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From one Australian deli, he built a shopping empire. His parents taught him what to do with its riches.
I first learned about Sir Frank Lowy at the Australian Museum in Sydney. Alongside an opalized plesiosaur skeleton and a 19th-century rug made of 75 platypus skins, there was a brief account of a Czechoslovakian Holocaust survivor who went on to become Australia’s richest man. It was a bizarre way to discover that the origins of the ubiquitous Westfield shopping malls lay in the Levi family from the tiny pre-War Jewish community of Fiľakovo on the Hungarian/Slovakian border.
In 2018, Sir Frank sold the company he ran with his three sons David, Peter and Steven and moved to Israel. At that point, Queen Elizabeth II had already made Lowy a Knight Bachelor and Australia’s Governor-General had appointed him Companion of the Order of Australia, Australia’s highest honor. Then, in 2024, as Lowy was receiving Israel’s highest civilian award, the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor, a production marketing team was charged with making a short introductory film about him.
Over the next year, that film grew into To Be a Jew: Frank Lowy in his own words, a new feature-length documentary by Sarit Asnapi. A film about one of Australia’s most successful businessmen could easily have become an inventory of 50 years of deals. Asnapi, known for My Sister’s Keeper (2023) about the ultra-Orthodox community, though, frames the film using the attacks of Oct. 7 that deeply affected Lowy. Talking to me, he teared up at the thought of his young relatives who were brutally murdered at Kibbutz Be’eri, comparing them to his Slovakian cousins murdered in the Shoah. Asnapi shows what Pinchas “Frantisek” Levi — the boy who lost his father in the Holocaust — carried into Frank Lowy’s later life.
When I met him in his New York apartment overlooking Central Park, Lowy told me about an episode during the war that didn’t quite make it to the film. While his older siblings illegally worked around Budapest, he and his mother were relatively safe, though hungry, in the international ghetto. At midnight, his brother sometimes brought food to the building where they were living so that Frank, then a boy, could carry the parcel upstairs to the crowded apartment. His mother would open it, set it out on the table, and invite everyone to eat.
“I protested,” Lowy told me. There were perhaps 30 people in a flat intended for three or four, and he could see how little food they had. What, he wanted to know, would they eat tomorrow?
“Tomorrow, God will provide.” his mother told him.
Lowy, who is now a spry 95, about to turn 96, built and sold Westfield, the shopping center company whose name is familiar to millions of Americans; helped remake Australian soccer; and founded major synagogues and think tanks in both Australia and Israel. But when he describes the principle behind his philanthropy, he returns to that apartment: “When you have a little, give a little. When you have a lot, give a lot.”
We began, though, with soccer. I’m a Leeds United supporter and his son Peter is now a director of the club. Lowy’s connection to the game goes back much further: to Fiľakovo, where his father took him to watch the local team on Sundays. On a return visit years later, Lowy sought out the spot by the field where his father Hugo, who was murdered in Auschwitz, had sat.
Lowy, his mother and his siblings survived. After the war, he went to Palestine, fought in Israel’s War of Independence and, in 1952, reunited with his family in Australia. He told me that on his first weekend in Sydney, he was back at a soccer ground, watching Hakoah, the Jewish club founded by immigrants on the model of the legendary Austrian team, Hakoah Vienna.
Years after that first Sunday at Hakoah, Lowy — who was president of the club from 1969-to-1988 — was asked to help overhaul Australian football. The sport had devoted supporters, but it was a “Volksport” where clubs often carried the national identities and rivalries of immigrant communities. Lowy recalled matches at which hostility in the stands overwhelmed what was happening on the field. He wanted a league that those communities could enjoy together with the rest of Australia.
After being approached by the Australian premier to transform the sport in that country, Lowy led the national governing body from 2003 to 2015. Under his chairmanship, the A-League began in 2005 with Australian city clubs taking over from the Macedonian, Italian, Croatian, Jewish, and other clubs that had preceded them. As well as refashioning the league, Lowy helped the “Socceroos” national team take on a pan-Australian character. With “the kick that united a nation,” John Aloisi’s successful penalty against Uruguay meant that Australia qualified for the 2006 World Cup, its first appearance in 32 years. It was a moment that transformed soccer’s standing in Australia from a niche sport into a mainstream powerhouse.
Soccer isn’t just a hobby for Lowy. In the wake of December 2025’s Bondi Beach massacre, he wrote to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism, suggesting the same principles he used to change the profile of the sport as a potential solution to the blight of rising antisemitism in the country.
