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Welcome to Finding Our Why, a new podcast for the Jewish Independent.
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My name is Courtney Winter Peters, and I'll be joining you on this journey and this discussion from my new home in the Gold Coast, Queensland.
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For those listening internationally and don't know the Gold Coast, think of it as Miami type vibes, a little bit holiday outside the Jewish community.
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It's not Melbourne, it's not Sydney, it's in sunny Queensland.
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And my name is Itai Flesher, and I'll be joining you from a small mountain in the Middle East called Jerusalem, which is where I've been living for the last eight years.
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You're calling in from a little bit more of a familiar location.
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Yeah, I think more of our listeners may have heard of Jerusalem and the Gold Coast.
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This is sometimes called the city of Gold, but it has no beach.
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So it could do with a beach, I think.
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The beach makes it.
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Yeah.
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So I think it's important just to say why we're having this conversation.
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So lately, and I speak for my experience in Australia in particular, any conversation around Judaism has felt really heavy and really loaded.
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And it feels like anytime I speak to friends within the community and also friends from outside the community, we're constantly justifying our existence.
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It's coming from a real focus on safety.
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There's a lot of discussion around anti-Semitism, security, and politics.
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And I think those conversations are really important.
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But I think what's missing is we've stopped talking about the beauty of our religion, the connection to culture and history and language.
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And I think that's something that's been lost along the way.
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I would agree with you.
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And I think, look, all those topics are really important about fighting anti-Semitism, about security, about politics.
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And in fact, the Jewish Independent has podcasts on all of those topics as well.
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But this one's a little bit different because rather than sort of sharing our thoughts on those pressing issues of the day, we're going to ask what is, I think, a bigger question, which is why does all of this matter?
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Why is it important to wake up in the morning and have all of these struggles and arguments?
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What are we actually fighting for?
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And through this podcast, I hope both you and I, and you, all of our listeners, will help find an answer to the question, which is a four-word question, which is very simple, which is simply, what is my why?
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And I think it's just important to note when we started talking about the idea for this, we discussed whether or not we'd invite experts or rabbis on to share their opinion and what their why is.
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But what we settled on is this is a conversation between us, between friends, between people navigating this space.
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We're not here to tell anyone what Judaism should look like to them or how they should practice, but just really creating a space for people to share their thoughts and reflect on what it is that keeps us going and that keeps us thriving and passionate about our history.
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So the podcast is really about one question: why?
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Why do we choose Jewish life and what does that look like today?
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Sounds like a fascinating conversation.
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I'm looking forward to it.
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It's very much going to be a therapy session for me outside the Jewish community a little bit at the moment.
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For me too.
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I feel like we're recording therapy, but that's uh that's what all good podcasts do these days.
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Thanks for being my friendly free therapist.
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I think it's a good place to kind of throw over to you and you can share your story and what brings you here today.
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You were a teacher in Australia for 15 years, then you packed up your life and you moved to that mountain you mentioned in the Judean Desert.
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You're a journalist, you're an author, you're a peace educator with Seeds of Peace.
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I'd love to hear a little bit more about what brings you here today.
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Thank you.
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So throughout my whole life, always been, I guess, a little bit different from people around me.
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And I often think about why things are the way they are.
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Remember, even as a child, I'd often just sit in the car with my dad and just ask him, like, why are the road rules the way they are?
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What why do we, why does school look the way it is?
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Why is it so many hours a day?
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Like, I just wanted to understand how things work.
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And and back then, I'm gonna show my age because there was no internet.
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I used this thing called an encyclopedia for our younger listeners.
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It's sort of like Wikipedia, but a book.
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And it was like 30 volumes, and people used to come door to door and sell them.
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And I remember as a child, I used to sit and read the encyclopedia because I wanted to understand how electricity works and how life is formed and you know what's going on in Yugoslavia, which, you know, that entry is a bit out of date these days.
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And yeah, I've just always had this curiosity, and then various decisions happened in my life that led me to be a teacher.
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I was a teacher in in Australia.
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I taught at the Adas Israel School, which is a Haredi or ultra-Orthodox school in Melbourne.
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I taught English and IT there, which is two very difficult subjects to teach at Adidas.
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And then I moved to Bialik and then King David and then uh Mount Scopus.
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And through all of those 15 years that I taught high school from year seven to 12, teaching Jewish studies, Holocaust education, religion, and society, I read thousands of essays and I had thousands of conversations with teenagers who were trying to work out what their purpose is in life and how they make meaning of both being a teenager, being a Jew, being a boy, being a girl, transitioning all those things that might happen in the life of a teenager.
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And as you help people answer those questions, you ask them for yourselves.
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And then eventually in 2018, my wife Carmen and I, who was also a teacher at Scopus, we decided that we needed to sort of keep asking this question in a new place.
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And we both had long service leave in in 2018.
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And so we decided to move to Jerusalem initially for two years just to sort of try it out and have an adventure with our kids and see what it would be like.
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And long story short, because I've written a whole book about this, I won't go into it now, but we uh we decided to stay here because we found meaning in Jerusalem and that's where we are today.
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Beautiful, beautiful.
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So, Courtney, your story is a bit similar to my story in that you also went to the same school that I did.
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We were both Scopus graduates, and you ended up in a very different place.
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Tell me how you got to be where you are today.
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It's really interesting listening to your story and when you say that you were a little bit different and all the deep thinking that you did.
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Even though we were growing up in the same place and very engaged in similar places, I think my journey was more.
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I took my experience and my Jewish identity for granted.
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Looking back now, and when I think about it in hindsight, I know that all my decisions have been, there has been a question around identity and belonging and meaning, and perhaps an unconscious search for it.
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I wasn't aware of it at the time, and it's something I'm coming to now.
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So all four of my grandparents were Holocaust survivors.
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So being Jewish never really felt like a question to me.
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It wasn't a choice, it was a responsibility.
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Their experiences shaped my identity.
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All the books I read growing up were about the Holocaust.
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So I think my why became closely tied to survival.
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They survived so that we might thrive.
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That was very much my philosophy.
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I grew up in what I'd call a very quintessential Melbourne Jewish life.
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I lived in Corfield, and again, for those that don't know Melbourne Jewish life, Corfield is the hub, the center, the everything.
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Did you call it the ghetto or the bagel belt?
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Uh, a little bit of both.
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But that sums it up completely.
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It was the everything.
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I went to a Jewish day school, I went to a Jewish youth movement, I even went to shul every week on Shabbat until I turned Bat Mitzvah and stopped going because I couldn't sit with my dad.
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My family had a kosher home.
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We didn't drive on Yomtov.
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I think I was seen by my friends as being very religious because it just wasn't the norm at like for scopus students, that was my cohort, but I would call myself traditional.
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So Judaism wasn't anything separate from my life, it was just woven woven through everything.
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And then work, as you mentioned.
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So after traveling for a year after school, and I didn't go to Israel at the time because it was there was an interfada, it was too dangerous.
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I went traveling, I volunteered in Kenya, I went to London, I did a I did some different things.
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When I came back and I graduated as a lawyer, I started in private practice, I spent time in planning and environment, and then I moved into the community legal sector.
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And I think that move was certainly inspired by my grandparents and their journey, by that recognition and understanding of they survived so that we might thrive and we were thriving.
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So what can we do for others?
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In those organizations, I was often the only Jewish person.
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So I would really like to speak up about my Judaism a lot.
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I was always leaving on time to get to dinner on a Friday night.
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I just was loud and proud.
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I was I was very clearly Jewish.
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On the side, I was always volunteering at Jewish organizations.
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I was, I think I was always just trying to find my way of connecting to community and how could I give back and what would that look like?
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Then I was offered the role of CEO at Stand Up.
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Stand Up is a Melbourne and Sydney-based Jewish not-for-profit focused on mutual allyship and mobilizing the Jewish community to support others, with a focus on partnering with First Nations and refugee communities.
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And for me, it was this perfect alignment of Jewish values and social justice.
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It was a dream job.
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Yeah.
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Dream job.
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I thought I had like found my path.
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And it's really interesting because I think that work expanded my way of thinking in a really profound way.
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From spending time with other communities, I became really aware about how insular my experience had been and how deeply protected I was by community.
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And I say that in a positive way.
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Like we really rally around each other.
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We really got this incredible community.
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So by 2025, after being at stand-up for almost four years, I was exhausted.
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I'd spent years immersed in conversations around identity and social cohesion and racism and anti-Semitism and belonging.
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Even pre-October 7, you know, there was this lack of separation between me and the work.
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When your values are so tied in, it becomes everything you talk about.
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So I reached a point where I just needed a break.
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Not from Judaism, but from the, you know, just from work, from life.
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So we took the kids out of school and we went traveling, we did a half lap of Australia for four months.
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I wouldn't say it's an unusual thing in Australia to do.
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It's a bit of a rite of passage, but maybe unique in the Jewish community to live in a tent for four months.
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And just for those of our international licenors, Australia is a very big country.
