Romy Prins

Romy Prins is a qualified CPA and Chartered Accountant who has worked across a range of industry sectors, including government and corporate organisations. She is studying for Masters of Education, teaches tertiary level accounting at Monash University and is involved in teaching for the CPA. ‘I find comfort in numbers,’ she says. ‘I am at home in a spreadsheet’.

This comfort in numbers is part of the toolkit Romy takes to her volunteer work in Jewish communal organisations. She is particularly committed to reviving Emunah, a women’s organisation based in Israel that supports social welfare causes, including advocating on behalf of women and children. As a third generation member of the organisation (her grandmother and mother before her were also involved) she is concerned that it, like other Jewish communal organisations, will ‘fizzle out’ if more young, Jewish women don’t take up leadership opportunities. And while she doesn’t regard herself as a leader in this space (as treasurer at Emunah, ‘I am just a worker who works for the cause’) she is nevertheless committed to helping to shape an environment where women can ‘learn and develop as leaders as much as men can and as much as they want to do’. This commitment extends to involving orthodox Jewish women, who she sees as a largely untapped resource in Australia. ‘There are things that women in the orthodox community can’t do,’ she says, ‘but that doesn’t mean they can’t lead’.

Married, without children, but with significant family responsibilities, Romy juggles the competing demands of family, work and volunteering responsibilities with remarkable aptitude. She would like to increase her volunteering to include using her skills with numbers and teaching to work with women to improve their financial literacy. There are particular problems for women, beyond knowing that financial abuse is domestic abuse. ‘In ultra-orthodox communities,’ she says, ‘we have people on very low incomes trying to support very large families.’ She would like to help women better manage their lives through better managing their finances. But most of all she wants women to ‘be involved in community leadership in whatever capacity they want to be.’ For her, that means ‘just doing the work’.

It also means finding fresh approaches to attracting young people to get involved in communal organisations. ‘I am Jewish, young, modern orthodox and feel we have an issue with bringing younger Jewish women into leadership positions,’ she says. ‘I want to encourage and empower women to take them on, as part of a younger Jewish cohort in general.’

Growing up and family background

I was born in Melbourne in 1975 in the same neighbourhood where I live now. In fact, I have never moved outside a one and half mile radius of the house I lived in when I was born! I've lived in a tightly confined community my whole life. I’m the sandwich child between two brothers. We live in a one kilometre radius of each other. But my family was pretty much normal for the demographic of the area we lived in and the school I went to.

I know more about my father’s side of my family than I do about my mother’s. He was born in Havana, Cuba, but his parents grew up in Germany and Belgium and there are good records remaining in those countries. My mother was born here but her parents survived the Holocaust in Europe and were less inclined to talk about things. Because they were from Hungary, there were few surviving papers, too. But the fact that my grandfather had farm experience probably helped his successful application to immigrate to Australia. They had a party on the boat as they were coming to Australia. The conditions were bad, but it was better than what they had known before. There was food – limited – but at least there was food. The boat was filled with Jews and other migrants – they were part of the migrant wave in the post war period. Australia needed people and that’s what they got.

My Dad’s parents were married before the war. They had organised visas enabling to get them to the US. My grandfather was enlisted in the Belgian army but managed to escape – he was a boat person who made it to Cuba – and managed to bribe himself in. He didn’t have a passport because the army took them away upon enlistment. His parents and sister all had theirs. So they waited the war years out in Cuba and then when it was over they went to the Belgian Consulate to get their papers. They eventually made it into the US but struggled financially there. A relative in Australia offered them work to help them set up a business, so they came out here in the 1950s. They arrived in 1958.

My mother was the first woman in her family generation to get a Uni degree. She did a Bachelor of Commerce at Melbourne University and was offered a job at a big bank and then found out she was pregnant. So she didn’t go to work until I was in year 11 or 12.

My dad had a different upbringing. At the end of year 12 he went to work and studied accounting at night. He joined an accounting firm and eventually established his own business importing food where he worked until the family business was sold about 5 years ago. Part of Dad’s business was a hamper company and my mother managed that, which she loved.

I wouldn’t say I was brought up a feminist, so much as to be independent. My mother didn’t do paid work until I was quite old but she was very much into her having her own source of money. I was told ‘you should always work, and should have a little stash.’ Her mother’s mother – who had been widowed twice, enjoyed business. She was very much into ‘women should not be in the kitchen.’ My Dad’s mother was much more traditional. Her sole purpose in life was to serve my grandfather. He died twenty-six years ago and I have never once heard her say anything derogatory about him. He was the best person on the face of the earth. He worked two and a half jobs so that she could stay at home and look after her husband and her two boys. That’s what she wanted. She would not have wanted to go out and work. But my other grandmother would never have gone for that.

Education and Jewish identity

I graduated from a modern orthodox school called Leibler Yavneh College. There were forty in my class (twenty-five boys and fifteen girls) and we were basically the grandchildren of survivors; some from Iran via Singapore, some English, probably about ten who were had locally born grandparents amongst them. It was a predominantly migrant school. My parents were observant and orthodox at home, so me getting a Jewish education just fitted into the lifestyle and, for teaching me a way of life. Which is to say I identify as a Modern Orthodox Jew. I observe laws like keeping Sabbath, keeping kosher. But I still fit in the modern world. It isn’t as much of a compromise as some people think it is. I am able to be the Jew I want to be and still mix, be the Australian I want to be. I mix in the Australian and Jewish communities the way I want to. There is a lot of merit in being Jewish; a lot to be said about being part of the community and you don’t have to be orthodox to feel it.

