Anne and Shoshanna take the pulse of how Israel’s complex (and teetering) coalition government has improved some of the systems in Israeli society that we care about (with a special mention for Chochmat Nashim’s deputy director). We also review how Matan Kahana, the complicated figure who heads the state’s religious services (now as deputy minister) has made a real push for women’s equal standing in some important ways.
Music: “Misery” by The Whips
Knesset member Aliza Lavie is blond, poised — and whip smart.
I caught her on her way out of the Knesset after yet another dead-end meeting with its ultra-Orthodox members, discussing women’s rights.
“Ultra-Orthodox parties are taking women backwards. Everything I try to do, they block,” she said, her voice rising with frustration. “Everything I’ve done, they’re trying to undo.”
I’ve been following Lavie for years — as part of my own activism for Orthodox women’s rights. Formerly a lecturer on communications and gender at Bar Ilan University, Lavie has led the charge to advance women since joining the Knesset in 2013 as part of the Yesh Atid party. Orthodox but not ultra-Orthodox, she has made it her mission to ensure women’s representation in Israel’s religious institutions. In Israel, a woman can serve as prime minister, head of the Bank of Israel, a Supreme Court judge and an air force pilot — yet her personal life is still subject to a religious legal system that renders her powerless.
For Lavie, it’s grueling work: She spends her days fighting with ultra-Orthodox members of the Knesset over women’s rights.
As part of government coalition agreements, control of all things religious is given to the Haredi parties —- and the coalition in power today (the Likud, Bayit Yehudi, UTJ, Shas, Kulanu and Yisrael Beiteinu parties) vetoes every one of Lavie’s bills. “Whether it’s to create female community representatives in the religious courts; to enlarge the women’s space at the Kotel, which is currently one-fifth of the size of the men’s, or to make prenuptial agreements [to prevent the divorce refusal] part of the marriage ceremony, my hands are tied,” she told me.
Despite 75% of Haredi women working — with 55% of married men studying full time in yeshiva, according to Hiddush, an organization working toward religious equality in Israel — Haredi women are entirely absent from government.
Both of the Haredi political parties, the Sephardic Shas and the Ashkenazi United Torah Judaism, bar female members; this has engendered growing problems within the ultra-Orthodox community and stokes a constant battle for women’s rights on a national level.
“They claim to represent the women in their communities, but they don’t come to sessions on women’s health or abuse,” Lavie said. “The issues in their community aren’t even discussed, because there are no Haredi women to discuss them. I work on behalf of Haredi women, but of course it’s not the same as having them there to speak for themselves. The lack of women in their parties affects the balance of the entire government, reducing the number of female MKs and ministers.”
For Ruth Colian, a Haredi lawyer and a colleague of mine, watching the community’s male representatives ignore, repeatedly, matters critical to women’s health inspired her to create U’Bizchutan, a Haredi women’s political party, under which she ran for the Knesset in the 2015 elections.
“I saw women dying of a disease they could not name — breast cancer — because of modesty,” Colian said. “I saw domestic violence that was kept quiet, women taken advantage of at work — especially Sephardic women — and Sephardic girls kept out of schools because of their backgrounds. They deserve to be heard.” Colian did not cross the election threshold, but it created a storm in Haredi society, marking the first time a Haredi woman challenged the status quo.
‘Today, We Have No Influence’
Esty Shushan, founder of Nivcharot, a women’s rights organization, feels that this lack of representation lies at the core of the issues Haredi women face.
“Our fight today is a battle for basic rights,” she said. Speaking quietly but passionately, the Safed-born Shushan explained that she was still shaken by the story of a woman she met the day before.
“Like so many Haredi women, Sarah married young after meeting her husband twice,” she told me. “She was hardly consulted in the process. She got pregnant immediately, but the marriage did not work and she got a divorce. She raised her son on her own until the boy turned 4, at which point her ex’s family took him from her, and she hasn’t seen him in over a year. They make her life hell.”
The phone went quiet, and Shushan’s tone shifted from sad to angry: “All she wants to do is learn. To be educated. To be a lawyer and prevent these things from happening to other women. But she has no education, no money, no future. And there is no one who is helping her.”
Shushan lashes out not at the community that allows such things to happen, but rather at the Israeli government for enabling the disempowerment of Haredi women. “We live in a democratic state where every person has rights, but we, Haredi women, still lack representation,” she said. “The religious parties state explicitly that they are parties of men. Women have no influence or power. The State of Israel allows institutionalized discrimination when it comes to those who hide behind religion.”
