PHILIPPSOHNS (SYDNEY)
I'm a real Aussie. Sydney born and bred whereas Sheila was born in Johannesburg and came to Australia in 1962. We met on the back of a bus en-route to a Canberra demonstration in support of the campaign for solidarity for Soviet Jewry. Sheila was a pharmacist and I was originally destined to become an electrical engineer. However we spent much of the next 17 years together in the retail clothing industry.

In the early 80's, Sheila and I started looking for an appropriate school for our two daughters Sharon and Jo. They had already attended a Jewish pre-school. In conjunction with other dedicated families, we started Mount Sinai College in Maroubra. I was the founding president when the school opened with 14 children in 1981. Today the school has over 350 children.

We were very early into the personal computer revolution of the early 1980's and became involved in the PC software development and training world. For the last ten years we have managed a computer training materials distribution company which is now run by one of our daughters.

We have a very strong Jewish communal involvement with both of us having held senior positions on the Joint Jewish Communal Appeal. Through this connection we first came into contact with the Shalom Institute and the Melton program.

DANA DUSHEINKO (SYDNEY)
I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1976, and immigrated with my family to Sydney, Australia in 1993. After high school (Jewish day schools in both South Africa and Sydney), I completed a four-year degree in Design/Education, and did a few months of casual teaching. I felt failed by the students, and decided to investigate other avenues! I was a Special Religious Educator through Academy BJE (Board of Jewish Education), and also taught English to migrants and refugees. I became the B'nai B'rith Youth Director in 1999, and in 2000, I was employed by The Shalom Institute as the Network Coordinator. (Network is the umbrella body for Jewish young adults in NSW). This year (next week!) I will complete my 2-year Melton course, which I have enjoyed and benefited from greatly. This will by my FIRST EVER trip to Israel, and I am feeling a mixture of excitement and a little apprehension! When I return to Sydney (after a holiday in London), I will begin a new position at The Shalom Institute as Event Manager.

EVA ROBEY MENZIES (SYDNEY)
I am the first Australian in my family. My parents came as refugees from Vienna in 1939, my father's family was from Poland and my mother's Austria/Hungary. My mother worked for the Jewish community and was involved in the setting up of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and many other associated organizations. My memories of school holidays are of the Board offices.

I am married with three children. My husband is retired and my eldest son is a maths teacher, second son is a lawyer and my daughter is the executive assistant to the CEO of Jewish Care in Melbourne. I work as a television/video producer for a company which does work mainly for not for profit organizations i.e. charities of various types.

This will be my 4th trip to Israel; my last trip was in 1997. On this trip I hope to learn how I can support Israel by being able to speak with confidence and knowledge about current issues facing Israel and about its history.

I am very much looking forward to the seminar and to meeting everyone.

FROM IAN BRODIE (SYDNEY)
I was born in Wollongong, NSW, in 1962, so I just turned 40, and am of German/Polish Jewish descent. I graduated with an Economics degree from Sydney University in 1987 and a Grad Dip Ed from Charles Sturt University (in Bathurst, NSW) in 1992. While studying for my Economics degree I spent two years in the Australian Army Reserve. After teaching in NSW country schools for three and a half months in 1990-1 and feeling a bit of an oddity in this environment, I made the transition to adult education, teaching literacy, numeracy, study & essay writing skills, as well as more vocational and academic oriented subjects in the NSW post secondary technical college system, working with Australian Aboriginal and adult migrant students, for five years.

More recently I've been working in administration across a broad range of employers from the Dept of Defense (Navy Armaments, & Army Medical) to University medical research (at Sydney Uni and UNSW).

I'm active in my kehillah, davening with the conservative minyan at Temple Emanuel, Woollahra, singing in the High Holy Days (& more recently other festivals/ commemorations) Choir, serving on the Education committee and convening the TEW book club. I thoroughly enjoyed studying the Melton course and plan to go on to further postgraduate study in Jewish Education. I'm passionate about adult & Jewish education and would love to serve the Jewish community as an adult educator at some point in the future.

