Facing Cancer Together: A Rabbi and His Community - Rabbi Yossi & Malki Rodal

00:00 Speaker 1 So about four months ago, I went to the dentist, and there was an ulcer on my tongue.

00:06 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Yossi Ruddle

00:08 Speaker 1 And they said, "How long has it been there for?" I wasn't very worried about it. They said, "Go get it checked out."

00:13 Speaker 2 Two weeks later, Yossi Ruddle went for a biopsy.

00:16 Speaker 1 To my complete shock, it came back positive for oral cancer on my tongue. They scheduled surgery right away.

00:23 Speaker 2 The Ruddles had a newborn baby at home, in addition to their other four sons, and a community to support, and the high holidays were coming right up.

00:33 Speaker 1 The challenge was that this was in Elul, and I was gonna come home right before Rosh Hashanah. So we had to pivot really quickly and make some decisions.

00:41 Speaker 2 Like what to do for holiday services. More than that, what would the effects of major oral surgery be on a man whose very life is teaching Torah and leading services? Would Ruddle even survive? But before these questions could be answered, Ruddle decided to apply the Rebbe's perspective.

01:01 Speaker 1 This is an opportunity to show people in the community that Judaism is not just for the happy times. And now I have the opportunity to show people how Hasidics can influence our lives, even during challenges.

01:15 Speaker 2 That perspective has served the Ruddles well, even after the December 14th attack against Jews celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach in Sydney. Because the Rebbe has invested in his emissaries the drive and the ability to always go forward, no matter what. I'm Gary Wolk, and this is Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and the community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Back to our story in a moment, but first, I'd like to tell you about a great opportunity. You can partner with Lamplighters in sharing stories of Chabad emissaries doing amazing work all over the world. Please consider dedicating an episode. You can email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. You can also let us know how we're doing and about the shluchim you think we should consider for upcoming episodes. Please rate and review Lamplighters to make it easier for other podcast listeners to find us. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch. While he was growing up in Pittsburgh and LA, and studying in France and New York, Rabbi Yossi Ruddle was certain about his intention to go out on shlichus.

03:18 Speaker 1 Yeah, that was my goal always.

03:20 Speaker 2 Malkie Ruddle wasn't as sure. She was born in Melbourne and studied at seminary in Tzfat, Israel. She met Yossi in 2013 after he had earned smicha in Crown Heights, and they realized they had a shared interest in reaching out to Jews. They were married in 2013 in Melbourne, and looked for shlichus opportunities. At first, the Ruddles assumed they'd find work in one of Australia's large cities, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, or Perth, where most Australian Jews live. But while Ruddle was in kollel in Melbourne, he and Malkie were approached by Chabad of RARA, which stands for Rural And Regional Australia.

04:05 Speaker 1 They asked us to go to Geelong, which is only an hour out of Melbourne, to visit the Jewish people there, perhaps make a Rosh Hashana thing, which we did, and then we did a program in Toowoomba, and I guess we did a, a commendable job, because we were hired for the job.

04:20 Speaker 2 Their mission?

04:21 Speaker 3 To touch the lives of people who don't live near a booming Jewish community where halal is available, and there are five shuls to go to. They might be the only person in their town, or more likely, they think they're the only person in their town.

04:38 Speaker 2 For the next six years, the Ruddles directed Chabad of RARA. The job took them all over Australia in what they called their RARA tank, an elaborately decorated RV loaded with Shabbos candles, Jewish literature, anything to help another Jew do another mitzvah. I originally talked to them in 2021 about their work in RARA.

05:02 Speaker 3 And we just kind of roll up with a big, loud mitzvah tank that says, "Do a mitzvah, and be Jewish with pride," and see who we can find.

05:11 Speaker 1 The Rebbe says that Mashiach will come when the, uh, wellsprings of Hasidut, when the wellsprings of Judaism are spreading even into the farthest places, and there isn't much out there that's considered further than Outback Australia.