He does not pretend that running a league supplies a complete answer to hatred. He does believe that people can change the public life of a country by building institutions, speaking openly and refusing to retreat.
“In soccer, we didn’t try to take people’s ethnic identity away; we worked to stop the expression of ethnic conflict in public. Similarly, it is probably not possible to eradicate a dislike of Jews, but it is possible to help people understand why, in Australian society, the public outpouring of this aversion is not right.”
The persistence of soccer in Lowy’s life fascinated me. So did the contrast between Hakoah, a place where immigrants could keep something of their old lives, and the more broadly Australian game Lowy later helped build. He did not see a contradiction. His early businesses had already taught him what could happen when people from different places found a reason to gather.
After finding factory work on arrival in a burgeoning immigrant Australia, Lowy took a job making sandwiches. Soon, he and fellow immigrant John Saunders opened a delicatessen in the Western Sydney suburb of Blacktown. “The delicatessen was very successful because we were the only ones that were selling continental goods,” he told me, “And the Russians, the Slovaks, and all the people that came were hungry for that. Because in Australia, then, a sandwich meant white bread, a slice of cheese, and white bread on top of it.” So their customers included Europeans from all over, who missed the food they had known before emigrating. The partners bought “Australia’s second espresso machine” and Lowy remembers the Italian workers queuing for coffee on Sunday mornings
One afternoon, an acquaintance told Lowy he was building shops nearby. Lowy, as he avers is the case throughout his career, was “aware and alert.” How does what I observe affect me? What can I do about it? With whom can I take action? So he went back inside and asked Saunders a question that would recur throughout our conversation: Why don’t we do the same? They began with a few shops in Sydney. In 1959, they opened their first proper shopping center in Australia, and in 1977, their first shopping center in America – in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Lowy describes this habit of noticing an opening, then acting on it, as “active optimism.” It is an appealing phrase, though his version has less to do with expecting things to turn out well and more to do with moving into an area and being open to pivot with partners to change goals and maximize success. He spoke of watching for dangers as closely as opportunities, and of the financial crises the company had to survive. He also spoke with unusual ease about the help he received: Saunders, bankers who stood by the business, and colleagues he chose well. “Alone you cannot succeed,” he said.
Lowy is similarly unwilling to make his Jewishness less visible for the comfort of others. He told me that he objected when newspapers called him a “Jewish businessman” in stories where another man’s religion would never have appeared. He wanted to be known as a businessman on the same terms as anyone else. At the same time, wanted no one to mistake who he was.
“I carried the Jewish flag,” he told me. Does he still? “All the time.”
For all his talk of building things, Lowy’s memories of Jewish life begin with what his parents did for people who had little power. Before the war, traveling Jews looking for money far from home in Poland or Carpathia would often sleep for free in the synagogue. On Friday nights, the rabbi would see whether any heads of household would take them in for meals. Lowy remembers that his father would bring these travelers home, and even seat them at the head of the family table, even when other hosts might have put them in the kitchen.
He founded the Lowy Institute, an international policy organization to combat what he saw as Australian isolation. By providing world class, original “policy-relevant research from an Australian perspective,” it can bring Australia into international conversations. Sometimes, that means bringing world leaders to speak in Sydney, or by convening meetings across the world under an Australian umbrella.
In a similar vein, in 2006, he became chairman of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, one of the world’s leading security think tanks. He described his private support for Jewish causes, including Holocaust commemoration, Tel Aviv University and the Australian Jewish Communal Appeal (JCA) as something he learned at home, from those meals and from the coins his mother put into a Jewish National Fund box at their home on Fridays.
The documentary follows Lowy as he reflects on nearly a century of Jewish life and visits communities devastated by the Oct. 7 attacks. Its title sounds definitive, but, when we spoke, Lowy was still working out what he wanted people to take from the film. He hoped some might follow his example in giving to others. He hoped, too, that telling a Jewish story openly might do some good.
Near the end of our conversation, Lowy said he was “a Jew, body and soul, Israeli on top of it.” After his journeys to Budapest, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Trumbull and New York, it was a strikingly simple account of himself. I thought again of the boy carrying food up the stairs, anxious about tomorrow, and of his mother setting a place for everyone anyway.
His mother and his father had both shown young Pinchas how to take pride in sharing food with strangers but it took an adult Frank Lowy to bring diverse people together at a massive scale no matter what their differences: whether it was through food at a deli, politics at a think tank, crowds at soccer games, or shoppers at malls across the world.