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So when you say do a lap of Australia, we're talking about several thousand kilometres you covered, I imagine.
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We drove 15,000 kilometres in four months.
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Yeah.
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You you could drive a day.
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You could drive four or five hundred kilometers in a day and barely see anyone.
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When you were on the road and you're driving for hours and hours and not seeing anyone except, you know, kangaroos, what's going through your mind?
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Are you listening to a podcast?
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Or are you just like letting the wind flow in your hair?
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Like, what was that experience like?
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Honestly, what was going through my mind a lot, particularly at the beginning, was how am I going to keep the kids happy?
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When are we going to feed them?
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What if we break down?
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And we did break down, I should say, we did break down, but that was okay.
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But it was also a switch off.
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We did Shabbat together, but it was just a switch off and a real presence with family.
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What mattered was our day-to-day.
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And it wasn't thinking beyond that.
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We weren't thinking about where we were going to be next week.
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We were just thinking about what we needed to do that day, which is a real gift.
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It's so true.
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I mean, I feel like in my life, so much of my life is planning, like making appointments, making emails, making medical appointments, planning an event I'm organizing or speaking at or whatever.
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And I feel like half my life is admin, you know, and then doing your taxes and all of that.
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And yeah, so just that ability to just be on the road and just be thinking about now rather than the future must have been a huge gift.
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Huge gift.
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And I think about it a lot.
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You know, we just did what worked for us.
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We didn't have to do things for others.
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We didn't have calendars.
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I think at one point I kind of started making notes of roughly where we wanted to be on a certain date.
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But we would wake up in the morning and just decide what worked for us.
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You know, I've got I was traveling with my husband and three kids.
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Like, what did we want to do that day?
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Which was a real shift from being a leader of a Jewish communal organization where you feel everything is for others.
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And it was a pleasure, but everything was for others and everything was seen and noticed by others.
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At the end of that trip, we weren't ready to go back to Melbourne.
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I think we were really enjoying being out of our comfort zone.
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And I think I particularly wanted a little bit more quiet to just that time to just reflect a little bit more on what we wanted our lives to look like.
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So, you know, I wasn't quite ready to jump straight back into organized community life.
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But honestly, that's also been the hardest part and the biggest this push-pull for me.
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This like it's really nice being away from all of communal life, but it's also really hard.
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You know, Gold Coast is a very different Jewish community.
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There's not easy access to a shul.
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I think we're 25 minutes from the closest shul.
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If you want to get kosher food, you've got to arrange with the shul.
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They're open twice a week, or you can order it from Melbourne and it will be here maybe within a few weeks.
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There's not a Jewish day school, it's really different.
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So to be sitting down now with you, what I've realized is that the why is becoming a really big part of my life at the moment.
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How I think, how I reflect what I want our house to look like and what I want Judaism to look like in our life.
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I totally resonate with that.
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And even though, you know, I ended up in Jerusalem, I actually considered when I had long service leave moving to Byron Bay.
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For those that don't know, it's a place you go into in Australia to lose your virginity, smoke marijuana, and try surfing.
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But anyway, I think is that still what happens in Byron Bay?
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I don't know.
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Uh I think so.
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I think it's a bit fancier.
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And now, like Chris Hemsworth lives there and Matt Damon visits.
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Okay.
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So buy expensive meals as well.
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So anyway, yeah, I thought of moving to Byron Bay and then uh or Mullum Bimbi or you know, somewhere like that, but I ended up in a place that's not similar to that at all in Jerusalem.
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But yeah, I I totally resonate with the idea of doing a stressful job and then finding something new to do.
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And definitely it makes you ask that why question a lot.
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I'll share just a Melbourne story that I sort of think about a lot when I think of the question of why.
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So Yom Kippur is a day that I think for many Melbourne, Sydney, Gold Coast Jews, is the one day you go to synagogue.
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And it's a day that you often get dressed up, and whether you believe in God or not, or believe in Jewish rituals or prayer, or all those things.
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It's a day that everyone takes very seriously.
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And myself growing up in Mount Scopus, and I was also the head of an Orthodox uh Jewish youth movement called Hinaini, which greatly influenced my life.
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So Yom Kippur for me was like the grand final.
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It's the biggest event in the Jewish calendar.
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Ironically, it would often fall on or near Grand Final Day for those that follow Australian rules football.
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Um as a Sakilda supporter, it's the Ah right.
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The only grand final they've ever won was on Yom Kippur.
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So that's a sign.
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Okay, so we need to get them into another one.
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That will take a while.
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Yeah, so I used to on Yom Kippur, are you still really because I actually speak Hebrew?
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I don't just read the Siddur as a random collection of words.
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I actually understand what every word means.
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And for those that that do understand Hebrew, you'll you'll know that when you do the prayers on Yom Kippur, 90% of what you're saying is adjectives about how wonderful God is.
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And it's beautiful poetry and it's said in a very creative and emotive way, but that's essentially the gist of the prayer.
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It's praising God's greatness and then obviously humbling yourself before this great power and asking for forgiveness for the misdeeds that you may have done in the past year.
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And then various things happened in my life, and I stopped believing in God.
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I don't stop believing in Judaism, but I think that the belief of, you know, as Nick Cave talks about, I used to believe in an interventionist God, but I stopped believing that God intervenes in the world.
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And so prayer became really difficult for me.
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But I still wanted Yom Kippur.
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I still wanted that feeling of song in there.
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But I just couldn't go to a synagogue and say all those adjectives about how wonderful this thing was that I didn't know I really believed in.
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So I started a new habit, which I started from probably the age of 25 till 35, which is I went to shul every year on Yom Kippur to Shri Racharasha.
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And instead of reading the Mahzor, I read a book by Viktor Frankel called Man's Search for Meaning.
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And it's a book about a Holocaust survivor.
00:18:18.079 --> 00:18:20.000
It was actually written in 1945.
00:18:20.079 --> 00:18:28.799
The whole book was written in nine days after he survived the Holocaust, which is mind-blowing to write a book in nine days in 1945.
00:18:28.880 --> 00:18:30.160
And it's got two parts.
00:18:30.559 --> 00:18:37.119
The first part is a testimony of how he survived and what he went through in the concentration camps.
00:18:37.519 --> 00:18:40.960
And the second half is about logotherapy.
00:18:41.119 --> 00:18:46.799
It's a kind of a therapy that he developed about how to answer life's big questions.
00:18:46.960 --> 00:18:59.279
But before I I sort of jump into what I've learned from reading that book for 10 years on Yom Kippur, I want to ask you what's your memories from Yom Kippur growing up and sitting in synagogue in Melbourne.
00:18:59.920 --> 00:19:02.079
Very similar to you, very much.
00:19:15.759 --> 00:19:26.960
Similar to you, I also, after going to Xil Kildeshul and Corfield Schul, and obviously Shira that I was very involved with, I also started going to Kolano and also connected a lot more.
00:19:27.039 --> 00:19:34.240
I didn't feel like I needed to read a book at Kolano because it's much shorter and it's more singing, and sometimes I was even playing guitar there.
00:19:34.319 --> 00:19:40.960
And so I I connected more to that song, but I I felt that at Koleno I wasn't really asking myself hard questions.
00:19:41.279 --> 00:19:46.720
I was like enjoying the experience, but I wasn't in suffering, I wasn't bored.
00:19:46.960 --> 00:19:54.559
There's something really beautiful about I don't mean to diss Orthodox Judaism here, but I think a lot of Orthodox Jewish practices are very boring.
00:19:54.799 --> 00:20:13.440
But I actually think that's a really good thing because there's something about there's long periods of silences in Orthodox Phila that you don't have in a colleague, and there's long periods of blessings or like Torah reading or repetition of something that you said 10 minutes ago.
00:20:13.839 --> 00:20:16.799
And in that act of being bored, you think.
00:20:17.039 --> 00:20:24.480
And I often feel like as a person that's very addicted to my phone, I don't have many moments in my life where I think.
00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:48.880
And so there was something about being in an Orthodox school, which I even when I was going to Colleen, I would still sort of go to a core field to Kildeshira, you know, something on the other parts of the day when it wasn't on, because I I feel like it's good to have moments when you just have time to think, which brings me back to what I was doing and I was thinking or reading, which was this book Man Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel.
00:20:49.200 --> 00:21:00.720
So without and I'm taking a long way from being a psychologist, but from what I understand, there's three dominant schools in psychology about what causes suffering or neurosis in the world.
00:21:00.880 --> 00:21:11.920
And the first is Sigmund Freund, and he said that suffering or neurosis is caused by unconscious desires, and if you can become aware of your unconscious desires, you can treat that.
00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:20.079
And then there was Adler who said that neurosis is caused by increased feelings of inferiority.
00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:27.519
And finally there's Viktor Frankel who said that neurosis or suffering is caused by a failure to find meaning.
00:21:27.680 --> 00:21:37.200
And he bases his sort of philosophy on the world on Frederick Nietzsche, who said he who has a why to live can bear almost anyhow.