Shushan sees her background in the community as essential to her work. “Only someone who has lived our life can know what we go through, what it’s like to be a young Haredi woman without work or education, under pressure to marry young and raise a family,” she said. “When we turn to women who want to help but aren’t Haredi themselves, we are accused of ‘going outside of the community’ and are shunned.”
‘Our Lives Are A Duality’
And it is not only in government that women lack positions of influence — the rabbinic courts, which have exclusive jurisdiction over all Jewish divorce in Israel, comprise all-male panels, in accordance with Jewish law.
It was from one of these divorce courts that Fainy Sukenik expected justice when she applied for a divorce at the age of 27, after seven years of marriage and three children.
She was sorely disappointed.
“It’s about you and your husband, but, at the same time, the political struggles play out in micro,” she explained. “A woman comes to court and, regardless of her success or status, there, her word matters less. Since Jewish divorce law favors the husband, much depends on the judges’ outlook. If the judges run their court according to outdated models of society, she can say she wants a divorce, she can say that she is abused, but if her husband says he still wants to be married, she has very little chance of getting a divorce.”
Sukenik described Haredi women’s lives as a duality: “In some ways, our rights are very present, and in others they are invisible. Men study Torah, so women go out into the world and work. But at the same time, we are told, no matter what you do or accomplish, it is not as important as your husband’s learning. At home you are number two; your goal in life is to support your husband and make a family. This is what we are taught from childhood.”
During the years she sought a divorce, Sukenik was ostracized and nearly fired from her teaching position at a Haredi girls school because of her decision to divorce. She began to blog under a pseudonym, and started a Facebook group called B’Asher Telchi to help other Orthodox women going through divorce.
Though officially banned in Haredi society, access to the internet is widespread; many people have two phones, one “kosher” with no internet and the other a smartphone. Thousands of Haredim have joined more and more social media groups whose members support each other in the comfort of shared identity.
But these groups do more than offer support — they are breeding grounds for change.
According to the Knesset member Rachel Azaria, another Orthodox fighter for women’s rights: “Women make change in their society by raising their voices via grassroots groups. In Jerusalem, one group called Lo Tishtok [13,000 members] sparked a major debate about sexual abuse. This led to the appointment of social workers and acknowledgement of an issue that had previously been swept under the rug. Another, Lo Nivcharot [(a precursor to Shushan’s not-for-profit, Nivcharot, currently 11,000 members strong)], created a movement of women who refused to vote unless they were represented [by women in Haredi parties].”
Sukenik’s experiences also led to her expanding her Facebook group into a nongovernmental organization. Through Ba’asher Telchi she has helped 2,000 women through the divorce process over the past four years. She has seen the changes to Haredi society in these women: “My mother’s generation never asked: ‘If I bring in the money, why do I have so little say in how it gets spent? Why must I deny my wants and opinions, my intelligence, and knowledge the minute I walk in the door?’ Women are beginning to ask questions [that] are influencing the entire Haredi structure.”
Sukenik asked incredulously: “Will Haredi society disintegrate if women have rights and are treated as equals? No! Not at all. So, to whose advantage is it to keep things this way? I don’t see this as men versus women, I see this as elites versus the average people. [Communal leaders and rabbis] want to stay in power; this is how they keep things in control, how they control people.”
‘Here, The Status Quo Is A Holy Thing’
Michal Zernowitski first entered Haredi politics in 2014, when she ran for office (and subsequently lost) in local elections of the ultra-Orthodox city Elad. Zernowitski spoke passionately about the elite that rules her society.
“Women are not rabbis, they are not communal leaders,” she said. “Our educational institutions are private with no government oversight. Every organization that runs the schools is devoid of women. Men make decisions. People get used to there being no women in any position of influence or authority, and they don’t understand how much this affects the community, in health, economics, women’s rights, etc. It’s not that they are bad people, but they aren’t women. How can they possibly represent our needs? In rabbinic courts, there are no female judges. Of course that affects how women are seen. Our kids are growing up without even seeing pictures of women — of course that affects them!”
The outcomes are clear. According to Rachel Levmore — the first female rabbinical court advocate elected to the committee to appoint rabbinic court judges — women’s experiences in Israeli courts improved dramatically when women were introduced as halachic and legal representatives and included in the committee that elects judges.
