Joe Bobker

JOE BOBKER was born in 1947 in Ulm, a displaced persons camp in Germany, to Polish Holocaust survivors Chaskel, of blessed memory, and Ida Bobker. On May 21, 1949, the family arrived in Sydney, Australia, as Holocaust refugees. Joe Bobker received his early Jewisheducation in an after-school cheder witha handful of other boys from Holocaust homes. His teachers, Rav Hertz and Rav Barzel, werefl own in especially from B'nei Brak to teach Torah tothe handful of children of survivors. Joe s main mentor was HaRav Osher Abramson, of blessed memory, also a Holocaust survivor. After graduating from the University of New South Wales, Joe Bobker pursued his Judaic studies at the famed Mercaz HaRav Kook Yeshivain Kiryat Moshe, Jerusalem. Over the years he has spoken frequently and written hundreds of articles about Jews and Judaism for a variety of newspapers including the 100-year-old Los Angeles Jewish Times, of which he is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. His work covers a wide variety of Jewish subjects from a very personal, philosophical and often whimsical perspective. Since 1980, he has lived in Los Angeles and New York with his wife Miriam, a barrister from Melbourne and herself a child of Holocaust survivors, Baruch, of blessed memory, and Rivka Cohn. When asked whatacts as his inspiration, Joe replied, Eli, Avi, Benny, Dovi, Hadassa, Baylie, Layella, Devorah, Dalia, Toby, Chesky, Yoni, Baruch, Ze evi, Mattie, Mordechai, Henny, Dovid, Shira and Osher my sons, daughters-in-law, granddaughters and grandsons [as of Chanukah, 2006].