PETER KOHN

THE Gold Coast Jewish community and Jews around Australia are in mourning following the death of Temple Shalom’s Rabbi Jackie Wexler on November 21.

The 56-year-old, who suffered from food allergies, had apparently been admitted to hospital with an allergic reaction and diverticulitis some days earlier. She succumbed to a severe infection and cardiac arrest.

The Conservative rabbi arrived in Australia from the US in 2008 on a two-year contract to lead Temple Shalom.

The synagogue’s distraught president, Kate Lesser, said the congregation had been in close contact with Rabbi Wexler’s family in the US since her death.

“As a community, we have just lost our core,” she said.

Union for Progressive Judaism (UPJ) executive director Steve Denenberg said: “We learnt of the news of her passing with great shock and our whole movement is grieving. We said special prayers for her over the weekend.”

Rabbi Wexler once said of her calling as a rabbi, that at the age of 17, “I knew without a doubt this is what I was meant to be,” although Conservative Judaism at that time did not allow women to be rabbis.

Gaining her s’micha from the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in the 1990s, she worked with congregations in Florida and on Long Island, New York. In August last year, she took up her Australian appointment as a rabbi.

Discussions on extending Rabbi Wexler’s contract were about to take place, Denenberg told The AJN.

He said Rabbi Wexler had missed a rabbinical meeting preceding the UPJ’s six-monthly gathering in Sydney last week because she had been unwell.

Arrangements are being made to ensure a rabbi will be present for b’nei mitzvah taking place at Temple Shalom in the coming weeks.

“As soon as is appropriate, we will convene a search committee to look for a long-term replacement,” Denenberg said.

Rabbi Wexler is survived by her children, her mother and a sister, who all live in the United States.