Amidst a sea of parochialism, a letter in this week’s Australian Jewish News articulates a much-appreciated perspective:
As the AJN continues its tedious weekly drubbing of Antony Loewenstein, it is difficult to ignore the obvious generational implications.
Loewenstein is a young voice, expressing opinions deeply unpopular in the Jewish community. He may not be always right, but neither is he wholly wrong. Whatever the merits of his opinions, he is at least brave enough to stand up for what he thinks. Ranged against him are a mauling pack of mainly old men who appear to loath him as much for who he is, as for what he says: he is without literary merit, they say, an intellectual failure, a self-hater.
What cant! What hypocrisy! As if one needs any credentials before one is allowed to express an opinion.
Loewenstein speaks from the heart his critics don’t even appear to have hearts and they consistently reveal themselves to be the real haters, of youth, freedom and change.
When one of your correspondents wrote of turning his back on the Jewish community, he spoke for many of us, young and old (I am nearly 60) who cannot abide this patriarchal contempt for real dissent, the kind that challenges us to look at ourselves honestly.
Dr Lewis Rassaby
Leura, NSW
Get ready for the usual suspects calling Dr Rassaby – whom I don’t know – a dangerous man, an anti-Semite, a self-hating Jew, a “Jew for Genocide” or worse. Such Jews are their own worst enemies.