05:25 Speaker 2 The Ruddles put the pedal to the metal and covered tens of thousands of square miles of Australian Outback. They met isolated Jews in some very unlikely places. One story they love to tell is the one that began as they were being filmed for an episode of a documentary TV series called Untold Australia. In 2017, the Ruddles set out for Central Australia with a full film crew following them.

05:54 Speaker 1 We had two young kids at that point. It wasn't very ideal driving for hours and hours, and there was a schedule that had to be followed by the crew, by the director, and it was very stressful.

06:05 Speaker 3 The middle of Australia is desert. Very few people live there. Most likely even fewer Jewish people live there. So we set off, and we were driving this big yellow mitzvah tank, and the first week and a half we didn't meet a single Jew.

06:21 Speaker 2 Until they arrived in Alice Springs, a town of about 34,000 in the Northern Territory. To give you an idea of how isolated Alice Springs is, it's a 23-hour drive from Melbourne, but it does have a few shops. The Ruddles stopped at one to pick up some supplies.

06:43 Speaker 1 And, um, when we got to the parking lot, our tank was too big. We couldn't park in the parking lot. We needed to park on the street.

06:54 Speaker 3 As we're walking down the driveway towards Kmart, I hear some, like, commotion behind me, and I turn around to see this woman kind of waving her arms wildly and calling out to us. And as I turn, she barrels past me into the arms of my husband, gives him this massive bear hug, and then backs off and says, "Oh, my gosh, I know I'm not supposed to r- hug a rabbi. I'm so sorry."

07:20 Speaker 1 And Malkie's like, "Well, you know what's, you know what's going on?" And she said, "I cannot believe that there's another Jew in town."

07:27 Speaker 3 And, um, I'm like, "Hi," you know, "what's your name?" And she's like, "I'm Penny. I'm Jewish. I can't believe this. I just can't believe this." She can't believe that there's a rabbi.

07:38 Speaker 2 Penny told the Ruddles that she had grown up near Sydney in a loosely traditional Jewish family. She got married, and her husband's work took them all over the world. They even lived for a couple years in Saudi Arabia, where they had a son. Penny yearned for Jewish connection, and welcomed the move back to Australia, but she ended up in tiny Alice Springs.

08:01 Speaker 3 And she said as time went on she was getting more lonely, she was feeling more isolated. It was getting her down. She was starting to feel that she wasn't important as a Jew, and it got to the point where she cried to God, and she was like, "God, give me a sign that you actually care about this woman out in Alice Springs in the middle of nowhere, and I haven't had much to do with my Judaism for so many years. Am I still important?"

08:26 Speaker 2 Penny told the Ruddles that when she spotted them she saw that as an answer to her question.

08:32 Speaker 3 Here was God telling her, "You are important. You are special to me. You are a part of the Jewish people, and I'm gonna show you that in the best way that I can."

08:42 Speaker 2 The Ruddles met with Penny in her home, but the film crew wasn't there to record it.

08:47 Speaker 3 We ended up going to visit her anyway, and meet her son, and let her feel like she's had that Jewish presence in her home. I gave her Shabbat candles, and we discussed that there are other Jewish people in the area that she could connect with.

09:01 Speaker 1 And, uh, we had the most incredible time with her, and she gifted us, you know, a challah cover that she had made.

09:07 Speaker 3 And we use that every Shabbat meal that we do anywhere in Australia. That Saturday night after Shabbat went out, I opened my phone, and it had a beautiful message from her. She had sent me a picture of her Shabbat candles, and she had sent me a message, "I just lit Shabbat candles for the first time, and it was just such a beautiful experience, and thank you so much."

09:26 Speaker 1 I don't suggest to send a picture of the Shabbat candles 'cause y- it's not allowed after the Shabbat comes in. But it was such a beautiful thing to see that her Jewish pride rekindled, and Shabbat candles for her was a massive deal after that.

09:41 Speaker 2 But Penny's enthusiasm wasn't limited to Shabbos.

