Thursdays, 5pm
Shlepping and Shmoozing is presented by Alex Dafner and Leon Gettler and consists of a hard-news chat show covering the week’s main news events from Australia, the world, Israel, the Jewish world and the Australian Jewish community. At the end of the program there are reviews of books, films, TV, theatre, concerts, albums, etc, and cultural news and announcements. In between these items you can hear music and songs by some of the best-known Jewish performers from around the world.
Alex Dafner was born in Lodz, Poland, to a Yiddish-speaking family and attended the local I. L. Perets Jewish school, before migrating to Australia in 1959 at the age of 10. He has presented the Kadimah Yiddish Show and co-presented Shlepping and Shmoozing, with Leon Gettler on J-AIR, almost from its inception. He joined J-AIR after a 33-year career as executive producer and presenter of the Yiddish-language radio program and trainer of journalists at SBS Radio Melbourne.
He was also the instigator, curriculum writer and teacher of VCE Yiddish in Victoria at Mount Scopus College and the King David School and was a long-serving president of the Jewish Cultural Centre and National Library Kadimah.
Leon has worked in journalism for 45 years. He has worked for the Truth, The Sun News-Pictorial, The Age, The Australian and AAP. As a freelance journalist, he has contributed to magazines such as CFO, CRN, ProPrint, Management Today, Charter Magazine, BRW and Business Spectator. He runs a weekly podcast Talking Business. He has also written three books: An Unpromised Land, Organisations Behaving Badly and Ten Ways to Survive the Corporate World. He is working as a research assistant for the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub. He is now doing a PhD on newspapers, innovation and communities.
He does two programs for J-AIR: Talking Tachless which presents all the week’s news, along with great music, and Shlepping and Shmoozing with Alex Dafner which looks at all the week’s news, what’s happening in the Jewish world, a discussion of books, films and TV to watch, along with great music.
Listen On Demand
29 May 2026, 10am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and we hear a short history of Melbourne’s 114 year old Yiddish oriented Kadimah Jewish Cultural Centre and National Library.
22 May 2026, 11am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and we celebrate the festival of Shavuot and also honour the memory of the great Yiddish comic Yisroel Szumacher on the occasion of his yortsayt-death anniversary.
15 May 2026, 10am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and we hear an interview with Mikhl Yashinsky about the so-called Yiddish Sherlock Holmes, Detective Max Shpitzkopf and other things, conducted on Boston’s Yiddish Voice program.
8 May 2026, 11am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and we commemorate the 8th May, anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in the bloody Second World War and hear a Jewish Red Army officer talk about two decisive battles that led to that victory.
1 May 2026, 10am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and on this 1st of May we hear a little about the history of this workers’ day here in Australia, around the world and among Jewish workers. And on the occasion of his yortsayt-death anniversary, we remember the so called Poet of the Holocaust Itzhak Katzenelson e”h.
24 Apr 2026, 10am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and we remember the Vilnius partisan, poet and great Yiddish song composer Shmerke Kaczerginski, e”h, and as tomorrow is ANZAC Day, we commemorate and honour the Australian Jewish ANZAC combatants.
17 Apr 2026, 10am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and as we approach the significant dates of the 19th April, the start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and Israel’s Remembrance Day and Independence Day, we focus on these significant three dates in today’s program.
10 Apr 2026, 9am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia, and as we’ve just ended Passover we entertain ourselves with a bitter-sweet Sholem Aleichem Passover story and reflect on how this festival of freedom is closely linked with the start of the heroic Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
3 Apr 2026, 10am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and in honour of the yortsayt-death anniversary of the so called “Father of Modern Yiddish Literature”, I L Peretz e”h, we hear a little about him and a few of his wonderful creations.
27 Mar 2026, 11am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and as we are preparing for the joyous festival of Passover we entertain ourselves with two pre-Passover stories by our Yiddish classicists Mendele Mocher Sforim and Sholem Aleichem.
20 Mar 2026, 11am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and as we find ourselves in a state of deep concern for Israel and Jewish communities around the world, we lift our spirits a little with some Yiddish humour from previous tough times for Israel and the Jewish people.
