Breakfast with Arnold Zable

 "Fascinating and imaginative work, and, inevitably controversial."

   Arnold Zable on "The Imaginary Jewish Homelands of I.N. Steinberg"

This morning we had breakfast with the highly acclaimed novelist Arnold Zable, former president of PEN Melbourne. The meeting was magical as we had much common ground including being and creating as secular Jews. The dialogue ranged from our mutual interest in Melech Ravitch and his family to his work with Aboriginal artists in Warmun and how Australia is moving toward a model of mutual exchange of knowledge and wisdom.  We also found out that both of our sons have an obsession with game design although his son is about 16 years older than Sacha.  He gave us so many interesting insights into Yiddish Melbourne from a secular Jewish perspective.  Given his amazing work on the plight of refugees and asylum seekers to Australia, it is obvious why our project has so much resonance for him.