NORTON AND RACHEL WASSERMAN (CHICAGO)
Both of us were born in Chicago, where we have lived our entire lives (other than for alleged higher education and my undistinguished military career). We met at a Jewish summer camp in Wisconsin when Rachel was ten years old and I was eleven. At the insistence of our parents, we married nine years later. Our parents did right in demanding the marriage, which has lasted through 45 years, three children, and six (so far) grandchildren.

Rachel's background is filled with Lubavitcher rabbis (father's side) and notorious horse thieves (mother's side). My own background is decidedly left wing, secular, and Yiddish. I squirm in synagogues until the booze is served at kiddush. After graduating from Yale Law School (after Gerald Ford but long before either Joe Lieberman or Bill Clinton), I practiced law in Chicago for over 40 years. I have been retired from that racket for five years.

Rachel's professional life has been far more varied and interesting. Trained as a teacher, she taught in elementary schools, including long service at the Solomon Schechter Day Schools in Chicago. She later served as Director of Marketing in the Continuing Medical Education Department of the American Medical Association, and then as Mid-West Director of fund raising for the United States Holocaust Memorial Commission. Prior to her retirement five years ago, Rachel was Executive Director of a Jewish Federation Agency in Chicago which focused on eliminating discrimination against Jews in places of employment. Since retirement, we have traveled to some of the most exotic places in the world, including Israel and Australia, but unfortunately, never to South Africa.

Our three children all graduated from the Solomon Schechter Day Schools, where I served for many years as a member of the Board of Directors. We are very proud that all six of our grandchildren attend the same schools. Our two sons are practicing lawyers in Chicago (WARNING to Lynda Dave - the younger one is unmarried!). Our daughter is a Jewish educator who serves as a consultant to the Board of Jewish Education of Metropolitan Chicago, and who teaches brilliantly, of course, in its Melton Mini-School.

We have been profoundly moved and inspired by our Melton studies, as a result of which we have recently funded the Rachel Wasserman Teacher Enrichment Program. This program will create a new Melton curriculum designed to assist Day School and afternoon school teachers with the task of communicating to their young students the concepts and approaches learned in the FMAMS core curriculum, and to subsidize the tuition and Israel Seminar costs of participating teachers.

We look forward to the enriching experience of both the Israel seminar and of new friends.

HINDA MILLER (ROCHESTER)
In addition to being Melton Director in Rochester, I am a wife, a mother, and a doting grandmother. I am a Rochesterian by birth, college educated in New York City with undergraduate and graduate degrees in government and public administration respectively. My undergraduate thesis was on the "Quasi-Government of Israel Before Statehood." I have visited Israel twice before, with contrasting experiences: stopping at the Mandelbaum Gate the first time, walking in the Old City the second; going to Eilat the first, to Sharm El-Sheikh the second; looking up from Degania the first, and down from Golan the second. Can't wait for the next experiences!!!

HELENA AND MAX WOLF (MELBOURNE)
We are rather daunted after reading the profiles of our fellow participants. We are not as active in the Jewish community as others but always support worthwhile causes. We have two adult children who attended Jewish day schools. I came to Australia from Poland when I was 12 years old and settled happily in Melbourne. Helena was born on a ship when her refugee parents were fleeing Europe. We are both professionals. I have no formal Jewish education and have not attended Melton. Helena had an orthodox upbringing, which became more liberal after marrying me. Not only does she attend Melton but classes at Chabad. We have been to Israel only once 5 years ago and loved the experience. We are excited about attending the Melton program in Israel.

SALLY AND DAN SCHECHTER
Dan and Sally Schechter are glad to join the Wassermans in representing Illinois at the seminar. We have reached the age when we are most frequently introduced in terms of what we used to do. We are still pleased to be identified with our five children and grandchildren. We are thrilled as we begin to think about our fourth trip to Israel. The first was as part of a Holocaust study group of the Chicago Board of Jewish Education. The second was to visit a son and daughter-in-law who were with CNN in Jerusalem. The third trip was at the invitation of the Israel Trade Commission when Dan was the publisher of the American Hospital Association. And now the opportunity to join the Australians gives us much pleasure. We visited Australia a few years ago and look forward to studying with the Aussies (and the Wassermans and Hinda Miller). Dan's career was in writing, editing and publishing, mostly in the health field, but also in various aspects of social welfare (camping and recreation) and education (schools and colleges). While serving as a synagogue president he took a lot of notes and later wrote a book about synagogue boards.

