JESSICA AND HER FAMILY IN MELBOURNE Part 1 Manus: Warrill Grindrod Producent: Dan Garrett Sändningsdatum: 11/12, 2001 Längd: 9'32

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1 Over to you 2001/2002 Jessica and her Family in Melbourne 1 Programnr: 01513/ra11 1 JESSICA AND HER FAMILY IN MELBOURNE Part 1 Manus: Warrill Grindrod Producent: Dan Garrett Sändningsdatum: 11/12, 2001 Längd: 9'32 Warrill Grindrod: Christmas music at Christmas time. In Australia, 11 year old Jessica is looking forward to what Christmas will bring. She s already been busy helping to decorate the artificial tree. In our lounge room we have a lovely Christmas tree and it s one that when Mum and Dad first got married, they brought it and it s now 13 years old. And every year we, on the first Sunday of Advent, we decorate it, and on it we ve got little Santa lights that light up, lots of different coloured tinsels. We ve got some little angels and reindeers, and at the top we ve got a star, a silver star that lights up with all different colours, right on the top and it s really nice. The fact that Jessica knows that the tree goes up on the first Sunday of Advent, the Christian season of preparation before Christmas, gives a clue to her upbringing. She s growing up in a family that s actively Christian. Jessica and her family live in a suburb of Melbourne, one of Australia s biggest cities. As with many families these days, both Jessica s parents work, so the time before Christmas is very busy. One of the important things is sending and receiving Christmas cards. We usually get lots and lots of Christmas cards and we put them on our fridge and freezer so it s like this big colourful rainbow of all the golds and reds and everything we get. And we usually buy like a packet of 200 stamps at Christmas time because of all the cards we send out for Dad s work, Mum s work, Dad s friends, Mum s friends, our friends, and all our relatives. Finally, after all the anticipation, Christmas Day arrives! When I met up with Jessica in the middle of the day, I asked how Christmas Day had begun for her and her two younger sisters, Tiffany and Rachel. Today began at 5 o clock when I looked in my Santa stocking and I went and woke up all my sisters. I found in my stocking lots and lots of lollies, which were yummy, and a karaoke Christmas tape. Then we all got up and we opened one present each only, and we got to pick out of the Christmas tree. And then Grandma, Dad, Mum, Tiffany, Rachel and I, we went to church. And Grandma and Dad went in one car and Mum, Tiffany, Rachel and I went in the other one, to go to church. 1

2 Over to you 2001/2002 Jessica and her Family in Melbourne 1 Programnr: 01513/ra11 2 Philip: Sol: Jessica and her sisters go to the local Anglican church every week, but this time it was very special not only because it s the Christmas Service, but because Jessica s mother came too. It was really special when Mum came to Church because she usually doesn t, and because she works full-time we don t get to see her very often. Mum usually doesn t come because she s Jewish, and that s not her religion. The fact that Jessica s mother is Jewish makes the family a very interesting one because Jessica and her sisters are being brought up as both Jewish and Christian. So what usually happens on Sundays is that Jessica s mother, Debbie, stays home and catches up with the housework while Philip, Jessica s father, takes the three girls to Church. So on a Sunday, Jessica, Tiffany and Rachel go out with me to Church while Debbie stays behind and tries to clean up the house. And we go to Church and they go off to Sunday School and do their little drawings. Then afterwards we stop and have an ice-cream on the way back home and that type of thing and we go through the story. So we might say talk about What did you learn today? and they ll talk about, Well today we learnt about talents and a talent is really a gift that you re given from God and it s important that you use your gifts. So Christianity and the Anglican Church are very important parts of Jessica s life, but so is her Jewishness. Jessica s Jewish grandfather, Sol, explains how the two blend together. Philip, their father, is a true Anglican and he s bringing the children up as Anglicans. He takes them to church every Sunday. We also go to church and we get involved in services at Christmas, Easter and any main services we go along and join in. So we don t want to make them feel that they re any different. And Jewish holidays like Passover and the New Year, Philip just respects it just as much as any Jewish people, probably more so. And we all still do the two. So it s, we have two worlds, we have the Jewish world and the Anglican world and the kids have grown up in that way. But let s return to Christmas, the time for Christians to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Jessica enjoyed sharing in the special celebration at their church. The church service was different because they had hymns like Away in a Manger and we just recently had a new organ put in, which is massive, and the sound was just tremendous, so we all really loved that. It felt really Christmas-y because there were lots of people and we usually like going to see the figurines of baby Jesus in the manger and the wise men and 2

