Published: 9 November 2026
Last updated: 9 November 2026
When Moshe first went to Gamblers Anonymous (GA), he chose a meeting in Prahran, a couple of suburbs away from Melbourne’s Jewish heartland because he did not want to bump into anyone he knew.
It didn’t work: the first person he saw was Jewish, and they knew each other. But the difficulty in being anonymous did not put him off.
He remembers feeling that his choices had narrowed to trying to fix his life or suicide. “There was no more money I could steal,” he says.
Despite being an Orthodox Jew, Moshe, a pseudonym, found himself gambling on Shabbat and even on Yom Kippur.
He stopped gambling in January 2005. More than 21 years later, he still attends at least two GA meetings a week and also goes to Jews in Recovery, a group for people recovering from addictions including alcohol, drugs, smoking and food.
Gambling is a problem that cuts across all ethnicities and religions. While Jewish tradition frowns on gambling, research has shown gambling disorder among groups of ultra-Orthodox men in Israel. Some researchers have suggested gambling addiction is more common in tight communities than alcohol or drug addiction because it is easier to hide.
At a US conference on addiction in the Jewish community in 1986, psychiatrist Robert Custer claimed Jews made up about a quarter of American compulsive gamblers despite being less than three per cent of the population. But more recent research suggests Jewish gambling is more in line with the general population.
Recent research shows problem gambling is increasing sharply in Australia, with online betting making gambling more accessible and easier to hide.