00:21:37.519 --> 00:21:49.920
And uh in his book, there's a there's many, many stories about how when he was in concentration camps, he sort of became the camp psychologist, which is you know not a position that anyone appointed him to be.
00:21:50.079 --> 00:22:01.759
But a lot of people wanted to know, you know, why should I wake up in the morning when all I see is death and suffering and hunger and pain and slave labor around me like Why should I do anything?
00:22:02.079 --> 00:22:04.559
And he would help people find meaning.
00:22:04.640 --> 00:22:10.079
And then that later on, he would treat, you know, clients for the rest of his life when he lived in the US.
00:22:10.319 --> 00:22:16.720
And uh there's a story he tells there, which I found very moving, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this as well, Courtney.
00:22:16.960 --> 00:22:32.000
About he's treating his friend who's a doctor, and his doctor is in great pain because his wife has died two years ago, and he just he can't he can't get up in the morning because he's just so deep in grief at the loss of his wife.
00:22:32.240 --> 00:22:40.000
And Victor Frankel says to him, What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first and your wife would have had to survive you?
00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:49.599
And then the doctor immediately responds to the scenario and says, Oh, for her, this would have been terrible, how she would have suffered.
00:22:49.839 --> 00:23:04.960
And then Frankel offers the doctor a new lens to view his grief, and he says, You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering, to be sure at the price that now you have to mourn her.
00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:08.559
And then upon hearing this, the doctor said, No more.
00:23:08.720 --> 00:23:13.359
And he silently shook Frankel's hand and calmly walked out of the office.
00:23:13.599 --> 00:23:16.960
So Frankel then considers this doctor cured.
00:23:17.200 --> 00:23:20.160
Well, not cured necessarily, but you know, not in suffering anymore.
00:23:20.240 --> 00:23:31.920
And then Frankel concludes the story with this insight, and he says, In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as a meaning of a sacrifice.
00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:39.920
So what he's saying there is, and I guess what I take from this is everyone in life endures suffering, loss, pain.
00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:47.680
We lose loved ones from war, from terrorism, from cancer, from illness, from traffic accidents.
00:23:47.759 --> 00:23:54.480
There's so many ways to experience suffering, financial loss, grief, like all these things that happen in life.
00:23:54.720 --> 00:24:00.880
And the question of how that's going to affect you is whether you can find meaning in that suffering.
00:24:01.039 --> 00:24:12.559
And in this case, this doctor found meaning from the fact that instead of his wife having to mourn him, which he would have thought would be unbearable, he was mourning his wife, but he found meaning in that.
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:21.119
Now it's a pretty dark story, but that's how Frankel was betreating people in the camps and later on in his life.
00:24:21.440 --> 00:24:25.839
It's a really powerful story, and it brings up it brings up a few things for me.
00:24:25.920 --> 00:24:33.839
I think the first thing that it makes me think about is all the rituals and customs we do have in Judaism to guide us through these things, right?
00:24:34.079 --> 00:24:38.480
And especially around you you said something about suffering ending.
00:24:38.640 --> 00:24:40.880
Like he thought he was cured and his suffering had ended.
00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:46.480
And I just like suffering, it doesn't end, and Judaism doesn't ask us to make it end.
00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:52.960
There's the, you know, someone dies, the funeral happens quickly, but then there's Shiva and Shloshim, and yeah.
00:24:53.920 --> 00:24:56.240
And you know, every year we revisit that, right?
00:24:56.400 --> 00:24:58.880
Every year there's you light a candle and you say Yizko.
00:24:59.680 --> 00:25:09.200
And I think having these things around grief and suffering really guide us and really make us sit in it to reflect, right?
00:25:09.279 --> 00:25:13.039
We can't just move on, we have to learn from it, we have to carry it with us.
00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:20.400
But then there's this other side of me, this feeling of, you know, of course in Judaism we come back to suffering.
00:25:20.559 --> 00:25:26.480
You know, everything seems to come back to trauma, and my journey certainly has.
00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:32.319
My journey is and my identity is so formed by the trauma of those before us.
00:25:32.400 --> 00:25:40.480
And I just wonder do we over-associate Jewish meaning and our why with pain and survival?
00:25:40.880 --> 00:25:50.559
Look, you know, when we were making the Google Doc for this podcast, we actually called episode two oi versus joy, which specifically deals with that question.
00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:54.160
And so I'm sure in episode two I'll I'll answer it a bit more.
00:25:54.240 --> 00:25:58.240
But I guess just for episode one, I just want to sit with that suffering.
00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:00.319
Yeah.
00:26:00.720 --> 00:26:11.759
Um, because I live in a country that there's constantly war and violence and loss, and so many people here have PTSD.
00:26:12.480 --> 00:26:27.680
It's not even PTSD because it's not proposed to anything, it's just a consequence of the way life is here, is incredibly stressful and there's grief and sudden loss happens all the time, as it happens to our Palestinian neighbours as well.
00:26:27.839 --> 00:26:36.319
And so we we in Jerusalem are constantly living life to the fullest, knowing that life can end at any moment.
00:26:36.559 --> 00:26:44.400
And so I think that shapes why when I think of meaning, I always think of what's the antidote to suffering and loss and grief.
00:26:44.559 --> 00:26:49.759
But yes, I would much rather have a a Judaism that's based on joy rather than oy.
00:26:50.240 --> 00:27:04.240
But I think that's where I am, and I think I think a story also that I've been carrying a lot over the past two and a half years since October 7th is the story of Rachel Goldberg-Poland, who my wife at Pradesh worked with her before October 7th.
00:27:04.319 --> 00:27:18.640
Pardess is a is a Jewish learning institute there where Rachel was like a counsellor helping students on this Gap Year programme, and her son Hirsch was stolen from the Nova Party on the morning of October 7th.
00:27:18.720 --> 00:27:30.880
And I would imagine many of our listeners are familiar with his story, but Hirsch lived a very, you know, in the same neighborhood as I did, in the same sort of Anglo community as I did.
00:27:31.119 --> 00:27:39.680
He supported the same football team that I do, and he had a great curiosity for life and travel and understanding the world.
00:27:39.759 --> 00:27:47.119
And so I think more than any other hostage that was taken on that day, I think I connected to his story maybe a lot more than many others.
00:27:47.279 --> 00:28:04.319
And and also in my neighborhood specifically, you can't walk more than 200 metres with saying a Hirsch sticker, a Hirsch poster, a Hirsch banner, because so many people in this neighborhood knew him and Hapoel Jerusalem, the football team that that he goes to with its iconic uh red and black colours.
00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:08.240
And in Australia was an Essenden supporter, so you know it's even the same colours.
00:28:08.559 --> 00:28:21.440
And I think something that I've been thinking about a lot is on the two-year anniversary of October 7th, Rachel Goldberg Poland came and spoke at my daughter's school, Boya, and they invited the parents to come and hear her speak.
00:28:21.519 --> 00:28:31.279
And so she told the story of what the last two years have been like, especially after Hirsch was murdered uh with a beautiful six.
00:28:32.079 --> 00:28:35.200
And most of the talk was about finding meaning.
00:28:35.359 --> 00:28:51.359
And at the end of the talk, she gave out stickers to all the students, and the sticker is a picture of Hirsch, and I've got it on my fridge, and he's sitting wearing sort of like a cool black t-shirt, like he's just come back from a holiday, and it's just got four words, and it's just what is your why?
00:28:51.599 --> 00:29:01.119
And uh she gave the sticker to the kids because she wanted all of the kids to just try and spend time thinking about this gift of life.
00:29:01.359 --> 00:29:04.000
What do you want to do with that?
00:29:04.240 --> 00:29:09.119
And it's a question I think about more and more because I used to think I have a simple answer to that.
00:29:09.200 --> 00:29:18.799
You know, I work in a peace-building organization, I facilitate dialogue, I I teach about how Israelis and Palestinians can share this land together.
00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:20.720
And so if people would ask me, what's my why?
00:29:20.799 --> 00:29:23.519
I'd say my why is to help bring peace.
00:29:23.759 --> 00:29:25.279
But that's not working very well.
00:29:25.519 --> 00:29:32.960
I don't know when exactly this podcast is going to be released, but I imagine that when it does come out, there probably will not be peace in the Middle East.
00:29:33.200 --> 00:29:49.680
And that doesn't mean I think my work is a waste of time, but it does make me ask questions of that I devote so much time to try and build peace and build understanding between Israelis and Palestinians and also between Jews of different political opinions.
00:29:49.759 --> 00:29:59.200
And I try and do that in my writing and in my speaking, but I have moments of success and I also have a lot of moments of failures, and that's why this why question keeps coming up for me.
00:29:59.519 --> 00:30:34.319
Yeah, I think we need I need to just take a moment for Rachel and everything she says and does as a mother, as a human, just watching her journey, and you know, I haven't met her, but you know, you just feel like you can feel her every word, and seeing how many people are just resonating with her, and that you can come through that and still feel so closely connected to your religion and your history and your culture, and that is what is giving her strength.
