Local women find careers in the rabbinate
Marilyn Kraar began requesting applications to rabbinical school about ten years ago. When the applications arrived, year after year Kraar would “look at them and laugh.” The idea seemed far-fetched.
Only last year, when a current student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati called to follow up on the years of sent applications, did Kraar begin to entertain seriously the idea of becoming a rabbi.
“I said, ‘It’s too late; I’m too old,’” she recalled in a telephone interview on the eve of her departure for the Reform seminary’s Jerusalem campus, where first-year students begin their studies.
The student persisted, telling Kraar: “We love having people like you in our class. Second-career people bring so much wisdom and value.”
Moreover, the following day, Kraar received five phone calls from “second-career students” from HUC-JIR — among them a television producer, a physicist and a teacher — who called to share their stories.
That bit of encouragement got the ball rolling, turning files of blank applications into the pursuit of a life dream.
Her rabbinical dreams began when the idea was untenable. “When I was eight-years old, I was in a Jewish day school in Atlanta and had a very strong connection to one of my teachers. He used to say, ‘It’s such a shame you’re a girl.’”
“There really were no women rabbis then…. I used to think I would love to grow up to be a rabbi and people told me, ‘You’ll grow up to be a rebbetzin.’”
Though Kraar always loved studying Torah, she studied social work in Boston and later moved to Milwaukee, where she became engrossed in her career as a social worker.
About ten years ago, she began working as a Jewish educator. In that capacity, she tutored for b’nai mitzvah and taught at area synagogues. That’s when the idea of rabbinical school reemerged.
And from the moment she decided to pursue the idea, Kraar said, she never forced anything. “It was kind of like taking things one step at a time and seeing what happened.” Those steps included filling out a daunting application, taking the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) in January and an interview at HUC-JIR in February.
Kraar will be joining a first-year class that is markedly different from the Jewish culture that originally swayed her from her rabbinical aspirations; half of the 70 students in the class are women. She is also comforted that her class includes 17 second-career students.
“I’m going with open arms. Instead of trying to make it what I want, I’m going to see what it is and then, if it works and fits, embracing it.”
One of the challenges that Kraar will face this year is that her family will remain in Milwaukee. Her husband, Jeff Irwin, and 21-year old daughter, Rachel, hope to travel to Israel during the year.
As for visualizing her future as a rabbi, Kraar said that she would consider taking a pulpit, perhaps in a larger synagogue that is led by two rabbis. Though she’s most excited about studying, Kraar is looking forward to working with people for education and life-cycle events.
“I have the skills to do people work and that’s very useful if you’re a rabbi,” she said.
Two days before her departure for Jerusalem on Sept. 10, Kraar said she was “overwhelmed by emotion…. I’m very excited and feel very blessed and lucky to have the chance to pursue a dream.”
Life experience
HUC had to encourage Kraar to apply to the Reform rabbinate, but that wasn’t the case for former Milwaukeean Carmit Harari, who had to put the brakes on her rabbinic aspirations for a few years.
Like Kraar, Harari had thought about being a rabbi from an early age. “Probably the eighth grade,” she said in an e-mail interview from her Jerusalem home.
Being surrounded by Jewish learning in her home may have had something to do with that. Her Israeli-born father, Rabbi Ze’ev Harari, served as a congregational rabbi in the Israeli and American Reform movements, and her mother, Laura Harari, worked at the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the education program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
But Harari, who will turn 26 this month, was told by the University of Judaism in Los Angeles (Conservative), when she applied to them her senior year in college, that she “needed more life experience” before she could begin rabbinical studies.
So, she finished college and served as the Steinhardt Jewish Campus Service Corps Fellow at Hillel-Foundation Milwaukee from July 1999 to June 2001. She then moved to Greensboro, N.C., to work at the new American Hebrew Academy, the first co-ed boarding Jewish high school in the country.
And it was while serving as assistant dean of Jewish life and assistant housemaster there that the idea of the rabbinate resurfaced, she said.
