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Event Topic: Migration & Belonging

  • MJBW Festival 2026 Closing Night: Out of the Depths, a Musical Soirée

    MJBW Festival 2026 Closing Night: Out of the Depths, a Musical Soirée

    In memory of Sylvia Urbach Z”L, and with thanks to the Krystal Fund

    THIS EVENT is proudly supported by:

    Joseph Toltz, Galit Klas, Adam Starr

    Bucharest, 1945: a small team of Polish Jews are gathered in a house set up by the American JOINT to support recently liberated survivors of the camps and ghettos. While compiling testimonies from those who come for food, provisions, and advice for safe places to resettle, they also gather songs of wartime experience, which are collected and printed in a short run. 

    Sydney, 2013: one of these fragile songbooks is found in the estate of a survivor in Sydney, preserved from deterioration by chance, pressed between pages of another music score. It is one of only 5 remaining copies in the world. Thirteen years later, the book is reborn as Out of the Depths: the first collection of Holocaust songs.

    The finale to Melbourne Jewish Book Week is conceived by the 2026 book’s co-author Joseph Toltz in association with Galit Klas, Adam Starr and other brilliant Melbourne creatives and klezmorim. Melodies from survivors are woven around the wartime narrative of the editor Yehuda Eismann, the custodian Olga R, and the designer of the book, Flora Romm.  

    As Professor Marcia Langton AM noted in her keynote launch of the book in June, the songs “capture experiences at a temporal proximity rarely available in written testimony. A single object retained among personal belongings becomes a material anchor for reconstructing an entire cultural history. It is a testament to the enduring power of cultural resistance.”

  • International Spotlight: Rachel Cockerell in Conversation with Deborah Stone

    International Spotlight: Rachel Cockerell in Conversation with Deborah Stone

    THIS EVENT is proudly supported by:

    On June 7th 1907, a ship packed with Russian Jews sets sail not to Jerusalem or New York, but to Galveston, Texas. In a highly inventive style, Cockerell uses exclusively source material to capture history as it unfolds. Melting Point follows her great-grandfather David Jochelmann’s family through two world wars, to London, New York and Jerusalem – as their lives intertwine with some of the most memorable figures of the twentieth century. It is a story that asks what it means to belong, and what can be salvaged from the past. Deborah Stone, Editor-in-Chief of The Jewish Independent, leads a captivating conversation with London-based historian and author Rachel Cockerell.

  • Nazis in Australia: Fact, Fiction, Print and Screen

    Nazis in Australia: Fact, Fiction, Print and Screen

    How did Australia become a refuge for alleged Nazi war criminals after WWII, and what happened when investigators set out to find them? This session explores fact, fiction, print and screen through the work of Danny Ben-Moshe, Mark Aarons and Dan Goldberg, moderated by Simon Holloway. From the Special Investigations Unit’s pursuit of justice for Holocaust victims, to the documentaries Our Dad the Nazi Killer and The Hunt for the Last Nazis, and most recently the novel The Watchmaker’s War, this discussion uncovers hidden histories, family secrets and unsettling truths in Australian suburbs.

    **Speakers:** Mark Aarons, Danny Ben-Moshe, Dan Goldberg – moderator Simon Holloway

  • Intersections: Shared Histories, Different Journeys

    Intersections: Shared Histories, Different Journeys

    Merav Fima, Ayelet Tsabari, Sanjiva Wijesinha – moderator Marcelo Maghidman

    From the Middle East to the Americas, Europe and the Orient, Jewish communities have developed distinct traditions while remaining connected through history and time. Bringing together Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi and non-Jewish perspectives, this conversation explores the diversity of Jewish cultures and how this manifests in the stories we tell. What unites us despite our differences, how do others perceive us, and how do we perceive ourselves?

  • In Search of Safe Haven: The Wandering Jew

    In Search of Safe Haven: The Wandering Jew

    THIS EVENT is proudly supported by:

    Rachel Cockerell, David Marlow, Adam Van Heerden – moderator Michael Visontay

    From a German-Jewish family spanning more than 300 years, to the little-known proposal for a Jewish homeland in Texas, to a contemporary pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago, this conversation explores journeys of displacement, resilience and self-discovery. Drawing on family archives, historical research and personal experience, the panel examines how migration shapes identity, how communities preserve memory across generations, and what the search for belonging can teach us about Jewish life, past and present.

