Susie Ivany OAM

When young women leaders in the Melbourne Jewish community are asked to name women leaders they admire from their community, the name Susie Ivany crops up with remarkable regularity. This is little wonder; Susie has been actively involved with the community for many years in a variety of organisations and capacities. She is currently co-Vice President of the board at Jewish Care Victoria, has been President of National Council of Jewish Women of Australia Victoria, Vice President of NCJWA and Vice President (Australia) of the International Council of Jewish Women. She founded and is Chair of Unchain My Heart, an organisation dedicated to educating about and advocating and supporting agunot (women chained to recalcitrant husbands under Jewish law).

As part of taking on these leadership opportunities, Susie is aware of her role in succession planning. She is passionate about developing and engaging the next generation of leaders to be involved in communal organisations. ‘My favourite thing in the entire universe is encouraging young people to participate in community work,’ she says. ‘I love people being empowered to achieve.’

The daughter of Jewish migrants who managed to get out of Europe at the beginning of the Second World War, she says her family’s migration story is a ‘typical Australian Jewish story’. Arriving in Melbourne, they were assisted by the existing Jewish community. Her father’s first loan was from the Jewish Prudential Company, which is now part of Jewish Care. ‘There are so many reasons why I love doing what I am doing,’ she says. ‘I’m giving back to the community because when my family came out they were helped.’

Part of that giving back is playing a role in encouraging young women to be leaders in Jewish communal organisations. ‘There are some particular barriers to women’s leadership existing in the orthodox movement,’ she says, ‘that are more than cultural. It’s ingrained’. But in the lay leadership field, she thinks things are improving. The barriers are not really any different than they are for women in the community at large. ‘Meeting times, women running families, women being time challenged’ – these are common structural issues for all women. Initiatives like Project Deborah, which Susie was involved with, also helped to tear down some of the personal barriers women experience, such as lack of confidence, feelings of isolation, and skills deficit. ‘Through capacity building, some really important results have come out of it.’

The importance of women’s participation in community and other public sphere activities cannot be overstated, she says. ‘Voice is important – we need to hear those female voices more and more.’

Family and background

I was born in Melbourne in 1957, in a little private hospital in Toorak. I have one sibling – a brother. My family lived in Elwood, on Glenhuntly Road initially and then we moved to Tennyson Street where my parents had a milk bar. We moved back to Glenhuntly Road later. When my parents initially arrived in the 1940s they worked as clothing machinists.

The family story goes something like this. My mother was born in Germany and left as a refugee as a very young child with her parents. Her family was Jewish but my grandfather had already been interned as a political prisoner, it was nothing to do with his being Jewish. He was a bit left wing – a social-democrat. That’s the legend. Somehow my grandmother, who was pretty tough, got him out but he had to leave straight away otherwise he would be put back into prison. So he ended up in Shanghai. Later my mother and grandmother went to Shanghai. Her much older sisters were already married and they came with their husbands to Shanghai. My uncle was sent with a group of young German men being sent to Israel on Aliyat Noar. He got stuck in Denmark, where he was hidden by a Danish family throughout World War 2. He remained in Denmark, so I have Danish family. My mother was a teenager when they arrived in Australia, to join my grandmother’s brother who was already here.

My father left Warsaw with is sister and brother-in-law and his family. They left the rest of his family in Warsaw knowing that he would never see them again. They came through Kovno, Lithuania – there was a Japanese consul there, Sugihara, who was giving visas to help the Jewish people escape from Europe. My father also ended up in Shanghai. They lived a couple of streets away from each other but didn’t meet each other. He came to Australia and his sister went to Brazil. He thought Australia would be a better place for Jews than Brazil.

I was very lucky growing up because I still had a grandmother. My grandmother became grandmother for the entire community, because there weren’t many grandmothers. Her name was Bianca and we shared a room until I was ten. She brought my brother and me up because my parents had to work. My mother says that without my grandmother none of them would have survived. Nothing fazed her.

When they arrived in Melbourne, my mother lived on Fitzroy Street, St Kilda in a boarding house with her parents. She worked in factories, and was a great knitter and sewer. My grandmother was a widow for fifty years, her husband got very sick and died young. She worked at Montefiore homes as a cook, and now I am on the board of Jewish Care. My father’s first loan came from Jewish Prudential Company, which is now part of Jewish Care. So there are so many reasons why I love doing what I am doing – giving back to the community because when my family came out they were helped.