00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:38.000
You know, sometimes there's this bit of this like like survivor guilt, right?
00:30:38.160 --> 00:30:49.039
This, oh, I'm so lucky to make these decisions that I can to live in the Gold Coast and do all these things so so freely and without the weight of the world on me.
00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:55.039
So I think for me, when I talk about my why, it's a whole new question for me.
00:30:55.200 --> 00:31:02.480
And it's really interesting being outside of the Jewish community and really having to find to find what that looks like.
00:31:02.640 --> 00:31:14.880
And listening to you talk and reflecting on my own story, I think if I had to name one idea that has shaped me, it would probably be a really simple one, le Dorvador.
00:31:15.039 --> 00:31:24.880
So, you know, we say every every Pesach, we say Mechol Dorvador, so from every generation to generation, it's this responsibility to carry stories forward.
00:31:25.039 --> 00:31:34.880
And I hear that in the way Rachel's sharing Herschel's story and keeping his memory alive, but it's that responsibility that to remember to bear witness that's shaped the work I do.
00:31:35.039 --> 00:31:42.559
You know, my grandparents' survival taught me that stories matter and that silence, you know, silence can erase, but storytelling can rebuild.
00:31:42.799 --> 00:31:53.599
So for me, that's kind of where my why comes back to at the moment, and being away from community is forcing me to be much more intentional.
00:31:53.839 --> 00:32:02.720
You know, I have to really think about what I believe, what I want to carry forward and why my kids are not getting Jewish education from a school right now.
00:32:02.880 --> 00:32:05.920
So it has to come from me and our home.
00:32:06.079 --> 00:32:10.640
As I said, there's not automatic access to Jewish life and culture here on the Gold Coast.
00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:21.759
So now Judaism is an active choice, and I think what an honor, what a joy for me to be able to go through this journey and really find the parts that I love and spark joy.
00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:24.640
So it's something I have to choose consciously every day.
00:32:24.799 --> 00:32:36.960
But um, you know, this podcast and this conversation couldn't have come at a better time to be able to explore that and give space to people who are hopefully listening that are going through this as well.
00:32:37.039 --> 00:32:45.359
We, you know, we're constantly being reminded about the bad and the hard and the scary stuff about our religion, but what's going to ground us?
00:32:45.680 --> 00:32:45.920
Yeah.
00:32:46.079 --> 00:32:49.759
So it sounds like we're both having the same midlife crisis.
00:32:50.880 --> 00:32:53.599
We've been calling it a midlife awakening in our house.
00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:54.240
Thank you very much.
00:32:54.960 --> 00:32:56.720
I like that, a midlife awakening.
00:32:56.960 --> 00:33:04.799
So with that, hopefully we've wet your appetite a little bit for what this podcast is about.
00:33:05.039 --> 00:33:12.160
So as we conclude episode one, can you tell us a little bit, Corney, about what can we expect in the upcoming episodes?
00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:16.799
Upcoming episodes will be more conversations between the two of us, just exploring.
00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:32.160
Topics will include, as Itai said, oi versus joy, why learn Jewish, why practice Judaism, why eat Jewish, why argue Jewish, why love Jewish, why love a Jewish homeland, why arts, and then what's your why?
00:33:32.559 --> 00:33:37.440
So we're very much looking forward to you joining us on the journey ahead.
00:33:37.599 --> 00:33:45.599
And we'd like to really thank Donnie Janks, who created the intro music for this podcast, and our wonderful editor, Nick King.
00:33:45.839 --> 00:33:55.359
And especially a big thank you to the Jewish Independent, our editor Deborah Stone, and all the team that have had faith in us to give birth to this new podcast.
00:33:55.519 --> 00:33:57.519
We'd love to hear your feedback on the episode.
00:33:57.680 --> 00:34:12.320
We've created a dedicated email address, which is finding our why at the Jewishindependent.com.au, and you can email us questions, thoughts, comments, anything you'd like us to talk about, and we'd love to hear from you.
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:15.360
And the last person I want to thank is Courtney.
00:34:15.519 --> 00:34:29.760
I know this was sometimes not an easy thing to do together, and I really wanted to thank you for your courage and bravery in sharing and coming along with this journey with me on my midlife awakening.
00:34:30.159 --> 00:34:32.559
Maybe we should call it midlife awakening.
00:34:33.599 --> 00:34:41.599
But thank you, and I'm really looking forward to having this conversation and for bringing thought and care and all your knowledge.
00:34:41.679 --> 00:34:42.320
Let's do it.
00:00:05.519 --> 00:00:10.720
Welcome to Finding Our Why, a new podcast for the Jewish Independent.
00:00:19.679 --> 00:00:29.120
My name is Courtney Winter Peters, and I'll be joining you on this journey and this discussion from my new home in the Gold Coast, Queensland.
00:00:29.440 --> 00:00:39.280
For those listening internationally and don't know the Gold Coast, think of it as Miami type vibes, a little bit holiday outside the Jewish community.
00:00:39.359 --> 00:00:43.200
It's not Melbourne, it's not Sydney, it's in sunny Queensland.
00:00:43.600 --> 00:00:54.479
And my name is Itai Flesher, and I'll be joining you from a small mountain in the Middle East called Jerusalem, which is where I've been living for the last eight years.
00:00:54.799 --> 00:00:58.000
You're calling in from a little bit more of a familiar location.
00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:02.320
Yeah, I think more of our listeners may have heard of Jerusalem and the Gold Coast.
00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:06.079
This is sometimes called the city of Gold, but it has no beach.
00:01:06.239 --> 00:01:08.719
So it could do with a beach, I think.
00:01:09.519 --> 00:01:10.640
The beach makes it.
00:01:10.799 --> 00:01:11.120
Yeah.
00:01:11.359 --> 00:01:15.280
So I think it's important just to say why we're having this conversation.
00:01:15.599 --> 00:01:25.120
So lately, and I speak for my experience in Australia in particular, any conversation around Judaism has felt really heavy and really loaded.
00:01:25.280 --> 00:01:36.319
And it feels like anytime I speak to friends within the community and also friends from outside the community, we're constantly justifying our existence.
00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:39.120
It's coming from a real focus on safety.
00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:43.840
There's a lot of discussion around anti-Semitism, security, and politics.
00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:46.400
And I think those conversations are really important.
00:01:46.719 --> 00:01:56.879
But I think what's missing is we've stopped talking about the beauty of our religion, the connection to culture and history and language.
00:01:57.120 --> 00:01:59.439
And I think that's something that's been lost along the way.
00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:00.560
I would agree with you.
00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:07.519
And I think, look, all those topics are really important about fighting anti-Semitism, about security, about politics.
00:02:07.599 --> 00:02:12.080
And in fact, the Jewish Independent has podcasts on all of those topics as well.
00:02:12.240 --> 00:02:23.680
But this one's a little bit different because rather than sort of sharing our thoughts on those pressing issues of the day, we're going to ask what is, I think, a bigger question, which is why does all of this matter?
00:02:23.919 --> 00:02:28.400
Why is it important to wake up in the morning and have all of these struggles and arguments?
00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:31.039
What are we actually fighting for?
00:02:31.280 --> 00:02:46.000
And through this podcast, I hope both you and I, and you, all of our listeners, will help find an answer to the question, which is a four-word question, which is very simple, which is simply, what is my why?
00:02:46.240 --> 00:02:57.120
And I think it's just important to note when we started talking about the idea for this, we discussed whether or not we'd invite experts or rabbis on to share their opinion and what their why is.
00:02:57.439 --> 00:03:03.759
But what we settled on is this is a conversation between us, between friends, between people navigating this space.
00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:20.319
We're not here to tell anyone what Judaism should look like to them or how they should practice, but just really creating a space for people to share their thoughts and reflect on what it is that keeps us going and that keeps us thriving and passionate about our history.
00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:24.080
So the podcast is really about one question: why?
00:03:24.319 --> 00:03:27.120
Why do we choose Jewish life and what does that look like today?
00:03:27.439 --> 00:03:29.840
Sounds like a fascinating conversation.
00:03:30.400 --> 00:03:31.680
I'm looking forward to it.
00:03:31.759 --> 00:03:36.560
It's very much going to be a therapy session for me outside the Jewish community a little bit at the moment.
00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:37.680
For me too.
00:03:37.759 --> 00:03:42.800
I feel like we're recording therapy, but that's uh that's what all good podcasts do these days.
00:03:43.120 --> 00:03:45.759
Thanks for being my friendly free therapist.
00:03:53.520 --> 00:03:58.560
I think it's a good place to kind of throw over to you and you can share your story and what brings you here today.
00:03:58.800 --> 00:04:05.919
You were a teacher in Australia for 15 years, then you packed up your life and you moved to that mountain you mentioned in the Judean Desert.
00:04:06.080 --> 00:04:10.000
You're a journalist, you're an author, you're a peace educator with Seeds of Peace.
