Rab­bi Marc Katz spoke with Nik­ki Gold­stein about Con­ver­sa­tions with My Rab­bi: Time­less Teach­ings for a Frac­tured World which she cowrote with Rab­bi Eli Schlanger. Gold­stein shares how she met Rab­bi Schlanger and the pro­found impact he had on her life. Their con­ver­sa­tions explore how Jew­ish wis­dom can shape and uplift our every­day lives, con­nect­ing us across divides. Schlanger was trag­i­cal­ly mur­dered at the Bon­di Beach mas­sacre in Decem­ber of 2025. This pow­er­ful book cap­tures Rab­bi Schlanger’s bound­less spir­it of giv­ing, com­pas­sion, and kindness. 

Marc Katz: Why did you decide to write this book?

Nik­ki Gold­stein: I don’t remem­ber the first time I met Rab­bi Eli Schlanger because I was in a coma. The sec­ond time I met him, I was awake and alive — though bare­ly — and I was still in the hos­pi­tal. When he saw me alive, he came direct­ly to my bed­side and pulled up a chair. He was sur­prised because the doc­tors had told my hus­band and daugh­ter to pre­pare for the worst when they asked him to pray for me. He instant­ly called my recov­ery a mir­a­cle, and Eli con­sid­ered his part in my sur­vival as some­thing very spe­cial, mys­ti­cal, and powerful.

That mir­a­cle bound us from the moment we met, and drew us togeth­er in var­i­ous ways over time. As he sat next to my bed, elat­ed and filled with won­der at God’s mer­cy and mys­tery, he asked me what I did for a liv­ing. When I told him I was a jour­nal­ist and author, he said, ​“Let’s do a book togeth­er.” He meant it, and over the next two years, he gen­tly pur­sued the idea. Some­time late in 2024, I came up with the idea of record­ing and writ­ing down our con­ver­sa­tions. Eli was fun­ny, clever, and fas­ci­nat­ing. Then, in Jan­u­ary 2025, he came to me with the idea of scaf­fold­ing our con­ver­sa­tions around the Noahide Laws, the sev­en Laws God gave Noah after the flood to cre­ate a just and civ­il soci­ety. So, by late 2025, we had a sol­id con­cept for a book that incor­po­rat­ed our real-life, real-time con­ver­sa­tions with Jew­ish wisdom. 

Eli was very per­sua­sive. He felt we were con­nect­ed in a deep way through the mir­a­cle, and he said he’d want­ed to write a book his whole life. Who was I to deny him that wish? Con­ver­sa­tions With My Rab­bi is dif­fer­ent from any­thing else I’ve ever writ­ten, but I, too, felt the pull of the mir­a­cle and felt com­pelled to write about our unusu­al friend­ship, my sur­pris­ing and thrilling bur­geon­ing con­nec­tion to the reli­gion of my ances­tors, and a cel­e­bra­tion of Jew­ish wisdom.

MK: How did you come up with the con­ceit of writ­ing a guide to Jew­ish thought and prac­tice through the lens of the Sev­en Noahide laws? For the read­ers, can you also begin by defin­ing them. 

NG: Eli was devot­ed to the teach­ings of the Rebbe, Men­achem Mendel Schneer­son. The Rebbe had encour­aged his adher­ents to cel­e­brate and teach the Noahide Laws. Because the Noahide Laws are not just for Jews, but for every­one, the Rebbe saw them as a way to share Jew­ish wis­dom with peo­ple out­side the faith. A Jew­ish gift to the non-Jew­ish world, if you like. Eli had begun anoth­er ini­tia­tive in Syd­ney, some­thing he called ​“Project Noah”, which was a way to invite non-Jew­ish peo­ple (espe­cial­ly school kids) into the syn­a­gogue and teach them about the Noahide Laws. He felt it would be a bridge between worlds and a pow­er­ful way to com­bat antisemitism. 

When he first told me about the Noahide Laws, I had nev­er heard of them.