09:45 Speaker 3 And that Rosh Hashanah she hosted about 30 people in her home, and she was kind of the Jewish mama of Alice Springs for that. And now she's connected, and she is loving it, so she's definitely involved in the community there, which is amazing.

10:03 Speaker 2 The Ruddles whisked all over Australia providing support to scores of isolated Jews, but as their family grew, it became too difficult for them to cover so many miles with their children in an RV. The Ruddles had sent out young rabbinic students on some of their routes, but what they really wanted was a more personal outreach. I first spoke with the Ruddles in early 2021. I caught up with them again in late 2025.

10:35 Speaker 1 So we found an amazing couple who were able to take over Chabad Arara.

10:39 Speaker 2 The Ruddles handed over the keys to the mitzvah tank to Rabbi Menachem and Rebbetzin Shevy Aram.

10:45 Speaker 1 And they've been doing incredible stuff taking it to the next level.

10:48 Speaker 3 And they're doing just an absolute rip of a job there.

10:51 Speaker 2 The Ruddles settled in Newcastle, which they had frequently visited while they were at Rara. It's on Australia's east coast between Brisbane and Sydney.

11:01 Speaker 3 And right now our focus is we want to really dig deep, and make deep connections with the people in the Hunter Valley. We wanna be here on a constant basis, and just give our all to these people.

11:14 Speaker 2 The Ruddles call their Chabad house Chabad of the Hunter and Central Coast.

11:19 Speaker 1 It's different in the sense that there's a shul, there's a, a center of operations. The biggest difference is in Chabad Arara we could see or speak to somebody once a year, or not even, maybe once every two years. Here in the community where you have an established presence, you're meeting the same people over and over and over. Your friendships are more cemented. You're able to have a lot more connection with them. Judaism opportunities become bigger, and you're able to, um, have a lot more effect on people, and have deeper relationships.

11:46 Speaker 2 Malkie says they began with about 40 regulars, but in just five years that number quickly grew.

11:53 Speaker 1 I would say we know of about, uh, between four and five hundred individuals, maybe, like, 300 families. That number grows, uh, every week, thank God.

12:06 Speaker 2 After years of steady growth, the Ruddles' shlichus took a dramatic turn in the summer of 2025.

12:13 Speaker 1 I went to the dentist, and there was an ulcer on my tongue, and they said, "How long has it been there for?" I wasn't very worried about it, but they said, "Go get it checked out," which I did.

12:24 Speaker 2 Two weeks later, Yossi Ruddle went for a biopsy.

12:28 Speaker 1 To my complete shock, it came back positive for oral cancer on my tongue. They scheduled surgery right away. We had a newborn baby at home, so we had just returned to regular programming after the baby. My wife had a C-section, so it was a question of w- which one of us could even drive at, at any stage. But they scheduled the surgery.

12:50 Speaker 2 Ruddle would require a tracheotomy, removal of a large part of his tongue, and several lymph nodes. In what could only be described as divine providence, the two specialists treating Ruddle's cancer were Jews who just happened to work in Newcastle.

13:06 Speaker 1 The doctor who operated on me, I've been chasing him for five years , who I haven't been able to even say hi to him, never met him. You know, I don't know how many challahs and cheesecakes we've dropped off on his secretaries, but, you know, I actually told him at the first meeting, I said, "We didn't have to do this to meet." But it was 100% God's plan.

13:22 Speaker 2 One challenge for the Ruddles was that this was in Elul, and Yossi would be back from surgery right before Rosh Hashanah.

13:29 Speaker 1 And I wasn't gonna be able to talk, uh, for a while, definitely not blow the shofar, so we had to pivot really quickly and make some decisions. It wasn't an option for us to leave and not have Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur here. Question was only how to go about it.

13:43 Speaker 2 An important answer came when Rabbi Yossi talked with a fellow shliach from Sydney, who urged him to consider the advice he had given to others facing challenges. Is that advice something he believed in himself? Ruddle realized that he did, and that changed his entire perspective.

