumanian lady and she was going to Israel and he came to Israel; that´s how I met my husband, because he came to visit his father. Israel to me means so much from every point of view, but I can´t say that one is more important than the other, especially as I´m connected from a sentimental point of view, and that covers a lot of space for me, because I was married here, I was courted here, I was engaged her, I went on a honeymoon here. From that point of view it´s very painful, and that´s why I most probably didn´t come for a long time. Rachael Kohn: Were you ever scared to come here? Lily:Not at all. I have confidence in Israel. I mean if something has to happen, it will happen. I´m not scared actually, I feel very free here, and I don´t feel like a tourist. Rachael Kohn: When you´re back home and people ask you about Israel or you encounter adverse views of Israel, what do you do? What do you say? Lily:What can I say to people? I say what I think. I find it wonderful, I´m not scared. I would come here next year again. Anne Gluckman:Anne Gluckman from Auckland, New Zealand, a member of the Orthodox community, not particularly ritually oriented, very keen on inter-faith relationships with the foundation Jewish Co-President of the Council of Christians and Jews, that was 21 years ago. We had four sons and two of them came here, one on an Australian Union of Jewish Students visit, at kibbutz areas. And my second son, John, was a volunteer here for three years on Garton. My two other sons are medical, and they both have worked here; Phillip did his elective at Hadassah (Hospital) and Peter who is a medical scientist, has done a great deal of work in Israel. Rachael Kohn: Anne´s mother became the first Jewish woman medical graduate in New Zealand, having emigrated as a child from Latvia in 1905 and settling in a small country town. That determination was passed on to Anne, who didn´t miss a beat on the strenuous tour, despite walking with a bent back and a cane. Anne Gluckman:I think this is my seventh visit; I´m 80 years old so I feel this will be possibly my last visit. I wanted to see, and I´m amazed by the development of the country since I was last here. I´m still deeply perplexed about the inability in my own head to define the boundaries of Israel, and having been now on the Golan, I am concerned about the sparsity of population there. I feel the publicity, the Western media gives to the situation in Israel, has bias. New Zealand, where I live, very much against Israel; I feel that Israel is regarded as huge and oppressive, and the conditions one sees here are the very reverse. I wish I could find the words and the means to express how small really Israel is, and I wish that perhaps its politicians that do not realise the average person wants nothing more than peace and security for their children and for their grandchildren. Rachael Kohn: Anne, do you remember 1948 when the State of Israel was proclaimed? Anne Gluckman:Yes. I remember it clearly, and I also remember a visit to New Zealand by ben Gurion. I remember he kissed me on the forehead and I went home and sort of didn´t want to wash my face for days, because even as a child I remember his magnetism, and I remember the intense emotion over the crackly radio, we heard that New Zealand had voted for the formation of Israel. Rachael Kohn: Anne Gluckman from New Zealand in Israel on a tour with other Kiwis and Australians, under the guidance of Rabbi John Levi, Emeritus Rabbi of the Melbourne Congregation, Temple Beth Israel. This is The Ties that Bind, and you´re with Encounter on ABC Radio National. We´re back in the garden of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. John Levi, you´re an historian of Australian Jewry; how have you seen the role of Israel in Australian-Jewish consciousness? John Levi: Australian Jewry is solidly pro-Israel, really solidly. With all Israel´s faults and trials and tribulations and crises and so on, because of the background of the Australian-Jewish community which is so closely linked with the survivors of the Holocaust, everybody understands that the Jews of Europe were absolutely defenceless, allowed themselves to be fooled into thinking that what happened couldn´t happen. And so we´ve been bruised by that experience, deeply bruised, and it´s going to take 100 years to sort it through theologically and socially, and so many Australian Jews really have whatever remnants of their family are left here in Israel. So many Israeli kids were born in Australia, and when they grew up, they came here because here there were cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, which they didn´t have in Melbourne or Sydney or Perth. So this is a vitally important part of Australian-Jewish life, and most people who go through Jewish day schools for example, spend time here, their gap year before university. I think it´s a very good thing to do. Rachael Kohn: And yet in Australia, there´s little understanding I think of that Jewish loyalty to Israel. Zionism