Journalist Nikki Goldstein remembers the last time she met with Rabbi Eli Schlanger. It was just days before he was killed by a terrorist at the Hanukkah party he organized last December on Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

“He had a two-week-old baby at that point, and as we finished work for the day on the book we were working on, he just sat back in his chair and grinned like a Cheshire cat,” Goldstein said.

She asked him what the smile was about.

“I’m just so happy,” Goldstein recalled him saying. “I’ve got five beautiful, healthy children. I love my wife, I love my family, and I’m completely doing what I’m meant to be doing. I’m on my path.”

But Schlanger’s path would be brought to a premature end the following Sunday, when two Islamic State-inspired terrorists opened fire on participants at the annual Hanukkah by the Sea candlelighting party he arranged. The holiday celebration, attended by about 1,000 members of Sydney’s Jewish community, became a day of darkness as 15 people, including the 41-year-old Schlanger, were shot dead, and dozens of others were injured in one of the deadliest antisemitic attacks in recent memory.

Goldstein was “in shock” when she heard the news of Schlanger’s death, but she later became aware that the book on the teachings of Judaism she’d been working on with him for almost a year would come to serve as more than just a religious guide.

“I woke up in the morning knowing that Eli’s legacy, his mission to bring light and love to the world, would not die with him. Through the hours of conversations, he had prepared me to be his herald, his foot soldier, and his torch bearer,” Goldstein wrote in the introduction to her new book, “Conversations with My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World.”

Goldstein, who is not religiously observant, co-wrote the book with Schlanger as a guide for non-Jews to the universal, ethical teachings of the Noahide Laws, rooted in Jewish wisdom and the teachings of the Chabad Hassidic movement. After Schlanger’s death, the project has taken on the additional task of serving as a memorial to his life.

A preordained meeting

Looking back, Goldstein said the story of how they met and came to write the book together now feels almost preordained. The pair had just begun work on the final chapter when Schlanger was killed.

“Eli chose me for this task,” she said. “This book is part of how his light keeps going.”

Goldstein says she vividly remembers meeting Schlanger, even though she wasn’t conscious at the time. In September 2022, she was in intensive care at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, suffering from a severe flare-up of a........

© The Times of Israel