Between loss and love: a lesson in multiculturalism

A few weeks ago, I was sharing hot chocolate with my six-year-old in an Elsternwick café when a dishevelled middle-aged man standing outside on the footpath began shouting at passersby: "You f***ing Jew! Get out of my way!"

He stormed into the café—owned by an Israeli Australian—continuing his tirade. While his words were vile, I suspected mental instability rather than deep hatred. Still, it was unpleasant.

I watched my child encountering overt racism for the first time. A chorus of parenting expert voices crowded my head: How could I turn this unpleasant experience into a lesson in resilience? How do I create a teaching moment from this encounter?

Nothing, it turned out. What followed did the teaching for me.

The café owner approached calmly: "It's okay, mate. Let me make you a coffee."

The man's anger dissolved into sorrow. "I'm sorry…. they didn't renew my medications; I'm having a hard time..."

"I understand," the owner replied gently. While preparing the drink, he quietly mentioned that he happened to be Israeli and that—like many Israelis—he was Jewish.

At the next table, two women were clearly upset. One turned to the man: "I’m not from that group, but I find what you're saying extremely offensive. There's no need for that language here. I get you're having a hard day, but we won't tolerate abuse of our community members."

I thanked the woman for her courage, especially as a role model for my daughter. She turned to my daughter: "I'm strong from martial arts, and it's good to stand up for others—but only when you feel safe!"

It was Australian social cohesion at its most glorious. I left the café delirious with joy. My daughter witnessed lessons in compassion, dialogue, and being an upstander while staying safe.

It's been stressful for Jews in Australia. Many have grown hypervigilant over two years of watching Jew-hatred emerge from various political corners. Friendships have ended, relationships changed, families divided. People are reorganising their lives around the fallout.

Yet countless examples of pro-social behaviour persist, and I truly believe Australian multiculturalism remains a success story.

Our challenge is holding this paradox—to recognise the pain from hostility and attacks alongside most Australians' general goodness. We may need to recalibrate interactions but we must continue engaging across boundaries.

This week we celebrate Tu B'Av, the 15th day of the month of Av, the Jewish Day of Love. It is an ancient holiday that celebrates multiple reconciliations in the Jewish collective story: the permission of intermarriage between members of the different tribes of the ancient Israelites, and the day when God's punishment for the sin of the spies was completed and Bnei Israel would be permitted to enter the Promised Land. The Mishnah describes this day as one of the most joyous of the Jewish calendar, and indeed today it is marked by secular and religious Jews alike as a day of matchmaking, weddings, and increased Torah study.

Remarkably, it falls just six days after Tisha B'Av, the 9th of Av, when we grieve collective calamities: Temple destruction, exile, expulsion, extermination. Tisha B'Av creates a container to hold our grief and also provides actions and rituals (fasting, reading Lamentations, sitting on the floor etc.) to express the loss and pain that comes with the territory of being a Jew.

Within the span of six days, we travel between loss to love in quick succession. Every year, we sit in our sense of alienation, otherness, and loss, and then quickly change gears, celebrating love, union, and all that is good about human connection only a week later.

This emotional whiplash mirrors relationship truth: living with others means constantly moving between closeness and distance, rupture and repair, rejection and reconciliation. The week between Tisha B'Av and Tu B’Av is a liminal space between the two poles, where we are given the opportunity to sit in this paradox.

Yes, people can be awful. But they can also be beautiful and kind. And. often they are pained as well. We must keep our eyes open to all the impulses.

Fear is blinding, and there's much fear now. But chronic vulnerability can slip into a psychology of victimhood politics that engulfs Jewish identity, displacing what's joyful and inspirational about both Jewishness and Australian society.

We fail to notice the many instances of social cohesion and healthy multiculturalism and prevents us from reinforcing them through outreach and engagement. Spending too much time in the 'Tisha B'Av mindset' risks complete withdrawal. But multicultural society requires work—bravery to engage with others despite discomfort and rupture.

We're in a moment where the politics of victimhood reduces complex humans to flat characters and fictitious hierarchies. But as Walt Whitman wrote: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

Just as Tisha B'Av and Tu B’Av force us to hold contradictory experiences, we must remember to hold the multitudes of our realities: that Australia is made of all types of people. Some are nasty, some are heroes, and most of us have the capacity to be both.