“When women hold official positions, the concerns of those women who appear in court are more likely to be heard,” she said.
Moreover, Haredi women are unlikely to have their concerns addressed anywhere else. Given the prohibition against television, secular radio and the internet in Haredi society, many Haredim get their news from internal ultra-Orthodox media, where censorship is a given. Some topics, such as women’s rights, women’s health, sexual abuse or even women in the news, are simply not mentioned.
On the one hand, this practice shields the population from secular influences they consider damaging; on the other, it limits awareness of opportunities and potential risks in ways that may have lasting ramifications.
When it comes to women’s rights, for example, Zernowitski says Haredi girls have no access to understanding their legal employment rights — essential as more and more women enter the tech workforce, finding employment in computers, business management and software engineering. (According to the Israel Democracy Institute, 17,300 Haredi high school girls are currently majoring in technological fields, an increase of 45% from 2013; more than half of them take matriculation exams.)
But when the Israel Women’s Network launched an awareness campaign about a legal advice hotline for religious women, the response was overwhelming. “We were bombarded with such insane and basic questions [from Haredi women] about women’s rights to salary and benefits, we had to hire lawyers and specialists,” said Zernowitski, who sits on the organization’s board.
Changing a community’s culture is complicated.
“In the Haredi world, ‘status quo’ is a holy thing,” Zernowitski explained. “The problem is that extreme elements always try to make it more extreme. It’s not enough to have separate classes, now it’s separate buses, libraries, separate everything, and this becomes the new normal. This is what we are up against.”
All these efforts by Haredi women to improve their society may be culminating, at least for now, in the candidacy of Rabbanit Adina Bar Shalom for government. The daughter of the revered late rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who also founded the Shas party, has announced a new political party that she will head. Her very announcement is a game changer, reflecting the winds of change that now seem inevitable. Most recently, the Israeli Ministry of Justice appointed its first female Haredi judge, Chavi Toker, to head the magistrate court.
Perhaps because of heartening developments like these, Haredi women’s activists are staying put, determined to make a difference.
Sukenik, Shushan, Zernowitski and their colleagues have no interest in abandoning their community. Rather, they want to improve it, by making women’s voices prominent. They know that if they do not fight for the improvement they want to see, their community will be vulnerable to the extremists.
Zernowitski sees this battle as the launching point for women’s representation in policymaking. “Haredi women are at the forefront of all rights struggles in the Haredi sector, in the battle for the rights of divorced women and women in general, in struggles for the rights of workers, in the revolution for higher education and employment, in the fight against sexual abuse and for quality education for our children. I believe that from here, they will reach decision-making positions, and that it will happen soon.”
Originally published in The Forward
Zvia Gordetsky has waited 17 years to be free of the man who prefers jail to granting her a divorce. Her case is unusual because unlike what happens too often, the religious courts did nearly everything they “should” do, and still she is not free.
Normally in Israel, where the religious courts have power to punish withholders, a woman only waits for a get because the court did not order the husband to give her one. In this case, within six months of asking for a divorce, the religious court ordered Zvia’s husband to grant it. When he refused, they told him he would be put in jail. He showed up to the next hearing with a packed suitcase, ready to move into prison. Since then, he has been offered the chance to grant the divorce — and leave prison — every six months. His response is: “They won’t break me.”
That the “system” worked as it should and Zvia — who told me her story personally — is still chained, has made this case shocking to those who are used to tragic stories of get abuse. That Zvia has chosen the desperate act of a hunger strike for her freedom makes it clear that she feels everything else has failed.
Read more in the UK Jewish Chronicle
At Monday’s Knesset debate on the Mikveh Bill, those in attendance were treated to mansplaining on an institutional level, some serious political games and, possibly, a bit of fraud.
Background
In Israel, what a woman does in the mikveh is not simply her own business. The Chief Rabbinate, religious councils and the balanit (mikveh attendant) are all involved. Women whose immersion practices and traditions are at odds with the dictates of the Rabbinate are often refused access to the publicly-funded mikvaot. In order to put a stop to this, a number of lawsuits have been filed with the Supreme Court in the past few years. Though successful in theory, the rules which establish women’s rights in the mikveh have not been put into practice. Thus, in a new suit, filed by the organization ITIM, 13 women are suing the Chief Rabbinate. The hearing is set for later this month.
