On Being a Jewish Conservative at the ABCBy the time I joined the ABC’s Religion Department in 1992, at the suggestion of its Head, Father Paul Collins, and not before being grilled by a phalanx of senior Radio National producers, I had spent twenty years in studying, university lecturing and publishing on religion in Canada, Britain and Australia. Collins, a Harvard-educated theologian with a PhD in religious history from the ANU, knew how vital scholarship was in understanding the nuances of religious life and thought. He believed that after five years in a joint appointment at the University of Sydney’s Religious Studies and Semitic Studies Departments, I was ready to take the plunge, although I was chary of trading the academic life for the media. Academia is often smug about its superiority to all other forms of knowledge, which brings to mind the Talmudic sage Rabbi Zadok, who was descended from Zadok the high priest, known to both the Jewish and Christian biblical tradition for his faithfulness to God,…