SAM LIPSKI
“There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, 2002.
AS Australian Jews, and here is a generalisation if ever there was one, we have more than our fair share of mavens about the Jewish community.
Now it doesn’t take much to be a maven, trust me. Having been labelled one a long time ago, I can confirm that all you need to qualify is a willingness to pontificate around the Shabbat dinner table on Friday night. Or in a column in The AJN like this one. Or better still, nowadays, in a blog.
As for surveys, shmurveys, evidence, shmevidence. Who needs them? The last community survey in Melbourne was published in 1991 and the mavens, if they ever paid attention, soon forgot what the survey had actually found. The maven’s mantra is: “I know what I know.”
A true maven would never admit that he knows there are things he doesn’t know about the Jewish community, let alone that there may be things he doesn’t know he doesn’t know.
Since 1991, despite some valuable but limited studies the Jewish Communal Appeal has undertaken in Sydney, neither community has developed an updated survey base. In an era of rapid societal and communal change, two decades between community surveys is just too long. Great for mavens and bloggers.
Which is why, even as a paid-up member of the self-appointed mavens’ society, I applaud the arrival of the 2008-09 Jewish Population Survey’s preliminary findings released this week, and previewed in last week’s AJN (28/08).
Yes, the survey gives us a rich feast of information about who we are, what we believe, and how we currently behave as Jews. Based on more than 6000 responses, it’s by far the largest and most comprehensive survey of Australian Jews conducted.
Monash University’s Professor Andrew Markus, and his colleagues Nicky Jacobs and Tanya Aronov, deserve our thanks and a mazal tov for their landmark, indeed historic, project. As do the hundreds of others involved in both cities. And as these are only the preliminary findings, there’s much more to come.
Of those findings, I was particularly interested in three that weren’t highlighted in the wide-ranging preview supplement The AJN published.
The first is that we seem to be becoming more religious. Comparing the 1991 and 2008/09 Melbourne surveys, there is more synagogue attendance, Friday night Sabbath and Kosher observance, and Jewish identification. Roughly 10 per cent more.
For me, it’s the long-term trend towards higher levels of religious practice and Jewish identification, rather than the size of the increase, which is significant – and encouraging.
Considered in comparison to the 1967 Melbourne survey, when “being Jewish” was important to 45 per cent of respondents, and the 1991 survey when it was 58 per cent, the 66 per cent who see their Jewishness as important in 2008-09 represents a key finding.
More analysis remains to be conducted on how deeply this identification goes, but something interesting is clearly happening.
A second finding I found somewhat surprising -– a known unknown -– was the strength of the visceral attachment so many Australian Jews have to Israel.
I’m not referring to the way some 80 per cent of respondents regard themselves as Zionists. No real surprise there. Except, of course, to some producers of religious programs for the ABC who’ve provided air-time for a handful of secular Jewish anti-Zionists.
What struck me, however, was the consistency between the 1967 Melbourne survey, when 58 per cent said they felt “special alarm” when Israel was endangered, the 55 per cent percent who said so in 1991, and the 57 per cent who repeated it in 2008-09.
There is a drop from 28 per cent in 1967 to 17 per cent in 2008-09 among respondents who said that when Israel was endangered they felt as if their “own life was in danger”. But I believe that reflects the views of a much higher percentage of Holocaust survivors who were still with us in 1967, but have since passed on.
Nevertheless, that today 74 per cent of Australian Jews -– 58 per cent and 17 per cent –- remain so deeply attached to Israel is a profoundly moving result. Not so much politically, or ideologically. But simply as a reflection of Jewish solidarity and peoplehood.
Finally, not another finding, but a fact. The survey is a wonderful example of how Melbourne and Sydney Jewish communities can combine their leadership and professional resources, as well as their experience and know-how. When there’s a will to do so, and when there are leaders who encourage it, many things are possible.
Anybody who believes, as I do, that the potential for greater cooperation between Sydney and Melbourne is Australian Jewry’s “sleeping giant” waiting to be fully exploited will shep nachas from reading the survey’s acknowledgments page. In its own way, it is as important a piece of intellectual property as anything else in the report.
Sam Lipski is the chief executive of The Pratt Foundation and a former editor-in-chief of The AJN. The Pratt Foundation provided a supporting grant to the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation for the 2008-09 population survey.
