The Kinsey Sicks. Photo: AJN file

LEXI LANDSMAN

BEFORE Irwin Keller stands on the bimah as spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom, he prays, but not in the conventional sense.

“I just always pray before services that I’m not really exhausted and confused,” he jokes from California, referring to not mixing up his tallit with his sequinned frock.

It’s not what one would ordinarily think of before entering a synagogue, but there is nothing that ordinary about Keller.

By day, he leads the congregation, but by night he is a professional drag queen and one of the founding members of the Jewish-flavoured Dragapella Beauty Shop Quartet – Kinsey Sicks.

While his two vocations might seem like an unusual mix, Keller says it was his experience as a drag queen that led him to become a queen of the Sabbath.
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Erwin Lamm. Photo: AJN file

LEXI LANDSMAN

A BLACK and white image shows a group of men, well dressed in suits, brandishing big smiles as they huddle together in a small hall.

Dated 1963, the photograph captures the first reunion of the wartime internees who arrived in Sydney on the military transport ship Dunera.

It’s a far cry from their entry to Australia two decades earlier, when more than 2500 German, Austrian and Italian internees, who were to become known as the Dunera Boys, arrived from Britain.

The photograph is among the items that are being exhibited at the National Library in Canberra in a special collection-in-focus exhibition marking the 70th anniversary year of the arrival of the Dunera Boys and their contribution to Australia.

Many of the internees were of Jewish heritage and had escaped to Britain from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, only to be interned as enemy aliens in camps in Britain in mid-1940, and then transferred to camps in rural Australia.
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Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) and Francois Pienaar (Matt Damon) in Invictus.

FILM REVIEW: INVICTUS
REVIEWED BY LEXI LANDSMAN

IT’S February 11, 1990. Anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela is freed from Victor-Verster Prison in South Africa after spending 27 years behind bars.

To the moving sounds of the Zulu folk song Shosholoza (Go forward) we see a team of white players, in crisp uniforms playing on a well-kept green field.

Across the road, a group of black youths wearing torn clothing are playing soccer with a tattered ball on a barren field.

A motorcade with Mandela passes the street separating them. The black youths run to the fence, peering out the wire cheering and chanting “Mandela”, while the white players slowly walk over and frown, their expressions unmoved. Their Afrikaner coach tells them: “Remember this day boys, this is the day our country went to the dogs.”
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World-music group Monsieur Camembert will perform at the Shir Madness music festival.

LEXI LANDSMAN

THE first-ever Sydney Jewish music festival is set to make a resounding splash at Bondi Beach later this year.

The inaugural Shir Madness festival will showcase an array of talent and styles, from klezmer and ladino to contemporary blues, jazz, folk, rock, world, reggae, rap and dance.

To be held in August, the event will feature more than 35 Jewish acts performing on four stages at the Bondi Pavilion, and the hunt is now on for suitable artists to appear on the bill.

Festival director Gary Holzman said: “I’ve always found it surprising that Sydney’s vibrant Jewish community has, for many years, held successful Jewish film festivals and writers festivals, but never an equivalent Jewish music festival.”

With home-grown talent such as Renee Geyer, Ben Lee, Lior, Monsieur Camembert and Tal Wilkenfeld having made their mark on the international scene, Holzman said he felt more effort was needed to support established and emerging artists.
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Ronni Kahn with her Australia’s Local Hero award. Photo: AJN file

LEXI LANDSMAN

RONNI Kahn will now be known across the country as Australia’s local hero.

Awarded the prestigious honour of Australia’s Local Hero by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd this week, the Sydney resident was recognised for her efforts to end hunger as founding director of OzHarvest, which collects surplus produce from cafes and caterers to help feed those who would otherwise go hungry.

From a dream in 2004, OzHarvest now has more than 600 donors and delivers more than 110,000 meals each month to 163 charities in Sydney, Canberra and Wollongong.

On the way to achieving her dream, she helped amend legislation, which permitted food from licensed caterers to be redistributed to those in need.

