By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in Ha’aretz
MELBOURNE – When history is taught in years to come, most people alive on October 7, 2023, will have a story about where they were when they heard the news. The new book “Ruptured” is a collection of 36 personal essays by Australian Jewish women in the aftermath of that tragic day.
The contributors are diverse in profession including artists, writers, psychologists, lawyers, teachers – even an Olympic racewalker. They are united by a sense that something shattered for Australian Jews on October 7. The book, published by the Lamm Jewish Library of Australia, was edited by award-winning writer Lee Kofman and Tamar Paluch, an occupational therapist turned activist.
The reflections in “Ruptured” are unfiltered – and at times deeply painful. One of Australia’s best known Jewish musicians, Deborah Conway, tells about the surreal experience of launching her memoir on October 3, just four days before Hamas‘ attacks,
“Officially I was about to embark on a wonderful adventure,” she writes. “Unofficially, I had become a slavering, blood-thirsty, child-murdering genocide supporter.” Her diary of cancellation as Israel launched its war in Gaza – from events, podcasts, interviews – reads like a grim tally of social exclusion.
Artist Nina Sanadze, who found herself doxed and targeted by activists after private WhatsApp messages were leaked, structures her piece as a police report. It is clinical in tone but heartbreaking in content.
“Management advised her to ‘read the room’ and avoid interaction with others in the studio,” one line reads. Her experience speaks to the isolation and fear that many Jewish creatives have felt in progressive circles.
Similarly, Jemima Montag, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor and the winner of two bronze medals in Paris a year ago, describes her fear of being targeted on social media for being a Jewish athlete. “I was preparing to represent [Australia] at the Olympic Games in Paris, the very city where Nana sought refuge after the Holocaust and had hoped it would be a symbolic and memorable celebration,” she writes.
“But when various Jewish sporting social media pages tagged me as a Jewish athlete to look out for at the Paris Games, Mum prompted me to remove the tags. It did not feel safe for the world to know that I was Jewish in the lead up to the biggest global sporting event on the calendar.”
These essays reveal just how close to the surface intergenerational trauma can sit. Many contributors are children or grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and for some, October 7 reopened old wounds.
Occasionally, however, the metaphors feel stretched, as in one essay where the writer feels mentally transported into the Shoah. “My body was in Sydney, but my mind was in the shtetls,” she writes. “I saw the trucks rolling in, saw the trains, the piles of bodies, heard my kids screaming for help.”
In another essay, a new mother wonders whom she would entrust her baby to, reflecting that “during the Holocaust many parents found safety for their children by hiding them with non-Jewish families. Some of the children assumed new names and identities and never saw their families again. Anything for survival … it feels imperative now that I decide who I can entrust my daughter to, if it becomes unsafe for her to stay with me.”
These feelings are real and personal, but as a grandchild of survivors myself, I sometimes found these scenes difficult to reconcile with the reality of Jewish life in contemporary Australia. I wondered how they might land with non-Jewish readers, and whether some of the imagery could have been more grounded. Jewish life in this country, though not without its challenges, has not mirrored the horrors of Europe in the 1940s.
Another noteworthy omission in “Ruptured” is the lack of acknowledgement of Palestinian suffering in most of the essays. A handful of the essays make passing references and two-thirds do not mention Palestinian suffering at all. This is, of course, a book about Jewish women’s experience. And yet, given the scale of devastation in Gaza since October 7, it feels like a missed opportunity that so few contributors address it directly.
Two exceptions stand out. Joanne Fedler, a bestselling author also known for her advocacy work, writes openly about her pacifism and discomfort with aspects of Israel’s military response. “I was deeply troubled. … How many innocent people will die?” she asks.
Similarly, Melbourne teacher Siana Einfeld reflects on her inner conflict when her local council passed a motion solely condemning Israel. “I, too, was devastated by the humanitarian crisis … but a refusal to acknowledge Hamas’ role would not promote coexistence,” she writes. These reflections offer needed nuance, and a reminder that it’s possible to feel grief for both peoples at once.
This book is powerful, but the demographic skew is noticeable. Most writers are from Sydney or Melbourne and tend to be older and secular, although there are a few essays from women in regional and remote areas, as well as Perth and Canberra. There are only a handful of younger contributors, and very few Orthodox voices.
One standout is high school student Noa Gomberg, who identifies as both queer and Zionist. She tells about being excluded from a Pride march. “A girl with pink hair and glittered eyelids, no older than me, was informing – no, warning me – that as a Zionist, I was unwanted in this community,” she writes.
That said, “Ruptured” is not pretending to be definitive. It captures a community in shock, struggling to make sense of a world that suddenly feels hostile in ways many hoped had been left behind. The pain is personal and unmediated. There are no neat resolutions. And while the book might have benefited from a slightly broader lens, its emotional honesty is undeniable.
Reading this work, I was reminded again of how isolating it can feel to be Jewish in the Diaspora when the world’s gaze turns on Israel. The stakes are high, the discourse brutal, and the space for nuance and complexity vanishingly small. “Ruptured” doesn’t solve this problem, but it documents it from the point of view of women who are living through it.