My father lived in a house with a family who rented a room out, the Griffenbergs. I ended up at National Council on the board with their daughter, who my father used to baby sit. The Head of Development of Jewish Care is the grandson-in-law of these people, with whom I work really closely. Life is so simple in so many ways – we just keep this ethos of giving.

Friday nights were and remain sacrosanct. It was always a special night, as much as possible. It is about family time on Friday.

My parents had a sort of kosher home – they bought kosher meat but didn’t necessarily keep everything separate. My mother – who was a manic sewer, would not sew on a Saturday. We lived a traditional Jewish family life as much as possible. Not orthodox but in the orthodox tradition. It’s interesting – philosophically, you would put me in to the progressive movement. Traditionally and culturally – I fall into the orthodox movement. When I started in Elwood it was a modern orthodox community. It probably still is, but they have more Chabad kind of rabbis.

As a kid growing up, I didn’t have much connection with non-Jewish Australians. I had a sense of what went on in other cultures but I was so steeped in Jewish culture. It formed the core of whom I was and of my community.

Also, as kids growing up – our opinions were valued. We were encouraged to speak and to speak out. This was, I think, a difference between Jewish culture and Anglo-Australian culture. Our upbringing was very child centric, because our parents never had proper childhoods themselves. They put all their energy into us. They wanted to see us thrive.

And thrive we did. When I became president of the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia (Vic), my brother, who is a doctor, became president of the endocrinologists at the same time. My mother said ‘who would have thought I would have had two Presidents sitting at my Shabbat table’! Never would have happened if they stayed in Europe. And that’s Australia! We had opportunities here that we would never have had otherwise.

Education

It was very important to my parents that I got a Jewish education. They worked really hard so that my brother and I could have one. We both went to Moriah College, which was at Elwood shule. When I was in a grade 6, Mount Scopus took over Moriah.

I went to Jewish schools from the age of three. I belonged to Habonim, which is where I met my husband. We’ve known each other since 15. All week I was at school, then I was at Habo, and still today, my best friend is someone I was at primary school with. Many of my friends went to Habo. We went to camp with them, those camps were pretty much our holidays. When we were young, we never went on holidays because my parents were always working.

I loved parts of school, but didn’t love Scopus. It was a tough environment. I arrived in the middle of Grade 6 and I found it to be a tough year. I was sustained through school by my friends at the Habonim youth movement. I was an OK student. I possibly could have been better in a different environment. If I was in school today, I would love it!

I loved University! I did an arts degree and found my people there. I did honours and I thrived. I was involved in AUJS (Australasian Union of Jewish students). I worked for them for a while when I finished uni. By the time I’d finished uni I knew I wanted to work for the Jewish community in some capacity. I applied for a job that I had no capacity to do – I was way too junior – but they recommended me to AUJS who were looking for someone in the office. That is how I started my journey.

My father said to me as an adult that he never thought I would finish school. Not because I wasn’t smart enough but because in his culture – not only did he not finish school – girls didn’t go to school. When I finished my thesis, I dedicated it to him – because he invested so much into it.

Women and activism

I was a feminist as a young women. I knew about it at high school but I didn’t understand it as a political movement. When I got to university I became fully aware of it. I read The Women’s Room – and that was important. It was the book that switched me on.

About twenty years ago a group of women started a Jewish Feminist seder for Passover. Someone had given me a book called Deborah, Golda and me. It’s American – it’s really significant. They talk about a Jewish feminist seder in New York that Gloria Steinem went to and we all wrote a book about it, a book of stories. I bought the book and then bought it for a friend of hers and her daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. It led them to having their own feminist seder.

We had to bring things that signified change to us and I brought a copy of The Women’s Room. We did it for 10 years – writing our own book. There were other groups around Melbourne that subsequently arranged women’s seders

The seder is about the meal, but we didn’t want to be slaves to the kitchen again. One of the things we decided was that we would simplify it to the basics. Jews have to have food, but we kept it simple in line with the traditions. There was some opposition, people said you couldn’t really call something that simple a seder. But it was an amazing thing and we really loved doing it.

I belong to a modern orthodox synagogue and I got a speaking part in it recently for the first time. You don’t normally hear women’s voices in an orthodox synagogue. I read a poem and a blessing. It was very exciting.