14:01 Speaker 1 This is an opportunity to show people in the community that Hasidus is the way to show people how to deal with issues. It's a bit of a paradigm shift in my shlichus, but now I have the opportunity to show people how Hasidus can influence our lives, even during challenges. So right away, we made the decision to share my journey with the community so they could be involved.

14:26 Speaker 2 In his first message to his community after his diagnosis, Rabbi Ruddle declared, "I know that this is from God, and I know that I will be even stronger coming out the other side. Now is my chance to practice what I preach." But there were many unknowns before the surgery. One of those was how the community would respond. The Ruddles were amazed at what happened as Rabbi Yossi's surgery date approached.

14:55 Speaker 1 I was, uh, forced to shave my beard 'cause they had to do a neck dissection and take out, um, 50 lymph nodes. But a guy in our community said, "Hey, if the rabbi can't grow the beard, I'm gonna grow in his place," and he actually grew a beard. In the hospital, a guy visits me and, um, with tears in his eyes, he pulls out an old, battered tehillim, beautiful little tehillim, and he says, "This was with me in my wars in Yerushalayim when we stormed Jerusalem, and it saved me, and this is for you in your war."

15:26 Speaker 2 With Malkie tending to a newborn and dealing with health issues of her own, the Ruddles knew they'd need extra help, so they announced a capital campaign with a goal of $25,000 to cover short-term expenses. They raised over 200,000, but there were many other ways their community stepped up.

15:46 Speaker 1 Oh, in every way possible. First of all, just in being supportive, calling and texting, et cetera. A tehillim chat was, uh, started up specifically, which is still going on today. There were multiple, multiple people that took on mitzvas, and, uh, Malkie would actually print out the picture. She asked people in the community to send a picture of them performing their mitzvah, and then she hung it up on the hospital walls, which was great. Really a, an amazing, amazing community support.

16:16 Speaker 2 And then the day of surgery arrived. Doctors successfully removed a large portion of Ruddle's tongue, replaced it with skin from one of his arms, removed lymph nodes, and performed a tracheotomy. It was a painful, grueling experience. As Ruddle recovered in the hospital, help came in from all over Australia. Chani and Stirni White, daughters of Chabad emissaries in Perth, helped care for the Ruddles' children for two weeks. Josh and Abigail Wonder came in from Melbourne to help lead services. Malkie's mother came, and members of the community chipped in wherever possible. Like Bert Gutman, he's been a Newcastle resident for over 40 years. During the month of Elul, he deployed his shofar for anyone who needed to hear it.

17:05 Speaker 4 A big kudu horn shofar over the period before the High Holy Days. I'd blow shofar for the family. Sometimes it was just Rebbetzin Malkie, and sometimes visitors would come, and I'd blow for them as well, and I'm enormously proud that I had that opportunity.

17:22 Speaker 2 Bert blew shofar in the hospital, too.

17:25 Speaker 1 Bert was wonderful. Out here in Newcastle, shofar blowers are few and far between, so Bert trained himself in the proper blowing, and every day in Elul, he would come with his big kudu horn, and he would blast the whole hospital down every day with the shofar, which is a wonderful thing.

17:43 Speaker 2 But that's just one of the ways Bert says he's grown Jewishly. He wraps tefillin regularly and has been studying Tanya, the magnum opus of Chabad Hasidus.

17:53 Speaker 4 Learning Tanya has changed my life. I can say this unequivocally. Having Tanya in the last year has changed my spiritual and emotional outlook and, uh, has contributed enormously to my journey, uh, and I'm enormously grateful for it.

18:14 Speaker 2 Bert was at the Ruddles' home for Rosh Hashanah services. He was prepared to blow shofar then, too, but he let the pros handle that.

18:23 Speaker 5 It was a wonderful service. Yossi was so happy to have come through his experience, to have his people around him, to be davening in his house, and I think he had a wonderful Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

18:39 Speaker 1 It was an interesting perspective sitting together with the congregation and having someone else lead the services. Challenging. It's not easy for a rabbi who likes to talk to, uh, have someone else leading it, but I was able to, for the first time in a long time, concentrate more on my personal davening, not having to wonder, "Well, where's the congregation up to? Where's this person up to?" I wasn't able to talk very clearly, but was able to get some words out. At that stage, I was able to, um, connect to people on a more individual basis, not having to lead everybody. I was able to kind of see what things interested me. It was good to be able to gauge the crowd from being within the crowd.

