My Spiritual Diary: Dr Howard Goldenberg

Sunday 6 May 2012 6:05PM




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Rachael Kohn: His smile is mischievous, it matches his red framed spectacles; a sign that the yarmulke he wears on his head as an orthodox Jew is worn with chutzpah as well as humility. Dr Howard Goldenberg is a physician in the city and the outback, who loves being Jewish, even while he's still asking the big questions. He agreed to keep a Spiritual Diary for The Spirit of Things on RN, on air and online at I'm Rachael Kohn.

Howard, have you ever kept a Spiritual Diary before?

Howard Goldenberg: I've never kept any diary before, and it's embarrassing and it sounds so pretentious, but it has been very valuable to me.

Rachael Kohn: Howard Goldenberg grew up in a small town in rural New South Wales, the son of a doctor. A faithful Jew, Howard is also fiercely independent. He writes books, like My Father's Compass, and Raft, about his encounters with Aboriginal Australians during his regular locums as a GP in the outback. Ritual and prayer bookend his days and his weeks, and also prompt theological reflections about the meaning life, love, and God.

Howard Goldenberg: [Diary] First of February, 2012. Mo'deh ani lafanecha. I give thanks to you, that you've returned my soul to me. Consciousness is the one irreducible and universal gift that I've found, the only one that all humans receive. My quest has been for a gift that the good God gives to all humans. I need to know that the structure is not absurd, or worse, vicious. What structure? A structure in which a creator who loves, controls, knows all, a created world where some lives are long and blessed, some short and blighted, some long and blighted. This is my search for unity.

I start with strong chai tea and a Turkish delight. These are preceded by blessings and a struggle to recite consciously, not on autopilot. And then I recite the Jewish creed, the Shema, declaring the unity of God. It's here in my prayer is that I slow my words. I know this is the task, this is the purpose and the opportunity to go deeper, to reach higher. The creed is 'Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.' It's the last word that anchors me as I survey the brief text for inspiration and connection.

'One', 'echad', unity, the singularity, as the physicist Paul Davies writes elsewhere. I understand that the Islamic creed iterates and reiterates the oneness of Allah five times and does so five times a day. We Jewish people do it three times. Maimonides, who grew up in a Muslim neighbourhood and thought-culture, writes in Guide for the Perplexed, 'There is no oneness like unto the oneness of God. Unity is the reconciling notion, the hope that I yearn for in a world that is riven.' One, a comfort and a bedrock ideal.

Second of February. My spiritual life is fuelled by caffeine. The caffeine speeds my imagination and my speculation along paths that seem to me to sparkle with originality and wonder. My reflections run ever faster and freer, following a night like last night when I was on duty and snatched a few hours of sleep. The spiritual reflections which follow are almost all text driven. I catch sight of a word or a phrase and I taste something new and fresh in prayer texts that I've recited every day since I was five.

This mornings phrases, 'The King will answer us on the day we cry out, God, faithful king, hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,' and finally, 'All their firstborns you killed and yours, you redeemed.' Somehow history's children come before us in and through all of these texts. My people are crying out in fear of a bomb from Iran. Of course Israel would retaliate, Iran would be destroyed, and life—Israeli and Palestinian—shattered unthinkably. I think of the children. There is no enemy so hateful to me that I wish his innocent infants to suffer.

'All their firstborn you slayed and yours you redeemed,' that text does not comfort to me, it troubles me. My granddaughter is staying with us overnight. She whispers in the half light of the curtained early-morning bedroom, 'I don't want to go to school today,' it's the second day of the new school year. Her pretty face is sullen, full of sorrow. It is a minute fear, but it points me towards the child who is unseen in the half light of all of history's large moments.

I come to the second text, 'God faithful king,' the phrase read only by a solitary worshipper. Six days a week I'm a maverick, an absentee from the congregation, I'm that solitary person in prayer. Only four nights ago I heard the great orator and teacher Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks arguing the irrefutable case in favour of group worship, of coming together as a community to pray and simply to be Jews together. I know what he means, and indeed I feel that pleasure, but I don't feel much need of the supportive solidarity of the collective. Mine is a more individual experience, also individualistic, which is condemned and sustained in our tradition, each worshipping under his own leafy tree, each doing according to that which is straight in his own eyes.

We're warned against flying solo, precisely because Judaism is the religion of the collective of Israel, and also because the sole flyer might depart from the authorised course. Precisely! I fly solo, because I need that liberty of thought and that autonomy of individual choice and conscience. But I never truly fly alone. I follow the pathways of the texts and I navigate by my father's compass. I truly doven more often than I simply pray, 'doven' being a term supposedly derived from d’avinu, 'of the fathers'.

The fathers here classically are the patriarchs, but for me they are my own flesh and blood, beloved father, who taught me to read Hebrew, to recite the prayers, to submit to the discipline of daily worship, who seemed to define our relationship linearly: me, son, dad, his dad, Abraham. I existed as a son of the fathers.

Rachael Kohn: One of the things you say early on is you need to know that the structure is not absurd. Do you strongly suspect it is?