  • Telling the Untold: From War-Torn Europe to Post-War Australia

    Telling the Untold: From War-Torn Europe to Post-War Australia

    Raya Goldtwig, Jonathan Kanat, Fiona Kelmann, Joe Reich – moderator Daniel Haumschild

    Ninety-year-old Raya Goldtwig recounts her childhood and her family’s desperate wartime measures, as if it were yesterday. By contrast, Joe Reich must embark on a forensic search to uncover his father’s Holocaust experience. Jonathan Kanat reveals how secrets from the Holocaust reverberate with devastating impact, long after his mother has settled in Melbourne. And Fiona Kelmann edits her grandmother’s memoir, as well as taking on the sacred role of scribe for another survivor. In telling these Holocaust stories, all four Melbourne-based authors have ensured that we will never forget.

  • Writing Lives: Michael Visontay on ‘Noble Fragments’

    Writing Lives: Michael Visontay on ‘Noble Fragments’

    Noble Fragments by Michael Visontay tells the fascinating story of how a rare book dealer in the 1920s took apart a Gutenberg Bible and sold its pages individually—an act that shocked the literary world. Decades later, this decision would play an unexpected role in Visontay’s own family history, helping them rebuild their lives after fleeing post-war Hungary. Blending history and personal memoir, the book explores how seemingly small events can have lasting and life-changing consequences.

  • Rami and Bassam’s Peacebuilding Tour: An MJBW and KDS Event

    Rami and Bassam’s Peacebuilding Tour: An MJBW and KDS Event

    Rami Elhanan and Bassam Aramin are from ‘enemy’ sides but are self-proclaimed ‘brothers’.
    Rami is a Jewish Israeli from Jerusalem who lost his daughter Smadar in a Palestinian suicide bombing in 1997, the same year Bassam’s daughter Abir was born. Bassam, who grew up in Hebron, was a former fighter who had spent time in an Israeli jail where he saw the film Schindler’s List that changed his life. His daughter, Abir was tragically killed aged 10 years old, by the bullet of Israeli border police.

    Their grief bonded the two and forged a joint path of dialogue and reconciliation, rather than hate and revenge, which is the subject of Colum McCann’s award winning book Apeirogon.

    In an age of polarisation, their example and message of peace and reconciliation is vital, the rarer it becomes. PLUS61J Media brings them to Australia for the first time, to share a unique encounter. In Rami’s words: “no one can listen to us and remain the same.”

  • Book Chat: Mark Dapin on ‘Australia’s Vietnam: Myth vs History’

    Book Chat: Mark Dapin on ‘Australia’s Vietnam: Myth vs History’

    Mark Dapin is the author of Jewish Anzacs: Jews in the Australian Military (2017) and the crime novel, King of the Cross (2009). For many years, Mark was a popular columnist in The Age’s Good Weekend magazine. He recently presented the series Myths of War for ABC Radio National.

    In Mark’s book chat, the author discusses his latest work, Australia’s Vietnam: Myth vs History. Was Vietnam a case of Australia fighting ‘other people’s wars’ — and how did the real experiences of veterans differ from our ‘official’ account of their treatment as returnees?

  • Book Chat: Ayelet Tsabari on ‘The Art of Leaving’

    Book Chat: Ayelet Tsabari on ‘The Art of Leaving’

    Ayelet Tsabari is an Israeli writer who was born into a large family of Yemeni descent. She has also spent many years living in Canada. Her first book, the collection of short stories The Best Place on Earth, was the recipient of the 2015 Sami Rohr Prize and a New York Time’s Book Review Editor’s Choice. Tsabari’s second book, The Art of Leaving, a memoir in essays was published in 2019, and won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Memoir. Ayelet teaches creative non-fiction writing in Canada at the University of Guelph, and University of King’s College.

    In her book chat, Ayelet discusses her experience growing up as a Yemini Jew in Israel, and the conflict between longing for freedom and a sense of home.