is a term of opprobrium for so many Australian non-Jews. John Levi: Yes, I think the anti-Israel campaign has been very successful. However, I also have to say with very few exceptions, most Australian Federal politicians have either been to Israel or understand the importance of Israel to the Jewish community in Australia. We´re dealing really with either professional anti-Semites who cloak their anti-Semitism by being unduly critical of Israel, which after all, it´s all right; or the younger generation who find that they really want a great creation to what they´re saying, then they stir up trouble on campus and then go their merry way when it´s all finished and they have fun teasing their fellow Jewish students. But I think Australia basically is pro-Israel, because there are so many links between Australia and Israel. Two world wars, and again and again, Australia has identified with Israel´s immigration policy, it´s dealing with the arid zone agriculture, nano-science, which is now so far advanced in Israel. There are so many links which makes me feel very pleased as an Australian and as a Jew. Rachael Kohn: And yet it seems that very prosperity of Israel is precisely what´s held against it. Again, it´s a kind of proof of Jewish supremacy, Jewish power. John Levi: Well that´s a no-win proposition, because the better you do, the worse it is. And I think we´ve just got to life with that. Rachael Kohn: The politics is usually considered the most difficult of Israel´s challenges. But there is something else that goes deeper. John Levi: I also have to say we have theological problems, we have people who have bought the argument that somehow or other Israel is an affront to Christianity, and so they find the justification for this in the often very absurd lies told about Israel, from here, quite often. They don´t understand that there´s freedom of speech here, and people can be very critical of their own country, and they don´t understand that for Christians in the Middle East, it´s a cheap way to gain safety and a modicum of respect by being critical of Israel, because there are no consequences for them here. And it shows what good boys they are. Rachael Kohn: That theological affront is, what, the replacement theology, in which the church is regarded as the new Israel? John Levi: Yes, it turns up all over the place. It turns up at Christmas Carols, `Born is the King of Israel´, and here we are! It turned up in the Queen Mother´s funeral service, they actually amended Psalm 121, so God´s dominion over Israel was left out. It´s turned out in all sorts of strange places like the fact that the Queen of England and the Commonwealth has never visited Israel, never set foot here. Been all over the Middle East where the oil rich countries are, but has never been allowed to come to Israel. Rachael Kohn: Allowed by her own people. John Levi: Allowed by the Foreign Office, allowed possibly by the Church of England, I don´t know. Rachael Kohn: Rabbi John Levi, how hopeful are you of Israel´s future? I mean from the time that you had first been here at its 7th anniversary to now, to its 60th, that´s many years, and Israel´s been through ups and downs and quite a few wars, many dead. The national anthem is Hatikva, Hope, The Hope. What do you see for the future? John Levi: I´m a great believer in history, and if the neighbours of Israel don´t make peace, if they continue to have war after war, they will continue to lose. And that may well change the boundaries of the State of Israel. If they do make peace, then there´s a very optimistic future for both Jews and Arabs, in this tiny country, tiny bit of land. My wife once wrote a letter to the President of the United States; we drove from the north of Israel down to the Dead Sea, which is most of the way down Israel, and we didn´t need to fill our petrol tank once. And she got terribly annoyed about this. So it is a tiny place, but on the other hand it´s incredibly strong, vital, it can put up with these political crises. What the Arab hostility has done, or the Islamic hostility has done, is to create a very vibrant culture in response to the threat. So the more they push, the stronger Israel gets. Of course the best thing that should have happened would have been if God had promised the people of Israel the South Island of New Zealand, but then Jewish history would have simply vanished, so I believe that old traditional importance of a land bridge between Africa, Asia and Europe, and the need to struggle and the fact that there isn´t great oceans of oil underneath Israel and so on, has had to make Israel a very interesting place to be. It´s probably the most interesting little bit of land in the world for me; because of my interest in Australia and its history, the other little piece of land that I really love very much are the Archives of New South Wales in the Mitchell Library. Rachael Kohn: Just opposite the Mitchell Library is a plaque commemorating the Light Horse campaign in Palestine, and that´s where