Howard Goldenberg: No, I can see the possibility that the structure is absurd, that it's entirely a figment of needy creatures. But the reality of that possibility doesn't oppress me, it keeps me restless and on my toes.

Rachael Kohn: It's interesting that the structure of ritual prayer throughout the day and throughout the year is not oppressive. Is it freeing?

Howard Goldenberg: I don't know that I experience it that way. It is defining, and it is necessary to me, and in its absence I feel in the same way as they would if I went to bed without brushing my teeth.

Rachael Kohn: Oh I know how terrible that is! But when you were young and your father taught you these prayers, did you just easily fall into it or was it a struggle at first?

Howard Goldenberg: It was a struggle. The prayers should be read in Hebrew, and Dad had taught me to read Hebrew fluently before I was five and before I went to school, but to actually gain the skill was laborious and frustrating and quite an onerous task for a kid who hasn't yet started school.

Rachael Kohn: You mention that your father was quite stern, or it least your brothers thought so. What was he like as a teacher?

Howard Goldenberg: He wasn't stern but he was strict and, as a teacher, very impatient with maths, in which he had enormous facility and I had none, but patient and affectionate in teaching us things that he loved and that I could love.

Rachael Kohn: Your father looms large in your diary, and you make no bones about loving your father and wanting to be near him and his role in your life.

Howard Goldenberg: As you express it with the particular penetration of your vision and the tenderness of your voice, you move me close to tears really. Yes, I do love my father dearly.

Rachael Kohn: What do you think it was about him and about you that fostered this close relationship? Because it's not that common.

Howard Goldenberg: Well, Dad was a very warm person and, often enough, heated...

Rachael Kohn: 'Heated'?

Howard Goldenberg: Yes, and impatient and then remorseful about his impatience. And I could always tell that he wished me well and was trying to endow me with what would nourish me and guide me.

Rachael Kohn: Did you think your father suffered? Did you feel his pain?

Howard Goldenberg: I'm pretty sure that Dad did suffer from an unacknowledged anxiety, and occasionally I think even depression, but that wasn't characteristic. I think Dad was anxious to be a good person, and it was true that he was anxious to perfect his children, and that was never going to happen, and that anxiety very slowly abated as he moved into old age and we into maturity.

Rachael Kohn: He lived as the lone Jew in a town of no Jews. So that sort of alienation or loneliness can be oppressive, can be a great pain. How do you think he carried that?

Howard Goldenberg: I think he carried it with great pride and joy, and I think he was liberated in leaving the city and the community and the household in which he'd been the firstborn child of a firstborn, unschooled, really impatient, patriarchal father, and my dad had obliged his dad by being a good student, a good son, a doctor, a source of pride, and now Dad was having some time in the country in liberty. And everywhere he went he was an example of goodness and kindness and skill and good faith, and he kept faith with human beings and he kept faith with God and with his ancestry. People admired that.

Fifty years later, after we'd left that town, I went back to launch my book, My Father's Compass, which is the book about Dad, and people came up to me after the launch one after the other, old people, still freighted with a feeling of love and appreciation for this good man and this good Jew.

Rachael Kohn: Well, you very much wanted to follow in his footsteps then. You became a doctor, you also go regularly to the outback and bring your services to Aboriginal communities in need.

Howard Goldenberg: Well, I think I wanted to follow in his footsteps as a human. I wanted to become a doctor because I could see that it was an inspiring life. I could see that Dad honoured his work and that people honoured him for that. My highest ambition was to have a lolly shop, and it's an unrealised ambition. At the age of four the question came to me, the doubt; what if I had a shop and nobody came? And that same lack of enterprise, that same unwillingness to take risks made medicine a hospitable place.

[Diary] Third of February, 2012. Friday, Sabbath eve. 'And David said to Gad, let us fall, I pray, into the hands of the Lord, for great are his mercies. But into the hands of a man let me fall not.' Great are God's mercies? Yes, death is the ultimate mercy. No? How so? If we see innocents suffer, if we see the guilty suffer without end? Who am I, son of man, to know, to ask, to challenge? I am just that, son of man, charged with the faith in a God of love, to ask, to challenge, but never to know, never to comprehend, but endlessly bent to apprehend God's ways.

Fourth of February, 2012. Shabbat, Sabbath today in the city. Synagogue service on Friday night and then again Saturday afternoon and evening. Saturday morning, said my prayers at home so I could participate in a big cooking program for a big family lunch.

At the large lunch, family and friends are present. Behold how good, how pleasant it is to sit as brothers together. In the afternoon after a nap, returned to the synagogue following a harrowing week shadowed by threatening illness of a child to feel the amity, the presence, the supportive aggregation of loved ones. The tacit tenderness extended by loving kin and friends are deeply healing. I become more whole.

Annette and I work together in the preparation and serving and cleaning up of the big lunch. Six hours, 10, 12, the more the closer. Shabbat, Sabbath, has brought us together as spouses, parents, grandparents, as children, aunt and uncle, as friends, as members of community, not alone, not alone with pain or doubt or fear or sorrow. Sabbath is me’eyn olam ha’ba, a sample of paradise.

