Ann Gluckman: My road to belief

This is a chapter from Identity and Involvement Volume 3: Auckland Jewry into the 21st Century, edited by Ann Gluckman, Deb Levy Friedler and Lindy Davis, 2020, published with permission.

I am now 91 years old. I was born in London, the first child of Samuel and Augusta Klippel. In my long life I have had both great joy and great sorrow. I have been fortunate to have had educational and professional experiences that were unusual for many women of my generation, and have worked for many years with people of different faiths. By telling the story of my parents’ life and my own life I hope to show how I have come to my own personal beliefs within Judaism.

I have written a detailed story about my mother’s life in Postcards from Tukums: A family detective story. Augusta Klippel (nee Manoy) was an amazing woman. She was the first Jewish woman to qualify in medicine at the University of Otago when she graduated in 1922. She later gained a Diploma in Paediatrics from the University of Vienna in 1925. Her infatuation with Vienna evaporated when she attended a Zionist Congress there that same year and she realised the rampant anti-semitism that existed in Austria.

On her way to Europe in 1924, at a stopover in Sydney while waiting for the mailboat to London, Augusta had been introduced to Samuel Klippel at a dinner given by Latvian friends of her parents Adolf and Yetta Manoy. New Zealanders could not cope with long foreign names and consequently many Jews changed their names: Manoy was contracted from Yeruchamanov. Samuel – later my father – was born in Brody, Galicia (the part of Poland that had been annexed by Austria in 1792). He was one of eight children. His father Reuben, after the birth of the first four children, had gone to America to try, unsuccessfully, to make his fortune. His wife Leah had not wanted to leave their poor but deeply Jewish life in Brody. Reuben returned 10 years later and four more children were born, including Samuel in 1896. Samuel’s oldest brother Henri, who had gone to Trieste, financed him to go to Vienna to study law; but in 1913, in an anti-semitic riot, he was literally chased out of university. After the First World War Samuel regained a Polish passport and went to join another older brother, Alec, who had emigrated to Australia on an Austrian passport in 1913.

Samuel proposed to Augusta the day after their first meeting. She refused his proposal because she was pursuing a career, but she took the address of his married sister Regina in Vienna. Augusta and Samuel corresponded very frequently. It was after the Zionist Congress, and having met Sam’s family in Vienna and Trieste, that she accepted his proposal, on the condition he went to New Zealand to get the approval of her family in Stratford. They were married in Stratford in early 1926.

Here I jump ahead in the story . . .

Immediately after their marriage Sam and Augusta went back to Sydney where Sam worked with his brother Alec in their tie manufacturing business. A few months later Augusta had surgery for acute peritonitis. When she recovered they went on an extended buying trip in Europe to source silks for the business. They were in London when Augusta had an emergency caesarean; this was serious surgery 90 years ago, and it left her very unwell. They employed a young woman, Chrissie, as nanny and maid, and she stayed with the family until they returned to New Zealand in 1934. In 1930 my only sibling, Geoffrey, was born, also by caesarean. This left our mother too physically frail to even think about returning to medicine.

Augusta had made several conditions when she agreed to marry Sam. First, they would speak only in English in the home. Second, as she was a true anglophile, they would bring up any children in an upper-middle-class English fashion. And third, she would call him John, not Sam. Her family in Stratford had to promise they would never talk to any children they might have about the dreadful conditions the family had suffered in Tukums in Latvia under the Tsarist pogroms. Adolf Manoy had had to flee Latvia in 1905 during the first Russian Revolution, as a cousin of his was implicated in the uprising. Adolf came to live with an uncle, Abraham Manoy, who had migrated to New Zealand in 1872. He worked as a travelling salesman for Abraham and it was six years before he settled in Stratford, Taranaki, where he opened a general store and had enough money to send for his wife and family. He had three daughters and a son; he did not know that his son Josef had died of scarlet fever in Latvia, until he met the family on the wharf in Wellington.

So strong was my mother’s desire to bring up her children as New Zealanders that I was told nothing of the backstory of the family. The story started to be revealed only by sheer luck, 10 years after her death in 1989, when my son Peter and his wife Judy (nee Nathan) were rebuilding on the site of the old family home in Lucerne Road, Remuera. The old home had cracked almost in half when the tufa rock it was built on slipped badly when a right-of-way was constructed for a new housing development on the lower slopes of the Ōrakei Basin. The workmen demolishing the house found in the rafters of the attic a huge cardboard box, of the type used to pack suits, stuffed with letters. They asked Peter if he wanted the box to go to the dump! Peter recognised the Russian stamps on envelopes addressed to Adolf Manoy, Stratford, New Zealand, and other letters in Augusta’s handwriting. There was also a small cardboard box containing 100 old postcards, all from Latvia.