The Noahide Laws are not in the Torah itself. They’re implied in Gen­e­sis 9, where we learn of the covenant God makes with Noah after the flood. The for­mal list of sev­en laws can be found in the­Baby­lon­ian Tal­mud (com­piled rough­ly dur­ing 200 to 500 CE). So the Noahide Laws are rab­binic, not bib­li­cal. And large­ly unknown to sec­u­lar and non-obser­vant Jews. This is Tal­mu­dic ter­ri­to­ry, more famil­iar to the Ortho­dox. They are as follows:

1. Do not wor­ship idols. Recog­nise and hon­our the One Cre­ator. Do not ele­vate false gods, ide­olo­gies, or mate­r­i­al pur­suits above the Divine.
2. Do not blas­pheme. Respect the sanc­ti­ty of the Divine. Use words with care. Do not blas­pheme or treat the sacred with contempt.
3. Do not mur­der. Pre­serve the sanc­ti­ty of human life. Every life has infi­nite val­ue and is sacred before God.
4. Do not eat the limb of a liv­ing ani­mal. Prac­tice com­pas­sion toward ani­mals. Avoid cru­el­ty. Recog­nise that how we treat the vul­ner­a­ble matters.
5. Do not steal.Respect the prop­er­ty, dig­ni­ty, and rights of oth­ers. Do not exploit, manip­u­late, or deceive.
6. Do not com­mit acts of sex­u­al immoral­i­ty. Pro­tect the dig­ni­ty of the body and the sacred­ness of rela­tion­ships. The fam­i­ly unit is the foun­da­tion of human soci­ety. Hon­our the moral bound­aries of intimacy.
7. Estab­lish courts of justice.Create sys­tems of fair­ness and account­abil­i­ty. Pur­sue jus­tice. Uplift soci­ety. Every small act of jus­tice restores har­mo­ny to our world.

Rab­bi Eli was pas­sion­ate about the Noahide Laws because he saw them as an endur­ing sym­bol of civil­i­ty, moral­i­ty, ethics, and con­nec­tion to God. He fer­vent­ly believed they offered a way to restore order and bal­ance to a chaot­ic world. As mod­ern humans, over­whelmed by divi­sion, noise, and moral rel­a­tivism, the Noahide Laws offer some­thing rare: clar­i­ty. They are not polit­i­cal. They are not dog­mat­ic. They are deeply eth­i­cal, root­ed in the idea that human beings are cocre­ators of a just world.

You don’t need to be Jew­ish to find mean­ing in them. In fact, these laws are specif­i­cal­ly not Jew­ish in the eth­nic or rit­u­al sense. They are a spir­i­tu­al frame­work for all of us — a way to bring more truth, com­pas­sion, and integri­ty into our lives, hearts, and communities.

They remind us that: life is sacred, jus­tice is not option­al, words mat­ter, com­pas­sion is holy, and here is One Source behind it all.

They don’t require reli­gious belief; rather, they ask us to live as if our actions mat­ter. Because they do.

MK: Of the sev­en laws, rep­re­sent­ed as chap­ters in the book, which were the most eye open­ing for you?

NG: The Law (and chap­ter) that was the most eye-open­ing was the first one, which cen­ters around the com­mand­ment ​“Do Not Wor­ship Idols,” and which I end­ed up call­ing ​“Tell Me Why I Should Believe In God?” 

Before Eli explained the Noahide Laws to me, I thought ​“Do Not Wor­ship Idols” was about not bow­ing down to gold­en calves (from the Bible and every Cecil B. DeMille Hol­ly­wood movie). After learn­ing that the com­mand­ment is actu­al­ly about hav­ing a a deep per­son­al rela­tion­ship with one God, I was pro­found­ly moved and excit­ed by the idea. Eli showed me, not so much through his words, but by the way he moved through the world, what hav­ing a rela­tion­ship with God looks like. And what it looks like is joy and good­ness. He expressed his love for God and God’s love for him through dai­ly acts of kind­ness, love, and com­pas­sion. He had a direct, dynam­ic rela­tion­ship with God, and his devo­tion to one God was inspir­ing and pow­er­ful. That chap­ter changed my life.