Fifth of February, 2012. Am I significant? Is anyone? If so, how so? Today I spent a few minutes with my youngest grandchild, aged 10 months, and my oldest grandchild, aged nine years. The baby fixed his steady slow gaze on me, caught my eye and smiled. I asked the older grandchild for his thoughts about his younger brother's struggle to overcome anxiety. The older boy knew that I honoured his opinion. I thanked him and our eyes met and each valued the other in equal large measure. I signify to those boys. My life is significant.

Rachael Kohn: Measuring his significance in the eyes of God and babies. Author and physician, Aussie and orthodox Jew, Howard Goldenberg is taking a look at his spiritual life, day by day, through the pages of his Spiritual Diary. This is The Spirit of Things on RN. Find us on the web at

Howard Goldenberg: [Diary] Sixth of February, 2012. Guilt. I think guilt is a wasted emotion unless you do something with it. Last November at a Jewish school I addressed a large group of senior secondary students on a topic dear to my heart; asylum seekers and boat people. My grandfather was an asylum seeker and a boat person. I asked a question. The girl on my right, an attractive young lady, answered promptly and with accuracy. I congratulated her, 'Brilliant answer.' I was going to say, 'Not just a pretty face,' but I realised I can't do that. So I said, 'Not just an ugly face.' The girl blushed, the class laughed. I shrank with shame. I was left with a feeling of guilt. Once again, I'd failed to govern my tongue. I'd hurt an innocent.

Over the following days and weeks I pursued an opportunity to apologise to her. When eventually I managed to phone her and give her my name, she hung up. I'm left with a wrong done by me unrequited. So what do I do with this guilt? All I can do is to resolve to guard my tongue better. That resolution is expressed three times every day in my prayer. My wrong act stands to my discredit.

Eighth of February, 2012. Will I pray for a speedy recovery of my sick relative who is suffering a deteriorating illness? Yes, I will, I do, I have done. Why? Do I pray to change God's mind, or to point out to God that I have a better idea than his? Or to sway God by virtue of my piety or work? These are absurd propositions and of course the answer is no to all of them.

My reason for praying speaks more to function and purpose. I pray, I cry out for my loved one in distress. By reflex, an instinctual use of the blessing and a burden that is human speech, I give voice to my wish that healing occur, but there is no expectation or obligation upon the deity. I pray because I can, because I must, but the prayer isn't futile, it serves my need but perhaps not my purpose.

Ninth of February, 2012. I love the Jewish story, I love being Jewish. The chain that extends back from me to my dad, to his father, and all the way to Abraham defines me. I loved and knew my father and I loved and knew my grandfather. I love and have always known Abraham, the first proto-Jew who is not himself Jewish. I am the wandering descendant of that wandering Hittite. We became the chosen people.

I reject chosenness as a mark of superiority. It's a notion that offends against our descent from Adam, our idea that we're made in the image of one God. And if we are chosen, then so are the Arab descendants of Abraham through Ishmael. We're only chosen to the extent that we choose to live a godly life, to be a godly people. I don't believe that God has a flag.

Eleventh of February, 2012. As the Sabbath ended, the phone rang. Nanna, aged 85, had collapsed. A great rush to her home where she lives alone by her two daughters, her two doctor sons-in-law, a doctor grandson, and her granddaughter, a bride to be tomorrow. Nanna, always lively and spry and dynamic, now looks grey, subdued, emotionally flat, confused. Her chin is bleeding, some teeth are broken, her left arm is fractured and dislocated, purple and swollen. She has no smiles, knows no fear, she's inward, still.

Ten hours later Nanna's hand is in plaster, her chin is sutured, her smile has returned. The cat scan of her brain shows no damage or bleeding. Nanna isn't in transit away from us. None of us knows when our flight will be called. It's enough to know that the call will come.

Rachael Kohn: Shabbat looms large in your diary, the time to come together, to affirm solidarity of the family, of the group of the larger Jewish people. What's it like when you don't celebrate Shabbat, if you find yourself somewhere and you can't?

Howard Goldenberg: I've never been unable to celebrate Shabbat. I was working in the Flinders Ranges last December when a man was brought into the hospital terribly burned and his care required many infractions of the regulations of the Sabbath, many of the labours which one does not do on the Sabbath; writing, using a phone, using electronic apparatus. All these things I did readily, and they were not in fact infractions of the Sabbath in any fundamental sense, and they didn't alienate me from the day. And after all of that suffering and all of those acts were completed, I found what composure I could find through the observances of the Sabbath.

I think the Sabbath really commands us to sacralise, to make sacred time. If I worked for the entire 24 hours of the Sabbath, my mind would remain free to create and live in a different space from the rest of the week. But usually it's a time without telephones. Time without telephones is a sample of paradise.

Rachael Kohn: In this day and age, absolutely! You talk about unity, of course the Shema, the creed that affirms unity, but for you it seems to be more a unity of mankind, of humankind.