Working in communal organisations

When I started out there wasn’t a clearly defined career path for people who wanted to work in Jewish communal organisations. It’s very different today, although there are still some issues. So there were the fundraising organisations and traditional organisations but there wasn’t a good professional pathway. Because there wasn’t a clearly defined career path in community organisations, I did a bit of work outside, doing PR, working for events like the Melbourne Film Festival. I had an interest in the arts, but I would have much preferred to stay involved in communal organisations but there weren’t the opportunities.

I got married when I was 23 but didn’t start having children until I was twenty-nine. My husband had his own business and I worked in it for about ten years. Once the family had financial stability I felt like I could return to what it was that I really loved to do, work in community organisations. Only this time I could do it in a voluntary capacity.

When I became president of NCJWA (Vic) I needed to bring it into the 21st century (via the 20th). You don’t want fifty people on the board. You want an executive. You want proper governance. You want proper modern business management.

I was involved with NCJWA since I was 24-25. I was very young. I walked into my first status of women community meeting and thought everyone was so old – but they were probably no older than I am today! I said to myself, ‘Why are all these old women here. This is not right.’

But I decided that what they were doing was important, so I worked on bringing in a younger cohort. People were pretty happy about what I did; there wasn’t a lot of resistance. I used to call them ‘the suffragettes’. There was a group of women who were very excited to see the younger women around and interested. What I brought to the work was enthusiasm, passion and knowledge. I’m not an intellectual – I’m not going to read papers. I’m better at speaking than writing. I work well in groups and I feed off people. I think they feed off me.

An important outcome of my involvement in the NCJWA was the establishment of Unchain My Heart. As part of my upbringing through this organisation I met a woman who had been involved in the whole issue of Jewish divorce and recalcitrant men who refuse to give their ex-wives a gett. It’s been an issue forever. We’ve always recognised it. Dr Geulah Solomon OAM was a strong feminist advocate concerned about the impact of this issue on women. Prior to there being the Internet, she got 50,000 signatures on a petition world-wide to present to the Chief Rabbi in Israel to start a movement. It started as an Australian thing and got the International Council involved. Solomon told me I needed to get involved in the International Council of Jewish Women.

She was very encouraging of me and my generation. She must have spoken to the President of the International Council at the time, and she asked me to come on the Executive after meeting me at a conference. So I got involved with another woman, Sharon Shenhav, an American lawyer who lives in Israel. She has been involved in this area for a very long time. She was the woman elected by the bar association to represent them on the committee to appoint the judges of the Beth Din. She was the first woman allowed to represent agunot at a religious court.

Anyway, I went to a conference in Prague three years ago, at roughly the same time that the Royal Commissions into Family Violence and Institutional Abuse were being conducted. I decided then it was our time. Organically, there seemed to be a whole raft of things happening which made it right to act; all the stars aligned.

I came back, spoke to a colleague and said ‘I think we should try to do something about this’. I rang other people involved in the Jewish Taskforce Against Family Violence. We formed a committee and started talking. I knew it was bigger than just the National Council; it needed to be all the women’s organisations because we have strength and power in numbers and diversity. So our members are Modern Orthodox, modern, secular, progressive; the entire gamut of religiosity and personal understanding. So the Royal Commission set the scene for what we were working on and we brought the super important tools of passion and enthusiasm to the table. We were just going to organise an event for International Agunot Day, initially – there is a day designated usually in February and March. But it got bigger.

We now represent all the women’s organisations. We are now the court network organisation at the Beth Din – the Jewish court. We support the women in the court if they are attending to get a divorce. We also support women through the process. We work closely with the rabbis of the Beth Din. We have an education arm. We have a good presence in the Jewish News who are very supportive of what we do. We have an ambassadorship program – about sixty ambassadors – their job is to keep the issue alive and to never stand by. We have rabbis, teachers, and lay people amongst their number.

We feel that resolving individual cases is a measure of our success. We have very good feedback about the volunteers at the Beth Din. Really, the fact that people are coming to them for assistance is a measure of success. They must feel like we are getting results. Ultimate success would be if we became redundant, but in the meantime we need to work towards universal acceptance. We also need to create awareness – many women don’t even know about the ways they can resolve things.