It took me two years to transcribe my mother’s difficult handwriting and more years to get the postcards, which were written in old German, Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish, translated by experts. It took me a further two years to write the book Postcards from Tukums and to learn about the past my mother wished to protect us from. How different my relationship with my mother would have been, had I known her dreadful childhood memories.

Among the letters were all my mother’s letters home to Stratford from Medical School, starting in 1917 and continuing until 1934, when she returned to New Zealand with her husband and two children. One of my aunts had saved every letter. These letters revealed to me how my mother had come from a very loving Jewish home in Stratford where, despite being 200 kilometres from Wellington, Granny Manoy had managed to keep a kosher home. When Augusta went to Dunedin she was excited to be going to a city with a synagogue and, hopefully, Jewish contacts. There were a number of very prominent families in Dunedin – Jews with roots in England – but none showed any interest in a foreign, country-girl student. Augusta became less stringent in her observances.

The whole time Augusta was in Dunedin she stayed at St Margaret’s Presbyterian College, which was the only hostel for women in Dunedin. She had to attend prayers each night, but she got permission not to attend some New Testament readings. Augusta thrived in the cultured academic environment. She made lifelong friends whose well-to-do, non-Jewish families were very kind to her and took her into their homes. Many of the parents had been students at English public schools and old universities. At first Augusta regarded the social conventions rather wryly, but she came to adopt the mores of the ‘social set’; she loved the elegance of their homes and particularly their breadth of reading and knowledge. In Dunedin she developed her persona and her love of the English lifestyle. She developed great social skills – and also, sadly, emotional restraint. She strongly disapproved of kissing, for example, even among family members, and in times of great sadness she showed an English stoicism.

After working on the letters in my seventies I realised I had suffered all my life from a variant of what is now known as second-generation survivor trauma. I had spent much my life unaware of my roots and, as a girl, had built up imaginary, very different pasts for the family. As my aunts had no children, and there were no other relatives in New Zealand on either my mother’s or my father’s side, we had none of the joy and support of the large Jewish family togetherness that typified most other families I encountered in Auckland during my childhood and youth. No one on my maternal grandparent side survived after 1917. On my paternal side, until 1939, there were none of his family in New Zealand. His brother Alec went to Austria just before the Second World War, and managed to bring their mother and two sisters and their husbands and children out to Australia; my father went to Sydney to meet them on the wharf. Sadly his mother died two weeks after they arrived.

Samuel obtained New Zealand work permits for his sister Ada Thumin, and for his oldest sister Regina’s son. The nephew, Max Farb, was a renal physician but unfortunately New Zealand would not allow refugee doctors to practise here unless they undertook to retrain from the third year at Medical School in Otago. On the permit application for Max and his sister, Samuel documented that they were mental health nurses, because people in that category were being granted permits. This infuriated them both, and they never spoke to my parents again. Max did qualify later to practise in New Zealand, having gone back to Medical School in third-year classes in the same year as my husband Laurie. They were good friends and lived in various ‘digs’ together until Laurie and I became engaged. Max and his sister later went to Australia

I now pick up the story where we left off in Sydney, where our family lived from the time my parents married until we came to Auckland. My father and his brother Alec were very different characters. They had a bitter split in 1934, which is when we came to live in Auckland, where there was a small branch of the firm Klipper Ties.

In Sydney the family lived in a succession of rental houses in Roseville, Killara and Turramurra. I remember never having friends locally to play with; I think my parents made very few friends. Alec and his family lived at Rose Bay. Our only real contact with Judaism was the three weeks each year when Dad stayed at work and Mum, Geoff, Chrissie and I sailed on the Monowai, Wanganella or Niagara to Wellington. Grandpa Adolf would meet us at the Wellington wharf and we would travel in his Ford Model T on the largely unsealed road to Stratford. We were spoiled and adored – and this was our only experience of Jewish ritual and family togetherness. In the Sydney years there were no family gatherings, nor any Jewish friends I can remember.

At six I started at Abbotsleigh, an Anglican girls college in Wahroonga. My father and I used to walk together to the station, where we caught trains in opposite directions. Imagine, in 2019, a six-year-old child walking home from a train station alone, through a shopping centre and crossing three roads. I don’t remember ever going to a synagogue in Sydney. In effect, Geoffrey and I were brought up by Chrissie all the Sydney years, and I vividly recall getting hysterical when we were told that she was not coming with us to Auckland. Still, it was my father who read us bedtime stories and took us on weekend car trips to the beach to go swimming.