Howard Goldenberg: As I reflect on my Jewish practices and my thinking through this diary, I realise, not for the first time, that Judaism points the Jew in two directions. One is to the particular, and the other to the universal. Judaism teaches me emphatically that I'm a member of a group, a people, and it teaches me, equally emphatically, that I'm a member of the human family. I think there's probably a tension between those two ideas and their practice.

It's been my family's experience through the generations in this country, this wonderful country, that we find a synthesis between our Jewishness and our humanness, and they need not be in conflict. But to achieve that synthesis and to maintain it requires a constant exercise of imagination, of imagining the other as one's self. In other words, active empathy. It's not that noble, it just takes a bit of humility to recall that you're a child of this universe and there are other children, not all in your family, but we're all here by right. And we owe respect and kindness to each other, and without it we're lost.

[Diary] Thirteenth of February, 2012. Up at 4am following three hours of sleep for my flight to far North Queensland at six. The public address bludgeons passengers into cowed conformity. The chief cabin attendant is another bully. My spirit rises in revolt. Of course I do nothing, say nothing, nothing other than my prayers which, are twofold. The first is the wayfarer's prayer, Tefilat HaDerech, the second is the routine morning service. I recite the latter in the departure lounge after seeking out as private a place as I can find, which soon becomes a public place.

I have the sense that the conspicuous ritual of a member of a religious minority has an oppressive effect upon a secular majority. This oldish man, full of purpose, free (it must seem) of doubt or self-consciousness, wraps himself in his prayer shawl, his Tallit, hides his face for a few moments, then pulls out the little black boxes with their black leather thongs that constitute Tefillin, prayer phylacteries.

Everyone who passes must gawp and gape or overt their gaze and pretend that this affront to normality, to the norms, hasn't happened beneath their eyes. And this worshipper, wrapping his face and body inside the Tallit which was my father's final gift to me, I'm closer to my dad, he who taught me how to pray and taught me to fuse a love of our old ways with our love of each other. I don't mean any harm to anybody by praying in public, I'm having a private moment with my father.

After the preliminary psalms and devotions I come to the Shema, the creed 'Hear O Israel', and I hear my father's voice in the small country house of my boyhood, 'And you shall teach them to your sons and you shall speak about them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.' And I do these things, today at the airport, tomorrow in the outback.

Fourteenth of February, 2012. 'Normanton, population 1,600' is the claim, but the place seems far too quiet and sleepy for that to be true. The roads here are wide and straight, the large old buildings high and broad, of timber and galvanised iron. Tidal salt flats surround the town, many underwater in the current wet season. The sun shines hot on my shoulders, the light glares, the bitumen bakes. I'm at home here. This might just as well be Leeton where I spent my seed time, my boyhood.

Back home my son speculates that my urge and need to go outback as often and as long as I do, too often and too long really for a devoted family and loving wife, that these come from the frenetic nature of my city existence. For my part I know that Clancy of the Overflow and Yeats' Lake Isle of Innisfree build and gather within me, line by line, until their respective closes:

'I hear it in the deep heart's core.'


'And I somehow fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go.'

Fifteenth of February, 2012. During my early morning run today, I was delighted by the agile wallabies, but overall I was disappointed. There were no great trees, no red escarpment or scree. In Aboriginal understanding this is saltwater country, and I have fresh water Dreaming. The difference is important. In the Kimberley town of Bidyadanga, situated on the coast roughly midway between Broome and Port Hedland, the community is comparatively healthy. People go fishing there and eat fish. But 80% of that population were brought into the coast from desert communities. They pine for their country. They are in exile. Their longing and sorrow create great art. The Bidyadanga art movement is born of this memory.

This long ramble leads to the reflection that our primal vistas remain supremely potent within our being. For me, a freshwater river, gum trees, dry country evoke a deep recognition. I felt, in the silence of the Negev Desert in Israel and again in the Galilee with its gum trees, that feeling of recognition. This is a moment of revelation, 'I've been here before', possibly serves to validate me. You belong here.

Rachael Kohn: Well, instead of people coming to you, you have gone to them, certainly in the outback and in your travels. And as a practising Jew that's a very interesting combination because your ritual obligations to pray in the morning, no matter where you are, finds you saying the Shema in the airport with people around, as you say, gawking at this person with a prayer shawl around him. What gave you the courage to do that? Because a lot of Jews, a lot of people who have strong faith and practice would be embarrassed or too shy to do it openly.

Howard Goldenberg: Well, I am embarrassed, but it would be harder for me not to do it than to do it. And eventually I've gained the realisation that I don't cause any harm and that Australians are very kind. Good secular Aussies have a great respect for the fidelity of an individual who follows a religious path with any apparent purity. Aussies have no time for religious hypocrites, and I think they see this worshipping individual as the opposite. They're probably too kind.

Rachael Kohn: What about your encounters with your Aboriginal patients and the members of the community that you encounter? What kind of insights have you gathered from them? Do you think they've affected your spirituality?

