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Bouncing Back: How a one-time homeless Christian learned lessons from Sydney’s Jewish community

Keith Austin
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John Holden

John Holden

Published: 7 September 2017

Last updated: 4 March 2024

When John Holden, 52, gets up to speak at the Shalom MOTH X storytelling evening at The Sheaf hotel in Double Bay this month, he won’t be telling a tale of woe.

He could, given what he’s been through since he arrived in Australia from the US 16 years ago, but it’s not in his nature. Despite a relationship breakdown in 2005 and a drug-and-alcohol problem that led to him “losing everything” around 2009, he refuses to see himself as a victim.

Speaking from his home in Orange, where he now works for the government, the Washington native says, “Any problem I caused in my life came from something I did. From having that drink I shouldn’t have had, from telling that lie I shouldn’t have told, from taking something that wasn’t mine or doing a deal that was too shady … anything that happened in my life that found me without a place to live was my responsibility.”

Instead he will be talking about some of the challenges he faced and how he overcame them. And part of that story includes coming into contact with MOTH X producer and Shalom program manager Deborah Meyer.

He says, “I met Deb through Our Big Kitchen, which is part of Yeshiva NSW. Somebody turned me on to them because they had a barista class going – this was in in 2013 – so I thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ll try that.’

“I did the barista class but I also met some really good people and just stayed in contact. That’s how I met Deb and Rabbi Slavin (he’s a hero of mine) and just kept following through.”

For Meyer’s part, she was moved by Holden’s “story of struggle, of plunging into homelessness and then moving on in his life through a strong desire to help others and give back, to volunteer and to study to become a counsellor (while living in his car)”.

“He has a profound desire to help others doing it tough,” she says.

And so when it came to finding people to talk at MOTH X, Holden was an obvious choice.

He’s in good company, too. The event also features actor Heather Mitchell; musician and social entrepreneur Edo Kahn; fashion designer and Mikvah attendant Rivka Ray; social-justice activist, poet and musician Rae Le Fleur; and a same-sex Orthodox Jewish married couple, Gavi Ansara and Sruli Berger.

According to Meyer, “Storytelling is quintessential to Jewish identity and the MOTH platform is a theatrically rich, raw and exciting way for people across all sectors of our community to engage and connect with others in their peer group.”

Shalom has been running the MOTH spoken-word evenings – in which speakers perform for five-to-seven minutes without notes – for four years, but MOTH X is just the third time they’ve aimed at the 40+ Generation X demographic.

The September 14 event takes place just before Rosh Hashanah and will explore the theme of New Beginnings – something John Holden knows all about.

Beginning again is never easy – it took him a good two years to get healthy and get back on track – but Holden believes that his strong work ethic was a major part of the process. “No matter what’s going on in your life,” he says, “you shouldn’t just be sitting around on your ass all day.

“I’ve always, no matter what stage I was at in my life, whether working as a professional, whether I was at school, no matter what I was doing, I was always working or volunteering.

“I get infuriated with people who just sit around. There’s always something you can be doing to make society better or make yourself better.”

And making both society and himself better included studying counselling and volunteering at the Jewish House in Bondi in 2015.

Holden, a committed Christian, says, “I was watching the rabbi working, busting his ass one day and, like, someone’s commitment to their faith doesn’t make me resent them, it just makes me more committed to mine. And when you look at people who can be committed in the face of horror, then you just go, ‘That’s what I want.’

“I remember I was sitting next to this old Russian lady … we were making some kind of Jewish pastry and she was talking to me and I was talking and we were totally different, 30-40 years apart, I don’t even know if she was a Holocaust survivor or not, I don’t know who she was. And we were sitting there talking and volunteering in our community, okay, and I said to myself how amazing is it that that people so radically different can sit there to do something good for other people.’

And when he gets up to speak on September 14? “I’m going to try to tell people that we need to look past our noses and think about what other people are going through. We need to find out what part of ourselves is alive in other people.

“We need to ask ourselves how we can help other people in our society and our culture who are suffering today.”

For more information on MOTH X ‘New Beginnings’, visit www.shalom.edu.au or call Deb Meyer on 9381-4162.

 

This The Jewish Independent article may be republished with this acknowledgement: ‘Reprinted with permission from www.thejewishindependent.com.au ’

About the author

Keith Austin

ORIGINALLY from London’s East End, Keith Austin has been a journalist more than 36 years. After working in local newspapers in London, Essex and the Home Counties he made the move to Fleet Street in 1986 when he joined The Sunday Times as deputy chief sub. Since then Keith has worked in Glasgow, Beijing and, for the past 18 years, Sydney, Australia.

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