The Melbourne butcher’s son who converted to Judaism and guided 10,000 lives in death

By Janine Schloss, PhD candidate, Jewish Cultural Practice, Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Monash University

Stella Prize shortlisted author Katia Ariel admits to a “pre-emptive regret” at not being able to include the personal details of each of the thousands of souls relayed to her by Ephraim Finch, director of Melbourne’s Chevra Kadisha – or, Jewish Burial Society. From the mid-1980s to 2015, he buried over ten thousand individuals. The book largely unfolds through a series of deep-dive conversations between Ariel, Finch and his wife, Cas.

Ariel writes that anyone living in the Melbourne Jewish community during this period would “for better or worse” have had something to do with the working-class…

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