Speaking to The AJN, the 57-year-old from Bronte said she felt “incredibly honoured and proud” to receive the award.
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The cast of Chicago. Photo: Jeff Busby

LEADING members of the arts community tell LEXI LANDSMAN about their favourite stage shows of 2009.

Jonny Pasvolsky

Actor

THE Wonderful World Of Dissocia was the surprise package of the year for me. The most vivid of imaginative worlds whacked you over the head with light, sound, song and colour in the first act of this two-act play. Justine Clarke allowed us into her childlike realm of experience, one where Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy and Edward Scissorhands could all play together.

Director Marion Potts displayed her wild imagination with two severely contrasting acts, which illustrated the emotional turmoil that often blurs the line between illness and imagination. This was an excellent direction for the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) to take in entering into a more relevant realm of plays.
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LEXI LANDSMAN asks prominent members of the Jewish community to discuss the best three books of the past year that they have read.

ANDREW HARRIS

Freelance photojournalist

ROBERT Mugabe elegises over an empty coffin at a state funeral; bee-keeping in Bosnia helps to explain the meaning of an old man’s life; a son makes sense of his father’s role in the old South Africa – three of my literary highlights for 2009: one shattering novel and two outstanding collections of short fiction.

Shaun Johnson’s incredible postcolonial account of his father’s life on the racial seam of apartheid South Africa, as a liberal-minded civil servant in The Native Commissioner, captures the heartbreaking futility of attempting to affect social change from inside the machinery of an essentially malevolent state.
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Arriving in Israel. Photo: AJN file

LEXI LANDSMAN

THE Jewish Agency for Israel has reported a 17 per cent increase in aliyah from around the world in 2009 compared with 2008.

Despite the global jump to 16,200 olim, Australia and New Zealand’s combined figures only increased by 1.7 per cent -– with 180 people making aliyah in 2009, compared to 177 in 2008, and 132 people in 2007.

However, federal aliyah shaliach Oren Sella said the number of Australian immigrants is at its highest since 1983, and he remained positive that there would be greater growth in 2010.

“This year we expect more than 200 olim because, for the first quarter of 2010, we have already finalised almost double the number of olim from this time last year,” said Sella.

Robbie Franco, the executive director of the Zionist Federation of Australia, said that although the jump between 2008 and 2009 is not significant, Australian aliyah figures have shown “phenomenal growth” over the past decade, increasing by 80 per cent.
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Author Dr Daniel Goldhagen. Photo: AJN file

LEXI LANDSMAN

LEADING author and expert on subjects of Jewish interest, Dr Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, will spearhead this year’s United Israel Appeal (UIA) campaign.

The writer is best known for his international bestseller, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, which was published in 15 languages.

UIA NSW president Bruce Fink said Dr Goldhagen is uniquely positioned “to speak truthfully and forcefully about the perils Israel faces, their sources, and the necessary responses”.

“The Sydney Jewish community is fortunate that Dr Goldhagen has accepted our invitation to visit Australia, where we will be privileged to hear firsthand from an extraordinary human being and a great Jewish thinker,” Fink said.

Recently appointed campaign chairman Danny Taibel added: “Dr Goldhagen’s work educates the world on the atrocities that Jews have faced and is a heartfelt reminder that we will never again be subjected to the horrific persecution and suffering thrust upon us in the past.”
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Singer Judy Campbell. Photo: AJN file

LEXI LANDSMAN

JUDY Campbell knows well that where there is water, there is life. But it is contemplating the reverse –- life without water -– that has driven the musician’s latest release, Waters of Kenya.

The new album by her band, Mosaic, is a fusion of traditional east-Kenyan rhythms with contemporary jazz that grew out of her collaboration with Kenyan percussionist Bandika Ngao.

“This whole collection of music is very much along the lines of tikkun olam,” 52-year-old Campbell enthuses. “It’s furthering the message about the importance of clean water in areas of the world that don’t have it.”

The album developed through the band’s association with the Tweed Shire Council of NSW, which runs a Kenya mentoring program to improve community and environmental health for Kenyan families by increasing access to safe water and sanitation.
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