When the family came to Auckland in 1934, I had just turned seven. My parents bought a house in Lucerne Road, Remuera, on the edge of the very élite, largely WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) suburb. The Lichtensteins lived there and they had a son, David, who was my brother’s age. At that time there were no Jewish girls nearby to make friends with: the majority of Jewish people lived in the western suburbs, close to the city centre and within walking distance of the lovely colonial-style synagogue on the the corner of Princes Street and Bowen Avenue.

People in that period were defined by their religion. In Lucerne Road I could have told you which house belonged to Catholics or Baptists. One of Augusta’s best friends was living in Auckland and she introduced Augusta to all her cultured, intellectual friends, who were the wives of the notables of Auckland. Mum was greatly admired for her brilliance and charm – and her wonderful baking skills. She started a reading circle, 40 years before book clubs became THE thing.

When my grandfather Adolf died in Stratford in 1933, my mother was distraught. Unfortunately he left most of his small estate to his wife, and then to his two single daughters. He had fully supported Augusta in her studies at Medical School and when she married, but there was no explanation in his will of his reasons for leaving her nothing. Augusta was angry because, despite the great support the family had given her, she felt she should have had more, as she was the only daughter who had given him grandchildren. (Let this be a lesson to everyone: explain in your will – or, preferably, before you die – why you distribute your estate unequally to your children.) Grandma Manoy and Augusta’s sister Sarah moved to Auckland after we settled there. Her other sister, Rebecca, married Harry Berman and ran the drapery shop in Stratford until she retired in 1964. The relationship between my mother and her mother and sisters, which had been very loving and supportive, became permanently frosty.

When my grandmother Yetta died in 1954, I was 26 years old. The nexus of family celebrations shifted and something very valuable was lost – though, if I am honest, there were moments in her lifetime when I resented her loving but inflexible demands on us to go to her every Friday night for the kiddush and Sabbath meal and for the festivals. She made the wonderful foods connected with each festival. From Yetta, who was the only grandparent I was privileged to really know, I caught the belief of God as an awesome presence, all-seeing and judgmental. This image was reinforced by the pictures in the book of Bible stories that was for a very long time my favourite bedtime reading. It only occurred to me long after I had given my own children the same book with depictions of God that one of the Ten Commandments forbids the portrayal of the Almighty.

Conversant as we are today with psychological theories and jargon, we can look back and see the great confusion some Jewish youngsters were exposed to as a result of their parents’ endeavours to do the very best for them. Education is highly valued in Judaism and, anxious to give their children the vocational opportunities they themselves were denied, many families made great sacrifices to send their offspring to the best available schools. These were often church schools where religious instruction was, of course, a mandatory part of the curriculum – so Jewish children received information at school that they felt they could not discuss at home. In state high schools, on the other hand, nothing was more humiliating to sensitive teenagers than having to wait in a classroom during morning prayers and then to parade into the full assembly to hear the daily notices. Students felt very conspicuous; and after a term-long exposure to The Merchant of Venice and Oliver Twist, with their stereotyping of the Jewish character, they tried to merge with and conform to the majority. I was particularly self-conscious after Easter readings at school assembly when the reaction of some of my peers left me with a very personal feeling of guilt. The concept of Jesus as a Jew never dawned on me, so at that time I did not understand the accusations that Jews were responsible for killing Jesus. I was deeply offended when people who I thought were my friends made snide comments, or asked questions I could not answer.

The desire to conform is strong in all teenagers, and this raised all sorts of conflicts when I became aware that the customs in our home were different from those of my school friends. By the 1940s the small Jewish community in Auckland had moved away from the inner-city suburbs and were dispersed throughout the already sprawling city. This meant that I and other youngsters were almost certainly the only Jewish children in our class at school. There was invariably embarrassment when we were confronted with ham sandwiches or shellfish delicacies in the homes of friends, and when we had to eat unleavened bread for lunch during Passover. Second and third-generation Jewish children tended to rebel at the religious strictures that prevented them from going to the pictures on a Friday night or playing competitive sports on Saturday. We were aware of the hurt it would cause our grandparents, who wanted the youth to follow traditional injunctions, and of the ambivalence of parents who were anxious and ambitious for their offspring to succeed in the wider society. Guilt arose when we did things that were the norm in our peer group but that contravened perceived Jewish mores.

Other things made us feel like outsiders too. As a young person, I had no real knowledge of the implications of concepts such as ‘confirmation’ and ‘communion’, for example – terms that were discussed with an animation that made me feel completely excluded. And I learned early on that there was a particular religious vocabulary that we were familiar with at home that had no meaning and therefore no usage in the world outside.

