Lisa Jackson Pulver: Jewish, Aboriginal, survivor

It wasn’t being alone in the world that Lisa found scary. “What was scary as a teenager was not being able to lock my door,” she tells The Jewish Independent. “We had a violent, violent home. Dad would come home in a rage. Anything would trigger him. Even a window he broke months before. Both my parents became alcoholics. None of the other kids from school were allowed near our place.

“I’d present at school physically battered. No-one cared. The other kids hated me and I hated being there. It was brutal.”

Eventually, the violence was too much for Lisa Jackson, and she  ran away from her home in Sydney. “I lived in the back of cars, on peoples’ couches, on the street. I’d go into shops, say I needed money and do odd jobs. I worked in milk bars and cleaned toilets.

“My father had a gambling addiction. He had served as flight crew in the Royal Australian Air Force in the Pacific campaign during World War II. He came back psychologically damaged, a violent man, having apparently been a beautiful man before the war. He had PTSD big-time and never recovered. He’d put himself in harm’s way for his country, but wasn’t looked after when he needed help. His personality was disfigured.

“He got a job as a boilermaker and would return from work covered in fine white powder. He got asbestosis and emphysema and the last eight years of his life were terrible, like he was breathing through a straw all the time. He died in a RSL home.

“Us kids were also damaged. We remain damaged. I still can’t sleep without a light on. Every door in my house has a bell on it.”

Today Dr Jackson Pulver, 65, is Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Indigenous Services and Strategy, at the University of Sydney and Professor of Public Health and Epidemiology. She serves on the Australian Medical Council, Australian Statistical Advisory Council and Royal Society of NSW, co-founded the Shalom Gamarada scholarship program for Aboriginal students and is a Group Captain in the Specialist Reserve of the Royal Australian Air Force.

But it’s been a tempestuous journey. Her mother was one of between six and 13 children, “depending when you asked”. Her maternal grandfather was killed by Japanese bombs while piloting a US Navy merchant ship transporting munitions to Allied forces in Papua New Guinea.

While on the street, Jackson Pulver met a nun who persuaded her to take up nursing. “It gave me accommodation, a job, three meals a day and a uniform. And the first home where I could lock the door.”

Qualifying as a nurse, she harboured dreams of becoming a doctor. “I was accepted at Sydney University, but I had no financial resources, was doing night shifts as a nurse, plus consultancy work and looking after kids. I started failing.

“I was about to defer when a professor suggested I switch to Public Health part-time, rather than drop out. Public Health was where I needed to be. I did a Masters in Public Health, a doctorate in Medicine and a graduate diploma, all of which allowed me to become an epidemiologist.”

So why does a Koorie woman convert to Orthodox Judaism? “During a term at Medical School, I was facilitating a writing course at Canon when I saw this guy, Mark Pulver, roll up on his bicycle and drink two bottles of Coca-Cola. He was a senior engineer there.

“I’m also a cyclist and I became friends with him and his girlfriend, Kathy. We all became friends and Kathy and I worked together on a video project for the Women’s Reconciliation Network. It was called Around The Kitchen Table, where women talk about reconciliation. Kathy died soon after that. Some time later, Mark and I got together and we got married in a civil wedding.

“His mother, from a long line of rabbis, was disappointed he hadn’t married a Jewish girl. She accepted me of course, but I was experiencing my own self-reflection. We wanted babies, but Mark didn’t want to send his children to a religious school. I did. Faith is important to me. I said how about sending our kids to a Jewish school? He said okay.

“I started going to Newtown Synagogue. It’s eclectic and very accepting. I converted Orthodox because I had the best rabbi. And later [in 2010] I even became president.

“As for kids, we had 12 IVF cycles. It was a terrible outcome each time; mostly we had miscarriages or failed transfers. Some stayed longer and the loss of those children was devastating. And ironic. Would it have changed my mind if I knew I wasn’t going to have kids? Probably not. I’m very happy being Jewish, thank you.”

Jackson Pulver is candid in condemning the upsurge in antisemitism. “One of the things that disgusts me is the denial of October 7, the disregard for the people still hostage. The world has gone from `We must never let the Holocaust happen again’ to denying human rights of those who were abused, abducted and are still hostage.

“I was in Kuwait on a women’s delegation. I told the organisers I was Jewish, so there wouldn’t be any surprises. We were in a building when our guide told me to look down. There were three graveyards side by side – Christian, Muslim and Jewish - about to be demolished to make way for new buildings. Would I like to say a prayer?

“I said I’d be honoured. I said Kaddish and we laid a stone on each Jewish grave. There were about 50, all very old. I appreciated the respect of the guide’s gesture. I’ve never forgotten the feeling of honouring those graves for the last time. It was absolutely profound. And acknowledgement that Jews were there, with so many others, side by side. Yet today people say we don’t belong in that part of the world.”

She is equally forthright about the “river to the sea” chant. “What happens to Jews, to Christians, to Baha’i, to the others, in that scenario? People take bite-sized six-word slogans and say it’s the truth. I wonder - if we had a live stream of the horrors of those who were kidnapped on October 7 and those still alive, would we be seeing the chants and the protests we see today? Would we be seeing, rather, people calling for peace, rather than more war?”

Jackson Pulver declines to comment on the controversy which has rocked the university in recent months.

“It’s too simplistic to say Australia is a racist nation,” she says. “That said, my perspective has changed significantly. I used to be happy that Australian society included a large proportion of first- and second-generation Australians. In different pockets of Sydney you can see different pockets of the world through places of worship, foods, hearing what is spoken on the street, the clothing people wear. It was wonderful.

“But now I am concerned. For example, the majority of people, many of whom are first- and second-generation Australians, don’t believe we should be seen in the Constitution as Australia’s First Peoples. This would have affected no-one - except us.

“I would have hoped we as nation were better than that. Aboriginal people also asked the Australian people to vote yes to give us a voice at the table on matters that affect us; Australia said no.

“How can we be deemed by 61% of people to be not entitled to such a voice? Who, really, would that have affected, other than us? The result makes no sense to me.

“Quite frankly, the world needs to take a big breath because we are on the precipice of extraordinary change. We are moving into a world where we will have to depend on each other to get through the biggest challenges to face humanity.

“We have to learn to be together, to care for each other, to have compassion for each other and our differences. Our descendants won’t look at us as good ancestors if we let this opportunity to care get away from us.”