3 Over to you 2001/2002 Jessica and her Family in Melbourne 1 Programnr: 01513/ra11 3 that because it s really pretty; and one of the people there do the flowers and they make it really, really nice. Sol: Betty: That sounds like Christmas in many parts of the world, but in Australia one of the distinctively different things about Christmas is the weather. Christmas happens in the middle of summer. Today it s really hot and so I m wearing three-quarter green pants which I got for Christmas, and a matching green T-shirt, and on my head I ve got our little Santa hat which is red and white, with a little bauble at the end of it, which if you put batteries in it, it lights up, as a light, so I ve been wearing that all day. The weather, it is so hot around here, we better put on lots of suncream. Already I can see Mum already looking like a beetroot and so are lots of other people here. And that s because a lot of the time everyone sits outside. After Jessica and her family had been to the Christmas church service, they all went round to Jessica s Aunt Alli s house for the main Christmas meal lunch a lunch that was eaten in the open air and was appropriate for the midsummer temperatures! For lunch we had cold turkey and cold ham with cranberry sauce for the people who liked it. We had lots of salads and vegetables; and then for dessert we had plum pudding with brandy butter and an ice-cream. But I don t like plum pudding so I just had a big blob of brandy butter instead. So Jessica s Australian Christmas reveals a mix of the old and the new: the traditional midwinter British customs adapted for the heat of an Australian summer. And it s that blending of cultures that is the basis of Jessica s family, a family that, as Jessica s Jewish grandfather says, is above all, Australian. Oh, I ve always felt Australian. I ve always felt Australian probably and being Jewish second, but I ve never forgotten that I am Jewish. As I say I think being Australian, I live here, it s my life and my children have grown up here and I think that is the number one priority. And the number one priority for Sol s wife Betty is the family. For Jessica s Jewish grandmother this is what s special about being Jewish, the sense of family. And this is a family that embraces the differences within it. I value the family, the family traditions and the family values, because in the Jewish family, the family comes before all else and there is a respect and a closeness. Families stay together and support one another and I m particularly happy when I see all the family together and they get on, and it s a loud and 3

4 Over to you 2001/2002 Jessica and her Family in Melbourne 1 Programnr: 01513/ra11 4 noisy and wonderful feeling, you know everyone s there and it s warm and we re our own little mixture. So we ll leave Jessica and her Jewish-Christian family as they continue to celebrate their Australian Christmas together. 4

5 Over to You 2001/2002 Jessica in Melbourne 2 Programnr: 01513/ra12 JESSICA IN MELBOURNE Part 2 Manus: Warrill Grindrod Producent: Dan Garrett Sändningsdatum: 18/12, 2001 Längd: 9'27 Warrill Grindrod: The musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Right now this soundtrack CD is Jessica s favourite. You may remember that Jessica is 11 years old, and lives in the Australian city of Melbourne. She s in Grade 6 at school and studies the kinds of subjects familiar to children all over the world. I m 11 years old and I m in Grade 6 this year and our subjects at school are English, Maths, PE, Sport, Creative Story Writing, Reading and Science. And Jessica has no doubts about the subject she likes best! My favourite one is Creative Story Writing and English because I love making up my own stories with my own characters. When I grow up and leave school I d like to become a singer and an actress. That s why she really looks forward to Saturdays - because then she can develop her love of inventing characters even further. Every Saturday for three hours I go to drama in a nearby suburb, and there we do little skits and sing and we rehearse for our concerts. The recent musical I did lately was Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which was really fun. Jessica (singing): Way way back many centuries ago Not long after the Bible began Jacob lived in the land of Canaan A fine example of a family man Jessica rehearsing one of her songs at home. She likes to sing as she feels it gives her the chance to express herself in quite different ways from normal talking. She loves becoming different characters through drama, but musical drama allows her to explore her talents even more. I really liked Joseph because I sung notes which I had never sung before, and we did more harmonies and parts. In the musical I was a hairy Ishmaelite, a narrator and I did some chorus work as well. 1