00:04:10.159 --> 00:04:12.879
I'd love to hear a little bit more about what brings you here today.
00:04:13.280 --> 00:04:13.840
Thank you.
00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:20.720
So throughout my whole life, always been, I guess, a little bit different from people around me.
00:04:20.959 --> 00:04:25.040
And I often think about why things are the way they are.
00:04:25.199 --> 00:04:32.480
Remember, even as a child, I'd often just sit in the car with my dad and just ask him, like, why are the road rules the way they are?
00:04:32.639 --> 00:04:35.199
What why do we, why does school look the way it is?
00:04:35.279 --> 00:04:36.560
Why is it so many hours a day?
00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:39.759
Like, I just wanted to understand how things work.
00:04:39.920 --> 00:04:43.439
And and back then, I'm gonna show my age because there was no internet.
00:04:43.680 --> 00:04:46.879
I used this thing called an encyclopedia for our younger listeners.
00:04:46.959 --> 00:04:49.519
It's sort of like Wikipedia, but a book.
00:04:49.839 --> 00:04:54.319
And it was like 30 volumes, and people used to come door to door and sell them.
00:04:54.480 --> 00:05:09.600
And I remember as a child, I used to sit and read the encyclopedia because I wanted to understand how electricity works and how life is formed and you know what's going on in Yugoslavia, which, you know, that entry is a bit out of date these days.
00:05:09.839 --> 00:05:17.759
And yeah, I've just always had this curiosity, and then various decisions happened in my life that led me to be a teacher.
00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:20.160
I was a teacher in in Australia.
00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:26.079
I taught at the Adas Israel School, which is a Haredi or ultra-Orthodox school in Melbourne.
00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:30.879
I taught English and IT there, which is two very difficult subjects to teach at Adidas.
00:05:31.519 --> 00:05:36.480
And then I moved to Bialik and then King David and then uh Mount Scopus.
00:05:36.720 --> 00:06:06.240
And through all of those 15 years that I taught high school from year seven to 12, teaching Jewish studies, Holocaust education, religion, and society, I read thousands of essays and I had thousands of conversations with teenagers who were trying to work out what their purpose is in life and how they make meaning of both being a teenager, being a Jew, being a boy, being a girl, transitioning all those things that might happen in the life of a teenager.
00:06:06.480 --> 00:06:10.319
And as you help people answer those questions, you ask them for yourselves.
00:06:10.480 --> 00:06:22.240
And then eventually in 2018, my wife Carmen and I, who was also a teacher at Scopus, we decided that we needed to sort of keep asking this question in a new place.
00:06:22.319 --> 00:06:25.040
And we both had long service leave in in 2018.
00:06:25.199 --> 00:06:33.680
And so we decided to move to Jerusalem initially for two years just to sort of try it out and have an adventure with our kids and see what it would be like.
00:06:34.160 --> 00:06:44.480
And long story short, because I've written a whole book about this, I won't go into it now, but we uh we decided to stay here because we found meaning in Jerusalem and that's where we are today.
00:06:44.720 --> 00:06:46.079
Beautiful, beautiful.
00:06:46.399 --> 00:06:54.000
So, Courtney, your story is a bit similar to my story in that you also went to the same school that I did.
00:06:54.079 --> 00:06:58.560
We were both Scopus graduates, and you ended up in a very different place.
00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:00.800
Tell me how you got to be where you are today.
00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:07.519
It's really interesting listening to your story and when you say that you were a little bit different and all the deep thinking that you did.
00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:15.199
Even though we were growing up in the same place and very engaged in similar places, I think my journey was more.
00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:19.759
I took my experience and my Jewish identity for granted.
00:07:20.079 --> 00:07:31.519
Looking back now, and when I think about it in hindsight, I know that all my decisions have been, there has been a question around identity and belonging and meaning, and perhaps an unconscious search for it.
00:07:31.759 --> 00:07:35.120
I wasn't aware of it at the time, and it's something I'm coming to now.
00:07:35.600 --> 00:07:39.439
So all four of my grandparents were Holocaust survivors.
00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:43.439
So being Jewish never really felt like a question to me.
00:07:43.519 --> 00:07:46.079
It wasn't a choice, it was a responsibility.
00:07:46.399 --> 00:07:49.040
Their experiences shaped my identity.
00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:52.399
All the books I read growing up were about the Holocaust.
00:07:52.879 --> 00:07:57.920
So I think my why became closely tied to survival.
00:07:58.079 --> 00:08:00.480
They survived so that we might thrive.
00:08:00.639 --> 00:08:03.279
That was very much my philosophy.
00:08:03.519 --> 00:08:06.959
I grew up in what I'd call a very quintessential Melbourne Jewish life.
00:08:07.120 --> 00:08:15.040
I lived in Corfield, and again, for those that don't know Melbourne Jewish life, Corfield is the hub, the center, the everything.
00:08:15.279 --> 00:08:18.079
Did you call it the ghetto or the bagel belt?
00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:20.959
Uh, a little bit of both.
00:08:22.160 --> 00:08:23.920
But that sums it up completely.
00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:25.199
It was the everything.
00:08:25.360 --> 00:08:34.879
I went to a Jewish day school, I went to a Jewish youth movement, I even went to shul every week on Shabbat until I turned Bat Mitzvah and stopped going because I couldn't sit with my dad.
00:08:35.120 --> 00:08:36.879
My family had a kosher home.
00:08:36.960 --> 00:08:38.559
We didn't drive on Yomtov.
00:08:38.639 --> 00:08:49.679
I think I was seen by my friends as being very religious because it just wasn't the norm at like for scopus students, that was my cohort, but I would call myself traditional.
00:08:49.759 --> 00:08:54.720
So Judaism wasn't anything separate from my life, it was just woven woven through everything.
00:08:54.960 --> 00:08:57.440
And then work, as you mentioned.
00:08:57.600 --> 00:09:04.720
So after traveling for a year after school, and I didn't go to Israel at the time because it was there was an interfada, it was too dangerous.
00:09:05.039 --> 00:09:11.679
I went traveling, I volunteered in Kenya, I went to London, I did a I did some different things.
00:09:11.919 --> 00:09:22.000
When I came back and I graduated as a lawyer, I started in private practice, I spent time in planning and environment, and then I moved into the community legal sector.
00:09:22.159 --> 00:09:34.080
And I think that move was certainly inspired by my grandparents and their journey, by that recognition and understanding of they survived so that we might thrive and we were thriving.
00:09:34.159 --> 00:09:36.320
So what can we do for others?
00:09:37.200 --> 00:09:40.480
In those organizations, I was often the only Jewish person.
00:09:40.639 --> 00:09:43.679
So I would really like to speak up about my Judaism a lot.
00:09:43.840 --> 00:09:47.360
I was always leaving on time to get to dinner on a Friday night.
00:09:47.519 --> 00:09:49.200
I just was loud and proud.
00:09:49.279 --> 00:09:51.360
I was I was very clearly Jewish.
00:09:51.679 --> 00:09:54.320
On the side, I was always volunteering at Jewish organizations.
00:09:54.399 --> 00:10:01.120
I was, I think I was always just trying to find my way of connecting to community and how could I give back and what would that look like?
00:10:01.679 --> 00:10:04.480
Then I was offered the role of CEO at Stand Up.
00:10:04.799 --> 00:10:18.960
Stand Up is a Melbourne and Sydney-based Jewish not-for-profit focused on mutual allyship and mobilizing the Jewish community to support others, with a focus on partnering with First Nations and refugee communities.
00:10:19.120 --> 00:10:24.399
And for me, it was this perfect alignment of Jewish values and social justice.
00:10:24.559 --> 00:10:26.159
It was a dream job.
00:10:26.240 --> 00:10:26.480
Yeah.
00:10:26.879 --> 00:10:27.440
Dream job.
00:10:27.519 --> 00:10:29.679
I thought I had like found my path.
00:10:29.840 --> 00:10:35.840
And it's really interesting because I think that work expanded my way of thinking in a really profound way.
00:10:36.559 --> 00:10:46.720
From spending time with other communities, I became really aware about how insular my experience had been and how deeply protected I was by community.
00:10:46.799 --> 00:10:48.159
And I say that in a positive way.
00:10:48.240 --> 00:10:49.840
Like we really rally around each other.
00:10:49.919 --> 00:10:52.000
We really got this incredible community.
00:10:52.240 --> 00:10:57.919
So by 2025, after being at stand-up for almost four years, I was exhausted.
00:10:58.080 --> 00:11:06.240
I'd spent years immersed in conversations around identity and social cohesion and racism and anti-Semitism and belonging.
00:11:06.879 --> 00:11:12.240
Even pre-October 7, you know, there was this lack of separation between me and the work.
00:11:12.399 --> 00:11:16.000
When your values are so tied in, it becomes everything you talk about.
00:11:16.720 --> 00:11:19.519
So I reached a point where I just needed a break.
00:11:19.679 --> 00:11:22.960
Not from Judaism, but from the, you know, just from work, from life.