As children we went to Hebrew School each Sunday for two long hours: fathers living in Remuera took turns to gather up the small number of Jewish children in that suburb. For me, attendance was an ordeal because the old men who taught, though kindly and well meaning, were untrained in handling restless youngsters. I had private lessons at home from Alec Forman. We learned to read Hebrew and copy printed letters, but I never learned to read it fluently.

I was one of the first five girls to have a bat mitzvah in Auckland. Our preparation was minimal. We went several times to the home of Mrs Astor, who was a true rebbitzen. She assumed we would have learnt how to keep a Jewish home from our grandmothers, and that was sufficient preparation. The actual ceremony consisted of the five of us reciting the Ten Commandments, standing on the floor in front of the lectern facing the ark in the lovely old Bowen Avenue synagogue.

*Rabbi Astor with US servicemen outside the hospital*

*Auckland Synagogue, corner Bowen Ave and Princes St*

My most vivid memory of the Bowen Avenue synagogue was the Kol Nidre service of 1944. Many American servicemen were in Auckland, either in the prefab American hospital in Cornwall Park, for those wounded in the South Pacific, or in the rest and recreation camps, one of which was in Market Road where the Dilworth School junior campus is now sited. The shul was crowded with servicemen and the local congregation. Rabbi Astor had a wonderful singing voice – he was a great cantor. The atmosphere was unforgettable.

Staying on at secondary school after the age of 14 was a privilege when I started at Epsom Grammar in 1940. Most girls left with shorthand and typing experience and got jobs in the Public Service, where they worked until marriage. It was only during the Second World War that married women entered the workforce for the first time. I was fortunate to have five years of secondary schooling and finished up dux and head prefect at a time when there were only 18 full secondary schools, including Catholic and private schools, in the whole Auckland catchment region.

*Ann as a prefect in the 6th Form, 1943*

Two weeks after I left school, in 1944, I went to the first Jewish camp, which was held on Bob Goodman’s farm in Kaiaua on the Firth of Thames. For the first time, Jewish older teens and young adults from all over New Zealand came together at that camp. I had never been out with a boy, except to some chaperoned dancing lessons. On New Year’s Eve, 1945 I went with a small group to sit and watch the moon. A young German refugee, whose uncle had obtained a permit for him come to New Zealand on the condition he went farming, got into a deep conversation with me and before the evening was over he asked me to be his girlfriend. We exchanged letters over a number of months. My mother used to steam open letters from him and seal them again crudely, which I felt was unforgivable – but arguing with Augusta was not pleasant. He was a fine man, but I knew that a future in farming was not for me.

In 1945 I went to Auckland University College, which was a branch of the the University of New Zealand (Otago was the only university in New Zealand at that time). The total student roll at Auckland in 1945 was 1200. My mother wanted me to take arts subjects, which I had excelled in at school, and become a teacher. In my first act of rebellion I enrolled in geology, chemistry, and botany for a science degree. I was the only female in the geology class. At university I again felt like an outsider because the main social club was the Student Christian Movement (SCM): hiking and camping were a large part of their social activities.

I was introduced to Laurie Gluckman by a former girlfriend of his who could not wait for him to qualify in medicine and had married an American serviceman instead. He was eight years older than I and a serious, pensive man. He had been born in Auckland. His father Ted (Edward Ephraim) was born in Lithuania and was at Gymnasium (secondary school) in Königsberg during a pogrom at home. His family sent him to stay with a cousin in South Africa, where he served in the British Army in the Boer War. He tried to make a business in Cape Town in a pub with Bob Ross (Sir Lewis Ross’s father) but they both hated the British apartheid system and came to New Zealand in 1907. In 1919 Ted married Myra Solomon, and Laurie was the first of their two sons. Ted ran a small picture-framing business in Hamilton: he was a brilliant linguist but was not a clever businessman. Laurie had to work very hard in the holidays to earn enough for his board and books at Medical School. He did not fit in well with his wealthy peer group, who all lived in halls of residence, whereas he lived in numerous ‘digs’. He was at Medical School through the war years and his mail came to him at the Student Common Room. All his letters were put on the noticeboard stamped with ‘Passed by the Censor’.

