Ensuring that memory becomes responsibility

By Bruce Hill
Read the article online at The Australian Jewish News

Jewish households across Australia are being invited to open their doors this Sunday night for a National Night of Storytelling, a coordinated effort to encourage community members to submit their personal experiences of antisemitism to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

The event, organised by ShareYourStory, a joint initiative of 11 peak Jewish communal organisations, will see participants gather in groups of up to 10 friends and neighbours before logging into a shared national Zoom at 7pm AEST (5pm in Western Australia).

Former federal treasurer, chair of the Dor Foundation, and a leading voice calling for the Royal Commission, Josh Frydenberg, will deliver the opening address.

He told The AJN the format was designed to make an unfamiliar process feel accessible.

“This will be real. This will be raw. This will be an opportunity for people to tell the Royal Commission how they feel,” Frydenberg said.

He acknowledged that some participants would find the process difficult and emotional, while for others it might prove cathartic. Either way, he said, the commission needed to hear from them.

“We can’t assume that either the members of the Royal Commission or the broader public at large truly understand the impact of the rise in antisemitism in Australia,” Frydenberg said.

“For us as members of the community, we have lived and breathed this for the last nearly three years, but for other members of the community, they may have seen it just as a headline.”

Frydenberg stressed that submissions did not need to follow a legal format and can be made confidentially.

Participants will have access to volunteer support throughout the evening via the live Zoom.

“What we want people to know is that they’re not alone and that they have the support of their friends and their family and loved ones, and they’ve also got the support of the broader community to find their voice and make their important submission,” he said.

Frydenberg pointed to the Royal Commission’s terms of reference, which require it to investigate the nature and prevalence of antisemitism in Australian institutions and across society, including the impact of antisemitism on security, physical and mental health, wellbeing and quality of life.

He said personal testimony was central to that task.

The intimidation, harassment, hate and violence seen across Australia since October 7, he said, had culminated in the Bondi massacre, and the community now had both an opportunity and a responsibility to ensure the commission was well placed to make constructive recommendations.

Frydenberg said that with approximately 3500 submissions already received by the commission, the number of submissions was less important than the quality and depth of the stories being told.

“The more personal stories that are provided by people as to how this tsunami of hate that we’ve seen in Australia, unprecedented as it is, has impacted on their lives, the more informed the commission will be,” he said.

Asked what the community could realistically expect from the commission, Frydenberg said he hoped its findings would reflect “the true nature of the problem we face in Australia as a result of the normalisation of antisemitism” and the fact that antisemitism has been normalised.

He said he hoped it would deliver practical recommendations covering law enforcement, border control, security agency cooperation and the resourcing of Jewish community security needs, and that the country would “reset its approach to these issues, given the failure of the approaches to date”.

Frydenberg stressed that the only way to improve social cohesion in Australia is to take on the hate that we have seen across society, including in our leading educational and cultural institutions.

He described Sunday’s event as both an opportunity and a responsibility for every Jewish Australian.

“Everyone has been impacted by the hate, harassment and harm directed towards the Jewish community in Australia since October the seventh.”

Hosts can register at: shareyourstory.org.au/storytelling.

ShareYourStory is a community initiative established to support people who wish to make a submission to the Royal Commission. Visit shareyourstory.org.au to learn more.

ShareYourStory has been established as a joint initiative.

Tahli Blicblau