00:11:23.039 --> 00:11:28.000
So we took the kids out of school and we went traveling, we did a half lap of Australia for four months.
00:11:28.159 --> 00:11:30.320
I wouldn't say it's an unusual thing in Australia to do.
00:11:30.399 --> 00:11:36.399
It's a bit of a rite of passage, but maybe unique in the Jewish community to live in a tent for four months.
00:11:36.639 --> 00:11:40.879
And just for those of our international licenors, Australia is a very big country.
00:11:40.960 --> 00:11:47.360
So when you say do a lap of Australia, we're talking about several thousand kilometres you covered, I imagine.
00:11:47.840 --> 00:11:51.039
We drove 15,000 kilometres in four months.
00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:52.000
Yeah.
00:11:52.159 --> 00:11:53.600
You you could drive a day.
00:11:53.679 --> 00:11:56.960
You could drive four or five hundred kilometers in a day and barely see anyone.
00:11:57.279 --> 00:12:04.399
When you were on the road and you're driving for hours and hours and not seeing anyone except, you know, kangaroos, what's going through your mind?
00:12:04.480 --> 00:12:06.000
Are you listening to a podcast?
00:12:06.080 --> 00:12:08.320
Or are you just like letting the wind flow in your hair?
00:12:08.399 --> 00:12:10.080
Like, what was that experience like?
00:12:10.559 --> 00:12:18.240
Honestly, what was going through my mind a lot, particularly at the beginning, was how am I going to keep the kids happy?
00:12:18.559 --> 00:12:20.000
When are we going to feed them?
00:12:20.159 --> 00:12:21.120
What if we break down?
00:12:21.279 --> 00:12:24.879
And we did break down, I should say, we did break down, but that was okay.
00:12:25.200 --> 00:12:26.879
But it was also a switch off.
00:12:26.960 --> 00:12:33.120
We did Shabbat together, but it was just a switch off and a real presence with family.
00:12:33.360 --> 00:12:35.279
What mattered was our day-to-day.
00:12:35.440 --> 00:12:37.200
And it wasn't thinking beyond that.
00:12:37.360 --> 00:12:40.000
We weren't thinking about where we were going to be next week.
00:12:40.080 --> 00:12:44.799
We were just thinking about what we needed to do that day, which is a real gift.
00:12:45.519 --> 00:12:46.159
It's so true.
00:12:46.240 --> 00:12:56.399
I mean, I feel like in my life, so much of my life is planning, like making appointments, making emails, making medical appointments, planning an event I'm organizing or speaking at or whatever.
00:12:56.480 --> 00:13:01.360
And I feel like half my life is admin, you know, and then doing your taxes and all of that.
00:13:01.440 --> 00:13:09.200
And yeah, so just that ability to just be on the road and just be thinking about now rather than the future must have been a huge gift.
00:13:09.519 --> 00:13:10.080
Huge gift.
00:13:10.159 --> 00:13:11.759
And I think about it a lot.
00:13:11.919 --> 00:13:13.519
You know, we just did what worked for us.
00:13:13.679 --> 00:13:15.519
We didn't have to do things for others.
00:13:15.759 --> 00:13:17.279
We didn't have calendars.
00:13:17.440 --> 00:13:23.200
I think at one point I kind of started making notes of roughly where we wanted to be on a certain date.
00:13:23.679 --> 00:13:27.519
But we would wake up in the morning and just decide what worked for us.
00:13:27.679 --> 00:13:30.080
You know, I've got I was traveling with my husband and three kids.
00:13:30.159 --> 00:13:32.320
Like, what did we want to do that day?
00:13:32.639 --> 00:13:40.720
Which was a real shift from being a leader of a Jewish communal organization where you feel everything is for others.
00:13:40.960 --> 00:13:47.279
And it was a pleasure, but everything was for others and everything was seen and noticed by others.
00:13:47.519 --> 00:13:50.960
At the end of that trip, we weren't ready to go back to Melbourne.
00:13:51.039 --> 00:13:55.200
I think we were really enjoying being out of our comfort zone.
00:13:55.279 --> 00:14:04.720
And I think I particularly wanted a little bit more quiet to just that time to just reflect a little bit more on what we wanted our lives to look like.
00:14:04.960 --> 00:14:09.440
So, you know, I wasn't quite ready to jump straight back into organized community life.
00:14:09.519 --> 00:14:13.120
But honestly, that's also been the hardest part and the biggest this push-pull for me.
00:14:13.200 --> 00:14:18.480
This like it's really nice being away from all of communal life, but it's also really hard.
00:14:18.720 --> 00:14:21.679
You know, Gold Coast is a very different Jewish community.
00:14:21.759 --> 00:14:23.519
There's not easy access to a shul.
00:14:23.679 --> 00:14:26.000
I think we're 25 minutes from the closest shul.
00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:29.279
If you want to get kosher food, you've got to arrange with the shul.
00:14:29.519 --> 00:14:34.559
They're open twice a week, or you can order it from Melbourne and it will be here maybe within a few weeks.
00:14:34.720 --> 00:14:37.279
There's not a Jewish day school, it's really different.
00:14:37.519 --> 00:14:46.559
So to be sitting down now with you, what I've realized is that the why is becoming a really big part of my life at the moment.
00:14:46.720 --> 00:14:52.799
How I think, how I reflect what I want our house to look like and what I want Judaism to look like in our life.
00:14:53.120 --> 00:14:54.559
I totally resonate with that.
00:14:54.639 --> 00:15:01.519
And even though, you know, I ended up in Jerusalem, I actually considered when I had long service leave moving to Byron Bay.
00:15:01.759 --> 00:15:09.039
For those that don't know, it's a place you go into in Australia to lose your virginity, smoke marijuana, and try surfing.
00:15:09.200 --> 00:15:11.919
But anyway, I think is that still what happens in Byron Bay?
00:15:12.000 --> 00:15:12.320
I don't know.
00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:13.519
Uh I think so.
00:15:13.600 --> 00:15:14.720
I think it's a bit fancier.
00:15:14.799 --> 00:15:17.519
And now, like Chris Hemsworth lives there and Matt Damon visits.
00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:18.000
Okay.
00:15:18.799 --> 00:15:21.200
So buy expensive meals as well.
00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:30.639
So anyway, yeah, I thought of moving to Byron Bay and then uh or Mullum Bimbi or you know, somewhere like that, but I ended up in a place that's not similar to that at all in Jerusalem.
00:15:30.799 --> 00:15:37.919
But yeah, I I totally resonate with the idea of doing a stressful job and then finding something new to do.
00:15:38.399 --> 00:15:41.840
And definitely it makes you ask that why question a lot.
00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:48.320
I'll share just a Melbourne story that I sort of think about a lot when I think of the question of why.
00:15:48.960 --> 00:15:57.679
So Yom Kippur is a day that I think for many Melbourne, Sydney, Gold Coast Jews, is the one day you go to synagogue.
00:15:57.840 --> 00:16:06.799
And it's a day that you often get dressed up, and whether you believe in God or not, or believe in Jewish rituals or prayer, or all those things.
00:16:06.879 --> 00:16:09.679
It's a day that everyone takes very seriously.
00:16:09.840 --> 00:16:19.200
And myself growing up in Mount Scopus, and I was also the head of an Orthodox uh Jewish youth movement called Hinaini, which greatly influenced my life.
00:16:19.279 --> 00:16:21.679
So Yom Kippur for me was like the grand final.
00:16:22.080 --> 00:16:24.480
It's the biggest event in the Jewish calendar.
00:16:24.639 --> 00:16:30.080
Ironically, it would often fall on or near Grand Final Day for those that follow Australian rules football.
00:16:30.159 --> 00:16:33.679
Um as a Sakilda supporter, it's the Ah right.
00:16:34.240 --> 00:16:37.519
The only grand final they've ever won was on Yom Kippur.
00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:38.799
So that's a sign.
00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:41.919
Okay, so we need to get them into another one.
00:16:42.159 --> 00:16:43.279
That will take a while.
00:16:43.519 --> 00:16:48.639
Yeah, so I used to on Yom Kippur, are you still really because I actually speak Hebrew?
00:16:48.879 --> 00:16:52.720
I don't just read the Siddur as a random collection of words.
00:16:52.799 --> 00:16:55.200
I actually understand what every word means.
00:16:55.519 --> 00:17:07.279
And for those that that do understand Hebrew, you'll you'll know that when you do the prayers on Yom Kippur, 90% of what you're saying is adjectives about how wonderful God is.
00:17:07.599 --> 00:17:14.400
And it's beautiful poetry and it's said in a very creative and emotive way, but that's essentially the gist of the prayer.
00:17:14.559 --> 00:17:26.000
It's praising God's greatness and then obviously humbling yourself before this great power and asking for forgiveness for the misdeeds that you may have done in the past year.
00:17:26.160 --> 00:17:31.839
And then various things happened in my life, and I stopped believing in God.