my husband Tom, who´d never been to Israel before, reflected on its meaning for him. Tom: I don´t have any personal connections that I know of in terms of my forebears as far as Israel is concerned. My folk arrived in Australia in the latter part of the 19th century from England, Germany, other parts of Europe. So I have a strong Australian-Jewish background. On my last day in Jerusalem I walked along the top of the wall of the old city, about three-quarters of the way along. That gave me time to think as I was looking at the various cultures and religions which often worked well and often worked in disharmony in this enclosed, small, old city which is wonderful. We walked through fascinating archaeological sites throughout the length and breadth of this country, tiny compared to Australia, but sights that go back to the Jewish imprint, the Jewish footprint 3,000 years. It made me feel proud to be of that culture and of those people. Rachael Kohn: As for me, it was my fourth trip to Israel, the place my father tried to get to, but was thwarted by the Second World War, where my parents emigrated after the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. But after three years of never-ending conflict, they went to Canada. So I make the pilgrimage now and again, meeting relatives and connecting to a deep history that together are the ties that bind. I want to thank everyone on the trip, and especially Rabbi John Levi, AM. Additional interviews can be heard on the Encounter website. Ties that Bind was recorded in Israel and produced by me, Rachael Kohn for Encounter, co-ordinated by Florence Spurling. Sound engineering was by Louis Mitchell. SONG FRAGMENT, Shoshana Damari (Ring Twice) read less
2008-09-14 Earth, My Mother
Sat September 13 2008
Hinduism is possibly the only religion in the world that has a special hell for people who chop down trees. It´s one small indication of the deep ecological sensibility which runs through the Hindu traditions, and which sanctfies rivers, mountains and forests. This program was first broadcast on 16/12/07 TRANSCRIPT: Gary Bryson: At the Sri Venkateswara Temple in Helensburgh just south of Sydney, the final day of a three-day ritual of preservation. Welcome to Encounter on ABC Radio National. I´m Gary Bryson. A. Balasubramaniam: This is a festival that is held once a year. It´s called Pavithra Utsavam. As you go around you´ll find the priest wearing a sort of a multicoloured thread around his head, and also there´ll be garlands made out of those multicoloured threads. This is like a celebration, a thanksgiving you could say to the God for the boon and blessings that we´ve got over the year, and also to get the blessings for a successful year to come. R. Natarajan Iyer: A few years ago, Helensburgh was devastated by a bushfire. At that time, all the trees in this whole land got burnt, but the temple was preserved, and the priest´s quarters were preserved, nothing happened to them. So the priests said we should do prayer to the Lord, so we have a three-day festival where what they do is, they decorate Lord Vishnu and then they have a small tank there, and he´s then immersed in that tank with the priest, he goes into it and prays. And then he brings it out and says `As water, we need you, we need the fire, but we need these all in a controlled environment, and we pray to you that you provide that control.´ Devi Balasubramaniam: So it´s done to remove all evil influences, bushfires, natural disasters, floods, any sort of serious accidents you know, things like that. Since we started doing that, touchwood, there have been no fires in Helensburgh area. Gary Bryson: The Pavithra ceremony, like many Hindu rituals, demonstrates a deep affinity with nature. It´s an affinity that´s typical of Hinduism generally, and one which suggests that Hindu beliefs and traditions can help foster a greater environmental consciousness amongst adherents. It may seem like an esoteric idea, but there are more than 800-million Hindus in the world, the majority in India, a country which faces huge environmental challenges in the wake of phenomenal economic growth. So what can Hinduism offer in helping people to meet those challenges, in India and elsewhere? That´s what we´ll be looking at in this program today, a journey which will take us into a small part of the vast and diverse realms of Hindu culture, its philosophy, theology and history, where we´ll explore a Hindu view of creation and the nature of the ultimate reality. Rami Sivan: The world religions can be divided into the Abrahamic religions, which are Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and what I would call the Dharma Coalition, which is the religions of the east, primarily Hinduism and Buddhism. Gary Bryson: Rami Sivan is a Hindu priest and teacher. Rami Sivan: The Abrahamic religions believe in a creation, ex nihilo, from nothing, they believe that God has created the world and has given it to us as a resource. Whereas Hindus, as the only panentheists of the