February 2015 and the Schools, Centre and Community of Yeshivah Melbourne found itself undergoing heartbreaking trauma in the wash of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Case Study 22. Pages were opened and stories revealed for the first time across the community. The reality was that there were many victims who knew of the histories and had been champions to date, with, as far as it appears, minimal if anything at all in the way of satisfaction, where devastation had occurred.
Early outcomes were promises of safety for our children. As always, across all the institutions that were exposed before the Royal Commission, these were accompanied by guarantees of an improved quality of leadership and governance. Within Yeshivah as with many other Institutions, so it was. The guarantees of improved leadership, the processes and governance it entails; long absent, had been called for repeatedly and were now widely promised.
Yeshivah has had its own system of management for literally decades and while many acknowledge that those 'running the show' did so with good intent, the days have long past that it could be seen to be fit that a community can be run behind closed doors with no compliant documentation (e.g. organisational constitutions) for a community of many thousands.
Some fifteen months have passed since Case Study 22 and in the interim promises have been made and broken, panels formed, numerous interim committees created, various independent entities advertised as running upcoming elections and just yesterday members of the Community have finally been advised for the first time in the decades since the Yeshivah Community originated that a process was now open by which some of them could become members of the various Yeshivah Corporations.
So it seems like a fine time to begin, for reflection and conversation. For those of us interested in true opportunities for transparent, responsive, 'service-driven' leadership and governance at Yeshivah; is the window finally opening?
I look forward to engaging and civil conversation...
...marcia pinskier
