Three weeks in Australia, and we are still counting. Weeks, not months, not years, the way you count time with a newborn. I’m waiting for the moment when the counting stops, when a place shifts from temporary to lived-in. I don’t yet know when that moment arrives, with babies or with stays in one place.
For those who are wondering what Melbourne, and this little corner of it, feels like: it feels and looks like Long Island, a place I have known all my life. And that should make it all feel familiar. A Jewish community in a place that looks like Woodmere, New York. This should be easy enough, shouldn’t it?
Let me tell you of another place that looks like Woodmere, New York: Amstelveen, another Jewish suburb, this time outside Amsterdam. And yet there is no mistaking that for Long Island.
In order to help me acclimatise, the minute the streets of Caulfield, Melbourne start deceiving me and sending Long Island messages to my brain, I remember Amstelveen. Why this is important, and why it isn’t.
It’s important because this is radically different. In New York, kosher food is so abundant it is literally falling off the shelves in supermarkets. The kosher symbols on foods are so well known and ubiquitous that I’m not sure the non-Jewish consumer even notices them, alongside all the other print on the packaging. That cannot be said of the state of kosher in Melbourne, or Amsterdam for that matter.
I have spent more time in the supermarket in the last three weeks than I care to admit, walking up and down aisles, search lists on my phone, scanning barcodes, and then ultimately giving up and walking out with cleaning detergent and fresh fruit.
What is the same? People. People are the same wherever we are. But perhaps the people here are warmer than those back on Long Island. There are too few of us to discount anyone. It makes the community kinder and at the same time more invested. They care, in a way I don’t think I have experienced before.
It’s something that will resonate with the “out-of-towners”: pretty much anyone who didn’t grow up in the New York tri-state area, or Los Angeles, or large cities in Israel, or any city with a massive Jewish population. In places outside of these, every Jew matters. Every communal institution is needed. If you don’t do it, whatever it may be, no one else will. Not because there is a lack of desire, but because there is no one else.
Parents are invested in the schools and youth programmes, not waiting for other parents to step up. This passion for community and the institutions that run it is a blessing. Though passions run hot, it is better than no passion at all. Like all communities, there are the doers and the people who benefit from the doers. There may be too many cooks in the kitchen, but at least the meal is getting made.
People are invested. People are passionate and we feel blessed to be here.
Two stories.
We were invited to a last-minute party. Earlier in the day, a wonderful family had offered to loan us a second car while we try to buy one during the holiday period, which is proving tricky. We already had a loaner and weren’t sure we needed another.
As we got into the first car to get to the party, we typed the address into Waze and followed it clear across town, to an area that may have been Jewish, though it didn’t have an outwardly Jewish vibe. Just as we approached the address, the car died right outside the door of a very big, very elegant house set far back from the road. With its dying breath, Daniel manoeuvred the car into a side road.
I texted my now best friend and said yes, we would LOVE to borrow her car.
The plan was as follows: we would leave the car on the side road, keys on top of the back wheel, waiting for the mechanic to pick it up. We would say hi at the party, take an Uber to dinner, and then ask our friends to take us to the new loan car after dinner. No harm, no foul.
As we approached the house, my Jewdar was on high alert, screaming: there are no Jews in this house. And in fact, there is no party. No cars outside. No people inside. We rang on the gate and no one answered, but the gate swung open.
We walked towards the house: a basketball court on the left, a swimming pool, half Olympic size, further in. As we got closer to the house, I noticed a Christmas wreath and a big red bow. Considering the party was being held by one of the stewards of the Jewish community as a farewell to the Israeli ambassador, nothing was working. And then it all landed.
Pristine white pebbles crunching beneath our dress shoes. We ran for the front gate, realising we were breaking and entering at the wrong address. We did not know that the numbering of this particular road starts again halfway through.
Suffice it to say, if you ever see a wanted poster of the Rabbi and Rebbetzin, I’m sure there is CCTV footage out there. Like most crimes, this one was born of stupidity.
This past week we were invited to two weddings. That’s two more than I packed for when I packed two suitcases each for myself and Daniel back in London on the first of September, long before I became acquainted with, and I suspect may never come to terms with, the Melbourne weather.
So shopping it was. I went to the largest mall in the area, Chadstone. I found an outfit, and as I stood to pay for it, the salesgirl asked me what the event was, to help me decide which shoes would best suit the outfit.
I told her it was a Jewish wedding: a lot of standing around, followed by a lot of dancing. Flats would be it for me.
This very tall, very beautiful, very blonde woman told me she was Jewish too. I asked her how she had been coping since the Bondi tragedy. “Not good,” she said. And she followed up with the same line I have heard repeatedly: this does not happen in Australia.
When I told Daniel the story, he corrected the no-longer-present salesgirl. This did not happen in Australia.
And now, after just three weeks, I find myself gently pushing back on Daniel too. And praying for all the incredible people we are now part of, and hope to be part of for many more weeks, months, and years to come, that Australia will once more be a place where this does not happen.
Places like Amstelveen, Woodmere, or Caulfield are filled with good people. People who care about their families and communities, their homes and their country.
About food:
I want to tell you what I’m cooking, but I’m just not. We have, frankly, eaten out every night, and many lunches too, since we got to Melbourne. The most I can claim to have made is six kilos of fried onions for the Mizrachi Melbourne Chanukah party, as part of a loaded latkes dinner.
What, you may ask, is a loaded latke? It was news to me too, but it was stellar. A loaded latke is one that you pile up with delicious things such as pulled beef, guacamole, and fried onions. My contribution was slicing and frying onions.
And this is why I love to cook.
Just days after the devastating attack on Bondi Beach, I volunteered to slice and fry six kilos of onions. I cried, and cried, and cried, and thought of nothing other than making sure I didn’t slice off the tips of my fingers. Then I fried, for hours.
My mind was fully concentrated on the task at hand. I stopped thinking and just did. For me, that was the activity I needed. Something mindless, yet helpful to someone.
So although I’m not really cooking until we officially move into our new home, if anyone needs a couple of kilos, or even a couple of dozen kilos, of onions fried in the Melbourne area, I’m your girl.
Kosher Food in Melbourne:
They said there was nowhere to eat, and yet…
Here are just a few places I have eaten since arriving three weeks ago, and that is with people generously hosting us in their homes almost every day. Two thoughts: either we have already exhausted every kosher option in Melbourne in a very short space of time, or no one here has ever been to Tamale, Ghana. I have. There were, as far as I could tell, three Jews and no kosher food.
Melbourne is not, as far as I can tell, a kosher food desert. But I will report back if this turns out to be merely a mirage, and all kosher food options eventually dry up.
Places I’ve eaten so far:
One response to “Three Weeks in Australia”
Did you have your goggles on? Xx