Rabbi Gabbi Sar-Shalom

As a ‘tiny girl’, Gabbi Sar-Shalom thought she might like to be a cleaner, or a firewoman when she grew up; ‘something heroic’. Around her Bat Mitzvah, she changed tack and decided it would be ‘amazing’ to be a rabbi. She could study, give sermons, work for social justice, be present at people’s meaningful ceremonies; do all the things she wanted to do. ‘What an honour to be present at those times,’ she thought.

She is now what she wanted to be when she grew up, becoming a rabbi after many years of juggling work, study, family commitments, community obligations and, of course, responding to the patriarchal structures with which organised religion challenges women who want to enter that space. Once her mind was set, she couldn’t even do rabbinical studies near her home; she had to travel overseas to do so. And, paradoxically, because she was brought up in a progressive household, has chosen to work within a conservative spiritual context - ‘I think the traditional values contain too many good ideas to let go of’ – she is still not able to use her title in the synagogue. ‘But in a way that is just an ego question,’ she says. ‘Let me do the work that a rabbi does and I’ll just wait. It works well for me now.’

The way it works for Rabbi Sar-Shalom now is a balancing act that seems to function well. She is Coordinator of Pastoral and Spiritual care at Caulfield Hospital; a part time role where she works to meet the spiritual and religious needs of patients, their families and staff while overseeing a multi-faith team of clergy and volunteers with different levels of training. She also works in pastoral care at the Ark Centre, a modern orthodox synagogue in East Hawthorn. She is completing a graduate certificate in supervision of pastoral care part-time (‘I wanted to upskill and get professional so that I can supervise the volunteers I work with effectively and assist other professionals’). With her husband, she cares for her family of young children and, to a lesser extent, parents. ‘I have the joy and responsibility of being in the capable generation,’ she says, ‘and I have the advantage of being healthy and the energy resources that come with that’.

Informed by her relationship with God, being part of the (young) ‘capable generation’, and working across a broad multi-faith community, Gabbi is a young woman leader with a positive outlook. ‘I think, generally, people want good for each other more than not. They are good more than not,’ she says. ‘But you have to look at nature to see that the world is full and overflowing and we don’t need to fight over resources. Life is challenging enough, let us look at what we have to give and receive, to and from each other and let’s enjoy it.’

In Gabbi’s opinion, embracing and empowering women’s religious leadership is vital to fulfilling this promising outlook:

I think there has been a lot of damage done because God has been imagined as a male. The kind of patriarchy set up in my religion has been harmful. We need more presence of female religious leadership that looks for female names for God, female expressions of God. God as nurturer, as carer, as loving; God as possessing typically feminine qualities that also reside in men. I think all genders can benefit from exploring the feminine.

Family and background

I was born in Melbourne in 1977. I’ve got one younger brother who now lives in Sydney, but we both grew up in Melbourne, in the suburb of Burwood. My father didn’t want us to live in a mono-cultural community; he saw that the world was a big place and we wanted to make sure we did too. A lot of our social life revolves around the Sabbath, so it is easier to have friends who understand the prayers and the traditions around this. But both my parents encouraged friendships beyond the Jewish community, as we do for our children.

My father was a social worker and my mother was a teacher. I think being a rabbi is probably a combination of both! My mother was head of English at Mount Scopus and was there for many years. My children call her ‘Super Nanna’ because she works very hard and still has time for all her family.

My father was born in England, and before that, the family was from Russia and Poland, a long way back. But I’m seventh generation Australian on my mother’s side; I think of myself as very Aussie. My grandfather, Alwyn Samuel, was a pilot in World War 2. He was in the RAAF and he was quite celebrated. He was in a crash where, sadly, two of his crew died but he was able to get out of the wreckage and was awarded for his bravery. So ANZAC day was a big deal for my family; we felt a connection to the Australianness of it.

