He saved his life – now his goal is to save his legacy. Nikki Goldstein doesn’t remember the first time she met Rabbi Eli Schlanger in September 2022. He was unconscious in Sydney, Australia, in the ICU, battling pneumonia and failing lungs. Doctors did not think that the 57-year-old suspect would survive the next day.
Moments later her husband and daughter raised their veiled heads from the ropes of her hospital bed, and caught a glimpse of a whirling dervish passing through the room wearing a yarmulke.
Although Goldstein was a secular Jew who never attended synagogue, her desperate husband Rowan asked a rabbi to give his dying wife a blessing.
Before saying the ancient prayers over his “lifeless” body, the bearded, freckled young rabbi blew the ram’s horn known as shofarit blew right before the Jewish High Holidays.
He rang a simple bell that was considered a “spiritual wake-up call” that “pierced the heavens” with its mournful cry and left Goldstein’s room.
The next day his infection subsided as doctors brought Goldstein out of a coma, something the medical team jokingly hailed as a “miracle.”
A few days later while making his rounds as a hospital chaplain, Schlanger passed the recovery ward and saw Goldstein – sitting, talking on the phone and looking serious.
“He survived,” he said, looking “completely shocked,” Goldstein, whose new book, “Conversations with My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings of a Broken World” (Harper Influence), comes out May 26, recalled The Post.
He would soon be known as “the miracle of Eli.”
“I don’t really know who you are,” said Goldstein, a best-selling author, in their first interview. “And I didn’t understand much of what you did. What I do know is this – God gave me a second chance. I’m alive today because of mitzvot [good deeds] he was admitted to that hospital room.”
In fact, he had never met a rabbi before. But when she walked into her new room, she didn’t feel depressed – but full of hope.
Before he left that hospital, an active assistant rabbi at Chabad Bondi in Sydney suggested they write a book together.
He was impressed by Schlanger, a British-born and married father of five who has called Sydney home for the past 18 years. Anyone who met an Orthodox rabbi said they were “in the presence of someone special,” Goldstein wrote.
“He was the first person to say that he is not a saint, but not many people walk with God in real time. This made him electric, he seemed to be a different person, and he was very alive.”
Schlanger later explained the importance of sharing with the world the Noahide Laws, the seven laws given to Noah after the great flood, which preceded the Ten Commandments, about how to build a just society.
“What are the Noahide Laws?'” Goldstein remembers asking the rabbi at the time. But when he heard that the laws, meant for everyone, regardless of faith or background, simply brought Jewish wisdom into the modern world and helped humanity live in harmony, he was on it.
“I was surprised,” admitted Goldstein, now 60.
Seven commandments – Do not worship idols; Do not blaspheme; Do not kill; Do not eat the flesh of a living animal; Do not steal; do not commit adultery; Establishing the courts of justice in our world – handed down from God to Adam and Noah means that they are universal and apply to all mankind.
They were an unusual couple.
A secular Jew who felt like a “visitor to my own culture” and a passionate rabbi whom Goldstein described as “one who lived with God, who breathed God, wrestled with God.”
Although they come from very different countries – one steeped in religious tradition, the other in spiritual belief – they find that they are looking for answers to the same important questions.
Laws, which are a universal moral code, are not a religion at all, Goldstein said, noting “they are a framework of morals and ethics intended to promote and support a good world. And they are important now because people are so lost.”
Now, you have a deeper understanding of how lost you are.
On December 14, 2025, the first night of Chanukah, moments before lighting the menorah in front of a crowd of thousands, Schlanger was shot and killed by terrorists who opened fire on a crowd celebrating his signature “Chanukah by the Sea” at the world-famous Bondi festival.
Schlanger was a prison chaplain who was known to be able to talk to anyone, with the uncanny gift of connecting with them in “nanoseconds.” Unfortunately, it didn’t work this time. The rabbi, with his “deep belief in humanity and the goodness of people,” appeared to appeal to the terrorists, according to some survivors.
He was shot in the back after throwing himself on top of a member of the public to avoid them with bullets, and died instantly.
The targeted massacre killed 15 innocent people – from 10-year-old Matilda to 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman – and injured dozens, including Schlanger’s wife, Chaya, who was shot in the back and their two-month-old son, who took a leg.