Howard Goldenberg: I'm not conscious of any direct effect, but I'm struck repeatedly by the number of instances in which Aboriginal spiritual ideas and practices seem to intersect with or parallel my own as a Jew. There is a very deep belief in Aboriginal people that there is order in the universe and that a human being and a human society have a duty in that universe, and that morally and societally and practically a person is supposed to, in the case of an Aboriginal person, maintain the country and the community. In the case of a Jew, practice Tikkun Olam, fixing up the world, trying to right wrongs and fill deficiencies.

It is also a belief among Aboriginal people that illness comes to one as a consequence of a societal wrong or a spiritual wrong—a person has married a forbidden person or taken another person's wife or pointed the bone or cursed another—and illness comes as a result of those things. Judaism has some roughly similar notions, that our well-being fundamentally relates to our spiritual status. And unless we are attentive to our relationship with God, and more critically I think our relationship with our fellow, we will not have spiritual well-being, and in that absence we won't have broad well-being. I'm not an expert on Aboriginal spirituality and not many white fellas are, and any white fella who tells you he is...if he knew it, he shouldn't be saying it.

Rachael Kohn: That's Howard Goldenberg, a Jewish doctor who regularly works as a relieving physician in the outback and he writes about his experiences in the most compassionate and joyful way in his book, Raft.

You're listening to My Spiritual Diary on The Spirit of Things on RN.

Howard's diagnostic skills are now turned onto himself, his conscience and character. But for relief, he runs, while listening to great singers, like Jan Peerce.

[Music: 'Ovinu Malkenu', Jan Peerce, The Art of the Cantor]

Howard Goldenberg: [Diary] Sixteenth of February, 2012. A close and discerning friend of mine declares I don't take myself too seriously and in fact not seriously enough. I wonder, is this a pretext that covers the desire to be perceived as more than I pretend? The mock modesty, if that's what it would be called, mocks modesty because it's vanity and it's directed towards vain ends. I think that might be a fair enough analysis.

What I enjoy about the irony of this sort of self view is it leaves room for laughter at myself and by myself and with others invited in on the joke. To be absurd I think is inevitable. To fail to see the absurdity is to be painfully absurd, and that's not funny.

Seventeenth of February, 2012. My early morning run today is enlivened by the greatest voices of the 20th century on my iPod, Jan Peerce, Peter Dawson and others, all singing gloriously, often of trivia, often of love, sometimes of God. Why do we sing? What does it serve? Where does that spring from?

After the run I return to my cabin and say my prayers, and there is the answer. The first half of the service is song, praise, psalms. Why? I can't imagine that we're meant to understand that God needs our praise, but I have no doubt that praise, psalm, is a human need, if not a godly one. We need to exclaim 'how good, how beautiful, how awesome, how sad, how lonely, how despairing, how confusing'. Our need and our gift is human. We sing, we shout, we cry, we groan, we plead, because we can. God gave us speech, a gift we share with him. The Bible says, 'And God said let there be light.' The word is the parent as well as the child of reality.

Twenty third of February, 2012. My locum is finished, I fly out today. Just shy of two weeks in a place I'd never known, remote, quite literally the end of the line. Burke and Wills struck their camp 119 here, their northernmost penetration. It was the place of their final defeat by the bush. They never enlisted the local Aboriginal people to guide them. This land doesn't offer the grandeur I find in most of my remote places. There are no great vistas, no uplift for the thirsty spirit. That is, until last night when an old man showed me how he sees his country, which is my country, through his eyes. Green flatlands, salt pans, flooding tidal rivers, pleasant and green, all the way to the horizon, thin forests and savannas, land without end, unchanging, a place to get lost in and find yourself, a place to be free.

25th of February, 2012. Shabbat again. My cousin Carmel is visiting us from Israel. With her come her son, his wife, their two kids. We have huge Shabbat meals, with large gatherings around the table; 14 on Friday night, 16 on Shabbat lunch. Great gatherings of children and grandchildren and cousins and aunties and a great-grandmother. Throngs of happy people, happy to see each other. A great thing, this family. And it's so easy to take for granted.

Shabbat and family are made for each other. They create each other. If I were to lack family, I would be alone. If I were to lack Shabbat, I would be impoverished. To lack both would be to be alone in poverty.

Twenty-sixth of February, 2012. Sailing on the Gippsland Lakes with my oldest friends and my surviving brother and his beloved daughter. We're on the sea, and today I prayed for the first time in my life the seafarer's prayer. Those who go down to the sea in ships, plying their trade on the great seas, they have seen the works and acts of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.

I think of my mother's father, Cyril Coleman, a pearler in Broome. During his time as a pearl diver, the annual death rate among divers was 30%. He lived and dived from 1910 to 1913. Pearling luggers were often lost in storms, all hands lost. My grandfather was spared.