Being from a Jewish family established in Australia for a long time meant that my upbringing was different from other Jewish kids in my group. For a start, all my friend’s grandparents had European accents and mine sounded like Aussies. They were Nana and Papa, not Bubba and Zaida. There was a lot less talk about the Holocaust in our family because my family was not directly affected. My grandfather was a pilot so we were on the side of the allies, fighting, but we were not amongst the victims. I could not directly relate to the stories of pogroms and anti-Semitism, but I was a sensitive soul and remember not wanting to hear stories of the Holocaust. But you can’t help but learn about the Holocaust and its legacy in this community. It has affected me all through my life.

What’s in a name?

My mother was sure I was going to be a boy and my name was going to be Gidon; a beautiful name. It took my Mum a while to get over the fact that I wasn’t born with the eternal experience of being a boy! She was a tomboy and she wanted to raise one too.

So my parents called me Gavrah which apparently means the Lord is my rock. But I didn’t like it; I thought it sounded too much like the word for man In Hebrew. So I legally changed it to Gabbi. I thought it was kind of similar; it has a similar root in Hebrew. I thought Gabbi and Gavrah were close enough. So my name before I got married was Gabbi Field.

I always thought when I was growing up that I would not take my husband’s name. Why should I take his name? But my husband’s name Sar-Shalom means Minister of Peace. I thought, ‘That is a beautiful name.’ It was meant to be.

School and growing up

My parents weren’t super wealthy but they prioritised education for their kids and we were educated at a progressive junior school at King David. I then went on to Mount Scopus for senior school. We got an orthodox education and were regular attendees at a progressive synagogue. I was a member of Netzer, a progressive youth movement.

I took on leadership roles at school and at the youth movement. I was elected onto the Mount Scopus SRC and other little things. In junior school I joined a friend who raised funds for the RSPCA. Through that I saw that people want to help and they want to do the right thing; they just need an opportunity. In the youth movement, they would train you to be young leaders. I learned how to run a discussion, ice breakers, how to help people get to know each other. I also went to Canberra to talk to politicians about Judaism!

I enjoyed the academic side of school. I was a good student, but I always thought of myself as the worst of the best, or the best of the worst. I always felt like I was struggling when I moved up. I was pleased with my final results until I heard what other people got! Comparisons to other people is natural human behaviour but it can only lead to bad consequences unless you are mature enough to handle them!

Feminism, Judaism and growing up

I think that both of my parents would have said they were feminists. I certainly grew up hearing men and women are equal, men and women are the same, Women can do anything men can do… which isn’t a model I like so much. I am in a more nuanced place with that now. I prefer the model where each individual works out who they want to be in the world and has equity of opportunity to figure that out. I don’t think I had that.

I certainly didn’t have it at Mount Scopus. There was a difference of treatment gender wise around the Bar Mitzvah time. The boys got to go to the synagogue and learn the Torah and so on. I was also learning to read from the Torah but I was doing it at home. At school there was no opportunity for that. I was also learning how to run a synagogue service outside of school education

Instead, all the Scopus girls did a Bat Mitzvah pageant where we had to wear white dresses and dance and sing – because that’s all girls could do! To their credit I think that has changed. There are now opportunities for girls to do more in-depth studies of the scriptures at school.

At school, I did advanced Jewish studies. There were one or two girls in the class and eight or nine boys. It was OK as long as there was one other girl in class. I was certainly the loudest reformed Jew there, but people weren’t too warm and welcoming of it! The Jewish community here is mainly traditional but not orthodox.

Higher education and Judaism

Once I finished school I knew I wanted to go in the direction of being a rabbi, but I didn’t know what to study first. To become a rabbi you can’t go straight to rabbinical school, you have to do it as a graduate student. It would have made sense for me to do an arts degree in Jewish history or an education degree. But because I didn’t know what to do I listened to a person at the synagogue who told me about a new multimedia degree Monash University was offering at their Berwick Campus in 1998. I spent three years learning that I needed to do a job where I was interacting with people more than computers. But it also taught me that content is king. That’s important. You can’t put information out that isn’t meaningful and informative.