To Be a Jew: Frank Lowy in his own words, will screen at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan on Sept. 29, and there will be a Q&A with Sir Frank Lowy afterwards.
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Photos: Pro-Israel counter-protesters overwhelm anti-Zionist bike rally in Philadelphia, where police arrest 3
Hundreds of pro-Israel counter-protesters gathered around Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square Sunday morning ahead of a bike rally targeting six Jewish-owned restaurants. There were about 300 anti-Zionist protesters and about 200 pro-Israel counterprotesters, police estimated. Rally organizers said the timing — just before the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Nazis attacked Jewish shops and homes — was coincidental.
Three people were arrested Sunday, according to police. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, said a few hours after the crowd had dispersed, “In the midst of blatant antisemitic targeting of Jewish-owned restaurants on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the City of Brotherly Love showed up to support our neighborhood businesses and prove once again that hate has no place in our Commonwealth.”
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Israel’s President Herzog tasks Gadi Eisenkot with forming Israel’s next government
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Sunday formally tasked Gadi Eisenkot with forming the next government, nearly two weeks after the country held a national election and days after a majority of parliamentary factions said they would recommend Eisenkot as the next prime minister.
“Yashar Leader Gadi Eisenkot, I expect you to do everything in your power to establish a government that will serve the entire people, those who supported it and those who did not, and that will be a responsible and decent address for all sectors, faiths, ways of life, and worldviews,” Herzog said in a televised ceremony held at his residence in Jerusalem.
Eisenkot has up to six weeks to assemble a coalition, a step that typically includes at least 61 seats out of 120 in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. If he fails to do so within that time, then the president can give another Knesset member the opportunity to form a government.
In his speech on Sunday, Eisenkot said that Israeli democracy was “at one of its most vulnerable moments.”
“The campaign to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy, together with the growing distrust in state institutions, fueled daily, has brought us to an extremely dangerous point,” he said, adding that continuing on this path Israel would reach the “point of no return.”
“The formal consultations held here, at the President’s Residence, have revealed a clear picture: an absolute majority of Knesset members, representing the Israeli public, support change and support me as prime minister,” he said.
Some 67 members of the Knesset recommended Eisenkot, a former IDF chief of staff, for prime minister during those consultations. Meanwhile, 46 members of Knesset recommended incumbent Prime Minister and Likud Leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. One faction, United Torah Judaism, with seven members of Knesset, refrained from recommending any candidate.
The consultations, Herzog said, “brought to the surface the disputes, the painful points, and of course, the multitude of voices within Israeli society and politics.”
He added that the differences “reminded us all that every citizen of Israel has an equal voice, from every side, every view, every way of life, and every faith.”
Eisenkot said he would work to bridge those divisions and attempt to form a national emergency government, even if it required “creative and unconventional political initiatives.”
For his part, Netanyahu has urged Eisenkot to join him in an emergency national unity government that will keep Israel strong against ongoing threats.
Eisenkot has responded that the “national emergency government” he will form will comprise the “four Zionist parties” of the change bloc – his own Yashar Party, B’Yachad headed by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beitenu Party and the Democrats under Yair Golan.
He also said he would welcome “parties and Knesset members who support Yashar’s four principles” to join the coalition.
At the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Sunday, Eisenkot said he would be sending out formal invitations as soon as possible “to every Knesset faction, calling on all their members, both as parties and as individuals, to take part in forming the government and bringing it to its swearing-in.”
“The rule is simple,” he added. “If you are prepared to sign on to the four principles I have set out, you are potential partners in a national emergency government under my leadership.”
Throughout his campaign, and particularly since the Oct. 27 election, Eisenkot has emphasized these four principles as the basis for forming the next government.
1) Recognition of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
Eisenkot wants to define his coalition as a government that is committed to Israel’s Jewish national identity and to democracy, not simply an alliance united by opposition to Netanyahu.
Any party wanting to join must accept Israel’s identity as the national home of the Jewish people first. The requirement has historically been contentious for Israel’s two Arab parties, who represent 19 Knesset members.
Parties must also accept the country’s democratic institutions, which uphold equality and rights for all citizens and prioritize the rule of law.
This means parties, such as the far-right and the ultra-Orthodox, that, as members of the outgoing government, have been pushing to overhaul the country’s judiciary – a key institution in Israel’s system of democratic checks and balances – might think twice about joining.