*Grandma Yetta Manoy at Ann and Laurie’s wedding: Left, Rebecca Berman; Right, Sara Manoy*

I fell deeply in love with Laurie and we became engaged at the end of my first year, to the disgust of Augusta, who intended me to get a scholarship then go to Oxford and to give no thought to marrying before 30. How prescient she was! The present generation of young woman would agree with her. In the twenty-first century, few well educated girls would want to tie themselves to marriage and motherhood at 19, with no career or travel experience. In 1945, though, if a Jewish girl was not married by 23 she was considered ‘on the shelf’. I feared the fate of ‘poor little Sarie’, as my mother called her sister, my aunt Sarah, who ran away to avoid an arranged marriage. It was customary for arranged marriages in some Jewish families.

Laurie and I married in January 1947 and I continued to attend university for the two third-year papers I needed to complete my degree. Everyone scowled at this idea. Married women did not study. The first five months went very happily as Laurie built up a large practice in Milford, which was still a seaside holiday suburb. Then, after a massive haemoptysis, he was diagnosed with severe TB and our life fell to pieces. As a close contact I was not allowed to attend university classes and labs. After a permanent pneumothorax Laurie was never strong enough to work as a GP. Over the years he gained high qualifications and practised as a psychiatrist and physician. He was always studious and he loved medical work. He wrote many hundreds of articles in medical journals. He published a book, Tangiwai – the first book written on pre-European Māori medicine – and he did his MD thesis on Māori beliefs. In the early 1950s he founded the Auckland Medical History Society, which is still going strong today.

Our four children, Peter (1949), John (1950), Philip (1954) and David (1957) were born each with completely different personalities and abilities. I was totally involved with them – at play centres, kindergartens, school committees and their other activities. By 1960 I developed what was then known as suburban neurosis, a term applied to well educated women who became so involved in domestic and child-focused affairs that they let their intellectual abilities lie fallow. One day Laurie, in a non-joking fashion, remarked that I was becoming a cabbage. By now, three of the children were at school and David was at kindergarten: why did I not go back to university and become interesting again?

Doing geology and botany required many fieldtrips away, doing fieldwork, so I changed course and took geography which was now also a science subject. I started over again with Stage 1 Geography and, with the permission of the University Senate, I passed three units of geography in two years and graduated BSc(NZ) in 1962 and MSc(AU) in 1964. In those last two years Auckland had become an independent university. From there I went straight into teaching, first at my old school, Epsom Girls Grammar, then as senior mistress at Seddon High School (now Western Springs College), and later became principal – the first woman in New Zealand to be appointed principal of a state secondary school. For a brief period I made headlines.

Many things happened during my 25-year-long teaching career, but two have relevance to what I have already written here. Early in my nine years of teaching at at Epsom Grammar I discussed with Margery Adams, the then headmistress, the embarrassment I had felt at school assemblies when I was a pupil. I pointed out that state schools were meant to be secular. We agreed that assemblies were a valuable community experience and readings should be chosen with care, from the old and new testaments or other thought-provoking sources. I spoke with the Jewish girls at school, who chose to go to assembly knowing they would be excused at times like Easter. I believe that in church schools in New Zealand today, Jewish children can gain much of value from learning the beliefs of others. I think that, if parents choose to send their children to such schools, they should be prepared to enter into open discussion with their youngsters about what have learned, say, of Christianity, and why we as Jews respect others’ beliefs, without agreeing with all the dogma.

Now schools are so large and so multi-racial, whole school assemblies are probably a thing of the past. But I strongly believe that just as many non-Jews are interested in knowing what Judaism is. Living in multi-cultural New Zealand, we need to at least know something of the beliefs of others. It is the best way to foster understanding. In my 15 years at multi-ethnic low-decile schools I learned to understand and to respect other traditions, and to help the pupils stand tall in their own faith and culture in what was, to many of them, an alien environment.

After Granny Manoy died we did our best to observe Friday night and the festivals, and the children attended Hebrew School. We celebrated the high festivals and Pesach (Passover) at our home, or at my parents’ home or at my brother’s home after he married Margot Israel. For the first time in their home I experienced the joy of a large family celebration. Margot’s mother, Ida, was one of the very large Robinson clan who were very observant and very close-knit. Margot’s death from cancer at 38 in 1977 was tragic. She was a brilliant and lovely person.

*Back left to right: Peter 15 , Philip 9 and John 13. Front: David 6*

All our sons learned their bar mitzvah parashah from Rabbi Astor. David Nathan describes beautifully how bar mitzvah boys were taught. He also describes how once good shaliachs were brought to New Zealand, how enthusiastic young people became about Israel and Judaism. Peter, Philip and David were each B’nei Akiva leaders and all the boys spent time in Israel. I have written about David’s experience in Israel in ‘Coincidence’. Laurie and I acted as camp parents at two camps.

