Leah Freudenberger: from insular roots to inclusive care

I grew up in the Adass community, but I wouldn't say I'm a typical member, as my parents weren't always religiously observant. My parents took on the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle when they were living in South Africa, and shortly after, they moved to Australia with my three older siblings. By many a strange turn of events, they landed in the Adass community, and me and my younger brother were born and raised in this religious framework.

A lot of people from Adass have very strong connections to their background – maybe they're a Holocaust survivor, or have religious observance going back through their previous generations. I’ve always felt a little different – my world was a bit more open due to my parents' background and the fact that none of my relatives shared our religious lifestyle.

When I was younger, our family went to a shule in Balaclava called Kollel Beth HaTalmud, and I still go there on occasion.

My husband – he’s his own story! He's from Israel, and he grew up in a very religious Hasidic sect called the Gur sect. When he came to Australia, he started going to a tiny shule which was started by those from the Gur community, but now comprises an eclectic mix of congregants. It’s very informal, there isn’t a specific Rabbi heading the congregation. There isn’t much there for women and girls, so my husband attends for regular prayers, but I only go for specific occasions such as shofar blowing on Rosh Hashana.

For certain events, I go to Kollel, because it's a bigger congregation where the rest of my family attend.

I was studying in Israel, and when I came home, I was working in the Adass school. One of the principals at the time was an Israeli woman – she had a very forthright style and we didn't know each other well – but she’d seen me at the winter camp and thought of someone for me. She reached out to my mum about this Israeli guy, because that's the way it's done in my community – people normally approach the parents if they have an idea for a match.

I initially thought he didn't sound like my type at all. But this principal was pushy, and so I eventually met him, and he made me smile. He brought out the light side of me, because I can be intense. We dated for a month, which probably sounds very short to you, and then we got married soon after. It’s been over 11 years now and we have five kids together. My principal must have been onto something!

I will preface this by saying that I don't necessarily know what people's assumptions are, because I’m sheltered in terms of what I expose myself to. I'm not on social media, so I don't know what people are saying online about us, because I don’t find a need to engage in those spaces.

I will say yes, it's an insular community, but that's by choice. It works for us. We're very self-sufficient. People obviously need to engage with broader services and systems, but I think most things are covered within the community. If someone has gone through something hard, everyone rallies to support them. Recently, there was someone who was not well in the Adass community, and I remember thinking, if they were my client, what more can I even offer them? They already had everything they needed.

The Adass community is sheltered – but that sits across a broad spectrum. People fall anywhere between having no exposure to media or news of any sort, again by choice, and those who are really out there, fully on social media and interacting with the wider community.

We have a way of life that we're happy with, and we want our kids to have the same way of life. Each family really makes certain decisions about what works for them. It doesn’t work for everyone, and there’s always going to be people it doesn’t suit. I've got quite a few friends who have moved on from the Adass community and made their own lives, and we're still very close. I love not having to choose my relationships based on how religious someone is or how they identify – but that’s just my personal experience.

That was a horrific event for the community, which was founded by Holocaust survivors, and I can only imagine how that triggered the intergenerational trauma. But I have rarely met people more resilient than our community, and the Adass folks were speedy about making alternate arrangements to gather, study, and pray.

For me personally, I felt so much love from the whole Melbourne community as people reached out to check in and show their support. That felt more powerful than the notion of some anonymous haters – I think that the love really outshone the horrible fact of the shul’s destruction.

Adass does not offer students a VCE option. They're not preparing you for tertiary learning, so I wasn’t sure I would ever have a university degree. The community places more emphasis on people finding their own path, so it wasn’t something I was raised with, even though my parents went to university.

What is very common in my community is for girls to go to seminary for a year after they finish high school, which is essentially a year of learning overseas. You live in a dorm, do a lot of different Jewish studies, go on trips, and so on. It’s a lot of money and my parents couldn’t afford to pay for me to do that at the time, so I worked for a year instead.

I ended up visiting Israel for a holiday, and the friend I was staying with told me about this education program where people can continue their learning. I went and checked it out, and I immediately called my parents to tell them I wasn’t coming home. I just fell in love with Israel.

My first year there I took on Jewish studies and paid off that tuition over time. But then the head of the program offered me to attend for a second year as a dorm counsellor, where I got a room and board, and I was able to do another program combining Jewish studies with a liberal arts degree. It was a mixture of education and psychology classes, and I completed the degree in a year, which was crazy. It was a very, very intense schedule.

My favourite class, which I didn't even get credits for, was counseling. I loved it. When I returned home to Australia, I decided to do a Bachelor of Counseling, but a few months in, I met my husband and things had to slow down. It took me double what it should have taken – six years instead of three – but during that time I had my first two kids and graduated just before my third was born. I like to finish things that I start.