Twenty seventh of February, 2012. I'm sailing with my younger brother. My brother regards me as a bit of an airhead. He likes to call a spade a spade. He said I would call it a long-handled horticultural device for turning soil. My brother says I am an agnostic. I'm not so sure. He asks me, 'Does God exist?' I'm unready to declare an unequivocal position. He says, 'Yes or no?' Me: 'It's not so simple.' I'm engaged in a quest for that answer. That's my pressing task. I apply myself to the task urgently. I've done so every day of my life since I was 15. I do have faith. 'Yes, yes, very nice, but yes or no?' 'You're demanding an answer according to categories which don't encompass the true response.' He says, 'So you can't say that God exists?' 'Sometimes I can.' Every day I try to believe that. I grope and I search for that belief and I have faith in that quest. I pray to God, as it were, begging him to exist. 'So you don't know?' 'Correct.' 'You're an agnostic.'

Twenty eighth of February, 2012. More about the agnostic question. Why am I reluctant to wear the label agnostic? I think it's because it reads too starkly. It's not what I want to be, and it creates a category that is too narrow for the breadth of my spiritual range. And my life's mission is to keep faith, even though it is difficult for me to find it or retrieve it, and the label agnostic points to a failure of that faith. So I say to my brother, when we continue our conversation, 'There are times when I experience a knowing of the reality of God, and that's fair enough. Moses himself never thinks of God or speaks of him until he comes to the burning bush. No one calls Moses an agnostic.'

So my brother says, 'What does it mean to experience a kind of knowing?' And my answer is, 'There's knowing by the rational mind and there are other ways of knowing; sensory, but also emotional, as 'I know love', and psychological 'I know fear', sorrow, confusion, and the spiritual knowing 'I know guilt, hope, thankfulness, humility'. As well there is an aesthetic knowing. A piece of music, a landscape, a poem creates a sense of knowing outside the realm of words.'

My brother says, 'That's a lot of words for a knowing beyond words.' And I say, 'What do you expect? I am Jewish. And what's more, a severe case of Jewish; I'm a Goldenberg.'

Rachael Kohn: You speak of your siblings, your brothers, and in particular an encounter that you had on a boat. I think it's quite significant that it was on a boat. There's something about a boat being cast on the sea, and of course there are many wonderful biblical stories about faith on the waters, as it were. But your brother insists that you're an agnostic, and that's a very interesting conversation about the purpose of worship and belief. It's almost, in your view, a day by day prayer in the hope that God exists.

Howard Goldenberg: I think that's true, and I think my brother really is brought up in the same family and the same tradition with the same teacher and the same exemplar and who has chartered a different path in his life but who retains a huge respect and affection and I think adherence to many of the observances. I think my brother is a necessary gadfly or bully in my life, and he demands that I think harder. My natural pattern of thought or my default condition is wishful thinking, but wishful thinking doesn't work with the big question.

And I have enough…I suppose it's intellectual humility…to utterly state that God exists as we imagine God is beyond my scope of achievement, and conversely to declare that God doesn't exist seems to me to arrogate to myself to be arrogant really an ability that I have not. And so I tumble around, it's not miserable but it's not comfortable, with that question. And my acts of prayer are times of worship, are the times in which I focus on that squarely. But I have certain beliefs that are rock solid, and one is that if God exists, our imperative commandment is to love each other. And if God does not exist, our imperative need is to love each other.

Rachael Kohn: So a love of each other, of mankind, really is the fundamental thing that keeps you going?

Howard Goldenberg: Well, that's the Torah teaching that gives rise to the Christian belief and practice. V'ahavta l'reakha kamokha, 'you shall love your neighbour as yourself'.

Rachael Kohn: Life is God-given and God-taken. That's a beautiful way of putting perhaps a doubt in the afterlife but still keeping it in the hands of God, as it were.

Howard Goldenberg: It's not for me that God knows what happens. And in the absence of God there won't be an afterlife, there won't be any suffering. So what I'm left with is that knowledge or the experience of the finite life that I have and that others have, and a sense of its minuteness in the great expanse of time and the indelible knowledge of its value. To be conscious, which one can't escape, is the parent of an appreciation of being alive.

Rachael Kohn: Being conscious, that's what you started your Spiritual Diary with, and it's also in a sense what you ended with, that is the consciousness that allows you almost to enter into the afterlife through dreams, that wonderful imaginary world where your departed parents may be imagining you, Howard.

Howard Goldenberg: My father would say, 'There's Howard, dreaming up stories again.' My father made a joking pretence of disdain for my writing, but really he loved it and showed it off to other people. And I would have no doubt that if he knew I'd written about him he would have been highly amused, highly embarrassed and exceedingly proud. Because Dad was a very modest man, and for a man not known to the public to become public property in a book that sold out and then went into a reprinting and still sells, it would seem to my father like an absurdly unearned tribute. And of course it's a most minute tribute to a wonderful person.

Rachael Kohn: Modesty is an important value for you, and yet you even doubt your own modesty. It's an interesting self enquiry that you make in the Spiritual Diary.

