Untold Australia: outback rabbis search for their brethren

Melbourne-based Yossi Rodal and Cairns resident Ari Rubin are Talmudists on a mission: no Jews will be left behind. In a country second only to Israel in the number of Holocaust survivors per capita, the pair scour the Outback in their so-called mitzvah tanks (mitzvah meaning good deeds, and the tanks repurposed panel vans painted with Hebrew letters), accompanied by their spouses and young children, doing their part to hasten what Rubin cheerfully calls “the coming of the Messianic era”.

Rodal and Rubin are part of Chabad of RARA (Rural and Regional Australia), a descendant organisation of a 200-year-old Chassidic movement based in Australia and dedicated to networking each of the estimated 100,000 Jews in the country — with an emphasis on those in the bush.

Read the preview in The Australian of the Untold Australia: Outback Rabbis screening on SBS TV.