Harari, like Kraar, “didn’t think I could do it,” but said she gained confidence after beginning the application process with HUC-JIR.
When asked about her decision to apply to the Reform rabbinate instead of the Conservative, as she had initially done, Harari said, “I feel like I’ve come full circle. In college, I became involved with the Orthodox movement…. I then realized that while Orthodoxy was appealing in many ways, I ultimately did not agree with it.
“I was raised in the Reform movement and came to realize that it suits me best. So ideologically, that brought me full circle to where I am today.”
Harari is currently in Jerusalem, where she attends a liturgy class with Kraar, and will most likely take classes in both HUC’s Israel and American tracks, as her fluency in Hebrew has placed her out of some classes in the track for American students. She said she has also seen former Milwaukee shaliach and HUC student Nir Barkin several times on campus.
What appeals to her most about the classes she has begun, she said, “is the fact that we are approaching Judaism from every angle — historical, liturgical, Zionist, etc. Also, spending the first year of our studies in Israel and literally standing at sites mentioned in the Bible as we learn about the passages and their significance. We are literally experiencing our own history.”
As for the future, Harari says “her primary interest is working with a Hillel program. However, as I begin student pulpit work next year, that may change!”
Students at the pulpit
Kraar and Harari have just begun their rabbinic studies, while Bayside native Jody Riches, 27, is about ready to conclude hers. She will be ordained next spring at HUC-JIR in Cincinnati.
Like Kraar and Harari, Riches’ affinity for the rabbinate began during her childhood.
“I had such an incredible time at my bat mitzvah, I told my parents I wanted to do it again. Their mutual response was, ‘Be a rabbi.’ At 13, neither they nor I expected I would take their advice literally,” she said.
In a telephone interview, Riches recalled always being interested in teaching. “My mom was a teacher, and I was the one who always played school with my stuffed animals.
And when our family went to Israel on Congregation Shalom’s Family Mission to celebrate my sister Dani’s bat mitzvah, Rabbi [Ronald] Shapiro also told me I should be a rabbi,” she said.
Judaism and religion were a “big deal in our house,” she added. “I taught Hebrew and religious school at Shalom while in high school, so I guess Rabbi Shapiro saw something in me that he didn’t see in my sisters.”
She loves learning and studying and passing it on to others. “I was an education and Hebrew major at UW-Madison — unfortunately before they had a Jewish studies major. I sort of feel I was a guinea pig for establishing the degree. I really created my own program,” she said.
By the time she graduated she knew she wanted to a rabbi. “I had thought I wanted to teach, but I realized by being a rabbi I could still teach, and have to opportunity to do more, such as performing life cycle events, counseling and dealing with the community.”
Like all HUC-JIR rabbinical candidates, Riches held student pulpits in several small communities that don’t employ full-time rabbis. “I think those experiences helped me decide I want to be a pulpit rabbi. I served in Peoria, Ill., and in Grand Forks, N.D., where I learned that Jews in small towns really need to find ways to bring their Judaism into their lives. While they seek Judaism in the same way as those in larger cities do, they need to make more of an effort. Though I’m basically a shy and quiet person, I had wonderful opportunities to work with people of all ages and even officiated at baby namings and funerals.”
Laughing, she noted that some of the congregants looked at her as a daughter or more often as a granddaughter, but admitted they “settled down” once she conducted a few services. “In a way, they mentored me while I taught them. It was a nice relationship.”
Further, she mused, “My parents came for Shabbat in Grand Forks and when someone referred to me as the rabbi, they were stunned.”
As a female rabbi, she said she hasn’t experienced any obstacles. However, she has seen other female classmates who don’t want senior rabbi positions at large congregations. “Being a senior rabbi at a large institution is like being a CEO of a corporation. For many women, and probably myself included, they want to balance their work and have a family. It’s hard to set boundaries when you’re a rabbi.
“You can plan to take a day off every week, but when you get a call, realistically it’s not going to happen. Also, at a smaller congregation, it’s easier to function in the community. I plan to go to the grocery store in jeans and be a real person with a real life.”