While I was studying, I maintained a continuous connection with Jewish spiritual life and learning. I was working, and involved In Netzer doing youth movement stuff. I taught Sunday school at the synagogue I grew up with. I read a lot of stories about American Jews who were cynical about Judaism and who travelled to India and found Buddhism and then met up with a Jewish leader who taught them that it was all in their own religion. So I decided to skip all that stuff and just learn about comparative religion. This has taught me that there are some differences and there is beauty in other religions that I’d like to explore. For instance, Hindu temples look so attractive, synagogues lack some of that uplifting intention that adoration of the divine can bring out in us. But I also think there is much beautiful wisdom in my own texts and the sages of my own faith tradition. If I had infinitive time and space I would love to learn and embrace everything, but I preferred to go deep into my own tradition.

I spent 2001 in Israel, which was a tough year, given the politics of the world at the time after 9/11. But it was a fantastic year. I was independent and able to figure out what I could do. It was very formational. I decided I would do rabbinical studies in the US.

There was no comparable place for me to do the study in Australia, as a woman. There probably never will be because of the size of the population here. You need the interested parties. While there are more women who want to follow the course I did now than there were when I started, there still aren’t enough to make it viable.

There are rabbinical studies colleges in Melbourne. There’s one just down the road from where I live. But it’s an orthodox college – and the orthodox community has very different understandings of the roles of men and women in the community than do progressive communities. They don’t think that women need to learn about the intricacies about laws and Talmudic text beyond those that affect them directly. Why would women need to do this? While they believe that women can and should learn, that learning is to help them to fulfil their internal place. So leaders in the orthodox community would say that there is no reason for you to study here. It’s not how God created women to be in any case. They are the same arguments the Christian denominations have run for eons.

So I returned to Australia in 2002, did some work at Adelphi hotel in accounts waiting for the US academic year to start in September. I packed up my life in Australia, saying my goodbyes as I prepared for five years in the US.

I began my studies in 2002 at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, now called the AJU; the American Jewish University. I loved being saturated in the Jewish community. I thought I would be the most exotic person there, until I met a male student from Uganda!

About halfway through my degree, my life switched direction again when I met the man who would be my husband. We moved to Israel, where he finished his degree and I transferred to online studies. While that was going on, I was working, and then I was having children. I was surprised by how much having children impacted upon my mind space to carry on studying. I did keep studying but it was much more demanding. It made finishing the studies much more of a challenge. In the end, it took me ten years to complete my studies instead of five.

Combining work and family

I am a rabbi, but I decided not to work in the pulpit space while I have little children. The years between nought and seven are crucial in the development of children and I see my decision as a form of prevention of problems later in life. Kids don’t get enough attention. Adults don’t get enough attention. I am trying to rectify this in my nuclear family. I want to be the Mum that is present. I didn’t want to outsource it and that’s the trade-off. If I was a rabbi full-time at a congregation I would be expected to be available at night and weekends. It’s probably a big disappointment to some people that I am not out there and rabbi-ing. But what works for me might change as life changes. At the moment, what I’m doing now works for me and my immediate family.

The vision I would want to see actualised is that everyone has the opportunity to find their own way. So if a woman wants to have ten children and raise them at home, then that is revered. Likewise, the person who doesn’t want to have children can be career focused. I want people to have real freedom to do what is going to work for their situation without being judged.

However, I think there need to be some shifts for there to be real freedom of choice. Many of my male counterparts of a similar age have super supportive wives at home who take on the child raising and are also being prepared to have husbands who are absent a lot. Male rabbis have the support built in. Female rabbis might attain some balance but only if men come closer to women on all levels. They are becoming domesticated. Younger men know how to cook and clean. They know it isn’t necessarily the woman’s role. Men being present at birth is the start to co-parenting.

