Playback: Closure and Disclosure

Now, how big is your family? Perhaps you have two sisters or brothers or three.

I've got none.

I'm an only child.

Well, Manny Wax grew up as one of 17 children.

He was an ultra-Orthodox Jew, part of the Chabad sect in Melbourne, Australia, and his family lived across the street from the Yeshiva Center, a religious school where all his education and all his extracurricular activities took place.

It was a tight-knit community you rarely hear from in the mainstream media.

I started by asking him what a typical day in his childhood looked like.

Well, you wake up in the morning.

I would have had already a responsibility for a younger sibling.

In my case, it would have been maybe a two-, three-year-old would have been responsible for changing their nappies.

The older children, you need to make sure that they do homework, prepare lunch for school, going to synagogue, of course, first thing in the morning.

Before that, even, you would go to immerse yourself in a mikvah, a male ritual bath, to cleanse yourself both physically and spiritually.

And then from there, you go to the synagogue, pray, then to school.

And of course, within the school, there was religious studies for the first three, four hours in the morning.

And then for the remainder of the day, about half or a little bit more than half, we had general studies as well.

Maths, English, science, the basics.

But the emphasis clearly was much more on the religious studies and the religious context and environment.

If the Lubavitcher Rebbe suddenly decided to give a speech from New York, we used to run to synagogue and have a listen to the live hookup from New

York.

And presumably prayers throughout the day, right? Prayers for washing your hands, prayers for eating, prayers for drinking.

Minimum 100 blessings a day is expected.

Wow.

And, I mean, look, if you just pray the morning prayers, which, mind you, includes thank you, Lord, for not making me a woman, and thank you, Lord, for not making me a Gentile, by the way.

So once you get through the morning prayers, you've probably got a solid 50-odd blessings already.

And then each time you eat, before you eat, after you eat, go to the bathroom.