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This is an edited excerpt from the book, “Conversations With My Rabbi,” by Nikki Goldstein.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
I don’t remember our first meeting.
I was in a coma. ICU. Tubes everywhere. A machine was breathing for me. I’d been intubated just 24 hours earlier, barely clinging to life after pneumonia had overwhelmed my lungs. That morning the head of the ICU had told my husband, Rowan, and my 18-year-old daughter, Liberty, to prepare for the worst.
While they sat at my bedside — watching, waiting, holding my hand — Liberty nudged Rowan and whispered, “Hey, Dad ... is that a rabbi over there?”
Because I was unconscious, I heard this story much later, and this is their version, not mine.
Sure enough, there he was: a bearded, bespectacled man, not too tall, not too short, quick of step, firm of purpose, bright of eye, kippah in place, moving quickly through the brightly lit ICU corridor. Rowan — not Jewish, bold and athletic, long of step — caught up with him in a few strides.
“Excuse me,” Rowan said hesitantly. “Are you a rabbi?”
“Yes,” Eli replied.
“My wife ... she’s in trouble. She might not make it. She’s Jewish,” Rowan said. “I think she’d want a prayer or blessing even though she doesn’t go to synagogue ... if you have the time.”
Eli nodded. Grave. Present. And kind. He stepped quietly into the room, glanced at me and turned to Rowan with a question: “What’s her Jewish name?” Rowan hesitated. Shrugged his shoulders. Looking lost for words. A little sheepishly, he admitted that neither he nor Liberty knew my Hebrew name.
Eli nodded, unfazed. “What about her mother’s Hebrew name?”
Another pause. Another blank. More shrugged shoulders.
Still, Eli wasn’t deterred. He asked, with warmth and gentleness, “Would it be all right if I blew the shofar?” The shofar, he explained, is an ancient ram’s horn, sounded on special days to stir the soul and open a pathway between this world and the Divine.
Rowan asked a nearby nurse, who looked a little surprised — this was, apparently, a first. Then, with a dry smile, she said: “As long as it’s not too loud, it probably won’t disturb anyone.” She gestured toward the others in the ward, adding: “Most of them are comatose.”
And so, right there in the ICU, Eli blew the shofar. They said its cry, among the sterile electronic pinging of machines, was deep and earthy. Eli spoke ancient prayers over my near- lifeless body. He offered comfort to my bewildered husband and terrified daughter. And then, he moved on.
It’s not that anything observable happened right then and there. I didn’t miraculously awaken from my coma, but something shifted. A day later, my lungs began to respond. The infection started to retreat. The medical team brought me out of the coma. I was thin, weak — but alive.
The doctors jokingly called it a miracle. I did too. Eli didn’t “call” it a miracle. He knew it was one.
When I was transferred to a general ward, I remember sitting up in bed, talking on the phone to one of my many doctors, when a Jewish man, clearly a rabbi, burst in with a bright smile and sparkling eyes.
“It’s you!” he exclaimed. “You made it!”
It took me a moment. Then I realised: This must be him. My rabbi. The hornblower. The stranger-turned-soul-friend.
Eli explained that the shofar acts as a kind of cosmic reset. A channel clearer. A spiritual defibrillator. His prayers, the prayers of my family and friends, excellent doctors, and my own stubborn will to live — somehow, they’d all found their mark. Whatever the mark was, I came back.
That moment bonded us in a way that’s hard to explain. Sacred. Unlikely. Eternal.
After my big miracle, Eli and I became a part of each other’s lives. We introduced each other to our families. We erased the lines between the secular and the religious. Between tradition and modernity. I joked that I was the only secular Jew he knew — and he gently corrected me, saying: “There’s no such thing as a secular Jew, we’re just Jews.”
We’re different. And yet, at the core, we are the same. We both want to do good. To serve. To uplift. Eli did it as a rabbi, ministering to his community with wisdom and warmth. I do it as a writer, telling stories, asking questions, chasing light.
When I met Rabbi Eli Schlanger, I found myself in the presence of someone who not only talked about God openly and eagerly, but lived with God, breathed God, wrestled with God. He was not afraid to use the word. He was not afraid to love it. He was not afraid to fear it either. Everyone who knew Eli felt as though they were in the presence of someone quite special.
He told me the other rabbis called him a “rough diamond,” which he liked because it reflected his authenticity and knockabout charm. He had the rare gift of being able to get into anyone’s level in nanoseconds, whether they be a prime minister or a prisoner. Not many people walk with God in a moment-by-moment, real-time way. It made him electric, somewhat eccentric, and very alive.