major world religions, see the world as a projection of the divine; we don´t hold with the idea of creation, we hold with the idea that the Divine, the Absolute, has projected itself into the form of the cosmos as we know it, so therefore our definition of God would be the sum totality of everything that exists. There is only one ultimate reality and everything that we see are modifications of changes within that singular reality, so we are all interconnected, and thus one of the major teachings of Hinduism is the interconnectedness of all beings. So we don´t differentiate between animals and humans for example. Humans and animals are part of the sentient universe, and so we would see the universe as sentient and insentient. But having said that, one of the most ancient texts, the Laws of Manu declare that the vegetable kingdom, although appearing to be insentient, does experience pleasure and pain. There is consciousness pervading the entire universe. Reader: Before time began there was no heaven, no earth and no space between. A vast, dark ocean washed upon the shores of nothingness and licked the edges of night. A giant cobra floated on the waters. Asleep within its endless coils lay the Lord Vishnu. He was watched over by the mighty serpent. Everything was so peaceful and silent that Vishnu slept undisturbed by dreams or motion. From the depths a humming sound began to tremble. It grew and spread, filling the emptiness and throbbing with energy. The night had ended. Vishnu awoke. As the dawn began to break, from Vishnu´s navel grew a magnificent lotus flower. In the middle of the blossom sat Vishnu´s servant, Brahma. He awaited the Lord´s command. Vishnu spoke to his servant: `It is time to begin´. Brahma bowed. Vishnu commanded, `Create the world´. Rami Sivan: Creation myths are all based upon the idea of projection. There is a creator, Bramha, but he creates from his mind. This is the key to understanding the process of creation, that he thinks the thought within himself as an archetype and then he projects that into creation, into being. The Sanskrit term for creation is srishti, which literally means an ejaculation or a projection or a throwing into being, and we also accept the idea that there is, after a period of existence, the withdrawal of the universe. So we have projection, and then we have withdrawal, but withdrawal is known as laya, so a Hindu cosmologist sees the world as a cosmic pulsation, or projection - withdrawal, evolution, involution - and this is a perpetual cycle. Gary Bryson: In terms of time we´re talking about ages, aren´t we? We´re talking about thousands, hundreds of thousands of years? Rami Sivan: The thing that differentiates the Western religions from the Eastern religions is the concept of time, because the Western religions are linear in their concept of time, with an idea that God has an agenda, a plan, an unfolding. Whereas the Hindu concept of time is circular, and we don´t believe that God has any plan or agenda, there is just the world is projected into being on a concept of lila, which is divine play, divine sport, what we call the creation or the existence of the cosmos is based on the idea that the divine is in sport, in play. Gary Bryson: Rami Sivan, and we´ll come back to him and to some Hindu ideas about the nature of reality, a bit later in the program. As a religion, Hindus will tell you that Hinduism is monotheistic, but that different aspects of the supreme being are given different names. Thus there´s Brhama the creator, Vishnu, who represents existence, and Shiva, who represents destruction. But Hinduism is more than a religion, it´s also a set of philosophies and cultural traditions, and it´s in this great human and intellectual diversity that its value in the struggle against environmental degradation might best be understood. Vasudha Narayanan is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Florida, and the author of `Understanding Hinduism: Origins, Beliefs, Practices, Holy Texts and Sacred Places´. Vasudha Narayanan: Hinduism is really a federation of traditions with a lot of interlocking and overlapping commonalities and a lot of areas which are very different from each other. So yes, it´s very intensely local on the one hand, and yet has startling similarities on the Pan-Indian or a global scale sometimes. And we´re talking about plurality of traditions, and we always have to talk about traditions [plural] when you speak about Hinduism. Gary Bryson: A question about the history of Hinduism reminds us again that linear time is very much a Western construct imposed on the religion. Vasudha Narayanan: Most Hindus don´t know the history chronologically, they know it from stories, and knowing it chronologically is very much of a Western enterprise, and it tells you largely more about the Western mindset, about going back to the beginnings. However, that having been said, historically we know that it goes back to probably about 2500, some people say 3,000 BCE, to a civilisation whose