Edited by Lee Kofman and Tamar Paluch
The world feels ruptured, but sometimes it is through the cracks that the light gets in.
In this powerful collection of essays, thirty-six women, including Ramona Koval, Dani Valent, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, Kerri Sackville, Deborah Conway and Rachelle Unreich, reveal how their lives in Australia were irrevocably changed by the events of October 7. From race-walker Jemima Montag’s account of competing in the Olympics as a Jewish athlete, to actress Dena Amy Kaplan encountering hostility when she speaks against Jew-hatred, and author Elise Esther Hearst’s attempts to find solace in making comedy, Ruptured is both an exploration of the profound rift created in the wake of that devastating day, and an attempt to mend it.
What reviewers say:
Contemporary terrors collide with unimaginable histories in this raw, courageous, and unflinching collection from some of Australia’s finest writers.
Van Badham, author of QAnon and On
A testimony of — and testament to — our community’s resilience. You will be gripped, you will be galvanised. You will know you’re not alone.
Alice Zaslavsky, author of Salad for Days
This book is not just a chronicle of pain and upheaval, but a testament to the strength and resilience each woman demonstrates in the struggle to maintain their sense of identity and belonging in contemporary Australia.
Fissured between these pages are necessary voices of pertinacious strength, unwavering courage, solidarity, womanhood, survival and faith — matrilineal, intergenerational, umbilical; Jewish Australian women here and now refuse to be de facto to a united global cloak of denial and silence. Giving rise to their shared essays, thirty-six women bring forth an ancient lantern of light and resilience through the gift of language. Their stories will pause you, conflict you — dare I suggest, embrace you. To be pierced is to be ruptured. To be ruptured is to overcome. To overcome is to heal.
Yvette Henry Holt, Australian Literary Executive and author of Anonymous Premonition
This book is a moving and thoughtful intervention by Jewish women of all political stripes into the unhinging polarisation of the social media age and the resurgence of antisemitism. Read it before you judge it.
Professor Catharine Lumby, author of Frank Moorhouse: A Life
Ruptured is a magnificent achievement.
Michael Gawenda, Author of My Life As a Jew
I urge to to buy a copy of Ruptured. To read it, think about it, let the perspectives it contains sink in. Please.
The title says it all — these are cries of pain, of disillusion, of loss of lifelong friendships, of search for identity, and above all, of shattering of trust and confidence. But these are also triumphant voices – of hope, strength, courage, of resilience and reconnection with roots and community. A Magen David reclaimed, a cherished family recipe shared, a renewal of faith and a voice and a tribe rediscovered. At the end of each essay, I wanted to reach out and embrace the woman who had crafted those words, fearlessly and with honesty. Such small threads, but together they weave a tapestry of fearlessness and of dreams for a better world.
Nina Bassat AM
Taken together, the essays in Ruptured form more than a collection of personal reflections. They are a testimony of a moment when Jewish Australians felt the ground shift beneath them.
Rebecca Davis, AIJAC
The silence of so many non-Jewish Australians about rising antisemitism in Australia after the horror of the October 7 pogrom by Hamas, and the failure to reach out to comfort long-term Jewish friends and colleagues, has broken the hearts and trust of many Jewish women. These marvellous, powerful and heartbreaking essays offer open-hearted readers the opportunity to understand the distress of Jewish women and talk to their Jewish friends and colleagues about counteracting Jew hatred in Australia.
Julie McCrossin AM
A timely and powerful anthology…
By turns hopeful, thoughtful, grieving and painful, these essays by Australian Jewish women challenge us to move beyond our own beliefs, perceptions and context, to that place where simple binaries open out into the many-coloured, multi-faceted, lived experiences of others.
Robyn Cadwallader, author of The Fire and the Rose
I had no idea what they [Jewish people] were all going through until I began to read this book.
An important new book.
This book is both an important contribution to Jewish history and a thought-provoking read
There are inspirational insights, naked honesty, emotional responses that cut to the bone, intellectual analysis… The editors of this remarkable book assembled a brilliant and extremely diverse cast of writers… I recommend this book, which constitutes a valuable record of heartfelt responses to heartbreaking times.
J-Wire
This book is powerful
HaAretz
‘I’m not alone,’ I kept whispering to myself. ‘So many other women feel the same.’
There are some events which forever change those they touch. The attacks of October 7, 2023 and their aftermath have reverberated around the world, felt keenly in communities everywhere. In capturing the perspectives of Australian Jewish women, Ruptured provides an important new lens. Horror and grief intersect with resilience and determination through these pages, in a text which deserves a place among the chronicles of this complicated history.
Meg Kenneally, author of Free
Essays by
Dani Valent
Deborah Conway
Elana Benjamin
Elise Esther Hearst
Galit Klas
Irena Zilberman
Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio
Jemima Montag
Jessica Bowker
Joanne Fedler
Julia Meyerowitz-Katz
Julie Szego
Kate Lewis
Kerri Sackville
Kim Rubenstein
Kylie Moore-Gilbert
Lana Schwarcz
Lee Kofman
Lisa Goldberg
Lynette Chazan
Melinda Jones
Dr Mindy Sotiri
Nicky Stein
Nina Sanadze
Noa Gomberg
Noè Harsel
Rachelle Unreich
Ramona Koval
Ruby Kraner-Tucci
Sharon Sztar
Sharonne Blum
Siana Einfeld
Sidra Kranz Moshinsky
Simonne Whine
Tamar Paluch