We all saw it coming. Australia recorded 1,654 anti-Jewish incidents in 2025. And it’s not only here in Australia; there is a global antisemitism emergency. The cost of politicians, universities, institutions, and the media turning a blind eye was my friend Eli Schlanger’s death on Bondi Beach on December 14, 2025 — at the hands of two terrorists.
Eli was 41 years old when he was gunned down mercilessly, senselessly, in a shooting spree with high-powered hunting weapons. Among the 15 victims killed at Bondi Beach was a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor. Eli’s two-month-old baby son was injured in the attack; his wife, Chaya, also had shrapnel wounds to her back from trying to shield the infant.
In the wake of his death, I am struggling with my faith. I’m finding it hard to reconcile with a God who allows this to happen. I wish Eli were here to do what he did: Shine light and inspire me with his unshakeable faith.
I started wearing a Star of David pendant on a necklace after October 7th. I wasn’t just wearing it as a symbol of my faith, but also as a talisman against the arrows, both literal and energetic, that come your way as a Jew walking around in the world. After what’s happened to Eli, I am conscious of wearing it as the “Shield of David” (its literal translation). I need its mystical protection. I have, at times, caught people in shops looking at it, probably confused, wondering why this blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman is wearing a Jewish symbol at her throat.
But Eli’s influence on me stretches way beyond wearing the Star of David; I am wearing my Jewish identity in a new way. There are two reasons for this: Eli’s miracle and my second chance at life invigorated my faith in God. And now, more importantly, Eli was killed, and I will never be the same.
But what of God’s laws? Surely there was a rent in heaven when Eli’s soul, which was so violently and prematurely taken from this earthly plane, appeared before God? To answer these questions, in Eli’s absence I turned to his most trusted guide and mentor, the venerable Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, in the days after Eli’s death. Rabbi Ulman was also Eli’s father-in-law and is the chief rabbi of Chabad Centre in Bondi, where Eli was his assistant rabbi.
ME: How do you reconcile Eli’s death with perfect justice in God’s universe?
RABBI ULMAN: I’m just thinking how to articulate it. First, we need to distinguish between revenge and punishment. Revenge is the wrong word for what justice is meant to be. Revenge is about satisfying one’s urge to “get even.” After October 7th, or after December 14th here in Australia, a person might say, “If I could get my hands on a terrorist, I would cut him limb by limb.” Why? Not because he’s motivated by a Godly, altruistic idea of cleansing evil from the world, but because he wants to satisfy his own animalistic desire to make the terrorist suffer at least as much as he made others suffer. That is revenge.
ME: And what about punishment? My lower self, the part of me that is hurting and trying to make sense of Eli’s death, maybe there is a part of me that wants justice — not just human justice, but Divine justice.
RABBI ULMAN: Punishment is different. This world is not a jungle; we are not animals. Certain actions make a person undeserving to continue to live in this world. Not because we are bloodthirsty, but because murder, for example, is the most destructive crime to society.
ME: In Australia, we don’t have capital punishment. If found guilty, do you feel that justice will be done to the surviving gunman?
RABBI ULMAN: I believe it will not be done, because he will continue to live. And because he continues to live, there is the possibility of his coming out one day or at least living a life behind bars, and that is still ... life. But we live in the system we live in. So, I hope, at the very least, that in this case [if he’s found guilty] they will give the Bondi gunman life without parole — that he will never be able to use any legal avenue to come out.
ME: I really want you to know that I feel incredibly lucky to have had two miracles. One was that I got a second chance at life. And the second was that Eli came into my life and ignited my Jewish soul. I feel absolutely that this is my mission now — to bring his light into the world, as he did for me. I got a second chance, and I will not squander it. I want to do his work in the world, through my writing.
RABBI ULMAN: Since you became part of Eli’s life, you’re part of our life. Because we are Eli’s. I hope you continue the connection.
ME: Oh, I have every intention. We can make sure his legacy lives on. I feel this so strongly for his children. That they’ll have words that celebrate his life. I really hope this will be something precious for them as they grow up. Their father’s words.
Thank you putting so much of the feelings, thoughts and beliefs, into words
Beautiful and touching. Thank you for writing and posting this, Nikki.
I've circulated it to my mailing list (of about 90). As I noted in my intro: "For those who haven’t had the experience: I have found that Chabad rabbis (and their wives) are consistently upbeat, caring, warm, enthusiastic, non-judgmental, encouraging and passionate in their love for all Jews and in their wish to make the world a better place by bringing Jews back to traditional Jewish life. I didn’t know Rabbi Eli Schlanger, but the description of him below would fit many Chabad rabbis. (Though I’ve never heard of one blowing shofar in an ICU before.)"
May you continue to carry Rabbi Schlanger's light in the world through acts of kindness, and by speaking up and taking action on behalf of our people.