It is considered the worst terrorist attack in Australian history.
The co-authors who developed a deep friendship were a few weeks away from finishing the seventh and final chapter: “What Does Justice Look Like?”
“Establishing the courts means that a world has been created where the widow, the orphan, the homeless, and even the foreigner have a platform to stand in front of power to be heard,” said Schlanger. “This law… is for all of us.”
Back-and-forth, real-time candid conversations provide an immediacy and intimacy that makes readers feel like they’re part of a conversation between friends. They challenge and push each other to question assumptions.
These messages are even more powerful now for Goldstein – who is trying to promote the good of humanity when Schlanger’s life is cruelly stolen by the worst people, when humanity fails.
The two terrorists were father and son. Sajid Akram, 50, was killed by police on the spot, while his son, Naveed, 24, was already facing 59 charges, including 15 murders, when he was hit with 19 others earlier this month.
Today, Goldstein refuses to give them “any brain space” and focuses on the interpretation of timeless Jewish values, which strike differently now.
He said: “Eli showed me that when you accept the laws, they become part of your relationship with God. “I think I didn’t really understand how Eli saw the laws and the covenant,” he said in reflection. “I thought they were a burden.”
The laws, “God’s gift to everyone,” are “not that difficult,” he said, noting his changed opinion about the Torah’s 613 attack after the Bondi Beach attack. “What I wonder about now—after Eli’s departure—is that if Eli can stick to 613, we can all make seven. It’s not that hard, right?”
Goldstein said he is taking a serious, serious look at the rules after the attack.
Now he understands that “do not worship idols” does not mean bowing down to an invisible golden calf, but it is about cultivating a “close, direct relationship with God.”
The Creator “gently, tenderly, lovingly invites us to communicate in a personal way,” a revelation that came to him only after the loss of Schlanger.
“That changed my life.”
The impact of the massacre will never leave him. “If Eli was still alive, I would still be fighting all those laws,” he admitted.
Goldstein spent a lifetime searching for answers, and his “famous” chance encounter with Schlanger “changed” his life in more ways than one.
“I was always looking for answers, but the way that came to me through Eli, is that I appreciate them.”
That Australia – considered one of the safest countries in the world and known as a safe haven for Jews for more than a century – would allow a good crack of hatred to shine through, hurts Goldstein.
His German Jewish grandparents, fleeing the precipice of the Holocaust, are warmly welcomed to their new home on the other side of the world.
With a small national Jewish population of 120,000, the wake of the Bondi Beach massacre never happened.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese initially “refused” to hold a Federal Royal Commission on the attack, according to Goldstein, an official and independent investigation into the system’s failures that helps “reveal the truth and provide accountability.”
Although the investigation process is still ongoing, Goldstein dismissed the doubt. “He was guilty of it – it was a mockery,” he lamented.
Goldstein is still waiting to be counted.
Earlier this month, a woman was charged with blasphemy for allegedly shouting, “F–k the Jews” at an under-12 girls’ athletics meet in Sydney. He was heard adding the Jews “had to be eliminated.”
Following the Sydney “Globalize the Intifada” event that took place, the mayor’s resignation was passed because they feared it would spark violence.
Last month, a solidarity concert for the victims of Bondi Beach was canceled after the Australian Hellenic Choir refused to perform with the Jewish Choral Society, a collaboration that last took place “without issue” in 2022, a year before the October 7 terrorist attacks.
Now, Goldstein sees himself as a conduit for Schlanger’s mission.
“You leave a big hole in this world,” he said with tears in his eyes. “He would go on to do great things for a long time.”
Schlanger’s goal was to let people know that they are not forgotten, even and especially in dire situations, whether you are lying in a hospital bed or languishing in prison.
Now, Goldstein confirms that the “light” of his beloved friend “will not die with him.”
He writes: “In many conversations, he had prepared me to be his herald, his foot soldier and his lamp.
Schlanger used the shofar as a tool to “reclaim my soul,” he writes of the cruel bait and switch. He changed me, he should have been a teacher, not me.
“He entrusted me with names,” Goldstein said. “He gave his life for his Jewishness.”
Doree Lewak is a regular contributor to the New York Post. He has also written for the Daily Mail, The New York Times, The Jerusalem Post, and the Los Angeles Times.