Observations on gender, youth, Judaism and public life

Ours is a complex community and religious practice is the last bastion of male territory. Even if people are progressive there is a strong view that religious life should be orthodox. There is a strong sense of the value of tradition in Judaism. There is a feeling that some would rather say no to religious practice, rather than to update it so that it makes sense, or reflect trends in outside society. So it leads to some really strange situations where you might have an orthodox woman who is a lawyer or partner in a law form but when it comes to Jewish practice she will still stay at home with the kids so that the husband can go to the synagogue. And people are starting to say, well this is a bit ridiculous! So now you might see more women on boards in orthodox institutions. There might even be a woman president of a synagogue, but not a rabbi.

The orthodox community is struggling a little bit in this area to resolve gender politics outside and inside religious practise. People are starting to say ‘well why does it makes sense that women can learn this but you can’t call them a rabbi at the end of it? Why can a woman run the shul… she can stand up to make announcements but she can’t read from the scriptures?’

There are also women who don’t want to have these sorts of ambitions anyway. In some parts of the orthodox community there are a lot of women who think their lives are full enough. Why would you go to synagogue when you are not obligated to go? Why would you read the Torah when you can get away with not doing it? So, it’s not like women are sitting around doing nothing else, waiting to take on more.

So people will come to things on their own. But, I do think some things have to change, if we don’t want people to walk away from religious practice entirely because it doesn’t seem relevant. I think we need women’s voices involved in the conversation. That’s the only way you effect things on the bigger picture. More women see that if they want to change things, they have to be part of the conversation, they have to get involved.

We need to find ways of including my generation in conversations about Jewish communal and religious life. Young Jewish leaders are looking to reframe our narrative of community to a more multicultural one, so that we rely less on the narrative of victimhood and more upon seeing the gifts that we have to enlighten ourselves and others. We are a people who have our particular stories and texts and culture and music and so on and for me, it is part of the richness of humanity. I want to see where we can move to as a community, not because we are afraid and feel we have to stick together or someone will attack us, but because of the beauty in our religion.

As part of this process, we need women’s voices in spiritual spaces. I think women’s leadership can bring people back to religion and spirituality. Women are naturally very joyful. When we are at our most powerful we are in our bodies. We bring presence to our spiritual lives. We like circles - we are drawn metaphorically in circles. When we are facing each other, we see the beauty of the person in front of us, and we can see the face of God!

We also need to find women’s voices in the religious texts. A lot of the texts are delivered in a male centric kind of way and I try to show them differently. There are some beautiful books, the five books of Miriam that retell a lot of the stories from a possible female perspective, so I like to read them and teach them and think of my own versions of them. Where are the women’s voices? The texts that I choose to read or share will show the wisdom of women. We have a lot of prophets; Deborah was one of them and I might like to focus on her. Or, Esther who is a real hero. I have done prayers in the past where I use female God language.

Having said that, in the place that I am at the moment, I don’t want to be known only as a woman and a feminist. I think that actually limits me. I don’t want people to look at me and say, ‘Oh she’s going to go on and say ‘let’s have the girls read from the Torah’’. I want them to see me. I don’t want to get pigeonholed as a woman in any role.

I’m hard to pigeonhole in any case. My kids are at an ultra-orthodox school, I work for a modern orthodox synagogue. My rabbinic training was in the Conservative movement, Renewal movement and Jewish Universalist movement. My upbringing was in the Progressive movement and I was also in the Conservative synagogue for many years. I like the Jewish Humanist prayers too. So there is a whole gamut of identities there.

I’m part of a generation that doesn’t want to be in a box. I just like to be a child of the universe. I want to be connected to all people.

Rabbi Gabbi Sar-Shalom was interviewed by Dr Nikki Henningham on 11 May 2018 for the She Speaks project. PHOTO: Leigh Henningham