There was no other school that would have fitted my needs in any case. I wasn’t into sport, arts and drama and I would have been lost in a bigger school. It never occurred to me to go to a non-Jewish school. I have chosen to remain modern orthodox. I enjoy my Jewish lifestyle. There is a sense of belongingness. I enjoyed that part of my schooling.

Outside of school, I belonged to the Bnei Akiva youth movement. I knew most of the boys in my circle in and outside of school; there would often be family meals together at the weekend! I confess that the boys in school could sometimes be a bit loud and domineering. Because there were so many of them, that could be a bit of a problem! And there still weren’t a lot of girls doing science in her class. If you were any good at numbers, it was assumed that you’d be good at science, which wasn’t really the case for me. I swapped out of the science subjects into commerce and did well in my final year, better than I would have if I’d kept with science.

I went on to study Commerce at Monash, after taking a gap year and going to Israel on a program run by Bnei Akiva. I graduated in 1996.

Career, working life and volunteering

After graduating, I took on a number of professional roles, including working in accounting firms, CPA Australia and for government in sustainability accounting. I’ve been lucky to enjoy different career options. Maybe my choices have been narrowed because I am a woman. I’m not sure because my professional work isn’t the top of my list of defining who I am. But I’ve never felt that I didn’t get a job because I am female. I’ve never felt like I got concussion because I was hitting my head against a glass ceiling.

The most important thing for me is being a kind, good person. I like to give back. I enjoy knowledge. Combining that with a profession is what I want to do. So volunteering makes sense in this context.

Taking a leadership role in my own community kind of fell on me. I’m the only one under the age of 50 who has ever shown much of an interest in Emunah, which is kind of fizzling out because most young people see it as an old persons auxiliary. There was an attempt to resuscitate it – I’m third generation involved in it – but it is fizzling out which is upsetting.

There is no single reason why communal organisations are struggling to attract volunteers. A lot of women my age – a lot of us had mothers who didn’t work. But women my age are much more likely to work, either through choice or need or both. So there are fewer opportunities and time to volunteer.

I also have a feeling that our parents and grandparents were more likely to support Jewish and Israeli causes first, but people now have a lot of generic causes now that they want to support that are competing for their attention.

To solve this problem, there might have to be a shift in Australia to a more US model where charity and not for profit organisations employ staff. In Australia this is almost frowned upon. But we might need to employ staff to be more effective in the future.

We might also have to try and make volunteering a bit more social to make it attractive and interesting. Maybe get young people to just organise a function that appeals to them, without any ongoing commitment to the organisation. Some people feel that they don’t want to be tied to it forever. But those of us who are already in the space are wondering how to we get away when there is no one coming up to take our place. We have to engage women and young people in communal organisations otherwise they won’t exist. And people’s lives will be shallower as a result.

Judaism, gender and leadership

They say that in terms of Judaism, Australia is a generation or two behind the United States. There are orthodox women overseas taking on leadership roles. I don’t think it is quite as advanced here and that is a real shame, because good women role models will step away. I know of women who go overseas to get ordained as rabbis and then accept jobs in the US. But the difference it would make for women in the Australian community to see women taking on these sorts of roles would be great. There have been some changes, where trained women get involved in helping other women understand Jewish law surrounding women’s issues, but more needs to be done.

In Australia there are women stepping into leadership roles at a lower level. In the youth movement I went to there were as many women leaders as men at a university level. But higher than that, it filtered out. The synagogue I went to never had a woman president or vice president. There was an associated women’s organisation that had women’s leadership and we are trying to invigorate that at the moment. There is a perception amongst younger women, however, that this is an old women’s auxiliary that we have to combat.

But I think women’s leadership offers something different and we need to empower women to embrace opportunities. Women, in general seem to work better as part of a team. They tackle problems differently than the ways men do. There are some wonderful role models of this type of inclusive and collaborative leadership in our own community, all committed leaders who fight hard for their mission. And there are many, many others.

It’s crucial that women across the spectrum of Jewish religious and communal life get actively involved in their communities, that their voices be heard and valued. If you want to have a sustainable community, you have to encourage the women. In my area of the Jewish community, 80-90% of the interaction with children is with women. And if they are frustrated, their sons and daughters will get frustrated. Children pick up frustration from home. They listen to conversations at Friday night dinners. They model their behaviour on their parents’ behaviour. If all our children are hearing is how hard it is to be Jewish, then why would they bother to stay connected to the community? Valuing women’s active and positive engagement in family and community life is vital to its sustainability.

What I want is for women to have the opportunity to be involved. I want to see women in leadership because I am frightened of what will happen to the next generation if it doesn't happen. If we want to keep women in the community we have to give them opportunities. I don’t think men and women have to do everything equally they just have to have the opportunity to be involved. They need equality of opportunity.

Romy Prins was interviewed by Dr Nikki Henningham on 4 June 2018 for the She Speaks project. PHOTO: Leigh Henningham