In a deeply personal interview with renowned business journalist Damon Kitney, Jeremy Leibler describes the pressure he faced as a leader of the Australian Jewish community, in the weeks following 7 October 2023.
“As one of the top mergers and acquisitions lawyers in the country with four children at home under 18 – including now 11-year-old twins – he was used to juggling the tough demands of work and home life,” Kitney writes. “But nothing in his 44 years prepared him for the ordeal he faced in the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7.”
As Jeremy explains it, “There’s no pressure that I’ve ever felt like being the voice of people who I knew were genuinely going through trauma.”
The article covers the long and extensive contributions made by successive generations of the Leibler family to the law and to Australian and international Jewish organisations over more than half a century. “Arnold Bloch Leibler has never left anyone in any doubt on where it stands on public policy issues. This is not only in its support of the Jewish people, but in standing up for Indigenous rights, calling out racism and other causes.”
Asked about the personal risks he shoulders as president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, Jeremy says that more than anything, he feels this cause matters.
“What I feel is a sense of gratitude that something of meaning and purpose is a central part of my family life,” Jeremy says. “I don’t see that through the prism of the suffering in the horrors of October 7. I see that through the positive of being able to model for my children – as I think my father, my uncle, and my grandmother – modelled for me.
“Which is that life is actually about standing up for the things that you believe in.”
To read the online article, click here.
To view a PDF of the article, click here.