I was thinking I’d take my degree and use it in the Adass community, which I’m passionate about, but nothing was a match at the time. I wanted a workplace I had a connection to, and I ended up joining a program as a youth mentor for two years, which gave me some confidence working in the broader Jewish community.

Sometime in the middle of that, I approached Jewish Care’s employment centre and was encouraged to apply for a position as their youth mentoring coordinator. While I was unsuccessful in getting that position, I was offered a role in the service coordination team with the social workers. It was a huge learning curve for me to come into the workforce as a young mum – my youngest was seven-months-old at the time – but I felt supported from the get-go.

There was a lot I didn't know about. Some of the struggles that people face aren't spoken about so much in my community. I’m not saying they're not there, but I think people have different comfort levels when it comes to sharing things in terms of relationships, abuse, addiction, and so on. These experiences affect everybody – they don’t discriminate against any community – but it was a big learning for me to understand that there is suffering that is really unspoken.

I've learned a lot about myself and my ability to connect with people, despite so many things being different. I tend not to work with clients who are from the Adass community just to let them have that sense of comfort. It's been a stretch for me to come from a place where my interactions are very limited to certain types of people, to then be able to relate to people from all backgrounds who are going through different types of things. But a strong value that I've always had is to respect every single person, regardless of what their values, beliefs or lifestyle look like. It’s about the person.

I've always felt so privileged when people open up and let me share in their journey, and I've had some who have requested me specifically. It's nice to know that I have a reputation for being trustworthy.

We see pretty much everything come through the door to our team. Whether someone is struggling financially, facing housing issues, lack of stable employment, physical or mental health concerns, or abuse of any form. Those are the big umbrella issues that we deal with.

A big challenge for many people is that they're not used to having to ask for help. We get people who have had, for example, a shocking medical diagnosis and are suddenly at a financial loss, and that feeling of them not used to being on the receiving end is a barrier. To that, I’d just say we all have our turn in being the giver and being the receiver, and sometimes it’s okay to accept the help that’s being offered.

I’ve also seen people's mental health often causing them to burn bridges in their life, and then they're left with no support, which is heartbreaking. But we get to be that person for them, which is so amazing. Even if we can't do a lot practically to help them, because they're stuck within larger systems that are really complex and don’t always serve the client well – such as the family court or disability system – we get to be the person who says, I'm going to listen to you and I'm going to do everything I can to try and find something to make your life a little bit easier.

It’s important to remember that any community is going to be extremely varied, you're going to have people at each end of the spectrum, whether it’s financially, their socio-economic situation, their access to education, and so on.

Knowing that most people in life, regardless of what community they come from, want the same things – and just because they're part of a community that's seen as having a lot of privileges, it doesn't mean that they, personally, haven’t experienced hardship or have the same level of access.

I'm always examining my role in the Adass community and as an Adass mum because I think a lot of people don't really understand the work I do. Adass friends of mine have very different jobs that are more fun – they're a photographer or interior designer. My clients aren't going to come to me in the street and be like, I love the work you do. We would just walk past each other! But that’s the work. It’s very private. We’re talking about people’s most intimate struggles.

That's really been changing over time. Traditionally, people think of women that are primarily homemakers, who have really big families, and that is certainly the case. But there are also a lot of mum-trepreneurs who are building amazing businesses on their own. They may not have studied anywhere, but they are pushing themselves to get out there and find jobs that suit them.

A lot will still choose professions that are family-friendly, because that’s still a very strong shared value, and many women still work within the Adass community, particularly in the school system because then they get the same holidays as their kids. There are lots of family-run businesses in the community too, so there’s more options for women nowadays.

It's hard to separate, because my Jewish identity is my core identity. It really influences every action and decision that I make – from the smallest ones in the very detailed way I live my life in terms of following Jewish law to the biggest life decisions, which also come from the values that I've been raised with based on the Torah. Judaism is the first thing that is important to me, especially when it comes to raising children and contributing as upstanding members of society for the next generation.

One of the biggest values for me personally, and in Judaism, is about helping those less fortunate. For me, Judaism is about what I can give to the community – and by community, I don’t just mean those who are Adass. Which is funny for me, because growing up, I didn’t even know that there was a bigger community, I just thought, we were the Jewish community!

A colleague once told me that we’re all part of the same community, and that was really grounding. I’ve held onto that over the years.

For me, it’s the Jewish theme or directive of being light unto the nations. I'm so blessed in my life with so many good things, just so much abundance. It's about not just saying, I'm covered, I’m good, I can go and live my life and have fun. It’s how this position charges me with the responsibility to help those who don't have the same blessings as me.

I'm really busy building my family at this stage of my life, but when things settle down, I’d like to keep making an impact as I have more time. I really look forward to maybe getting a master's degree in something that suits me. I have a lot of interest in helping families function better and spreading whatever impact I can.