2) Acceptance of the values of the Declaration of Independence.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence, proclaimed and signed on May 14, 1948, is a foundational document that has helped shape the country’s constitutional principles, although Israel does not have a single, formal written constitution.
In it, the signatories laid out their vision for Israel, including the historical ties the Jewish people have to the land of Israel and its place as a safe haven for Jews around the world who are in trouble.
For Eisenkot, the emphasis appears to be on one particular section that declares: “The State of Israel will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens, irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; and it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
By embracing the Declaration of Independence, Eisenkot is recognizing the place of Israel’s minority groups, highlighting their “full and equal citizenship.” A point mentioned twice in the declaration.
The declaration also reaffirms that Israel is a country seeking peace, rather than endless conflict, at a time when Netanyahu has recently been criticized over his handling of the country’s wars on multiple fronts.
3) Mandatory service for all — military, national, and civilian, to strengthen the IDF and expand its ranks.
Including this condition for joining the government is a direct message to the ultra-Orthodox parties, at least one of which is considering supporting Eisenkot’s coalition.
United Torah Judaism, which has been aligned closely with Netanyahu’s bloc for at least the past two decades, on Thursday refused to recommend the prime minister as Israel’s next leader. Instead, the party, which holds seven seats, abstained from recommending any candidate.
Both UTJ and the second ultra-Orthodox party, Shas, have resisted efforts that would include ultra-Orthodox young men studying in yeshiva under a universal draft law requiring all eligible Israelis to perform military service.
Previous exemption laws have expired, and Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s blanket exemption of yeshiva students from military service has no legal basis and violates principles of equality before the law.
By including this condition, Eisenkot is telling the ultra-Orthodox – and even the Arab community, most of whose members are also exempt from mandatory military service – that everyone in Israel must do their part, whether through military service or some type of national or community service.
This stipulation could either keep the ultra-Orthodox out of the government, even though Eisenkot’s partners have expressed willingness to allow their participation. Or it could force them to be more flexible on an issue that until now they have appeared unrelenting.
4) Recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organization and commitment to dismantling its military and governing power.
Leaders of the two Arab parties, the Islamist Ra’am Party and the more nationalist Joint List, have refused to make this statement out loud.
Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas, who has repeatedly condemned the Oct. 7 attack, has said he does have a clear position on this but refuses to state it publicly for several reasons ranging from concerns about his personal safety to his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas is also affiliated. He has also questioned why Arab politicians are required to pass loyalty tests that are not applied equally to Jewish politicians.
When President Herzog pressed him on the matter last week, Abbas said: “I have an unequivocal answer, but leave me space to be a bridge. To also influence the other side.” He argued that maintaining channels of communication with Palestinians requires him not to adopt language that would immediately alienate them.
For the Joint List, the continued refusal to call Hamas a terror group appears to reflect the view that Hamas is part of the broader Palestinian political movement. Some of its members argue that labeling it a terrorist organization risks delegitimizing Palestinian political aspirations as a whole.
Members of the 11-member faction have condemned the Oct. 7 massacre, but are unlikely to accept this particular condition because it could be used to justify Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank. Its leaders also want to preserve their credibility among Palestinian voters, many of whom see the conflict through the lens of occupation and Palestinian national rights.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Boy George’s Tel Aviv concert was not perfect. For the crowd, that was beside the point
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Sound problems, guitar trouble and an admission of forgotten lyrics punctuated Boy George’s second Tel Aviv show Saturday night. But the British pop star, irreverent, occasionally exasperated and frequently hilarious, could hardly have asked for a more forgiving audience.
At 65, the Culture Club frontman is no longer the chart-topping phenomenon of the 1980s. Although plenty of those who filled Menora Mivtachim Arena were old enough to remember his heyday firsthand, his appeal went well beyond nostalgia.
At a time when international stars have largely stayed away from Israel, George has become one of the country’s most outspoken supporters, enduring considerable backlash from within the music industry for his refusal to remain silent over the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
“Silence is not a f—ing option,” he said to thunderous applause.
Saturday’s concert, the second of two nearly sold-out performances following Wednesday’s show at the same venue, was dedicated to survivors of the Nova music festival massacre and bereaved families, with 1,500 tickets donated to members of the community. Israeli DJ and producer Ofer Nissim joined George onstage in the second half, bringing a dance-club element to an evening that mixed Culture Club classics, covers and newer material.
