Non-Jewish students flock to learn about Jews at Monash University

The Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation is growing and most students are not Jewish. ANNA GAME-LOPATA talks to new director DAVID SLUCKI.

The Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation (ACJC) at Monash University aims to harness its potential as a global home for Jewish thought leadership, according to its new director, historian and author, Associate Professor David Slucki.

With the pandemic no longer holding it back, Slucki has big dreams for revitalising ACJC's mantle as a hub of activity where scholars work together with artists and cultural producers to create new scholarship and artwork. He says this would make the organisation “globally unique as a venue for such hybrid works”.

However, he emphasises that he also intends to continue ACJC’s core focus of studying the post-Holocaust Jewish world in its many facets, including history, culture, psychology and literature.

“We have a role to play in making sure that Jews don’t get forgotten in public conversations about diversity, multiculturalism and inclusion,” Slucki says. “Jews count.”

Many in the community would not realise that unlike most Jewish institutions, the vast majority of ACJC’s students are not Jewish. That’s significant given the numbers— its current cohort being 1350 strong and growing.

Slucki says students take such a variety of courses, it’s hard to generalise about their motivations. However, he points out that an extremely important part of ACJC’s mission is to teach a diverse array of people about Jews.

This year, Slucki’s unit about race and ethnicity in American popular culture has attracted 650 students who want to learn about and compare the histories of representation of Jewish, African and Asian Americans. That’s an increase on 480 from the previous year and 120 the year before that.

He says both Jewish and non-Jewish students are also interested in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and are very “politically engaged, aware and smart”.

“They want to understand what's happening in the region,” he says. “Students who take A history of God are deeply interested in religious ideas and experiences. They want to understand where Jews fit in a broader discussion of monotheism.”

For Slucki, it’s a huge joy to talk through ideas with students who bring fresh perspectives and an open mind despite often knowing little (or nothing) about Jews.

Of course, ACJC also works in tandem with Jewish community and advocacy organisations. Slucki says he’s planning to reintroduce working with Jewish schools to help upskill Jewish studies teachers by offering classroom tools based on new pedagogical approaches.

“We partner with Jewish institutions to program events and we’re out there commenting in the media,” says Slucki, who recently wrote a piece in The Canberra Times and appeared on ABC News Radio to share the importance of Holocaust remembrance.

“Stories about anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial are usually coming from a place of ignorance,” he says. “People need to understand the Jewish experience and why it matters. We’re the national experts, and as an organisation, ACJC wants to lead that conversation to emphasise the complexity of Jewish life and culture.”

A roundtable discussion this week, Jewish Studies: a snapshot of the field, shared ACJC's new vision with the community, featuring Slucki, and former ACJC director Professor Rebecca Margolis, along with their colleagues Dr Noah Shenker, Dr Daniel Heller and Dr Nathan Wolski.

“We want to hit the ground running in 2023,” Slucki says. “With lockdowns now hopefully in the past, we want to reintroduce ourselves and showcase our revitalisation.

“We all think very deeply about our role as scholars of Jewish studies, whether it’s Jewish texts, history or contemporary life and culture. We’re looking forward to harnessing our strengths for the future.”

Prior to taking the ACJC top job, Slucki was an academic at the College of Charleston in the US state of South Carolina, before being appointed Loti Smorgon Associate Professor in Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture at Monash University. His books include The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Toward a Global History (2012) and Sing This at My Funeral – a Memoir of Fathers and Sons (2019).

He also co-edited In the Shadows of Memory: The Holocaust and the Third Generation and says he has always been fascinated by the variety of ways survivors and their descendants have reinvented what it means to be Jewish in the wake of the Holocaust. This became the ongoing animating question for his research.

Growing up in a Bundist environment in Melbourne, Slucki’s own identity was deeply informed by iconic figures such as Artur Zygielbojm, Vladimir Medem and Mikhal Klepfisz , who he idolised and wished to emulate. “[They are] all men, but that was the era I was growing up in,” Slucki comments. “Theirs were the faces gazing down at me from the walls of SKIF (Sotsyalistishe Kinder Farband), the Bundist Jewish youth movement I attended.”

The subject of Slucki’s first book, The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945, started as a PhD at Monash University. “It was about the efforts of a group of Polish Jewish socialists to rebuild in the face of everything they had known being destroyed, and how they dispersed throughout the world to places like Australia, the United States, France, Israel, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil,” he says.

His second book, Sing This at my Funeral, is a memoir on the relationships between fathers and sons, given the turbulent, war-torn lives of his own father and grandfather. “There’s an old saying that all history is autobiographical,” Slucki quips.

“After my father died, I decided to write a memoir of four generations of men in my family. I thought there was no one to keep telling the stories I grew up with and carry them on. As a father, I was thinking a lot about being a son and what it means to be a father raising sons.”

On a totally different tack, Slucki’s current writing and scholarship examines Jewish-flavoured TV comedy such as The Nanny (1993-99), a US sit-com set in New York. He says such research also has an autobiographical element. 

“My dad had a wicked sense of humour and I've always been a fan of comedy. I watched The Simpsons when I was a five-year-old and the whole run of Seinfeld.”

Slucki says the ACJC must be nimble and think creatively about its role and that of academics in general, especially given the tension between its relationship to the Jewish community and broader commitment to furthering knowledge.

While he says the academic research and teaching undertaken at ACJC is geared towards uncovering truth, he concedes the organisation also has a responsibility to the Jewish community which is its primary source of support.

“Another part of our mission is to think about how we square things off when the agendas of our different constituencies don't meet comfortably,” he explains. “For example, our stakeholders have differences about whether we’re a community-focused centre or one with a broader mission.

“As director, I’m clear that we need to take the research we do to the broader public, expand and disseminate it in ways that create new insights into big questions.

“Ultimately, we’re aiming to further an understanding of Jews and Jewish life, both within the Jewish community and outside it.”

Photo: David Slucki (Monash University)