Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Louise Adler. The 67-year-old ex-CEO of Melbourne University Publishing is publisher-at-large for Hachette and a vice-chancellor’s professorial fellow at Monash University.
RELIGION
Your parents were Jacques and Ruth Adler, both Jewish immigrants. My father came here from Paris in 1948, my mum from Berlin in 1939. My father was in the Resistance in Paris and came after the war.
Were you raised in a household that was both religiously and culturally Jewish? We were “devout secular Jews”, atheists steeped in Jewish culture. I’m not denigrating people who believe but, for me, it’s about this world, this life. Can you be a decent person? Can you do something? Can you make a contribution – however modest – in your private life, your public life, in this world? I don’t believe in the hereafter. My parents and grandparents didn’t, either; we went to Yiddish school to learn Yiddish and Jewish traditions. My parents didn’t go to synagogue, but were deeply Jewish in their attitudes to life. I think I am, too.
In what way? Actually, I don’t know if it’s specific to being Jewish or being immigrants. After all, Jewish people aren’t the only ones to say that education – and seeing the next generation become professionals – is important. But it wasn’t just about going to university, which was expected and a given. It was also about cultivating a life of the mind. Intellectual and cultural engagement. Like many Middle European Jews, we didn’t go to synagogue, but we went to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra every Saturday night.
What are your commandments for authors? Think about your audience. Work out who you’re writing for. If you’re writing for yourself, enjoy it, then put it in the drawer. And just because Aunty Beryl or Uncle Kevin thinks it’s great, don’t hang on to their viewpoint. They may not be the best arbiters.
Read the article by Benjamin Law in The Sydney Morning Herald.