In 2022, when Australian journalist Nikki Goldstein, a secular Jew, was critically ill, a rabbi at the hospital changed her life. Goldstein learned that while she was in a coma, Orthodox Rabbi Eli Schlanger had prayed for her, and blown the shofar on her behalf—religious acts that she says gave her "a sense of deep joy, mystical interconnectedness and lightness" as she recovered. Goldstein and Schlanger began talking about purpose and belief and he proposed writing a book together.

Their plan was tragically disrupted when Rabbi Schlanger was murdered in 2025 while leading a Chanukah celebration on Sydney's Bondi Beach which claimed the lives of 15, and wounded many more. Goldstein spoke to PW about her relationship with Schlanger, what she learned from him, and about finishing the book, Conversations With My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World (Harper Influence, May), without her teacher and friend.

Can you elaborate on the impact on you of those first encounters with Rabbi Eli?

When I emerged from the coma, before I even knew about Eli's prayers and shofar-blowing, I knew that something radical, inexplicable, and profoundly transcendental had happened to me. I awoke different. When my husband and daughter told me what Eli had done—and I see his prayers, the blowing of the ancient ritualistic instrument, and Eli's own goodness as an intervention on my behalf to God—I knew I would never be the same. I went from being culturally Jewish to what I would call mystically Jewish—not necessarily observant, but suddenly in an intimate relationship with my religion in a way I wasn't before. These are not small changes.

How would you summarize this book?

It’s a conversation between a secular Jew and a rabbi exploring what faith means in the modern world. It was Rabbi Eli's idea to scaffold our conversations around the Noahide Laws, the seven principles that were given by God to Noah, after the flood, that were needed to create a just world. They are very specifically intended not just for Jews.

The book includes suggested spiritual practices. Is there one you've been able to incorporate into your life?

Eli really, really wanted for me to learn, and recite, Shabbat prayers, and I now am doing that as a tribute to him, and as a way of connecting with him. In the book Eli says, "Shabbat is at the center of Jewish spiritual mojo. For six days, we run after the world. On the seventh day, we stop and let the world run without us."

What happened when you two disagreed, such as in a discussion about suffering?

I believe he accepted God's will with incredible faith and equanimity. It doesn't mean he didn't struggle at times with human suffering; he was immensely compassionate and human, but he deeply believed that God had a greater plan for everything. During our conversations, at times I pushed back on what I saw as his over-willingness to comply with God's will rather than rail against it.

You say you wanted to make the book authentic to him and also to yourself. How has the rabbi's murder affected your understanding of God?

Eli was trying to say to me throughout all of our conversations that you need to wrestle with God in order to have an authentic relationship. I believe that I'm having a very authentic relationship with God when I rail and say, that's not fair. Eli even said to me that it's not forbidden to be angry with God. I don't want to give the impression in the book that I'm some sort of holier-than-thou person that has risen above my own human feelings about what happened. I have not, and I'm still angry, and I'm very sad for his family.