His habit of mocking himself and mimicking others repeatedly drove the crowd to laughter, turning interruptions that might have derailed a slicker performance into part of the entertainment.
The banter ranged from wisecracks about technical glitches to personal reflections on the hostility he has encountered over his support for Israel. When a guitar failed to produce any sound, he appeared mildly irritated, telling the crew, “You have to plug things in, you know.”
“This is a weird moment,” he added, before smiling and continuing, “but this whole night has been a weird moment.”
Introducing his cover of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” he explained that he had attempted it on Wednesday but forgotten the lyrics. “Luckily, this time I have autocue,” he said, breaking into his trademark laugh.
As for his detractors around the world, he made clear that he had little interest in winning them over.
“I’m 65. It’s too late to hate me, I don’t give a s–t,” he told the audience.
The one person’s opinion that mattered to him, he said, was his late mother’s. Recalling an Irishman who had suggested that his Irish mother would be ashamed of his support for Israel, given Ireland’s strong sympathy for the Palestinian cause, George was defiant.
“I can tell you categorically my mother will be more proud of me than she’s ever been,” he said.
In another characteristically unpredictable diversion, George dedicated his solo release “Clouds” to Philip Sallon, a longtime Jewish friend and influential figure in London’s club scene who helped introduce him to Jewish traditions when he was young.
The two have since fallen out. “He hates my guts right now,” George said, asking anyone who knew Sallon to tell him that he had sung the song for him in Israel as an act of forgiveness, “as a mitzvah.”
But the evening’s most emotional moments belonged to “We Will Dance Again,” the song George released in July about the Nova attack. Its lyrics explicitly reference the atrocities committed on Oct. 7, criticize fellow musicians for their silence and challenge accusations of genocide against Israel.
George’s eight-day visit included a meeting with President Isaac Herzog and a trip to the Nova massacre site near Kibbutz Re’im, where Hamas terrorists murdered more than 360 festivalgoers on Oct. 7, 2023.
Having visited Israel many times before, he told the audience that this trip had affected him differently. He also appeared uneasy about the gratitude being lavished on him.
“It’s awkward for me as an outsider to be in the midst of this amazing recovery and sadness,” he said.
Survivors of the Nova massacre and relatives of those murdered joined George onstage carrying Israeli flags for “We Will Dance Again.”
George, having changed into a colorful, geometric-print suit and rhinestone-studded black hat, performed the reggae-inflected song about one of the most traumatic events in Israeli history while embracing the survivors and bereaved relatives beside him.
At one point, he seemed close to tears. “I’m going to cry,” he said.
But even the solemnity didn’t last long. When George invited one of the bereaved women to address the crowd, she demurred because she didn’t speak English.
“I’ve never met a Jewish person who doesn’t have anything to say,” he joked, drawing laughter and applause from the crowd.
In the audience, people swayed to lyrics that included an explicit reference to girls raped against trees. Kay, a singer from Tel Aviv, remained seated, tears in her eyes.
“I can’t dance to that,” she said.
Yet she was deeply moved by George and the atmosphere surrounding the performance, and was untroubled by its hiccups.
“It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be human, and that’s what connects us,” she said.
Tammy, a 60-year-old dance instructor who regularly plays Culture Club songs in her classes, hadn’t initially intended to attend. But after seeing footage of George’s Wednesday performance, she changed her mind.
“I saw the clips on social media and was jealous of people who went,” she said.
Lavie, a 24-year-old Israeli-born performer who divides his time between New York and Los Angeles, had never heard of Boy George before the singer began making headlines in Israel. He started studying his music ahead of the concert, hoping to learn from the veteran entertainer’s stagecraft.
“I learned a lot,” he said toward the end of the performance. “What impressed me most was how he handled all the glitches with grace and humor.”
Not everyone was quite so impressed.
Daniel, a Jaffa resident originally from Los Angeles, was scathing about the musical performance and even more critical of the audience’s reaction.
“Everyone was off-key, and it was just awful,” he said. “But what bothered me most was the crowd’s desperate need for approval.”
“We need a national therapy session to counter our neediness,” he added.
George saved “Karma Chameleon,” the 1983 hit that made him a household name around the world, for the finale. By then, the show had stretched to roughly two and a half hours, but thousands of people were still on their feet.
George contrasted the atmosphere in Israel with London, which he described as “full of anxiety and tension.”
“It feels so relaxed here,” he said. “I don’t want to go home.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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