name has been disputed. Traditionally we´ve called it the Indus Valley civilisation, contemporary with the major civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia and so on. The culture of this civilisation in combination with the culture brought along by the Indo-European people who were said to have come from parts of Central Asia, led to what we call Hinduism today. But whether the Indo-Europeans came from Central Asia, or were residents of India, Central Asia, the Middle East has been disputed. So we´re not sure exactly where it began but we do know that by at least 1500 BCE we have literature, compositions, called the Vedas. Christopher Key Chapple: This is a collection of originally oral literature that was transmitted by a very complex process of education and memorisation. Gary Bryson: Christopher Key Chapple is the Navin and Pratima Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University in California. He´s also one of the editors of `Hinduism and Ecology: The Intersection of Earth, Sky and Water´. The Vedas are arguably the world´s oldest sacred texts, and in the form of the Upanishads and the famous Baghavad Gita, are the basis of much of classical Hindu thought. Christopher Key Chapple: Out of this very visionary collection of praise poems, arose a world view that matured into a collection known as the Upanishads. In the Upanishads we have a variety of different theological visions, and we have the beginnings in both of these texts of an idea about how best to manage social organisation. So that in what is broadly called `The Hindu tradition´, we have both theology and social analysis and a prescription about how life is best to be lived. By around 600 BC and 500 BC with the rise of the companion faiths of Buddhism and Jainism we begin to get a quite prophetic ethical command that non-violence should be the standard by which all human action is undertaken And then by around 300 BC, we find the rise of the Buddha image, we find the rise of the images of the Jina, and we also shortly thereafter, see the depiction of statues and bas relief of the various gods and goddesses that are associated with the Hindu tradition. Many of these images tie directly to the forces of nature. The major theology that most people are familiar with would be the theology of the Creator God, a Sustainer God, and a God who brings everything to a close, Brhama, Vishnu, and Shiva. And within that very broad definition of what constitutes the religious faith, there are innumerable local deities and there´s a proliferation of stories starting really with the Mahabharata as well as the Ramayana, that include a mythological structure that is extremely complex and deeply, deeply entertaining. Vasudha Narayanan: The epics, both of which were written in Sanskrit - there are two of them the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata - have been beloved narratives which Hindus have loved through millennia. And the stories from these epics are transmitted through performing art, to music, to dance, to the grandmother´s voice, and now to television and infinite versions through the web now. Gary Bryson: It´s this capacity to be both deeply metaphysical and yet firmly grounded in folk traditions and popular entertainment that are the keys to Hinduism´s strength. It´s a supremely practical religion, with something for everyone, whether you´re a farmer pondering the significance of forest cover, or a searcher after truth, contemplating the nature of the universe. Common to all of the Hindu traditions are what´s known as the four great goals of existence. The first of these is artha, or the pursuit of wealth. Christopher Key Chapple. Christopher Key Chapple: Every human was to have sufficient wealth to thrive, to have enough to eat, to have shelter from the rain, to have shelter from the burning sun, and this wealth became the foundation for all the other pursuits of human life. The second great pursuit is beauty, and this is in Sanskrit referred to as kama, and associated with pleasure. And there´s an acknowledgement in India that to have a moment of beauty is extremely vital, it´s very nurturing for the human soul. The third goal is dharma, and dharma is the ability of a person to live up to the cultural expectations, the family expectations of what that person needs to do to both hold his or her life together, but also contribute to the overall society. Now in the ancient times people would devote the first part of their life to these three pursuits. And then sometimes earlier in life, but generally after one has reached the far end of middle age, people may return to explore a different type of education; rather than studying the technical texts about how to be good, say if you´re a farmer to be a good farmer, or to be a lawyer or physician, that you would study the more philosophical texts and go out in quest of spiritual liberation, which in Sanskrit is known as moksha. Gary Bryson: But while moksha. is the ultimate goal in the Hindu traditions, the