My quiet, gentle father had left decisions about his children to my mother, who was the hugely dominant character in the family. He was an ardent Zionist and at one time president of the New Zealand Zionist Society. He imbued us with his zeal and dedication. The annual JNF dinner was a massive fundraiser. It was run like an auction with people trying to outbid one another in their generosity. It brought the community together. One year my father was overseas and asked me to approach some people to ask them to increase their donation. Two people showed me the door, saying they had given to the best of their ability. I was humiliated and did not approve of that approach.

My father died two days after the Day of Atonement in 1964. He was a really good man, and I felt a great resentment at God, because the Day of Atonement service, as I interpreted it then, would offer another year of life after sincere repentance. (In his will Dad had asked for the words ‘I BELIEVE’ to be inscribed on his tombstone.) Then, when our youngest son David was killed in an accident in 1979, also two days after Yom Kippur, I felt a deep rejection of faith – this literal view of God as a stern arbiter was untenable. This rejection was fuelled by what happened at David’s funeral and afterwards.

David was a very easy child. He had gone to St Kentigern College, a Presbyterian school, since intermediate, as we felt it not easy to follow his three older brothers to Auckland Grammar where, we learned, the same masters often compared the brothers against Peter’s very high academic achievements. David was a typical Kiwi all-rounder. He was a good student and a fine cricketer and golfer. He did the Duke of Edinburgh Award programme. At school he had to take Religious Studies, at which he excelled: one day the rather dour headmaster, the Reverend Adam MacFarlan rang and said, ‘ What would your rabbi say if a Jewish boy won the prize for the best Religious Studies pupil in the senior school?’ David was very active in Bnei Akiva. He shared Laurie’s and my interest in Māori. They went further than I did, as both were actively learning Māori from a noted Māori elder. David was the first Pākehā to enter a Māori speech contest, and when he was doing his law degree he did two papers in Māori. By then I was already principal of Ngā Tapuwae College in Māngere, where most of the students were of Pacific Island origin, and David often came to the school and spent many hours tutoring some of the pupils. He got on particularly well with the two native speakers of Māori who were on the staff, Kepa and Pani Sterling, who were Ngati Porou, a tribe with a very proud history. They built a marae on the school grounds which, years later, they developed into a separate Māori Immersion School. In the year before his death David spent three months in Israel with AUJS, including on Kibbutz Erez.

The evening before he died we had sat on the sunporch steps at Lucerne Road and wondered if we could both be capped at the same ceremony – I with a Massey Diploma in Educational Administration, and he with his LLB. He still had to sit a final paper in the following week, to gain admission to the Bar. Months earlier he had started work as a junior in the firm of which David Robinson (now Judge) was the senior partner. That night he went to a friend’s birthday and was coming home when a car came around a corner on the wrong side of the road; David’s car swerved to avoid it and went into a lamppost. David would have been coming down Ayr Street hill at considerable speed. Laurie and I had heard an ominous bang about 1 am. At 3 am there was a loud knocking on the front door. I looked in David’s room. He was not there. There was a policeman at the door! Forty years on I regularly wake at 3 am, having heard the knocking in my sleep. At that time Peter and Judy were in San Francisco; Judy was pregnant with Josh. John, after two years on kibbutzim in Israel was doing part of the further five years he spent on OE, working on deep-sea fishing boats out of the Faroes, and Philip was in Dunedin doing third-year medicine.

The accident was written up in the Herald, as both Laurie and I were both well known in our respective work. David’s funeral was held at our home in Lucerne Road. The service was taken by the Hungarian rabbi who had been recently appointed; Laurie and I had never met him. The house was packed mainly with David’s friends. Suddenly there was an uproar – the Māori choir at Ngā Tapuwae had arrived in the school minivan. They had not told anyone, including Laurie and me, they were coming. They wanted to sing the 23rd Psalm. They had known David and loved him. But the rabbi refused to start the service with them in the room. Beyond that I have no recollection of the funeral. David Robinson gave a short but meaningful oration, which he sent to us later. David and Margot’s graves were among the first in the new Jewish part of Waikumete cemetery. We did not sit shiva, it had not been the custom in our small family. That we did not sit shiva is something I now deeply regret.

In the few days after the funeral we were visited daily by colleagues and friends, mainly not Jewish. Laurie and I were so involved in our respective careers we had had little time to socialise to maintain Jewish friendships – what a tragic admission. I was numb at first, and then despair and frenzy found outlet in intensive involvement with work. The love and demands of family assumed a new meaning.