We’ve come a long way from my early days at the NCJWA. About twenty years ago, NCJWA organised a seminar on Jewish women and family violence. To that point no one had really spoken about it openly. It was never out there, and we were running at the same rate as everyone else, but the public message was ‘there is no violence in Jewish families’. Of course there is and through organisations such as Unchain My Heart we are raising awareness of other forms of domestic abuse.

As well as Unchain My Heart, I’m also very passionate about the Jewish Care work I do. I guess it stems from feeling grateful to Jewish Care (Jewish welfare at the time) for being there to help my family when they arrived on the ships. Who was there to help my dad when he needed a loan to buy a business? Who helped me when I had aging parents and my father got dementia and we didn’t know what to do. They helped my mother to get her life in order. They have always been there.

They don’t always get everything right but they work well. They are a massive organisation: 600 employees, many volunteers, a budget of 70 million dollars in Victoria. It is probably the biggest Jewish agency in the southern hemisphere. They look after Holocaust survivors, they help to work packages for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). The bottom line is that we help the people who are most vulnerable in the community. When people think of Jewish people in Melbourne they generally don’t think about those who are vulnerable.

There are particular needs that Jewish Care has to provide. Aged care; all facilities are kosher and they have to respect the Sabbath. At disability respite centres the same things apply. A lot of the in-house packages will be for Holocaust survivors and you need to have empathy for what they have gone through. You need to understand how people might regress as they get older and the impact that has. If you have a disabled child from a very religious family, they have to be in specialised care.

We have to deal with homelessness. We have sixty units and a number of houses and a Memorandum of Understanding with Port Phillip housing. We do transitional housing with a very old building and they are always full. There is a need. And they have to be in the area, because they need to be near the synagogues. Our population is aging, faster than the general population. Our community experiences the same mortgage and rent stress that other communities do. Yet poverty isn’t seen to be an issue for Jewish people – when it is.

We do face some challenges going forward. We need youth. It is an issue – and communal organisation boards are conscious of the need to get younger people into their organisations. Hence the number of leadership and mentoring programs. We all learned on the job, but it isn’t like that anymore. People need more formal programs.

I also think that assimilation is a huge issue. As we integrate and adapt to the broader community, we also need to think about how we are going to survive as a community. We need to retain levels of cultural orthodoxy. We need to think about not so much religious but secular connection. How do we get young people working to be part of the community?

Advice for women going forward

Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. We are already strong. What we need is to change the way the world perceives that strength.

I received an award in 2016 – the Jewish Community Council Award – The Sir John Monash Award. I decided to speak about women in leadership. It was just before Hillary Clinton lost. I did some research and one of the things that came out strongly was that we have plenty of people with potential, they just need to keep going. Motivation and encouragement are what make things happen.

Voice is important – we need to hear those female voices more and more. After I joined Jewish Care the Board did a 360 degree review. The consultant who did it said I came out well but advised me that during board meetings I needed to sit somewhere where the chairman sees me. Even things like where you sit are important. I would never have thought about it unless she told me. You need to position yourself so you can’t be ignored, literally and metaphorically.

I haven’t really experienced discrimination in a way that disincentivised me from keeping going. But I was discriminated against by older men when I was younger, so I did learn to deal with things. I also have a good motto: ‘Say yes before you can think about it otherwise you’ll say no’. It’s my natural instinct to say no but I had to stop that. The danger is you will miss out on good opportunities due to fear.

One of the other things you need to be clear about are your own strengths and weaknesses and you need to surround yourself with people who can step in. I didn’t know that consciously, but I think I knew it subconsciously. Collaborating gives you access to strengths you don’t have. I’ve always had a collaborative approach. I also have the capacity to let go. I’m good at delegating and a lot of women aren’t good at it. You have to learn not to micro manage – you’ll kill yourself otherwise.

One of my greatest skills is one you can’t put in a position description. I can put a committee together in 10 minutes. That’s how Unchain My Heart started! The committee may not last forever but it lasts long enough to get things started.

I like putting people together who I think will work well together. Not formally all the time but I do it formally as part of a mentoring program I do with Jewish Care. The program is about encouraging young people to get involved on boards. Each board member takes on a mentoring role with a young person. My favourite thing in the entire universe is encouraging young people to participate.

Susie Ivany was interviewed by Dr Nikki Henningham on 23 January 2018 for the She Speaks project. PHOTO: Supplied