goal that impacts most on the ecological question is that of dharma. It´s here that Hindus find an ethical and moral basis for living well. Rami Sivan. Rami Sivan: Dharma literally means to support or maintain, so dharma is that which supports and maintains our very existence itself, as well as our relationship to the environment and to other sentient beings. Hindu morality is based on the teaching that virtue is any act which favours or brings joy and happiness to another being. Any act which causes suffering to another being is considered to be sin, and these two are the only criteria for judging Hindu morality. Does our act bring joy and happiness and advancement to another being? And I stress here being, because it could be a sentient or insentient being. So anything which favours the environment, preserves the environment, grows the environment for others, is an act of virtue. Anything which depredates the environment or causes suffering to other beings, is an act of demerit, or as you say in the Judaeo-Christian sense, a sin. Gary Bryson: But is there a contradiction then between artha, the pursuit of wealth, and dharma, the injunction to live ethically? Vasudha Narayanan. Vasudha Narayanan: Well the Hindu tradition, like all of the religions, warns you against excessive greed, excessive accumulation of wealth, especially those which lead to a denigration of the lifestyle of other people. Having said that, I say that there´s also a part of Hinduism in which there´s a healthy respect, and the key word is a healthy respect, for wealth. The goddess Lakshmi is counted to be a goddess of good fortune, but so is the god of earth, Bhudevi, or the earth is counted to be a consort of Vishnu, and together they´re supposed to be a pair. The question of who trumps who is important, and there´s a healthy respect for wealth. Does it mean destroying of the earth? Absolutely no. A. Balasubramaniam: Hinduism preaches very simple living and it also preaches not to squander anything. M. Chandrasekaran: Your requirements for lavish things are not there, and therefore you don´t really need modern gadgets, just to have a quality peaceful and simple living. Devi Balasubramaniam: We can´t say especially in Western countries you know, they lead a simple life, because they lead a Western kind of life, but simplicity is an essential principle of the Hindu religion, yes. A. Balasubramaniam: The more you possess the more worries you have, so the least you possess, the least worries you have. If you have one house that´s a worry, then you have a car, then two cars, it goes on, so material possessions don´t give happiness, that´s what the Hindus believe. So once you don´t have the need for them, you should renounce them. Gary Bryson: Devotees at the Sri Venkateswara Temple in Helensburgh, just south of Sydney. And on this Encounter on ABC Radio National, Hinduism and ecology, a short journey into the complexities of the Hindu traditions, and their importance in developing an environmental consciousness. We´ve seen so far that Hinduism is a set of lively cultural traditions that provide a practical framework of how to live well, both materially and ethically. We´ve also seen that Hindus believe that everything in the universe is part of God, or the supreme being. But if we´re all part of the divine, how then should we understand the material world and our place in it? It´s a central question to any understanding of a Hindu ecology. To answer it, we have to get a little philosophical, so to help us do that, here´s Dr Arvind Sharma, a leading Hindu scholar and author, currently with the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University in Montreal. Arvind Sharma: There is no first point in Hinduism when the world came into being. In this respect it is very different from the Abrahamic religions all of which postulate a point before which the universe did not exist, and after which it came into existence. They also postulate a point afterwards it might go out of existence, but no such points exist in Hinduism, so the universe was always there in some form, and will always be there. So the status of the universe and any discussion we have about the universe is unlikely to be etiological, that is, having to do with its origin, is more likely to be metaphysical, the relationship this universe has to the ultimate reality. In Hinduism the ultimate reality is both imminent and transcendent, that is, it is contained in God, but God is more than it. Just as you might look at the number 5 in relation to the number 3, the number 5 contains number 3 but also is more than number 3. So in the same way, there is God in the universe, but it is more true to say that the universe is in God and God is more than the universe. Gary Bryson: All reality then is ultimately spiritual? Arvind Sharma: You see there are two extreme positions which can be taken on this issue and they have been taken within Hinduism, but only one of the two is ultimately true or real. So the materialists