19:17 Speaker 2 With the holidays in the rear-view mirror, Yossi Ruddle is now dedicating his energy to the resumption of a normal schedule at Chabad of the Hunter.

19:26 Speaker 1 Baruch Hashem, it's been way better than expected. So I've got a few bruises, a few scars. I've got the neck scar here. We've got the tracheotomy scar. I've got some nerve damage, so that's also s- a work in progress. Going to a lot of physios and speech therapists, et cetera, but my speech is getting very close to normal. It's been getting better every day. All in all, I consider myself to be over the issues.

19:50 Speaker 2 But there is what Ruddle calls a minor issue. During the surgery, doctors discovered that he has cancer of the thyroid, which he'll have removed at some point, and Malkie is still recovering from serious migraines.

20:03 Speaker 1 She's doing pretty well. It's obviously a big struggle, but we, together, we're trying to adopt that perspective and continue with that perspective of nothing bad happens, and everything happens for a reason, and, uh, trying to make it a growth opportunity.

20:16 Speaker 2 Specifically, Ruddle says he wants to be more helpful toward others who are going through difficult times.

20:22 Speaker 1 I don't know how I would have, have been able to go through it alone. I can't imagine if I didn't have a family or a support system or, or community that was there for me, just sitting in the hospital not knowing what's going on and not having anyone to lean on. So I think it's put me in a position to be able to become a better shliach, a better community leader, in terms of being able to appreciate and empathize with people who are lonely and don't know what the next step is gonna be.

20:51 Speaker 2 For now, the Ruddles are running a children's camp, and they'll resume Hebrew school in January. Amazingly, Ruddle joined over 6,000 of his colleagues for November's Kinus Hashluchim in Crown Heights.

21:04 Speaker 1 And it was an incredible thing to be able to go to the Kinus and go to the aisle, meet family, friends, and say thank you to all the people who, who really were there for me. And, uh, I came back with renewed energy, and, uh, right when I came back, we had a class the next day. That was the restart of the class, uh, the first one in four months. And we're, um, yeah, we're going strong. Thank God.

21:25 Speaker 2 What about your beard? Has it made a comeback?

21:27 Speaker 1 It's almost back to where it was, back to its former glory.

21:30 Speaker 2 And what about the guy you mentioned before who grew a beard after you had to shave yours?

21:35 Speaker 1 He still has it till today.

21:38 Speaker 2 Yossi Ruddle says the Newcastle community has been struggling in the aftermath of the Sydney attack, which took place just a short two-and-a-half-hour drive from their Chabad house. Ruddle was personally close to Rabbi Yaakov-Halavi Levinson, one of the two Chabad rabbis murdered on Bondi Beach, and he's grieving all who lost their lives. But it's clear that he's applying the lessons he's learned from his personal ordeal to that as well.

22:06 Speaker 1 You have a choice of how to deal with a challenge. You have to see it for what it is. You have to change your perspective, because it's a growth opportunity. That's really, literally what it is, and you'll be able to meet the challenge head-on with the right perspective, and, uh, you'll be able to overcome anything.

22:23 Speaker 2 Ruddle says recent support from Australians has been, in his words, "incredible." A Newcastle vigil the Wednesday after the attack was attended by well over 1,000. The Ruddles say that since the attack, they've already met more than 10 people who want to be part of their community, and so their work goes on with the approach that they've always taken.

22:47 Speaker 5 How can we make Judaism more relevant to you? How can we make your Judaism feel more meaningful to you? Every person is precious. Every single soul is an important part of the Jewish population. We have God on our side, so we're doing good.

23:09 Speaker 2 I'm Gary Wolk. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast@L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.