I HAVE an ordinary family: me, my husband Andrei Barkovsky and our child, Allochka, now 10 years old. I was born in Ukraine, in the city of Donetsk, but in 2014 the war in the Donbas began. On July 23 we grabbed a package with documents and our little Alla (then two years old) and fled from the war. We arrived in Kharkiv – a large, beautiful, peaceful city, the original capital of Soviet Ukraine. We left everything in Donetsk – an apartment, our belongings, toys, photographs – and started our lives from scratch. It was not easy: to find an apartment, to issue documents for immigrants, to find ..read more

Late last month Rabbi Yaakov Glasman of St Kilda shule made a trip to Ballarat to present at an interfaith gathering of the three Abrahamic faiths. The well-attended event featured speakers representing Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The forum was part of the City of Ballarat’s Harmony Fest program, which celebrated Ballarat’s culturally diverse community and their contributions to society. It was organised by the Ballarat Interfaith Network as part of an Interfaith Friendship Walk. The participants’ journey began at the new mosque in the suburb of Canadian, they then walked past the histori ..read more

Three years ago, I spent Pesach on my own in lockdown in Los Angeles. Two years ago, I spent it on my own in hotel quarantine. This year I was back with my sister-in-law, Mandy, and her extended family in Surfers Paradise. Every family has its own set of distinctive seder rituals. In my family it ends with a packet of mass-produced cheap foam masks, sound effects finely tuned over the years, a great deal of jibing and jeering, and our own unmatched rendition of Chad Gadya, One Little Goat. Although all the elements are the same, every Pesach seder is utterly unique. For this year’s seder, my n ..read more

Chag Sameach from Scott Disick and his kids. The Keeping up With the Kardashians star, who shares three children with his ex-girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian, shared his Pesach celebrations with the world via his social media, of course. “Happy Passover people,” Disick wrote on his Instagram stories alongside a number of bowls of matzah ball soup. Footage was also shared of his sons Mason and Reign wearing kippot while the family read aloud from the Haggadah. His daughter Penelope is also shown in pictures around the table. Disick was raised Jewish and has shared his faith with his children, wit ..read more

Over Pesach, the trailer for the new Barbie movie dropped and it’s everything us ’90s kids have dreamed of. In addition to the trailer, the full Barbie cast was revealed, which includes four Jewish actors featuring alongside Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Issa Rae, Simu Liu, Kate McKinnon, Dua Lipa and more. This feels extremely appropriate considering Barbie inventor Ruth Handler was Jewish, making the most famous doll ever a de facto member of the tribe. British Jewish actor Kingsley Ben-Adir, who is of European descent on his father’s side and Trinidadian descent on his mother’s side, will pl ..read more

When Jews around the world told the Exodus story during the Passover Seder last Wednesday night, they recalled God taking them out of Egypt “with blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.” With the war still raging in their country, those same features – but from a very different source – marked Ukrainian Jews’ preparations for Passover. As workers were preparing matzah in the Tiferet Matzot bakery in southern Dnipro, Ukraine’s main matzah factory, sirens in the central Ukrainian city sounded at 10pm, warning of another attack by Russian drones. Though many of the Russian- and Iranian-made drones ..read more

With Pesach now upon us, we are feeling the all-encompassing nature of this festival. The food, the guests, the fold-out chairs, the deep clean. For many this chag also means powerful discussion around the seder table, inspired by the longstanding themes of Pesach: freedom, slavery, peoplehood, survival, the past, the future. In that vein, a big question I and many others will be asking around the seder table tonight is: With the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt long gone, what does ‘freedom from Pharaoh’ mean in my own life and our community’s life? The magic of Jewish survival and thriving is found ..read more

Asking the four questions is a highlight of the seder, particularly for my children, who prepare them diligently. Have you ever wondered why we start the seder with questions? Wouldn’t it make more sense to first recount the story of the Exodus and then invite questions if there is time? The seder’s question-and-answer format is not a coincidence, but derived from the Torah. “When your child asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What are the testimonies, the statutes, and the ordinances that God has commanded you?’ Then you shall tell your child, ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and God took u ..read more

From the far-flung Himalayas to the Old City of Jerusalem, every Jew in any way affiliated with Judaism will shortly have a seder. At the very least, they will have an evening get-together with some matzah and horseradish (or lettuce) and cups of wine. But what is the essence of the seder to which our thoughts are now turning? In his magnum opus, Halakhic Man, Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchik suggests that the seder is best defined by Rambam in Yad Hachazakah (Mishenh Torah), his 12th century codification of law that serves to this day as one of the basic building blocks of the Shulchan Aruch, our ..read more

Chabad of Rural and Regional Australia (RARA) has expressed thanks to the almost 700 people that donated to its 2023 annual giving campaign earlier this month. The campaign has so far raised $260,000 for its outreach work for isolated Jewish families and individuals across Australia, and remains open for additional donations. Rabbis Menachem Amar and Mani Holzman from New York completed the latest RARA road trip earlier this month across the NSW coast, starting with spending time with Jewish families in Wollongong, before driving hundreds of kilometres up the Pacific Highway to help families i ..read more