MK: You kept the book in dia­logue for­mat between you and Rab­bi Schlanger. Why choose that format

NK: There are sev­er­al rea­sons for using a dia­logue for­mat for the book. For a start, Eli wasn’t a writer, and he wouldn’t have had the time or patience for sit­ting down and end­less­ly draft­ing long pas­sages of copy. He was a very vibrant, fun­ny, charm­ing, and elec­tric man, best cap­tured in real-time con­ver­sa­tions. Sec­ond­ly, our rela­tion­ship grew out of con­ver­sa­tions we most­ly had on the phone. He was extreme­ly busy, and he often called me for a chat when he was on the go — vis­it­ing a pris­on­er in a jail miles away, see­ing a patient in hos­pi­tal, or deliv­er­ing food to the needy. He was always on the way to do all kinds of good, and he jammed in con­ver­sa­tions with me — and many oth­ers — as he went about his dai­ly work min­is­ter­ing to those who need­ed him. Our con­ver­sa­tions record the man in his most nat­ur­al state. Since his death, they’re now a record of who he was.

MK: What is the most urgent mes­sage in the book?

NG: Eli want­ed the book to be about heal­ing the world. He want­ed to bridge the divide between Jew­ish and non-Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties. I once asked him what his mis­sion was and he sim­ply said, ​“To bring light.”Then he asked me what mine was, and I said, ​“To bring love.” That’s the most urgent mes­sage in the book.

MK: How did the book change after the attack at Bon­di Beach and Rab­bi Schlanger’s murder?

NG: The book wasn’t com­plet­ed when Rab­bi Eli was mur­dered. We had only record­ed six out of the sev­en con­ver­sa­tions on each of the Noahide Laws, and there was still a lot to do. His father-in-law, Rab­bi Yeho­ram Ulman, stepped in, and I inter­viewed him instead of Eli for the final chap­ter about cre­at­ing courts of jus­tice. I also need­ed to tell the sto­ry of what hap­pened to Eli and the oth­er four­teen vic­tims of the Bon­di Beach mas­sacre. I used my jour­nal­ism skills there and wrote con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous­ly about the funer­al and Aus­tralian pol­i­tics in the after­math of the tragedy. But the main dif­fer­ence in the book is that I used the writ­ing process as a kind of cathar­sis; I inves­ti­gat­ed my grief and my anger at what hap­pened. Those sec­tions were not in the pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion of the book. Also, because Eli wasn’t around to help me with the reli­gious checks, I was blessed by the intro­duc­tion of Rab­bi Zal­man Shmotkin to the project, who ensured the book was cor­rect from a reli­gious point of view.

MK: How can we fos­ter more of the intra- and inter-Jew­ish dia­logue that this book seeks to model?

NG: Eli was the most amaz­ing exam­ple of what it means to bridge the divide between Jews and non-Jews. His long-time assis­tant, Evie Sum­mers, told me they were once at a local shop­ping cen­tre when Eli caught sight of a Mus­lim Imam. He raced up to him, and asked how they might col­lab­o­rate to bring Jews and Mus­lims togeth­er. Eli’s open-mind­ed, opti­mistic, and com­pas­sion­ate approach to all peo­ple, regard­less of race or reli­gion, was a great exam­ple of how one per­son, one con­ver­sa­tion at a time, can make a difference.

MK: One of the things one gains from read­ing the book is a real appre­ci­a­tion of Rab­bi Eli Schlanger, both as a per­son and as a teacher. What else can you tell us about him that isn’t in the book?

NG: My words are a poor attempt to cap­ture the radi­ance of the man. He wasn’t just good (though he was that in spades), he was God­ly, and his God­li­ness was reflect­ed in pro­found joy. No words can cap­ture the exu­ber­ance of his spir­it. It made peo­ple feel instant­ly warm and con­nect­ed to him. After his funer­al, his love­ly wife Chaya told me, ​“It was a room full of Eli’s best friends.” Every­one loved him. He was the first to say he wasn’t a saint, but it’s a great loss to the world now that he’s gone. It’s like the sun col­lapsed and now there is a black hole. It’s my hope that the book can go some way to fill­ing the hole that he left behind.

MK: If you had the abil­i­ty to ask Rab­bi Schlanger one final ques­tion, what would it be?

NG: I don’t have a final ques­tion for Eli because I feel he’s with me and I talk to him in my head, and some­times out loud (I hope no one is lis­ten­ing!). If God intends for good peo­ple to become angels, I believe he has wings.