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
14 Mar 2025, 10am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and as we are in the midst of the joyous festival of Purim, the happiest day on the Jewish calendar, we’ll entertain ourselves with some rousing Purim Songs and Purim stories.
6 Mar 2025, 9am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and we recall the wonderful Yiddish actor Yosef Buloff e”h, on the occasion of his yortzayt-death anniversary yesterday and we hear a little about him and some of his wonderful performances.
21 Feb 2025, 11am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and we recall the popular Polish Yiddish writer and poet Zusman Segalovitch e”h, on the occasion of his yortzayt – death anniversary on the 20th February.
14 Feb 2025, 10am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and we recall the so called “Prince of Yiddish Poetry and Prose” Itzik Manger e”h, and we hear a little about him and some of his wonderful creations.
7 Feb 2025, 10am Kadimah Yiddish Show Alex Dafner presents current events reports from Australia and we recall the wonderful author Y Y Singer e”h and hear the first chapter of his monumental novel “The Brothers Ashkenazi”.
