There are six Jews living in Devonport, Tasmania, and 18 on Magnetic Island, Queensland. It is these far-flung Australian Jews, believed to number 8000 across the continent, that Saul Spigler and his team are in search of. ANGIE FOX meets this Melbourne man with a (massive) mission. Volunteers use the census figures as a starting point, then search for Jewish names in local phone books, often cold-calling doctors or lawyers. Upon arrival in a town they will visit cemeteries, post offices, town halls and historical societies to look for Jewish names. They also advertise in local papers and follow up on leads by word of mouth. THERE once was a Jew living in Proserpine, far-north Queensland. When he died, his non-Jewish wife wanted to give him a Jewish burial. But nobody in town knew what that entailed. Then someone remembered that the local priest's mother had been Jewish. After some discussion, the priest attended the Jewish man's funeral and said Kaddish. This story may sound like the start of a rabbi's sermon, or even a joke, but it's the kind of yarn that Saul Spigler hears on a regular basis. The founder of Chabad of Rural and Regional Australia (RARA), Spigler, 49, has dedicated his life to caring for the needs of Jews who live in far-flung Australian towns and villages. That may involve connecting a Jewish woman living in remote Western Australia with Perth's Chevra Kadisha so she too can have a Jewish burial, or simply finding a retail outlet that stocks Sabra alcohol for a lone Jew living in Kalgoorlie. But more often than not, it entails visiting people who identify themselves as Jewish, reconnecting them to their roots and performing a mitzvah with them, such as putting on tefillin. "There are Jewish people who are very isolated and there are different social problems as well; there's lots of intermarriage in the country. I felt there was a real need for Chabad of RARA and thank God we are having quite a bit of success," Spigler, a solicitor, told the AJN. Established three years ago and funded by private donations, Chabad of RARA has more than 1800 Jews, from 170 different towns, on its database. With the aid of students from Melbourne's Yeshivah Centre as well as volunteers from overseas countries, Chabad of RARA is on the road driving its "Mitzvah Tank" mobile home for at least 25 weeks of the year. Two months ago Chabad of RARA volunteers travelled 13,000 kilometres across Western Australia and South Australia. They added more than 70 Jewish names to their database on their eight-week odyssey. Spigler maintains that had they found just one Jew the journey would still have been worthwhile. "Every Jewish person is precious. For whatever reason God has put them in some far away place and we are happy to help them," he says. "It's a lot easier to have a lasting effect on someone if they know that you care enough about them to come all this way. It makes our chances of success in connecting a person back to their roots much better" For Alice Springs resident June Robinson, Chabad of RARA's work is far more than just a Jewish wake-up call. It is about building Jewish communities out of disparate peoph in remote locations. Robinson, 64 — a retired physio-therapist who grew up in a "relatively Orthodox" home in Sydney's inner west — abandoned all of her Jewish practises when she moved to Alice Springs with her husband 23 years ago. "It's a lot easier to have a lasting effect on someone if they know that you care enough about them to come all this way:' - SAUL SPIGLER Founder, Chabad of Rural and Regional Australia Three years ago — after reading an advertisement in the local paper searching for people interested in attending a Chabad of RARA shabbaton — the woman who grew up celebrating Jewish holidays, attending synagogue and regularly dining with her family on Shabbat realised there were other Jews living in her midst. "I always jokingly said that If I wanted to find out how many Jewish people there were in Alice Springs I would put an ad in the paper saying if you know what a minyan is ring this number. So when I saw the ad I thought that's interesting someone's got the same idea;' she recalls. Robinson and her husband Lance, who converted to Judaism through the Sydney Progressive community after the couple was married in 1971, attended the shabbaton where they were introduced to almost 30 Jewish neighbours. For Robinson, attending a Shabbat dinner after more than 20 years was like "meeting up with old friends': "You just take up where you left off," she says. Although she hasn't been inspired to "go back to the nitty-gritty business of kashrut" she now attends all of the events organised by Chabad of RARA and has established friendships with other Jewish people in the area. "[Chabad of RARA] actually manages to create communities out of all those different peoples who arrive in these strange places for all sorts of reasons and who sometimes feel the need to communicate with each other but don't know where everyone else is." Robinson explains that the Jewish, and indeed general, community in Alice Springs is transient — with many people coming to work for short stints or spending extended holidays there. For this reason, Robinson believes the establishment of a community, albeit it "very loose-knit", is all the more important as it provides a base for people new to the area. "Sometimes the people who are there need to know that there are other Jewish people that they can turn to. Especially when you come up from other cities and you don't know anybody and you can't talk to anybody about your beliefs or problems. Then I am there, because I know." Describing herself as a rarity in Alice Springs by virtue of the fact that she has been living there for more than 10 years, she says her involvement in these community events is personally fulfilling. Most of the guests at the shabbaton were previously unaware of each other's existence. As a result, one of the guests — a former Israeli who now lives on a farm 100 kilometres from Alice Springs — is conducting Jewish study sessions with other local Jews interested in increasing their knowledge of the religion. According to figures from the 2001 Australian Census there are approximately 5000 Jews living outside capital cities. But Spigler estimates the real figure is more, citing Townsville, Queensland, as an ple. The census figures indicate there are almost 50 Jews living in Townsville, but Spigler's team has already found almost 80, with a fur-ther 15 living on nearby Magnetic Island. "If I am right and there are 7000 Jewish people out there ... the goal is to find as many as possible. But more than just finding names, the goal is to connect them, to give some sort of inspiration to them, to create communities and hopefully give them experiences in bigger communities in major cities." Volunteers use the census figures as a starting point, then search for Jewish names in local phone books, often cold-calling doctors or lawyers. Upon arrival in a town they will visit cemeteries, post offices, town halls and historical societies to look for Jewish names. They also advertise in local papers and follow up on leads by word of mouth. Sometimes encounters with Jews happen by chance, when people — such as the woman in the petrol station in Mallacoota, in Victoria's East Gippsland, and the man in the post office in Maldon, near Bendigo, Victoria — recognise the Mitzvah Tank or the volunteers' yarmulkas. Spigler's own passion dates back almost 30 years when, as a 19 year old, he spent four weeks travelling around Australia visiting remote communities in four states. During the 10,000-kilometre trip he visited a family of sheep farmers in central Victoria and gave the young daughter some Shabbat candles. Realising that returning to visit people in remote towns was crucial to his work, Spigler was inspired to establish Chabad of RARA. His ultimate goal is to have someone working fulltime on the project, maintaining contact with all the people on the datab For information call Saul Spigler on 0418 990 823 or email [email protected].