Joe Bobker was born in 1947 in Ulm, a displaced persons camp in Germany, to Polish Holocaust survivors Chaskel, of blessed memory, and Ida Bobker. On May 21, 1949, the family arrived in Sydney, Australia, on board the Luciano Marnaro liner as refugees from Adolf Hitler s reign of terror. The most searing influences on his Jewishness were his parents, two simple Yidden who saw over 131 family members turned into ashes by the genocidal Nazi war machine and yet never swayed from their beliefs. Their faith was clearer than vision. Mr. Bobker studied at the famed Mercaz HaRav Kook Yeshiva in Kiryat Moshe, Jerusalem. Over the years he has spoken frequently and is well known for his dozens of articles about Jews and Judaism in the 100-year-old Los Angeles Jewish Times, of which he was publisher and editor-in-chief. A prolific and creative writer, Bobker has covered a wide variety of Jewish subjects from a very personal, philosophical, erudite and witty perspective.

Since 1980, he has lived in Los Angeles and New York with his wife Miriam, a barrister from Melbourne, Australia, herself a child of Polish Holocaust survivors.