I am an Australian journalist and writer who spent decades running from her Jewish identity and found herself, through the strange mercy of almost dying, running straight back
toward it.
In September 2022, I was admitted to hospital with what I thought was a routine chest infection. Within hours, the head of the ICU told me my heart would give out if they didn’t put me into an induced coma. I had minutes. I called my husband, told him I loved him, made him promise to keep my feet warm — I have always had cold feet, and the thought of lying intubated with no socks filled me with a specific, disproportionate anxiety that I have come to think of as entirely reasonable — and then everything went blank.
What happened in that coma is the story I’ve been trying to understand ever since. A rabbi appeared. A shofar was blown. Prayers were whispered into the
space between my near-lifeless body and Heaven, and then, something shifted. I woke up, and I was not the same person who had gone under.
Rabbi Eli Schlanger became a permanent presence in my life — ringing to talk about God, weaving my family quietly into the rhythms of Jewish life, writing a book with me. In December 2025, he was killed at Bondi Beach. He was forty-one years old. He left behind a wife, five children, and a woman who has been arguing with God about him ever since.
“Conversations with My Rabbi” is the book I’ve made of all of it. It is the truest thing I have written.
When I’m not writing, I’m doing yoga on my deck and attending to the unreasonable demands of two dachshunds named Archie and Sunny and being enjoyably married to Rowan and mother to Liberty.
Nikki Goldstein is an Australian author, journalist, and the founder of Go2Guru Publishing. She is the author of more than sixteen books, including the internationally published GirlForce series (200,000+ copies sold), and the forthcoming Conversations With My Rabbi (HarperCollins, May 2026)). Her work sits at the intersection of Jewish identity, women’s wellness, and spiritual resilience. Nikki’s academic background includes counselling studies and qualifications in Jungian philosophy. She has been published in Vogue, Elle, and Marie Claire, and held senior editorial positions at The Australian Financial Review Magazine. She lives in Sydney. For interviews, speaking enquiries, and media requests, contact: [contact@nikkigoldsteinauthor.com].