Howard Goldenberg: It's partly an Australian thing. I don't think Aussies like people who big-note themselves, and there is no doubt that the Australian term 'a show pony' applies to me. And my dad occasionally, just occasionally, called me a show off, and with complete justice. So there's a vanity in all this modesty.

Rachael Kohn: As Golda Meir said to one of her subordinates, 'Don't be so humble, you're not that important.' My guest is Howard Goldenberg, a discerning physician, orthodox Jew and author, whose Spiritual Diary reveals the ins and outs of a life lived reflectively. I think that describes the RN listener, don't you? I'm Rachael Kohn and this is The Spirit of Things, where we talk, discuss, and dream.

Howard Goldenberg: [Diary] Twenty-ninth of February, 2012. Idle thoughts come to me during our idle days on board the boat. I have dreamt recently of my departed loved ones. They come to me in dreams at intervals, and almost always warmly. I dream of Dad, and we're surprised to see each other in the dream, Mum too, because we know that they are dead and I'm alive. But I emerge from the dreams quiet and happy, deeply happy. These experiences seem so real. They are real experiences in fact, mental experiences.

Do the dead dream of us? Perhaps they think that we're not real. Does Dad say to Mum, 'I saw Howard last night, he was playing cards in the cabin of a yacht on the Gippsland Lakes. He and the others looked so happy together.' And Mum says, 'What a lovely dream, Myer.' 'They seemed as real as we, Yvonne. Was that life real then, Yvonne? Were we real then? What does real mean?' The conversation never ends, it doesn't need to. My parents have all the time in the world, or in their world.

All of which brings me to the afterlife, which I think is a concept not really native to Judaism. I suspect it is an import from the Greek. It's a fairy story that we with our limited imagination, we need to fabricate, to square the moral books, to allow God an arena in which he can accomplish justice. But I can't attach myself to any idea of an afterlife. I'm content for my God-given life to be God-taken. I never asked for it, I don't deserve it, I am gifted irreducibly with consciousness. Come poverty, illness, suffering, I'm conscious. That gift, that burden, that light switched on in an organism is my great endowment. It's not permanent, it'll end, I'll become a memory. My loved ones might see me in dreams. It's enjoyable for me to play with the thought that I might dream in turn of them.

First of March. The month is over but I have some afterthoughts. Why do I bother myself so hard to believe? Why do I live the life of ritual, restriction, regulation under those circumstances of uncertainty? In general, the ritual and restriction provide me with a practical structure for a spiritual life. The regulation of appetite, instinct, behaviour, lead this human from the jungle into a decent and sometimes even a godly form of conduct, and they lead me towards fellow humans, and other creatures and species, and towards my planet.

In my personal case, my Jewish practices provide me with identity, with location in time and space, with connection to beloved forebears and inspiring ancestors, and with support, moral or spiritual or communal, in the often lonely business of human existence, in a cosmos that is fundamentally inhuman. And my Jewish practices provide a workout for my brain. In short, my religious life is a support for a personality structure that is markedly dependent.

At the same time I forge and forage for my individual self, creating an individual identity that is clearly Jewish, clearly observant, and clearly unorthodox in the sense of not conventional.

Rachael Kohn: Your religion, your Jewishness, has been bequeathed to you, it has been practised and upheld by you, but in the end you say it's your opiate. What do you mean by that?

Howard Goldenberg: Well, if I think back to my earliest life, I can recall moments of fear and doubt and loneliness, simple things like fear of the dark or things particular to me in which my father would disapprove of me or be cross at me, and in those times from early in my life I've found a comfort in religious practice. And I think that really I was a bit of a sissy, a bit of a wuss, and I don't think those characteristics have gone entirely. I'm not going through my life on this earth in a sense of great anxiety, in fact probably the opposite, a sense that life is good, an instinct that it's good, and that is not extinguished by the observed facts of so much viciousness, unkindness and ill fortune in the world.

But I think it's a dependent personality, and I depend upon love and affirmation and I'm quite conscious of it, and there's no question that my Jewish practices place me in a context and patterns in which I am assured of those things. I feel comfortable and comforted to know I'm walking in the paths of my fathers, I feel rewarded. It's never the intent of my religious practice to gain thanks or reward or acknowledgement from another person.

But religion does command me to charity and to respect and to help for somebody who is sick or unfortunate or frightened, and so I suppose my religious life brings love my way. It comforts me. I am unfortunately the owner or the repository of an historical consciousness. I know that most human beings, now and through history, have not lived the life of comfort of a middle-class Australian person born in the middle of the 20th century who has neither gone to war nor seen war. I know that I've had a freakishly fortunate life, it feels to me a blessed life. And to know that so many suffer raises urgent questions and terrible questions; why do the bad things happen to those innocent people, why not to me? And I know that I'm not innocent. A religious practice gives me a path by which I can negotiate the questions, and my own I suppose inability to come to conclusions forces me to persist in that life of enquiry.

Rachael Kohn: Have you been able to pass this on to your children?

