Editors:

Frosh (Anthony) is a social-psychologist and research-methodologist with an interest in how people perceive the media. He is currently working in consumer research, although he harbours a desire to return to his former career as a Jewish action hero.

Rach SD (Rachel Sacks-Davis) is interested in creative Jewish expression, ancient Jewish heretics, and riding bicycles. She works in population health research.

Sub-Editors:

Malki Rose is a media producer and researcher from Melbourne. She’s studied theological and literary texts, history and politics and enjoys bringing science, history and torah together in a wonderful tour de force of outrageousness in her plight for the ultimate truth. Including lectures on Jewish Metaphysics and Eschatology, such as ‘Moshiach: Are we there yet?’ (in which she blamed/praised Aristotle and the Fibonacci Sequence for this whole Messianic mess!) She has a media/film company, and a Fine Food and Catering company. Loves working with charities, social justice and contributing regularly to several online publications. When not writing, babbling and cooking, she can be found camping in the mountains of the Victorian countryside, hanging out with her nieces and nephews, or at the end of a microphone crooning her favourite Barbra, Broadway and Musical hits.

Other regular contributors:

Geoffrey Bloch is a Melbourne based barrister.

The Hasid is a book-junkie and Yiddishphile who not-so-secretly wishes she was Sophia Petrillo from The Golden Girls.

Simon Holloway is a scribe of the Pharisees. He is also a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney (Classical Hebrew and Biblical Studies) and is the Director of Education at North Shore Temple Emanuel. His interests include the Hebrew Bible as literature, the ‘interface’ between linguistics and literary criticism, and the development of the Hebrew language. Simon is also the author of Davar Akher.

Alex Kats is a Melbourne based public policy and events manager, who has previously lived in Sydney, Israel, London and New York. He has a relative who was once a General in the Russian army, and another relative who has been excommunicated from the Jewish community. He is also distantly related to Henry Winkler who played ‘the Fonz’, and to Aharon HaKohen from the Bible. With that yichus and a background writing speeches for politicians and organising conferences for CEOs, he is completely confused and therefore regularly thinks and writes about contemporary Jewish issues.

Joel Lazar is still at university and likes to dabble in the odd opinion piece. He is in search of a good existential crisis (every kid seems to have one these days) and asks a lot of questions whilst providing very few answers

Dr Philip Mendes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Medicine at Monash University. He is the author or co-author of six books including The New Left, the Jews and the Vietnam War, 1965-72 (1993), and jointly edited with Geoffrey Brahm Levey, Jews and Australian Politics (2004). His publications on Jewish history and politics have appeared in numerous local and international journals.

Liz (Elizabeth Paratz) is a 6th-year med student caffeine-junkie, whose articles can really be simply summarised as ‘a spoonful of Judaism helps the medicine go down.’ (All the references in her articles can be supplied upon request.)

Kovi Rose is a Mount Scopus graduate who made aliyah in March 2011.  He plans to study international law/advocacy after he completes his military service.

Sibella Stern is a deeply restless global citizen with an interest in sexual slavery (an academic interest of course), music, writing and quizzing people about difficult or definitive moments in their lives. In her spare time, she daydreams about which of her family members would make the ultimate Amazing Race partner. Today it’s her sister.

Larry Stillman has a family history that includes  includes Ottoman Palestine, shetel Poland; and the third and fourth aliyot.  If his great-grandfather had not suffered from a land swindle in Ramat Gan, life would have been different. An Italophile, he thinks of expiring in Venice by falling into a canal after a few too many glasses of wine. He is involved in social-technical research at Monash, has a PhD on structuration theory, and degrees from Harvard and Hebrew University.

Deborah Stone is the executive director of the Anti-Defamation Commission. She is also a former editor of the Australian Jewish News and a former journalist at several major metropolitan newspapers.

Keren Tuch is a wandering and wondering Jew who aspires to be a citizen of the world.  By profession she’s a physiotherapist, by leisure she is a reading, writing cyclist (although not simultaneously!) and by food she’s an interested Jew.

David Werdiger is a businessman (see here & here), masters student, blogger, writer and voice artist; and is involved in several community not-for-profits. He was born and bred in Melbourne, and is married with five children. You can find more of David’s writing at David Knows, as well as at Helium.

Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, D.Phil. (Oxford), Ph.D. (titular) (Cambridge), M.A. (summa cum laude) (Tel Aviv), is Professor of Linguistics of Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide. He holds an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Fellowship, as well as a 211 Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Shanghai International Studies University. Professor Zuckermann is a world-renowned expert of revival linguistics, Jewish linguistics and contact linguistics. His numerous publications include the books Language Revival and Multiple Causation (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), the revolutionary bestseller Israelit Safa Yafa (“Israeli – A Beautiful Language”) (Am Oved, 2008), and Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). His website is http://www.zuckermann.org .