Running the Gamut

October 24, 2001-Good Eats

We finally found food with flavor It wasn’t fried! It wasn’t pickled! It was cooked by an Israeli. We went to Sue and Len Goldzweig’s home. She’s the woman who wrote the book about her experiences during WWII. If you recall, she’d been sent to England on her own at age nine and wrote about her adventures. The people who had gone to the PFLAG meeting in Brisbane with us and have a gay son in Sydney were there along with another couple. We’d met them before, but had never spent time with them. They're from New Zealand and are a hoot. It felt as if we'd all been friends for ages.

Len told of the suggestions he made five years ago when the congregation was trying to find a permanent rabbi. He thought that women rabbis might have trouble getting a job and would be more likely to take a pulpit off the beaten track. He was met by dead silence at the board meeting. He then got the bright idea that gay rabbis might be interested for similar reasons. This caused an uproar. He told us about this because he doesn’t think that either would be a problem anymore. He pointed out that David’s “Family Values” sermon was met with equanimity and no fuss. Times and people change. I did wonder how they would select for “gayness” in a rabbi.

On our way home we were in a traffic jam. Here roadwork tends to be done at night to avoid rush hours. While we waited, I was entertained by watching construction workers who wore uniform walking shorts, had cute legs, and were talking on mobile phones. Our road crews look as busy, aren’t dressed as cute, and don’t have phones.

Sense & Nonsense

‘Strine ( slang and accent) strikes again. There was a message waiting for us when we got home. We’re meeting our usual Wednesday night dinner group at an Indian restaurant. The directions were to 10 Dhuri Place. I’d never heard of that restaurant, but it sounded Indian to me. When I went to find it on the map, I mentioned the name to David. He looked at me quizzically and laughed. The name of the restaurant is Tandoori Place.

Anthony Mundine is a top Australian boxer who shot off his mouth in what has become quite a “cause celeb” here. He was asked what he thought of the terrorism and Afghan situation. He’s a Muslim and I could tell from the rest of the interview that he’s not the brightest star in the Southern Cross. His answer was that the U.S. brought the terrorist attack upon itself. He expanded by saying that Islam teaches to fight for God. The hijackers weren’t terrorists. They were fighting for God. When David heard that, he said that Mundine is the only Muslim who is telling the truth to the media. I figure that Mundine is too dumb to be diplomatic. Of course, now there’s a lot of back-pedaling and claims of quoting out of context. There was no context. His statement was an answer to a direct question. The head of the International Boxing Federation said he ‘d never fight in America. The head of the IBF has a son who worked in the Towers. His son was outside having a smoke when the first plane struck.

Minorities

Crime doesn’t seem to know racial boundaries here or in the U.S. Although there’s a fairly high crime rate here, there aren’t many minority criminals. Aborigines are represented in the prison population, but there aren’t many of them to begin with. In the U.S. most of those incarcerated are minorities. It’s nice to know that the white population here has found a need and filled it. Syd Bruce said that when he’s in the U.S. on business, he’s appalled by what people say about minorities. They sound like the KKK. Then we went into a discussion of the non-discrimination laws regarding real estate. He said they have those laws here, but they’re ignored. If someone pulls up to an apartment with a bunch of kids in the car, the manager tells them there’s nothing available and calls a bunch of other managers in the area to warn them about the family. Aborigines can’t afford to buy houses, but he said that if someone doesn’t like the way a buyer is dressed or how he presents himself, they don’t have to let him in.

We walked over go our favorite kebab stand for lunch today. We were sitting at a table outside when the owner came out to clean up. She was the woman I'd spoken to right after 9/11 who said she was a Kurd. She asked how we liked our food and after we stopped raving about it, we mentioned we noticed she sells cigarettes and that they’re very expensive in Australia. She confessed that she smokes although she should know better. She was an ICU nurse in a bone marrow transplant unit when she lived in Turkey and the Netherlands. She has seven-year-old twin boys and an 11-year-old girl. She loves working at the kebab stand because it’s relaxing, but plans to return to nursing when the children are older. I’m not sure what religion Kurds are, but they’ve been chased around their part of the world for a long time. If she’s Muslim, she’s a liberated one.

Toby