As a result of these events I have come to think differently about many things. I am certain that one of the things that had happened as a result of living in what was then a predominantly British society is that many Jewish people became indoctrinated with the idea that it is wrong to show emotion, and that restraint at all times is proper. I am sure that the traditional mourning customs of our Jewish forebears were therapeutic and wise, and of course there are interesting parallels with Māori and other indigenous customs. In adopting the customs of the majority in New Zealanders I think some Jewish people have cast aside much that is of intrinsic value. I learned a lot from the many, often tragic Māori tangi I attended.

In 1979 Harold S Kushner’s book When Bad Things Happen To Good People was very much recommended. It did not help me. I read everything I could about understanding how God could allow such things to happen. It gave no answer to me. In 1980, in search of an understanding of how others perceive God, I enrolled extramurally for a BA in Religious Studies at Massey University. The readings and the essays and the residential courses greatly widened my horizons. The two week-long residential courses, three times a year, brought me into contact with people of many different races and religions, and differences within religions. At this time I had already been teaching in multi ethnic schools for six years. I had found that to be able to teach disadvantaged newcomers to New Zealand successfully, one had to get to know and understand their background, so these courses expanded what I had learned from experience.

At Massey I was exposed to ideas that were formative to me, including those of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who defined a religion as the duality of cumulative tradition and faith. I, personally, replace the word faith by belief. I strongly believe that each person’s belief is unique and the product of life experiences. At different stages in life belief may wax and wane but, to a theist, it is never extinguished.

Martin Buber was a Viennese-born Jewish philosopher. He propounded the ‘I–Thou’ proposition that human existence may be defined by the way in which we engage in dialogue with God (whatever one’s definition), with the world, with one another. This is fundamental to my thinking. It is congruent with Māori and Polynesian beliefs and those of many other indigenous cultures.

Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit priest, was for a period disowned by the church. He was a noted evolutionist who, while working in China, took part in the discovery of the remains of Peking Man. His major book was The Phenomenon of Man, which presents the idea that just as the universe, the world and nature have evolved, so will mankind. This ultimately will culminate in the unification of consciousness, the noosphere. This is a postulated sphere or stage of evolutionary development dominated by consciousness, the mind and interpersonal relationships. Humankind is still evolving and has not yet reached its ultimate development. This can only occur if humankind chooses to attain true empathy and cooperation between all peoples. I, personally, have great fear that with the world as it is in 2019, such a future outlook is extremely dim. I am much more likely to believe in the Malthusian theory that with the huge development of weapons of mass destruction, of artificial intelligence, and the discord between great powers, mankind has the potential to extinguish itself. Rudolf Otto in The Idea of the Holy used the wonderful adjectives numinous, awesome, mysterium tremendum, wholly other, to describe the presently indefinable. To me this is the most wonderful description of how I, personally, perceive God. Lloyd Geering challenged and stimulated my thinking, as have so many recent authors writers on a vast range of topics: intelligent design, creationism, evolution, genetics, agnosticism, aetheism, theism.

Exposure to such ideas has exercised my intellectual, emotional and spiritual thinking. Religious studies courses gave me a framework and a vocabulary that enabled me to think beyond what had been possible within my tiny Jewish community: perhaps because of the uncertainty of my own ideas, a fear of being cast as disloyal, the feeling that group togetherness was required, I did not find scope to discuss ideas of a spiritual nature, although there have been stimulating groups in which to discuss historical, literary, ethical and political issues. I so wish that within Auckland Jewry we had more forums where we could have serious discussions on topics such as I have listed. At Shalom Court lunches, various rabbis have tried to get questions asked, leading to discussions, but the older audience seem reluctant to express views that others may not like. Deb Levy has started a weekly women’s learning group, but it is not in depth text study and rather encourages discussion.. It would be wonderful if women were given opportunities to ponder deeply over questions in the way some men do in a yeshiva.

I have found that many of the modern writers such as Dawkins and Dennett have done much to strengthen my belief, because I have been able spiritually and mentally to argue against their conclusions. I have re-read some of the works carefully, and been interested in, and agree with, many sociological and psychological points they raise, but I finish up stronger in my personal belief. I am not disillusioned. The questioning and the arguing with myself has proved of great value.

I recently read Noah Feldman. As a Jew he encapsulates the dissonance facing modern orthodoxy today: how to reconcile halachic laws, and values designed to differentiate the orthodox from the rest of the world, with being fully involved in modern society. I would posit that this is one of the great challenges in the 21st century. The peoples of the world are increasingly exposed to the ideas of others. In many parts of the world populations are multi-ethnic, multi-religious, intermarried. What is going to happen to traditional cultures and specific religious traditions?