And, next Labor Day, that “real life” will include husband Rabbi Alan Cook, who was ordained this June at HUC-JIR and now serves at a congregation in Denver.
“I came to HUC planning not to date anyone in the school because I thought it was important to live beyond its borders. But, as they say ‘the best laid plans….’”
Riches said the couple will live in Denver for at least a year, where Cook is in the first year of a two-year contract. “After that, it’s anyone’s guess,” she said. “And we have agreed not to work in the same synagogue and likely not to both be pulpit rabbis at the same time. If and when we have a family, we’ve decided it’s not wise for both parents to be on call 24/7.”
Clearly excited about graduating in June, she said she is ready to get to work. “I’ve learned so much from my teachers,” she said, “but I always gain something when I’m with Rabbi Shapiro. He’s shown me how to balance family and work and how to make my delivery from the bima more personal. I can almost see him sorting things in his mind before he speaks.”
The daughter of Bob and the late Gayle Riches, she said, “My parents saw this coming, Judaically. My dad is very excited for me move forward in my work and I know my mom would be really proud.”
Finally assistant rabbi
Proud parents are part of the rabbinical territory for freshly ordained Rabbi Phyllis Anna Sommer. “They’re overwhelmed,” she said of her parents, Mequon residents Sharon and John Sklar.
“I think they feel it was a reflection of their Jewish upbringing of me,” said the 26-year-old Brown Deer High School graduate, who recently began work as assistant rabbi at Am Shalom Synagogue in Glencoe, Ill.
Sommer, who graduated from HUC-JIR last May, said that she grew up in an “observant Reform family,” meaning that the family attended services regularly and celebrated every Jewish holiday.
“My parents knew what they were doing. They weren’t afraid to talk about Judaism…. It was part of who we were,” she said.
Like Riches, Harari and Kraar, Sommer dreamed of becoming a rabbi from a young age. During her six summers at Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute, she was “inspired by all the rabbis and educators who worked with me. I saw them as really wonderful teachers … who really lived Jewish lives. I always said, ‘I want to do that.’”
At the camp, she was even voted to be the most likely to become a rabbi, she recalled.
Like Riches, Sommer grew up a member of Congregation Shalom, which is among the top four synagogues nationally to have sent rabbinical, cantorial and education students to HUC-JIR within the last 10 years, according to John Braunstein, associate provost for enrollment and planning at HUC-JIR. “It’s been a real feather in Rabbi Shapiro’s cap that so many of us have gone,” Sommer said.
It was her first visit to Israel that “solidified” her commitment to pursuing a career in the rabbinate. In 1996, while a student at UW-Madison, she traveled to the Jewish state with Imagine Israel, a two-week tour for first-time visitors organized by the Hillel Foundations in Madison and Milwaukee and underwritten by the Gerald and Louise Stein Family Foundation and the Jewish Community Foundation, MJF’s endowment development program.
In many side conversations with trip participants, she answered many questions about Judaism. “I found myself really teaching…. I wasn’t really equipped to answer all their questions, but I loved doing it,” she said.
Two years later, Sommer returned to Israel as a first-year HUC-JIR student. It was there that she met her future husband, Michael Sommer, also a rabbinical student.
During their fourth year of studies at the school’s Cincinnati campus, Sommer gave birth to their son David, now 22 months old.
Sommer feels she was well prepared by her five years of studies and with the practical experience of holding two student pulpits — in New Iberia, La., and Billings, Mont.
Nevertheless, this year poses personal challenges for Sommer as Michael commutes Mon.-Thurs. to Cincinnati to complete his studies.
But Sommer is excited to face the challenges of leading the congregation of 850 families. “The best part is getting to put into practice all the things I’ve work so hard at the last five years. I get up in the morning and am happy to go to work.”
(Mardee Gruen, Elana Kahn-Oren and Vivian M. Rothschild contributed to this story.)
Loading ...