AustLit

'Separate biographies of two brothers appearing roughly contemporaneously are rare, and with both of them making a strong case for why each of their subjects, Isi Leibler (1934) and Mark Leibler (1943), should be regarded as the pre-eminent Australian Jewish leaders of their generation. The brothers’ sense of competition as they championed Jewish causes together, as rivals, separately and in different lands, inevitably framed the question of who has contributed more while obscuring the value of their joint efforts and the overall worth of the duumvirate. On antiSemitism, Zionism, Soviet Jewry, Cold War analysis, and international diplomacy, particularly centred on the United Nations (both as a proactive forum for raising issues or as an anti-Israel collective in need of reform), their legacy has been farreaching, transcending parochial communal issues to speak of larger concerns. Indeed, they are both regarded as influential Jewish leaders internationally. Isi, who died in 2020, was an independent and acute observer of Israeli politics, earning his right to criticise by picking up sticks and living in Jerusalem since 1998; Mark continues to speak out on Indigenous rights and recognition, and is an ever-present voice fighting anti-Semitism and its anti-Israel proxy. (Introduction)