00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:44.079
I don't stop believing in Judaism, but I think that the belief of, you know, as Nick Cave talks about, I used to believe in an interventionist God, but I stopped believing that God intervenes in the world.
00:17:44.240 --> 00:17:46.640
And so prayer became really difficult for me.
00:17:46.799 --> 00:17:48.640
But I still wanted Yom Kippur.
00:17:48.799 --> 00:17:51.119
I still wanted that feeling of song in there.
00:17:51.200 --> 00:17:59.440
But I just couldn't go to a synagogue and say all those adjectives about how wonderful this thing was that I didn't know I really believed in.
00:17:59.759 --> 00:18:09.200
So I started a new habit, which I started from probably the age of 25 till 35, which is I went to shul every year on Yom Kippur to Shri Racharasha.
00:18:09.440 --> 00:18:14.640
And instead of reading the Mahzor, I read a book by Viktor Frankel called Man's Search for Meaning.
00:18:14.960 --> 00:18:17.920
And it's a book about a Holocaust survivor.
00:18:18.079 --> 00:18:20.000
It was actually written in 1945.
00:18:20.079 --> 00:18:28.799
The whole book was written in nine days after he survived the Holocaust, which is mind-blowing to write a book in nine days in 1945.
00:18:28.880 --> 00:18:30.160
And it's got two parts.
00:18:30.559 --> 00:18:37.119
The first part is a testimony of how he survived and what he went through in the concentration camps.
00:18:37.519 --> 00:18:40.960
And the second half is about logotherapy.
00:18:41.119 --> 00:18:46.799
It's a kind of a therapy that he developed about how to answer life's big questions.
00:18:46.960 --> 00:18:59.279
But before I I sort of jump into what I've learned from reading that book for 10 years on Yom Kippur, I want to ask you what's your memories from Yom Kippur growing up and sitting in synagogue in Melbourne.
00:18:59.920 --> 00:19:02.079
Very similar to you, very much.
00:19:15.759 --> 00:19:26.960
Similar to you, I also, after going to Xil Kildeshul and Corfield Schul, and obviously Shira that I was very involved with, I also started going to Kolano and also connected a lot more.
00:19:27.039 --> 00:19:34.240
I didn't feel like I needed to read a book at Kolano because it's much shorter and it's more singing, and sometimes I was even playing guitar there.
00:19:34.319 --> 00:19:40.960
And so I I connected more to that song, but I I felt that at Koleno I wasn't really asking myself hard questions.
00:19:41.279 --> 00:19:46.720
I was like enjoying the experience, but I wasn't in suffering, I wasn't bored.
00:19:46.960 --> 00:19:54.559
There's something really beautiful about I don't mean to diss Orthodox Judaism here, but I think a lot of Orthodox Jewish practices are very boring.
00:19:54.799 --> 00:20:13.440
But I actually think that's a really good thing because there's something about there's long periods of silences in Orthodox Phila that you don't have in a colleague, and there's long periods of blessings or like Torah reading or repetition of something that you said 10 minutes ago.
00:20:13.839 --> 00:20:16.799
And in that act of being bored, you think.
00:20:17.039 --> 00:20:24.480
And I often feel like as a person that's very addicted to my phone, I don't have many moments in my life where I think.
00:20:24.960 --> 00:20:48.880
And so there was something about being in an Orthodox school, which I even when I was going to Colleen, I would still sort of go to a core field to Kildeshira, you know, something on the other parts of the day when it wasn't on, because I I feel like it's good to have moments when you just have time to think, which brings me back to what I was doing and I was thinking or reading, which was this book Man Search for Meaning by Victor Frankel.
00:20:49.200 --> 00:21:00.720
So without and I'm taking a long way from being a psychologist, but from what I understand, there's three dominant schools in psychology about what causes suffering or neurosis in the world.
00:21:00.880 --> 00:21:11.920
And the first is Sigmund Freund, and he said that suffering or neurosis is caused by unconscious desires, and if you can become aware of your unconscious desires, you can treat that.
00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:20.079
And then there was Adler who said that neurosis is caused by increased feelings of inferiority.
00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:27.519
And finally there's Viktor Frankel who said that neurosis or suffering is caused by a failure to find meaning.
00:21:27.680 --> 00:21:37.200
And he bases his sort of philosophy on the world on Frederick Nietzsche, who said he who has a why to live can bear almost anyhow.
00:21:37.519 --> 00:21:49.920
And uh in his book, there's a there's many, many stories about how when he was in concentration camps, he sort of became the camp psychologist, which is you know not a position that anyone appointed him to be.
00:21:50.079 --> 00:22:01.759
But a lot of people wanted to know, you know, why should I wake up in the morning when all I see is death and suffering and hunger and pain and slave labor around me like Why should I do anything?
00:22:02.079 --> 00:22:04.559
And he would help people find meaning.
00:22:04.640 --> 00:22:10.079
And then that later on, he would treat, you know, clients for the rest of his life when he lived in the US.
00:22:10.319 --> 00:22:16.720
And uh there's a story he tells there, which I found very moving, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this as well, Courtney.
00:22:16.960 --> 00:22:32.000
About he's treating his friend who's a doctor, and his doctor is in great pain because his wife has died two years ago, and he just he can't he can't get up in the morning because he's just so deep in grief at the loss of his wife.
00:22:32.240 --> 00:22:40.000
And Victor Frankel says to him, What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first and your wife would have had to survive you?
00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:49.599
And then the doctor immediately responds to the scenario and says, Oh, for her, this would have been terrible, how she would have suffered.
00:22:49.839 --> 00:23:04.960
And then Frankel offers the doctor a new lens to view his grief, and he says, You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering, to be sure at the price that now you have to mourn her.
00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:08.559
And then upon hearing this, the doctor said, No more.
00:23:08.720 --> 00:23:13.359
And he silently shook Frankel's hand and calmly walked out of the office.
00:23:13.599 --> 00:23:16.960
So Frankel then considers this doctor cured.
00:23:17.200 --> 00:23:20.160
Well, not cured necessarily, but you know, not in suffering anymore.
00:23:20.240 --> 00:23:31.920
And then Frankel concludes the story with this insight, and he says, In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as a meaning of a sacrifice.
00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:39.920
So what he's saying there is, and I guess what I take from this is everyone in life endures suffering, loss, pain.
00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:47.680
We lose loved ones from war, from terrorism, from cancer, from illness, from traffic accidents.
00:23:47.759 --> 00:23:54.480
There's so many ways to experience suffering, financial loss, grief, like all these things that happen in life.
00:23:54.720 --> 00:24:00.880
And the question of how that's going to affect you is whether you can find meaning in that suffering.
00:24:01.039 --> 00:24:12.559
And in this case, this doctor found meaning from the fact that instead of his wife having to mourn him, which he would have thought would be unbearable, he was mourning his wife, but he found meaning in that.
00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:21.119
Now it's a pretty dark story, but that's how Frankel was betreating people in the camps and later on in his life.
00:24:21.440 --> 00:24:25.839
It's a really powerful story, and it brings up it brings up a few things for me.
00:24:25.920 --> 00:24:33.839
I think the first thing that it makes me think about is all the rituals and customs we do have in Judaism to guide us through these things, right?
00:24:34.079 --> 00:24:38.480
And especially around you you said something about suffering ending.
00:24:38.640 --> 00:24:40.880
Like he thought he was cured and his suffering had ended.
00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:46.480
And I just like suffering, it doesn't end, and Judaism doesn't ask us to make it end.
00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:52.960
There's the, you know, someone dies, the funeral happens quickly, but then there's Shiva and Shloshim, and yeah.
00:24:53.920 --> 00:24:56.240
And you know, every year we revisit that, right?
00:24:56.400 --> 00:24:58.880
Every year there's you light a candle and you say Yizko.
00:24:59.680 --> 00:25:09.200
And I think having these things around grief and suffering really guide us and really make us sit in it to reflect, right?
00:25:09.279 --> 00:25:13.039
We can't just move on, we have to learn from it, we have to carry it with us.
00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:20.400
But then there's this other side of me, this feeling of, you know, of course in Judaism we come back to suffering.
00:25:20.559 --> 00:25:26.480
You know, everything seems to come back to trauma, and my journey certainly has.
00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:32.319
My journey is and my identity is so formed by the trauma of those before us.
00:25:32.400 --> 00:25:40.480
And I just wonder do we over-associate Jewish meaning and our why with pain and survival?
00:25:40.880 --> 00:25:50.559
Look, you know, when we were making the Google Doc for this podcast, we actually called episode two oi versus joy, which specifically deals with that question.
00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:54.160
And so I'm sure in episode two I'll I'll answer it a bit more.
00:25:54.240 --> 00:25:58.240
But I guess just for episode one, I just want to sit with that suffering.
00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:00.319
Yeah.
00:26:00.720 --> 00:26:11.759
Um, because I live in a country that there's constantly war and violence and loss, and so many people here have PTSD.
