About Shai

Shai, our first child of four, brother to Tal, Netta and Noam, was born in Israel, Petach Tivka on October 11^th 1986, on Shabbat and two days before Yom Kippur.

We lived within walking distance of the hospital and on the morning of Shai’s birth, Shimshon walked to my mother’s home to give her the news; she had just become a grandmother to a healthy boy. I’ve always envied Shimshon for this moment shared with my mother, who said that when she heard Shimshon at the door she knew before she was told that there was a cause for tears of happiness.

I had been hoping all along that although she was in her final stages of cancer, she would be able to fulfil her wish to hold her first grandchild. Thankfully she did. She passed away on 20^th of Kislev, just before Chanukkah when Shai was two and a half months old.

Our firstborn was named on the first day of Sukkot. We named him Yossie, after my late father who had passed away on 11^th  Kislev. It was only after my mum passed away that we started thinking about names. We felt that there was an incompleteness, and we added his first name, Shai. We chose this name as it is an acronym for the names of my mother and father, Sharon and Yossie. Shai means gift in Hebrew. Unfortunately, we never thought this gift would not outlive us.

Three years later we immigrated to Wellington, New Zealand. Shai attended Play Centre, an early learning method of free play. He loved it as it allowed him to explore, create and play in a way that was not restricted to his age. Shai attended Moriah College for his primary years where his teacher pointed out to us that there were early signs of a deep, even unusual curiosity for a child of his age.

In 1996 we moved here to Melbourne. Shai attended Yavneh College and in his gentle, quiet way he acquired friends and made quite a mark academically, winning prizes in Jewish Studies, General Studies and Sports, especially athletics.

Shai attended Yeshiva College during his early high schools, but his best academic years started when he was accepted into Melbourne High in year 9. He came into his own: he met bright and quirky friends, he loved the intellectual stimulation, and he flourished. This lasted for one and a half years.

In the middle of year 10, at the age of sixteen, Shai was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease – which had a huge physical, emotional and mental toll. Shai made us keep it a secret and absolutely did not want it shared with his friends. Unfortunately, he did not respond well to treatments. By the time he reached year 12, he could barely make it to school and for his final year, he studied for most of his VCE subjects on his own. This included sitting his exams with a supervisor at home. Despite all this, Shai achieved an ENTER of 98 and received a full scholarship to The University of Melbourne to study biomedicine, which he undertook for five years, earning an honours degree and starting a PhD.

At the age of 23, Shai found the strength to travel around Fiji (his first holiday in over seven years), which he absolutely loved! The culture, the hiking, the sunshine, the people and the food all resonated strongly with him. But shortly after his return from Fiji, he was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukaemia. This was more than he could deal with, and it was not long after this that he abandoned his PhD research.

And so Shai began to drift. He moved out of home, and found comfort in the warmth of Brisbane. He lived on a farm, cared for horses and dogs and became connected to the wonders of nature. After a few years, he returned to Melbourne, experiencing life in different suburbs around the city. Shai was collecting experiences and interactions which were a source of wider and deeper understanding of humankind. [Emphasising that everything was adding to his knowledge] I have come to understand that unfortunately, he chose not to share his health issues with his flatmates. This was a very heavy load for him to carry on his own.

We tried to offer him help, and support his choices. It was hard to watch. As every parent would say: If I could take away his pain and suffering, I would do so in an instant. But unfortunately, as parents, we can’t always do that.

But I think I can say that despite his hardships, Shai could still find moments of joy in his life, like his 10-day, 250km hike on the Great Southern Walk, camping in Wilson’s Prom, watching clouds, studying paintings by Turner, reading Moby Dick, studying Gemara at the Kolel, tutoring underprivileged kids in Dandenong, and visiting Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory.

His mind was deep and his thirst for knowledge constant. And we know that there is much we will continue to discover about Shai through his immense writings about that which he learned and explored, and about the experiences, the concepts, the understanding with which he engaged and which were so integral to his being.

Gift – he was our gift, and he left the world a gift of his own.

Nitza Marom
Melbourne, April 2019