What do you think?
Rate this book
Conversations with My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World
Conversations with My Rabbi is an unforgettable true story and a profound book of wisdom, offering seven timeless teachings for living well in an uncertain world.
In September 2022, Nikki Goldstein was comatose and near death in a Sydney ICU when her husband asked Rabbi Eli Schlanger to pray for her. Standing beside her bed, he blew the shofar and whispered ancient prayers. One day later, Nikki began recovering from the life-threatening infection. Doctors called it a miracle.
As she regained her health, this secular Jewish woman and the devout rabbi formed an unlikely and beautiful friendship. Coming from profoundly different worlds – one grounded in religious tradition, the other in temporal modernity – they discovered they were seeking answers to the same essential questions.
Together, they turned to ancient Jewish teachings for guidance on living more ethically, compassionately, and spiritually. In January 2025, they began to record their conversations as a book. But just weeks before they were to write the final chapter, Eli was killed on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in one of the deadliest mass-casualty shootings in Australian history. Devastated by shock and grief, Nikki vowed that Eli’s legacy and his mission to bring light, love and moral clarity to the world would not die, because his teachings were more necessary than ever.
Reflecting the dialogue-driven Jewish intellectual tradition, the question and answer format of Conversations with My Rabbi invites readers to ponder, to question, and to define their own beliefs as they follow Nikki and Eli’s real, raw, tender, sometimes funny, sometimes fierce, yet always deeply human conversations. A repudiation of the madness we are experiencing today, this book is Rabbi Eli’s eternal gift – a guide for all, regardless of faith, who struggle to live with integrity, compassion and courage in a divided and uncertain world
In September 2022, Nikki Goldstein was comatose and near death in a Sydney ICU when her husband asked Rabbi Eli Schlanger to pray for her. Standing beside her bed, he blew the shofar and whispered ancient prayers. One day later, Nikki began recovering from the life-threatening infection. Doctors called it a miracle.
As she regained her health, this secular Jewish woman and the devout rabbi formed an unlikely and beautiful friendship. Coming from profoundly different worlds – one grounded in religious tradition, the other in temporal modernity – they discovered they were seeking answers to the same essential questions.
Together, they turned to ancient Jewish teachings for guidance on living more ethically, compassionately, and spiritually. In January 2025, they began to record their conversations as a book. But just weeks before they were to write the final chapter, Eli was killed on Sydney’s Bondi Beach in one of the deadliest mass-casualty shootings in Australian history. Devastated by shock and grief, Nikki vowed that Eli’s legacy and his mission to bring light, love and moral clarity to the world would not die, because his teachings were more necessary than ever.
Reflecting the dialogue-driven Jewish intellectual tradition, the question and answer format of Conversations with My Rabbi invites readers to ponder, to question, and to define their own beliefs as they follow Nikki and Eli’s real, raw, tender, sometimes funny, sometimes fierce, yet always deeply human conversations. A repudiation of the madness we are experiencing today, this book is Rabbi Eli’s eternal gift – a guide for all, regardless of faith, who struggle to live with integrity, compassion and courage in a divided and uncertain world
282 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 26, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
June 28, 2026
More relevant that you might think
For me this was a book about the horror of our times. I have studied Judaism and my role in it as a Christian for a number of years. It is a much larger subject and much more important than the Holocaust, but that is here most people go to try to understand why Jews have been persecuted for so long in history. That it is still going on today, is largely down to the malicious and unwarranted ignorance of people of my accepted religion and the religion of Islam.
I have an affinity for this religion, its laws and its customs, many of which are embedded in Christianity, though most Christians know so little about that that it breeds the hostility that has its origins in ignorance and the arrogance of the established Church and its refusal to explain the relationship between these two sister religions. I will not deal with Islam though the hatred shown toward Israel is both wrong and unwarranted, absolutely. This book has presented an explanation of the beauty and love that arises from a man’s beliefs and the religion he preached and lived by. It has nothing to do with politics, unlike the hatred and bigoted opinions of the world leaders and organisations that are supposed to be uniting humanity, in which they are clearly failing.
Cast aside the references to what a Jew is or why they think and act as they do, try to see the divine in yourself when you read this and try, really try to see why this horror, and all that is happening in this world and the effects of the persecution of one religion is having on all of us. Why this is wrong and try to stop it in yourself and in others.
For me this was a book about the horror of our times. I have studied Judaism and my role in it as a Christian for a number of years. It is a much larger subject and much more important than the Holocaust, but that is here most people go to try to understand why Jews have been persecuted for so long in history. That it is still going on today, is largely down to the malicious and unwarranted ignorance of people of my accepted religion and the religion of Islam.
I have an affinity for this religion, its laws and its customs, many of which are embedded in Christianity, though most Christians know so little about that that it breeds the hostility that has its origins in ignorance and the arrogance of the established Church and its refusal to explain the relationship between these two sister religions. I will not deal with Islam though the hatred shown toward Israel is both wrong and unwarranted, absolutely. This book has presented an explanation of the beauty and love that arises from a man’s beliefs and the religion he preached and lived by. It has nothing to do with politics, unlike the hatred and bigoted opinions of the world leaders and organisations that are supposed to be uniting humanity, in which they are clearly failing.
Cast aside the references to what a Jew is or why they think and act as they do, try to see the divine in yourself when you read this and try, really try to see why this horror, and all that is happening in this world and the effects of the persecution of one religion is having on all of us. Why this is wrong and try to stop it in yourself and in others.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review