Untold Australia: Outback Rabbis
Wednesday, May 23
8.35pm, SBS
The self-contained Untold Stories series, back for a third season, is what SBS does best: observational films about diverse communities around Australia that many of us never hear about, told with warmth and, often, humour.
Outback Rabbis is a brilliant example – it follows two Chassidic rabbis, Rabbi Ari Rubin from Cairns and Rabbi Yossi Rodal from Melbourne, who feel it’s their duty to find every Jew in Australia with the aim, purely, of ministering and spreading love.
With their families along for the (long) rides, the two set off on Jew-seeking missions in their specially decorated motorhomes: Ari, initially on his own and later joined by his wife Mushkie and their toddler, travels throughout Far North Queensland, an area known more for rodeos than religion, while Yossi and his wife Malki and their two kids make the drive from Melbourne to Alice Springs – an area that is, Yossi says, “uncharted” in terms of counting Jewish people.
Members of Chabad, an ultra-Orthodox sect of Chassidic Jews, are part of an organisation called CHABAD RARA (Remote and Regional Australia), whose mission is to reconnect Jews with Judaism, no matter how far-flung.
Read the write-up in The Sydney Morning Herald.