About Lynn Jenner

I am a baby boomer, born in Aotearoa New Zealand. My Jewish great grandfather came to New Zealand in 1878 but we do not know where he came from. One of my parents was Jewish and the other not. My parents raised me with the idea that it wasn’t right to impose religion on kids and they should find what suits them when they are old enough to know what feels right. My mother and father each had their reasons for taking this position, which I think they intended to allow us the broadest possible world to explore. But it certainly made me feel different from other kids. It also led to me growing up ignorant of any spiritual practice. In the last twenty years I’ve found that it is very Progressive Judaism that suits me. Most particularly I am interested in Judaism as a way to keep trying to be a decent person. My parents are both dead but while they might not have been keen on the religious element I know they would have supported the idea of being a decent person.

I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to live in Israel, as a Jew or as an Arab, or what it’s like to be persecuted. I’ve been lucky to have lived in a time when anti-Semitism was not strong in New Zealand. I know from historical reading that this has not always been true.

I think that my safe life means that I have no mandate to say what anyone should think about the need for the state of Israel to exist. But I do think I have a mandate to say that creating a society that is essentially an apartheid state is wrong. It is also wrong in my view to act as though there were no human inhabitants in the land that is now Israel. I don’t buy the idea that what is in the Torah about the land being given to the Jews by God means that the land that is described belongs as of right to modern Jews. I guess that’s me being progressive and saying that what is in the Torah is not to be taken literally. I could not be any more opposed to the ongoing plans for settlements to extend the land occupied by Israel.

All these ideas date from before the October 7 Hamas attack and the consequent war on Gaza. Again, I’m no expert on wars or on life in Gaza and the Israeli towns nearby. But the scale of the deaths of Gazans, compared with the number of deaths of Israelis, tells one part of the story. I believe that you can’t fight your way to peace. You can fight your way to an uneasy domination, but not peace.

I am a mother and a grandmother. I know that everybody’s son and everybody’s daughter are taonga. They are our future. My heart breaks for all who have died in these wars and will die next week and next year if no just peace is made. I refuse to pray for the soldiers of the IDF without thought for those whom they kill.

I’m not used to telling the whole internet my ideas. But I think it’s reasonable to say that if we are talking about people all being entitled to be treated with respect and to have access to food and shelter and be safe from attacks by soldiers, then this applies to people from Gaza as well as to Jewish Israelis.