She’s from Texas but with close ties to Wisconsin, and she worked in Jewish communal life for years before deciding to become a rabbi. Toba Schaller will be the new rabbi/director of lifelong learning at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun in River Hills.
Schaller will oversee education at a congregation with close to 500 families and will support the senior rabbi, Marc E. Berkson. Prior to Schaller’s appointment, Rabbi Jessica Barolsky served as director of lifelong learning at the synagogue for more than four years.
Schaller, 35, is to be ordained a rabbi in New York City on May 8 by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the main seminary for Reform Judaism.
She grew up in a small Texas town, Conroe, without any kind local of Jewish community. “There were times when we would drive an hour for synagogue once or twice a week,” she recalled.
She’s served in the Jewish community in various ways – including work for Hillel International on college campuses; as a summer camp educational director and as manager of a Jewish high-school program in California with a $1 million budget. But she actually decided to become a rabbi while working as a cocktail waitress in Denver. She wound up teaching the 11-year-old daughter of a bar owner, who was Jewish.
“I wasn’t working in a Jewish job anymore but I was still teaching Torah,” she said.
She was hoping to find a rabbinical job in Milwaukee and is glad to have found this one. Her brother lives in Madison and her husband is from Wauwatosa.
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