Howard Goldenberg: It hasn't been possible to avoid it. And I would say that two of my three children are not orthodox and one is. All three show a great respect for my observances, and all three are independent thinkers and they are kind, good people. I look at them and I feel pride and pleasure in the way they conduct themselves. And this is not the fruit of their father alone, it may not be primarily the fruit of my life but their mum who is a good and kind person.

Rachael Kohn: Can I finally ask you about your mum who doesn't figure at all in your diary?

Howard Goldenberg: Well, she was a person who loved her children quite unconditionally. She was a Pollyanna, she saw beauty and goodness in almost everything, in every step of her long path through life, and she suffered great misfortune and always felt herself fortunate. And she was the tenderest, sweetest, most amusing quirky old girl, and I can't think of her or speak of her without smiling.

Rachael Kohn: Do you think you inherited a lot from her? I think you probably have.

Howard Goldenberg: Oh, no question, including her dirty mind!

Rachael Kohn: Well, on that note I think we'll close this lovely conversation. Thank you so much for allowing us into your Spiritual Diary, Howard Goldenberg.

Howard Goldenberg: Thank you very much.

[Diary] Last word. Fourteenth of March, 2012. Is it futile or perverse or irrational or feeble or embarrassing to live a life of religious observance without a rock solid floor of belief? I think the answer to all of those is no, excepting to the last question, which is; is it embarrassing? It is somewhat embarrassing to admit to that inability to settle at an answer of the big question after 51 years of nagging at it. But I think the daily wrestling at the question is honourable, I think the acts of fidelity are defining. I resort to religion not from fear but certainly for comfort. I'm sure that my religion is my opiate.

Rachael Kohn: So there, Karl Marx! Religion as an opiate can be quite a good thing according to my guest today, medical doctor Howard Goldenberg. His published books are My Father's Compass and Raft, named after the wonderful painting by Alice Springs based painter Rod Moss, which you can see on our website, just put The Spirit of Things into your search engine.

And while you're there, you can find a link to POOL, ABC's social network website where you can upload some thoughts from your Spiritual Diary. Have a look at the others, they're really quite special.

The Spirit of Things is produced by me and Geoff Wood, with sound engineering by Luke Purse. I'm Rachael Kohn, Join me next week at the same time, right here on RN.


Dr. Howard Goldenberg
Howard is a Melbourne based physician who regularly works as a relieving doctor in the outback, and has worked with refugees on Palm Island. He is a writer of two non fiction works, My Father's Compass, A Memoir (2007) and Raft (2009) about his encounters with Aboriginal Australians in the outback. On his father's side, he is descended from the most famous Jewish scholar in 18th Century Europe, the Gaon (genius) of Vilna, and on his mother's side from Cyril Coleman, pearl diver, polo player and one-stringed concert violinist, of Broome. Howard has run 36 marathons and 63 circuits of the sun.


Howard Goldenberg
Hybrid Publishers
9781876462857 ppbk
"A doctor in a yarmulka enters Aboriginal Australia...these are the clinical notes of a humble and compassionate man." Martin Flanagan
My Father's Compass: a Memoir
Howard Goldenberg
ISBN: 9781876462482
Goldenberg's magical qualities of story telling...records the life of his father, Myer, a rare combination of dinkum Aussie and devout Jew.

Further Information

Pool ABC social website, My Spiritual Diary Project
Upload your Spiritual Diary entries - writing, music, art


Dr Rachael Kohn
Dr Rachael Kohn / Geoff Wood

Comments (7)

Add your comment

  • Jonathon Rutherford :

    06 May 2012 6:56:27pm

    I am an atheist, but I found this a wonderfully engaging spirtual reflection - thankyou Howard. Very earthy and honest reflections, but also profound.

  • me :

    06 May 2012 7:23:07pm

    faith seems esoteric until you devolop your spirituality to the extent that nothing is more real or important than love(to god and your fellow being)

  • Fiona :

    06 May 2012 8:20:23pm

    I loved your program on Dr Goldenberg tonight - one of the best you've done. He sounds like a lovely human being, refreshingly free of the piousness that characterises some people who claim to be deeply religious.

  • Michelle Godard :

    08 May 2012 2:24:24pm

    Dr Howard Goldenberg's diary was intelligent and full of searching questions. Wonderful!

  • Colin :

    08 May 2012 3:18:39pm

    A really good program. I felt the discussion about faith, about labelling(?) was really useful. I used to call myself an athesist but now prefer no label at all knowing both the problem with labels but also appreciating the great value in the philosophy and ideas of peoples of all faiths and none as we attempt to make sense of the world and our brief lives.

    And yes Howard,I agree, whether there is a god or not, surely love is the most important thing (with reflection a close second).

  • theodora :

    08 May 2012 3:38:49pm

    I loved every second of this beautiful program. Thank you Howard for sharing your diary. Inspiring, honest, open and thought provoking. I am studying Buddhism and found many parallels in your observations.

  • Doreen Jenkins :

    08 May 2012 4:56:24pm

    What a fabulous programme this was - I enjoyed it enormously. Thank you very much indeed for sharing it with us. Doreen Jenkins