6 Over to You 2001/2002 Jessica in Melbourne 2 Programnr: 01513/ra12 Jessica (singing): Jacob was a founder of a whole new nation Thanks to the number of children he had. He was also known as Israel But most of the time His sons and his wives used to call him Dad. Jacob, Jacob and sons Men of the soil, of the sheaf and crook. Dell: Jessica s grandmother, Dell, feels it s very important to let Jessica discover, and then build on, her talents. Dell is sure that if you know yourself and are able to be yourself, this will help you for the rest of your life. If you know yourself and you know what your talents are, and you really work at those, then you can be yourself. And if you re yourself, you haven t got that fear when you meet others and do things, because you re being the best person that you can be and that s all that can be asked of you and everything else ll come naturally. Jessica is being brought up in a strongly Christian household. Her father, Philip Dell s son is very much a practising Christian. But Jessica s mother, Debbie, grew up in a traditional Jewish family, and sees herself as Jewish. Interestingly, Philip s Christianity was one of the things that Debbie found most attractive about him. In relation to religion though, one of the things that I always believed was that I would marry somebody Jewish. But as I grew up I realised that I didn t actually like a lot of the Jewish people because they were very closed and exclusive. And I think one of the things, one of the major reasons I fell in love with Phil was because of his Christianity and because of his values, because I saw and I still see to this day, Phil doesn t talk about his values, he actually lives them. And if my girls take up the values of what Phil lives by and that s based on Christianity, then I m comfortable with that. So that s something that has made Phil unique and made me fall in love with him. But working out how they would blend their two traditions wasn t always easy for Philip and Debbie. It was particularly difficult when they were thinking about marriage. We did have to work through, very much, when we decided to marry, where we got married, how we would get married and if we chose to have children, what that would actually mean. And there was a lot of pain in that for both of us. And of course Philip and Debbie s own families had to adjust to the fact that Philip and Debbie wanted to marry. Debbie s father Sol, was very supportive. 2

7 Over to You 2001/2002 Jessica in Melbourne 2 Programnr: 01513/ra12 Sol: Betty: Betty: Dell: That didn t worry us at all because, number one, we ve always brought them up that if they ve got to make their choices in the world, and if they re not Jewish, so what? As long as they re happy and I think this is the thing you got to get through. You can marry a Jewish man and be just as unhappy as marrying a non-jewish man the same result. After all we re all people. And Debbie's mother Betty was happy for her daughter too, but the reaction of the rest of the family was very different. Betty wished they could be more open-minded. That she married, was marrying a non-jew, wasn t what worried me, it was how it affected my parents. Because my father said You ve got to cut them out. And I said I can t. I couldn t come to terms with cutting them out and besides I liked Philip. I couldn t see anything wrong with them. And there is only one God, it depends how you worship, that s all. We went ahead with the wedding. My parents wouldn t attend. I just felt very sad that day that my parents had missed their first grandchild getting married. But Betty and Sol worked hard to bring the family back together and eventually Betty s parents accepted what had happened. Once we got over the wedding and Mum and Dad come to terms with it, they see our family and they mix in. They love being with the family and they love all the get-togethers. And that is part of our tradition really. You know, eating and sharing good times. The Jewish emphasis on family has impressed Philip s mother, Dell. She too was supportive of the marriage, but knew there could be difficulties. I saw it as exciting but I also saw it as much harder. You know, it s harder to know and understand the rules that they keep and it s much harder for the children to know where they are. But I ve really appreciated the way that they ve included Christians. And I think they re an amazing Jewish family to accept us as we are and not ask us to cut off parts of our religion that they don t approve of and they re so into having family get-togethers. They include other people who aren t blood relations. They re an inspiration really. A lot of that inspiration comes from Debbie. Like her mother, Debbie sees the joining together of all sides of her family as part of her Jewishness. For me Jewishness is about the sense of family. It s not the religion, so my Jewishness is not about God, but the traditions of Jewishness, of family, are very important to me and it s the custom and it s the activity and the celebration. 3

8 Over to You 2001/2002 Jessica in Melbourne 2 Programnr: 01513/ra12 It s values like these that Debbie hopes will also become very important to her children. And she hopes she can pass on another of her most strongly felt beliefs. I think the most important one is about respecting where we ve come from and respecting and acknowledging who you are. And acknowledging that everyone s different and that difference is OK and you ve got to be true to yourself. But in the end what Debbie wants most for Jessica and her sisters is not about Jewishness, but about what mothers everywhere hope for. What I want for them is not to marry a nice Jewish doctor as a traditional Jewish mother would like, but I d like them just to be happy and to find what their dream is and to follow that and I hope their hurts are very small. When I grow up and leave school I d like to become a singer and an actress. 4

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