onver­sa­tions with My Rab­bi: Time­less Teach­ings for a Frac­tured World chron­i­cles a series of deep con­ver­sa­tions between Nik­ki Gold­stein and Rab­bi Eli Schlanger about the mean­ing of Judaism for our era. The two met in 2022 when Gold­stein was hos­pi­tal­ized and on the verge of dying. Her fam­i­ly asked for a rab­bi and Schlanger answered the call. For­tu­nate­ly, Gold­stein recov­ered, and she began a friend­ship with Schlanger that would open her eyes to many of the gifts and teach­ings of Judaism. 

The book serves as a use­ful intro­duc­tion to many of the most impor­tant themes and strug­gles of Judaism today. It intro­duces those ideas in a cre­ative way, explor­ing them under the rubric of the sev­en Noahide laws. These sets of laws, rang­ing from avoid­ing idols, to set­ting up a legal sys­tem, to killing an ani­mal before you eat it, were envi­sioned by ancient rab­bis to be the basic guid­ing prin­ci­ples that any­one of any faith should fol­low. They are expec­ta­tions of all of human­i­ty. As Con­ver­sa­tions with My Rab­bi unfolds, Gold­stein and Schlanger dis­cuss each of these laws, using them to ask wide-rang­ing ques­tions about the nature of God, why evil exists, and how to have healthy sex in a part­ner­ship. Schlanger, who comes from a Chabad back­ground, is an expert in the bib­li­cal and rab­binic mate­r­i­al he presents, and he brings in a healthy dose of mys­ti­cism to prove his points.

Although this book stands on its own mer­its, the thing that makes read­ing it so pow­er­ful is its back­sto­ry. Schlanger was the rab­bi who was killed in the attack on Bon­di Beach in Syd­ney. Know­ing this fills the book with sub­text. Once can’t read Schlanger’s thoughts on evil or anti­semitism or his belief in God’s prov­i­dence with­out those issues being in con­ver­sa­tion with the hor­rif­ic events of Decem­ber 2025. In addi­tion, Gold­stein includes a num­ber of notes to express what she is think­ing as some of what Schlanger says hits too close to home. In one pro­found moment, Gold­stein lays all her doubts out for the read­er: ​“I am strug­gling with my faith. I’m find­ing it hard to rec­on­cile with a God who allows this to hap­pen. I wish Eli were here to do what he did, shine light and inspire me with his unshak­able faith.”

Since Schlanger died before the book was fin­ished, their con­ver­sa­tion ends abrupt­ly. For the sev­enth chap­ter, Gold­stein turns instead to Rab­bi Yeho­ram Ulman, Eli’s father-in-law and the chief rab­bi of Chabad Cen­tre in Bon­di. Here, in addi­tion to unpack­ing the idea of jus­tice in Judaism, they exam­ine Schlanger’s lega­cy and impact. It is clear that both of them car­ry a hole in their hearts after Eli’s death. It is this pain that takes the book from a sim­ple exam­i­na­tion of some impor­tant ideas in Judaism to feel­ing time­ly, pow­er­ful, and painful. 

In the end, Con­ver­sa­tions with My Rab­bi shows that a person’s teach­ing and lega­cy can live long after they are gone. Gold­stein shows that Schlanger lived his life in the micro — he cared about indi­vid­ual patients, won­der­ing Jews, yearn­ing con­gre­gants. Yet his teach­ings are big enough, uni­ver­sal enough to touch all of us. Few of Goldstein’s read­ers like­ly knew of Schlanger before Bon­di Beach. Thus, the book demon­strates that some of the best teach­ers are the ones we least expect.