claim that matter alone is real, and spirit or consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, it is a spin-off, it is derived from matter. The non-materialist, or the idealists as they are called, would argue the opposite, that spirit or consciousness alone is real and matter is a by-product of that consciousness. So both schools try to reduce both their limits to one of them. Gary Bryson: What does this suggest to us then in terms of an ecological sensibility? Arvind Sharma: Well I think if you really want to bring all this to bear on the question of ecology, then one has to look at all these various schools of Hindu philosophy, more comprehensively, and make a point which is common to many of them. And that point is that when you approach the human being in Hinduism, then in this way of looking at the world, you approach it through the ultimate reality and then the cosmos and then nature, and then the human being as part of nature. In Western thought, modern Western thought, the movement has been in the opposite direction. You start from the individual, and the system of thought called individualism, and then from that you move to society, and then from that you move to a larger arc, say, of the cosmos or the universe. So I think the real point of interest when we look at the issue of ecology from the point of view of Hinduism as compared to the West is that the movement of thought in Hinduism, especially in terms of dharma, or what is the right thing to do, rather than just metaphysics, is for the ultimate reality, the cosmos, nature in its broader sense, society, and then the human being. Gary Bryson: Dr Arvind Sharma of McGill University in Montreal. This metaphysical construct would suggest then that Hinduism contains within it a deep ecological sensibility. One that plays out in day to day life and ritual, as well as philosophically. Reader: Earth, in which lie the sea, the river and other waters, in which food and cornfields have come to be, in which lives all that breathes and moves. May she confer on us the finest of her yield. Earth, in which the water, common to all, moving on all sides, flow unfailingly, day and night. May she pour on us milk in many streams, and endow us with lustre. May those born of thee, O Earth, be for our welfare, free from sickness and waste. Wakeful through a long life, we shall become bearers of tribute to thee. Earth, my mother, set me securely with bliss, in full accord with heaven. O wise one, uphold me in grace and splendour. Devi Balasubraman: Earth is regarded as the mother, even today farmers in India in the villages, you know, they set aside a special day to do pujas, that is, you know, prayers, for the earth. They thank God for the sun and the moon and the rain and also they pray to mother earth, they regard it as the mother who gives life. R. Natarajan Iyer: We believe in nature. So, water, air, fire and so on. We believe that each one of these should exist, and we should allow them to exist in a prime way, that is the best way that you can think of. A. Balasubramaniam: Hindus believe in sanctity of life, not only human beings, they believe in sanctity of animals and also plants, so though they´re vegetarians and they have to eat plants to live, they feel that one should not destroy plants unless one has to for reasons to exist. Devi Balasubraman: We don´t regard the human race and nature as separate. Human race is part of nature and these environmentally friendly principles have really been built into the Hindu religion from very, very ancient times. We respect the earth, we respect everything that´s on it, and treat all animals, plants, everything with respect. Rami Sivan: When we perform puja, which is an act of making offerings, it is essential that every single thing in that puja ceremony, in that liturgy of making offerings, is biodegradable, there is nothing artificial that is offered to the Gods, everything has to be made of leaves, flowers, fruit, natural ingredients that easily biodegrade. In the death ceremonies, on the 13th day we have a ritual in which a fruit tree is planted in memory of the deceased. Every time you chop down a tree out of necessity, you´re required to plant another one in its stead. There are certain meritorious acts in planting trees. So for example if somebody has accumulated a lot of bad karma and they feel that they wish to mitigate this bad karma in some way, then they´re ordered to plant trees. Rami Sivan: The oldest text known to mankind is the Rigveda, which has an approximate date of about 7,000 years ago. The Rigveda is the source book of Hindu spirituality and within the Rigveda there is a hymn to the forest, a hymn to the trees, hymn to the rivers, lauding them and praising them as goddesses and gods. Trees are particularly said to be sacred, and there is an injunction not to destroy trees without reason. In actual fact, Hinduism is the only world religion that has a specific hell for people that cut down trees. It is called the Asipatrav