By Michele Alperin
Special to The Jewish State

Rabbi Toni Shy has just begun her tenure as religious leader of Marlboro Jewish Center/Congregation Ohev Shalom-- the largest Conservative congregation in the world with a woman at the helm.

Maybe it was beshert, fated. Shy was not actively looking for a new position when two people at the Jewish Theological Seminary independently came to her and told her, "You really ought to look at this synagogue; it's a place where the match is just right." And she did.

Jeff Sacks, the synagogue's president, is thrilled with the direction in which the rabbi wants to move the congregation. "We've got an excitement around us, a spirituality, a desire for us to grow and move ahead and be that model Conservative synagogue that everyone looks at and says, 'Wow, we want to be like them,'" he said.

Not only does Shy bring ideas, resources, knowledge, and experience, according to Sacks, but she brings a dynamism and effervescence, tempered with a nurturing warmth. He mentioned particularly the way she wants to reach out to the congregation-- group by group. "She plans to meet with the groups on a regular basis," he said, "communicate with them and touch them."

Michael Danziger, the ritual vice president, has been part of the synagogue community for about 20 years. He is excited about this new beginning, especially given the difficult period the synagogue is coming from. Its former rabbi, Peter Light, was charged about a year ago with misuse of $86,000 from the rabbi's discretionary fund, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to three years in prison. Interim rabbis Gerald Zelermyer and Gary Karlin served the congregation since last August.

"To have someone come in with the energy level and talent that Rabbi Shy is bringing and the sensitivity to other people is a great thing," said Danziger.

His goal for the synagogue, one he feels comfortable Shy will accomplish, is "to have everyone feel they are part of a community and a family, to have people feel they have strong connections to the synagogue, which means they will have strong connections to their own Jewish identities."

Danziger added that clergy has a critical role in making people feel that connection. "Clergy gets invited into people's lives at the most teachable moments and sometimes the most intimate moments. It is an opportunity to share and guide, and my understanding is that Rabbi Shy excels at that."

Shy has already had the experience of being the first female rabbi in a shul -- at her previous congregation, Temple Beth Israel in Port Washington, N.Y., where she stayed for 11 years.

"It was a huge issue for them," Shy recalled, "but they opened their hearts to me there."

Although having a female rabbi was new to her former congregation, as well as something they didn't quite know how to deal with, they were willing to try.

 "They discovered that it's not an issue, as will this synagogue. I don't make it an issue for them," she said. "A rabbi is a rabbi, teaching is teaching, being loved is being loved, and I've already started to love them. It's about the content, not the container."

Another challenge for Shy will be the transition from Temple Beth Israel, with 270 families, to Marlboro Jewish Center/Congregation Ohev Shalom, with 800. And the first year she will have no assistant rabbi; the congregation thought this might be an imposition.

 "That's a lot of lifecycle events," she admitted. But Shy plans to open her arms to her new congregation, "making myself very available, going to them and not waiting for them to come to me, making my home open to them, making lots of phone calls and home visits." Simply, she will ask them to give her a chance to get to know them.

For Shy, the size of her new synagogue also represents opportunity. "With a community of this size," she observed, "there are so many people you can touch, different interests of all kinds, who you are offering this kind of spiritual anchor."

Rabbi Tony Shy is a Californian. When she was a child, her parents had a strong sense of Jewish identity. She remembered them pointing with pride to landsmen like Sandy Koufax and Liz Taylor and also lighting candles on Shabbat and having Shabbat dinner together. But, Shy said, when it came to Jewish knowledge, they only had smatterings. "There was much they didn't know. Certain holidays--large holidays--they didn't know about," she said.

From the start, Shy had a bit of a different orientation. "Always when I read," she said, "the books that pulled me were books on religion and books on Judaism." And even today when she goes into a library or a bookstore, she noted, "That's my section."

Shy's Jewish connection flowed from something essential to her being. "Judaism was a natural for me," she said, "so much so that, born and raised in California, when I got a license at 16, I drove to synagogue."

Shy had had no formal training and didn't know Hebrew, but soon learned the prayers, service, and melodies. "It was where I was supposed to be," she said. "It gave me comfort-- thinking about God, being near God, ritual. Everything spoke to me from then until today."

It was at UCLA that Shy really started her Jewish education, including Hebrew language. When she was ready to graduate, with a bachelor's degree in psychology, she already had the rabbinate in mind and gave a call to Elliot Dorff at the University of Judaism. Female rabbis were being ordained in the Reform movement, and she wondered whether she might enter the preparatory year at the University of Judaism for students who planned to go to the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Dorff told Shy, "It just so happens there is going to be a vote upcoming to see whether women will be allowed to be rabbis. You can come into the program but I don't know what will happen." Shy studied with the men and had a wonderful year of learning, but in the end, Shy said, "they never had the vote; it was too divisive for the movement." So her classmates, all male, moved on to N.Y., and Shy stayed in California.

She accumulated more degrees, a bachelor's degree in Jewish studies and a master’s degree in rabbinic literature from the University of Judaism. Shy then married her first husband and had five children, whom she devoted 15 years of her life to home schooling.

It was her desire to share with her children her own love of learning that impelled her. She had been teaching in a synagogue afternoon program and found that so many of the children "were so turned off to learning; it was killing me."

About then she had her first child. "I had this baby who was so wide-eyed, and I didn't want him to not love learning like I loved learning," Shy explained.

One day she came home from teaching and happened to turn on a talk show where John Holt, the author of "Why Children Fail," was speaking about home schooling. She was curious about these people who didn't send their kids to school, read a bunch of books on the subject. "I was very intrigued, and I thought would try it. I tried it for 15 years, thinking that if it didn't work, I would send them to school."

Judaism was integral to Shy's curriculum. "The holidays were much more than holidays," she remembered. With projects to prepare for each holiday, including plays, books, and decorations inside and out, Shy said, "they were living the holidays as they came and went." Some of her children, she noted, want her to do the same for their children.

It wasn't just the details of Jewish living that her children got from Shy, but her sense that "God was in everything I was doing, seeing how I related to God and knowing what I believed about God. That's who I am and what I am."

Shy had to stop home schooling her children when she moved with her family to Teaneck so that she could go to the Jewish Theological Seminary. She managed to cram her rabbinic study into four tough years (when pretty much all she did was study and work, except for Shabbat, which she spent with her family). The hard work didn't faze her. "I was so in love with Judaism and the study that it didn't matter," she said.

Upon ordination, she got her first rabbinic job and stayed there for 11 years.

In 2002 Shy received the New York Board of Rabbis 2002 Chaplain of the Year award for her service to the Jewish and general communities in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11.

While in Port Washington, Shy got divorced and then remarried to Dr. Herb Bilick. Her youngest child is now a sophomore at Clark University. And the next-oldest just gave birth to Shy's first grandson. Shy also has three stepdaughters.

Shy was enthusiastic about working with the synagogue's brand new cantor, Wayne Krieger, to make people want to come to services. "We will make it so you come and sing, come and enjoy yourself. We're working together to make it lively," she said.

As for Shy's overall hopes for her new congregation, she shared this vision: "In my mind's eye, I see it as bursting with activity, community, joy, people being so kind and wonderful with one another, learning everywhere, lovely acts of kindness going on for us and the community and the Jewish community and the world community."