00:26:12.480 --> 00:26:27.680
It's not even PTSD because it's not proposed to anything, it's just a consequence of the way life is here, is incredibly stressful and there's grief and sudden loss happens all the time, as it happens to our Palestinian neighbours as well.
00:26:27.839 --> 00:26:36.319
And so we we in Jerusalem are constantly living life to the fullest, knowing that life can end at any moment.
00:26:36.559 --> 00:26:44.400
And so I think that shapes why when I think of meaning, I always think of what's the antidote to suffering and loss and grief.
00:26:44.559 --> 00:26:49.759
But yes, I would much rather have a a Judaism that's based on joy rather than oy.
00:26:50.240 --> 00:27:04.240
But I think that's where I am, and I think I think a story also that I've been carrying a lot over the past two and a half years since October 7th is the story of Rachel Goldberg-Poland, who my wife at Pradesh worked with her before October 7th.
00:27:04.319 --> 00:27:18.640
Pardess is a is a Jewish learning institute there where Rachel was like a counsellor helping students on this Gap Year programme, and her son Hirsch was stolen from the Nova Party on the morning of October 7th.
00:27:18.720 --> 00:27:30.880
And I would imagine many of our listeners are familiar with his story, but Hirsch lived a very, you know, in the same neighborhood as I did, in the same sort of Anglo community as I did.
00:27:31.119 --> 00:27:39.680
He supported the same football team that I do, and he had a great curiosity for life and travel and understanding the world.
00:27:39.759 --> 00:27:47.119
And so I think more than any other hostage that was taken on that day, I think I connected to his story maybe a lot more than many others.
00:27:47.279 --> 00:28:04.319
And and also in my neighborhood specifically, you can't walk more than 200 metres with saying a Hirsch sticker, a Hirsch poster, a Hirsch banner, because so many people in this neighborhood knew him and Hapoel Jerusalem, the football team that that he goes to with its iconic uh red and black colours.
00:28:04.400 --> 00:28:08.240
And in Australia was an Essenden supporter, so you know it's even the same colours.
00:28:08.559 --> 00:28:21.440
And I think something that I've been thinking about a lot is on the two-year anniversary of October 7th, Rachel Goldberg Poland came and spoke at my daughter's school, Boya, and they invited the parents to come and hear her speak.
00:28:21.519 --> 00:28:31.279
And so she told the story of what the last two years have been like, especially after Hirsch was murdered uh with a beautiful six.
00:28:32.079 --> 00:28:35.200
And most of the talk was about finding meaning.
00:28:35.359 --> 00:28:51.359
And at the end of the talk, she gave out stickers to all the students, and the sticker is a picture of Hirsch, and I've got it on my fridge, and he's sitting wearing sort of like a cool black t-shirt, like he's just come back from a holiday, and it's just got four words, and it's just what is your why?
00:28:51.599 --> 00:29:01.119
And uh she gave the sticker to the kids because she wanted all of the kids to just try and spend time thinking about this gift of life.
00:29:01.359 --> 00:29:04.000
What do you want to do with that?
00:29:04.240 --> 00:29:09.119
And it's a question I think about more and more because I used to think I have a simple answer to that.
00:29:09.200 --> 00:29:18.799
You know, I work in a peace-building organization, I facilitate dialogue, I I teach about how Israelis and Palestinians can share this land together.
00:29:18.880 --> 00:29:20.720
And so if people would ask me, what's my why?
00:29:20.799 --> 00:29:23.519
I'd say my why is to help bring peace.
00:29:23.759 --> 00:29:25.279
But that's not working very well.
00:29:25.519 --> 00:29:32.960
I don't know when exactly this podcast is going to be released, but I imagine that when it does come out, there probably will not be peace in the Middle East.
00:29:33.200 --> 00:29:49.680
And that doesn't mean I think my work is a waste of time, but it does make me ask questions of that I devote so much time to try and build peace and build understanding between Israelis and Palestinians and also between Jews of different political opinions.
00:29:49.759 --> 00:29:59.200
And I try and do that in my writing and in my speaking, but I have moments of success and I also have a lot of moments of failures, and that's why this why question keeps coming up for me.
00:29:59.519 --> 00:30:34.319
Yeah, I think we need I need to just take a moment for Rachel and everything she says and does as a mother, as a human, just watching her journey, and you know, I haven't met her, but you know, you just feel like you can feel her every word, and seeing how many people are just resonating with her, and that you can come through that and still feel so closely connected to your religion and your history and your culture, and that is what is giving her strength.
00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:38.000
You know, sometimes there's this bit of this like like survivor guilt, right?
00:30:38.160 --> 00:30:49.039
This, oh, I'm so lucky to make these decisions that I can to live in the Gold Coast and do all these things so so freely and without the weight of the world on me.
00:30:49.440 --> 00:30:55.039
So I think for me, when I talk about my why, it's a whole new question for me.
00:30:55.200 --> 00:31:02.480
And it's really interesting being outside of the Jewish community and really having to find to find what that looks like.
00:31:02.640 --> 00:31:14.880
And listening to you talk and reflecting on my own story, I think if I had to name one idea that has shaped me, it would probably be a really simple one, le Dorvador.
00:31:15.039 --> 00:31:24.880
So, you know, we say every every Pesach, we say Mechol Dorvador, so from every generation to generation, it's this responsibility to carry stories forward.
00:31:25.039 --> 00:31:34.880
And I hear that in the way Rachel's sharing Herschel's story and keeping his memory alive, but it's that responsibility that to remember to bear witness that's shaped the work I do.
00:31:35.039 --> 00:31:42.559
You know, my grandparents' survival taught me that stories matter and that silence, you know, silence can erase, but storytelling can rebuild.
00:31:42.799 --> 00:31:53.599
So for me, that's kind of where my why comes back to at the moment, and being away from community is forcing me to be much more intentional.
00:31:53.839 --> 00:32:02.720
You know, I have to really think about what I believe, what I want to carry forward and why my kids are not getting Jewish education from a school right now.
00:32:02.880 --> 00:32:05.920
So it has to come from me and our home.
00:32:06.079 --> 00:32:10.640
As I said, there's not automatic access to Jewish life and culture here on the Gold Coast.
00:32:10.799 --> 00:32:21.759
So now Judaism is an active choice, and I think what an honor, what a joy for me to be able to go through this journey and really find the parts that I love and spark joy.
00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:24.640
So it's something I have to choose consciously every day.
00:32:24.799 --> 00:32:36.960
But um, you know, this podcast and this conversation couldn't have come at a better time to be able to explore that and give space to people who are hopefully listening that are going through this as well.
00:32:37.039 --> 00:32:45.359
We, you know, we're constantly being reminded about the bad and the hard and the scary stuff about our religion, but what's going to ground us?
00:32:45.680 --> 00:32:45.920
Yeah.
00:32:46.079 --> 00:32:49.759
So it sounds like we're both having the same midlife crisis.
00:32:50.880 --> 00:32:53.599
We've been calling it a midlife awakening in our house.
00:32:53.680 --> 00:32:54.240
Thank you very much.
00:32:54.960 --> 00:32:56.720
I like that, a midlife awakening.
00:32:56.960 --> 00:33:04.799
So with that, hopefully we've wet your appetite a little bit for what this podcast is about.
00:33:05.039 --> 00:33:12.160
So as we conclude episode one, can you tell us a little bit, Corney, about what can we expect in the upcoming episodes?
00:33:12.640 --> 00:33:16.799
Upcoming episodes will be more conversations between the two of us, just exploring.
00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:32.160
Topics will include, as Itai said, oi versus joy, why learn Jewish, why practice Judaism, why eat Jewish, why argue Jewish, why love Jewish, why love a Jewish homeland, why arts, and then what's your why?
00:33:32.559 --> 00:33:37.440
So we're very much looking forward to you joining us on the journey ahead.
00:33:37.599 --> 00:33:45.599
And we'd like to really thank Donnie Janks, who created the intro music for this podcast, and our wonderful editor, Nick King.
00:33:45.839 --> 00:33:55.359
And especially a big thank you to the Jewish Independent, our editor Deborah Stone, and all the team that have had faith in us to give birth to this new podcast.
00:33:55.519 --> 00:33:57.519
We'd love to hear your feedback on the episode.
00:33:57.680 --> 00:34:12.320
We've created a dedicated email address, which is finding our why at the Jewishindependent.com.au, and you can email us questions, thoughts, comments, anything you'd like us to talk about, and we'd love to hear from you.
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:15.360
And the last person I want to thank is Courtney.
00:34:15.519 --> 00:34:29.760
I know this was sometimes not an easy thing to do together, and I really wanted to thank you for your courage and bravery in sharing and coming along with this journey with me on my midlife awakening.
00:34:30.159 --> 00:34:32.559
Maybe we should call it midlife awakening.
00:34:33.599 --> 00:34:41.599
But thank you, and I'm really looking forward to having this conversation and for bringing thought and care and all your knowledge.
00:34:41.679 --> 00:34:42.320
Let's do it.