As knowledge of the universe has expanded exponentially over the past half century, ethics and values have changed. With globalisation most great religions have been polarised internally along broadening spectrums. Modern technology has not minimised differences in many aspects of human existence but rather has accentuated them. Any religion or philosophy, to remain relevant, needs to respond to major changes in the human condition of adherents. The Talmud evolved in the aftermath of the Dispersion. Now, over 200 years after the 18th-century Enlightenment, the geographic spread of Jewry, the Holocaust, the end of empires, the establishment of Israel, revision is perhaps the answer – not to accommodate, but to explicate old values to 21st-century Jewry. The Torah, the inspired prophets and some of the literature set enduring ethical standards. However, in my opinion many of the old prescriptive laws may now be irrelevant. Many of the laws may require explanation as to why they were inspired at particular times; and questions asked – and answered – as to their relevance to humankind now.

For Auckland Jewry to revitalise I think we need some more opportunities to debate such questions, not superficially but in depth. Women need to be included in discussions that once were limited to men, and mainly to men in yeshiva. I do not think we listen enough to the voices of young people, either. They are the ones who will or will not, keep this community alive.

I will conclude with some personal thoughts. In Exodus chapter 3, 13–22 God speaks to Moses out of the burning bush. Moses asks what God is, and God replies ‘I am that I am.’ In different versions of our prayer books, Hashem, Adonai, Elohim, YHWH, Shaddai are used synonymously. I believe that since, in the last half century, we have reached the outermost reaches of space, and with our knowledge of how evolution works, we can no longer assume that humanity will not evolve past its present level of intelligence. I find it difficult to attribute everything to God in the anthropomorphic form of Superman. From all my reading I believe that God is, in Otto’s wonderful words, numinous, awesome, mysterium tremendum, wholly other and indefinable. This indefinable source of the universe has spoken to founders of beliefs from earliest times when words came into being. Great, inspired individuals hear the ‘voice’ of the indefinable, who imbued humans with spiritual wonder about how the world around them came into being.

While Judaism was the first religion to have written commandments, every culture from earliest times had oral laws to control and govern tribal behaviour. While Zoroastrianism, which arose in Persia, may have come close to a monotheistic belief, it was in Judaism that monotheism and its Commandments and ethical system developed.

At the end of my long road to belief my spirituality has increased and I find comfort in the thought of the ineffable, which is expressed in Judaism but is also at the base of all religions. Through aeons, understanding of God or gods arose according to where human life originated, how people had to try to understand their particular environment; and at different times and places inspired individuals heard the ‘voice’ differently.

At the present time congregations are making choices as to where they fit on the very wide spectrum of Judaism. Writing in Auckland in 2019 I believe we need some definition within the Auckland Hebrew Congregation, now 180 years old, and where it stands on the spectrum of orthodoxy. I think Rabbi Friedler has clearly explained his viewpoint in an article in this book. I believe the congregation need to discuss his views and give thought to what is the true nature of the community. We need to take more heed of the opinions of young people and of women. Beth Shalom writes of its connection with American Conservative Jewry and this too has many different strands.

I know I could feel comfortable in the Beth Shalom community but now, by deliberate choice, aware of and proud of my descent, I choose to remain a member of the Auckland Hebrew Congregation because I have been a member for 84 years and it is where most of my family belong. My daughter-in-law Judy is a direct descendant of the founder of the congregation. I recognise the importance of belonging within a family. I remain, however, strong in my own spiritual beliefs.

I believe that all humans are born with an innate spirituality and, with it, the impulse to believe. I view all enduring faiths as having inspired and inspirational ethical bases: different cultures perceive the same ultimate force through different facets.

Ann Gluckman MSc, BA has held numerous positions in education and in community organisations. She was foundation principal of Ngā Tapuwae College and the first woman in New Zealand to be appointed principal of a state coeducational secondary school. She was elected to the Council of Massey University and was the first lay member on the Middlemore Hospital Ethical Committee. She was foundation Jewish co-president of the Auckland Council for Christians and Jews.

Ann was awarded an OBE in 1993 for services to education and the community. Ann’s writing on comparative religion, multicultural education and travel has been widely published. She has edited and contributed chapters to a number of books and other publications, and was co-author of Ageing Is Attitude: The New Zealand experience (1995). She initiated and edited the first two volumes of Identity and Involvement (1990 and 1993) and wrote a biography of her mother, Postcards from Tukums: A family detective story (2010).

Ann Gluckman: My road to belief

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Ann Gluckman: My road to belief

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