SYDNEY, Australia—Sulaiman Khatib is an ordinary Palestinian with an extraordinary past.
Born in the west bank near Jerusalem, he grew up as a “freedom fighter,” as he describes it, fighting against the Israeli occupation by throwing stones and preparing Molotov cocktails.
In 1986, however, when he was just 14, he and a friend stabbed some Israeli soldiers. Khatib was arrested and sent to prison for 10 years. He spent most of his time behind bars learning Hebrew and English, reading about Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, and studying the histories of other conflicts—all of which, he said, led him to a startling conclusion: “I believe there is no military solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
SYDNEY, Australia – Lisa Jackson Pulver is not your average Australian Jew.
Yes, she is one of this country’s 110,000 or so Members of the Tribe, but she is also a member of another tribe: an Aboriginal clan called the Wiradjuri.
Jackson Pulver says she’s not the only Aboriginal Jew in Australia.
“The first Jew came here on the First Fleet in 1788, and since then Jews have been marrying Aborigines because white women wouldn’t marry them,” Jackson Pulver said. “There’s a big mob of black Cohens out there, and they’ve got Jewish ancestry.”
But Jackson Pulver has a few other distinctions not shared by other “black Cohens.”
SYDNEY, Australia – For the Jewish community, the devastating earthquake that hit New Zealand struck close to home.
An Israeli backpacker is believed to be among at least 75 people killed in Tuesday’s quake, with four other Israelis among the 300 still missing as of Wednesday, and the destruction in Christchurch on the country’s South Island included the city’s Chabad house. Another Christchurch synagogue reportedly suffered damage but was not destroyed.
SYDNEY, Australia – A controversial ban on kosher slaughter by New Zealand’s agriculture minister has been partially reversed amid allegations that his decision was taken to appease Muslim countries that have lucrative trade relations with New Zealand.
The reversal marked only a partial victory for the Jewish community: While the ban on kosher slaughter of poultry was suspended and a deal on kosher lamb is still being negotiated, the ban on beef is expected to remain in place. That means kosher beef will have to be imported from Australia.
SYDNEY, Australia – It began with a small ad placed in the Melbourne edition of the Australian Jewish News by John Rosenberg, a Jewish professor who liked neither the constraints of Orthodoxy nor the lack of tradition in Reform Judaism.
A decade later, Rosenberg’s solution, Kehilat Nitzan (Hebrew for “bud”), has bloomed into Australia’s first and only independent Conservative congregation, with some 600 members.
Now the congregation is on the cusp of opening its own synagogue building.
It could be the script for a best-selling novel or a blockbuster film.
Instead it’s the real story of the estate of a bankrupt Jewish author who died in London more than a decade ago and now is at the center of a billion-dollar copyright case against J.K. Rowling, the multimillionaire author of “Harry Potter” fame.
Adrian Jacobs, an art collector, lawyer, and accountant who made millions on the stock market before going bust, wrote a children’s book in 1987 titled “The Adventures of Willy the Wizard: No. 1 Livid Land.”
SYDNEY, Australia – It was the 10th of Tevet, a fast day when Jews traditionally mourn the start of the siege of Jerusalem, which presaged the destruction of the Holy Temple.
But while Orthodox Jews the world over marked the annual solemn day last month by abstaining from food and drink, a group of 25 or so Chabad-Lubavitch chasidim in Melbourne staged a festive meal complete with singing, dancing, kiddush, and a Shehechiyanu blessing heralding the arrival of the messianic era.
The act, which was recorded in a video that has been posted on YouTube, is causing an uproar across the Lubavitch world in Australia and beyond.
When Australian tenpin bowler Josh Small marches into the Ramat Gan stadium for the July 13 opening ceremony of the 18th World Maccabiah Games in Israel, he will be completing a journey his father started at the ill-fated Games in 1997
Small, now 19, was just 7 when his father, Greg, died after the makeshift bridge collapsed as the Australian team was walking toward the opening ceremony of the 15th Maccabiah on July 14, 1997.
Scores of Australian athletes were sent plunging into the polluted waters of the Yarkon River.
SYDNEY, Australia – It took nearly two years, cost more than $7,500, and involved two donkeys, one sheep, a case of mistaken sexual identity, several DNA tests and the unwavering faith of two fervently Orthodox Jews in Australia.
On Sunday, more than 1,500 mostly Orthodox Jews in Melbourne witnessed what is believed to be the first “pidyon petter chamor” -- redemption of a first-born male donkey -- celebrated in Australia.
The story of how this rare Jewish ritual transpired reads like a Hollywood film script.
SYDNEY – Like Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, Rafael Rajzner was one of the few Holocaust survivors who chronicled his traumatic experience in the years soon after the war, when most survivors stayed silent.