RUTH PARASOL
Hi, my name is Ruth Parasol. I immigrated to Melbourne in 1956 from Singapore and am proud to be of Sepharadi descent, originally emigrating from Baghdad. I met my husband Sam at school and married him soon after completing my science degree at Melbourne University. .I then finished Teacher Training and taught at senior levels at government and private schools. I have three wonderful sons; two are now married and one just completed high school. I am a GIT (Grandmother in Training) After a break I went back to work with a part time commitment to my husband's business. Over the years, that grew to be a major component of my life. We manufactured women's wear in Australia and this well-known company was in existence for over fifty years. Due to a life changing event and the fact that our elder sons are both professional and had no interest in the family business we decided to close it. In the last twenty years I have supported my husband in all his community work, and now I have volunteered with several organizations including the Jewish Museum. I have gone back to playing tennis and learning golf, but one of my greatest pleasures has been Jewish learning, especially the Melton Program.

BRENDA HERZBERG (SYDNEY)
Hello, everyone. I am Brenda and the two most important facts about me are my little granddaughter and Zionism. These two came into conflict because up until three years ago I was living in Israel and had been there for twelve years. But then it became a choice between family in Sydney and life in Israel... So back to Australia, but this time to Sydney, not to Perth where I had lived previously.

The Melton program has been a wonderful way of getting to meet people in Sydney, making new friends, taking up new interests. There's nothing quite like studying together to build ties. Looking back on my life in Israel, I don't know quite how it managed to work out, but it did. Always busy, always discovering new people, places and ideas and as one has to, struggling to keep a roof over my head. I am looking forward to having some time in Israel to learn more deeply, reflect and discuss. I look forward to meeting all of you.

CHARLES AND LEAH JUSTIN (MELBOURNE)
Leah and Charles Justin have become almost itinerants to their family as we try to find a way to make our work fit in with our extensive travel arrangements. This year has been extraordinary as we have journeyed through what became a Roots tour of Eastern Europe where Leah reluctantly discovered that confronting one's fears is the best way of overcoming them, particularly as we visited Poland (Auschwitz). Japan later on in the year showed us so much of the many beautiful forms Eastern spirituality can take as we traveled all over Japan to visit Shinto shrines and Buddhist Temples set in exquisite forests and parklands. Israel is a country we have visited many times traveling there with our three children from the 1970's to the 1990's and our children have spent a year on Machon and kibbutzim in Israel with Habonim after finishing school.

We have found, (as one always does when travelling) how much we discover about ourselves when we visit Israel… a land that is complex, contradictory and inspirational and although our family is anxious about our journey we feel a great need to be there but timing is everything. We've been hanging out for this seminar for the last few years. so... here's hoping..

Charles is an architect (actually he always says that's what he does- not who he is) with a wonderful lateral view on everything: a skeptic, design aesthete, a big picture man, and total optimist. He is also a fanatical soccer supporter and still plays each week with a bunch of equally meshuggeneh guys where he manages to release a lot of tension (why can't they try that in Gaza? If only it were that simple!) And he plays a mean scrabble game. If books give us an insight into who we are, he is currently reading a biography on Jack Welch, CEO General Electric and a Dictionary of Important Ideas and Thinkers, coupled with some contemporary design magazines. And he actually remembers what he's read!

Leah is the yin to his yang or vice versa. Totally illogical, emotional and she doesn't play soccer! Pilates is more her thing, and even though she knows more words than him, she can never beat him at Scrabble as strategy is not her strong suit. Leah has been an English tutor, practices as an architectural librarian, and is also currently working as Melton Director in Melbourne, when she's not travelling, cooking, organizing something or someone, or guiding schools at the Jewish Museum. Her bedside reading is also telling. Walking the Bible by Bruce Feiler coupled with The Devil and Miss Pym by Paolo Coehlo and The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton.. She reads a lot more than Charles, but forgets most of it.