Earlier this year, another Supreme Court case was filed – and won – about mikveh use. This case made it illegal to refuse the right to use state-funded mikvaot for Conservative and Reform conversions.
It was this case that led MK Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism to sponsor the so-called Mikveh Bill. The original writing of the bill states that “using a public purification mikveh, which is intended for immersion for purification or for conversion purposes, will only be permitted for halakhic immersion, conforming with the halakha (religious law) and with Jewish custom according to the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish law) and the rulings of the Chief Rabbinical Council in Israel.”
While Gafni claims that the law is simply to ‘safeguard Judaism’ and prevent non-Orthodox conversions in state mikvaot, the people who will be most affected by the bill are Orthodox and traditional Jewish women who use the mikveh monthly.
How so? Under this ruling, women may only use the mikveh according to the Chief Rabbinate’s interpretations of Jewish law and tradition. If a woman’s tradition or ruling by her rabbi are not in line with the rulings of the Chief Rabbinate, she can be denied use of the mikveh. For example, women are barred from immersing without an attendant (despite this being permitted by the Shulchan Aruch). The bill also bars single women, women preparing to ascend the Temple Mount and women who would like to immerse for whatever purposes that they may choose — for example, to renew themselves after trauma or to mark an occasion (see here for more).
The bill was signed by 11 male MKs from UTJ, Shas and HaBayit HaYehudi and one female MK: Shuli Moalem of Bayit Yehudi. From the beginning, however, Moalem made her support for the bill contingent on key changes to the bill’s wording that would protect the women who use mikvaot, allowing them to immerse according to their own traditions.
Monday, June 5, 2016
The debate was nearly over before it began. In attendance were: MKs Gafni, Eichler, Azulay, Moelem, Azaria, Lavie, Stern, Swid, Glick, and Paran. Also present were representatives of numerous organizations, as well as individual women for whom autonomy and privacy in the mikveh are vital. It was standing-room-only; nonetheless, many of the men in the room seemed bewildered as to why so many women were present for the discussion.
The discourse was truly shocking. The concerns of religious and traditional women, whom the religious parties claim to protect, were dismissed completely out of hand.
The Play-by-Play
Because Gafni had not disclosed changes he had made to the bill, Moelem insisted on tabling the discussion.
MKs Rachel Azaria and Aliza Lavie, as well as Elazar Stern echoed Moelem’s demand. Gafni responded: “I never imagined that the wording of the law would be so important that anyone would need to read it first!”
Committee chair of the debate MK Amsallem of Likud, together with MKs from UTJ and Shas, insisted that the debate go forward, but the women MKs were having none of it. They vociferously opposed the bill for being harmful to women.
MK (Yesh Atid) Aliza Lavie pointed out that instead of promoting religious observance, this bill will actually result in violations of religious practice as long as the religious institutions continue to dismiss women’s concerns about the mikveh.
Rachel Azaria (Kulanu), furiously argued that it was unacceptable to reject the legitimate concerns and experiences of women in the mikva when women are the ones who are most affected and who have so much at stake if this bill is passed. She shouted over their interruptions and protestations that they were stripping women of their rights and traditions without hearing women out. Her passionate outburst resulted in her forcible removal from the room.
Throughout these exchanges, Gafni kept repeating his claim that women have nothing to worry about. But his claim that “this law doesn’t affect women at all!” is disingenuous, given that, as a man in the ultra-Orthodox community, he knows full well that married women immerse in the mikveh regularly. How could he claim women would not be affected by the changes his bill makes to the most intimate and feminine space in Judaism?
Indeed, his statement is laughable. To suggest that a law governing use of the mikveh won’t affect women is preposterous. Even to suggest, as he has done, that the bill does nothing more than establish the status quo is problematic; as Moalem pointed out, the status quo isn’t enough. That’s why women have been bringing suits for some time! Moreover, Gafni and several of the other male MKs present appeared to willfully ignore the implications of the bill that the female MKs were very loudly explaining to them.
When after an hour, the actual text of the revised bill was produced for the other MKs, it was immediately clear that the wording had been dramatically altered from the previous version and that Gafni had tried to hide it. MK Michal Rozen (Meretz) left no room for doubt: “I’m looking at both versions of the bill, the old and the new. This is not a revision of the the bill. These are two different bills.”
The legal advisor began reading the new bill aloud and the objections began in earnest. In response, Gafni screamed that it was not the legal advisor’s place to comment on the legality of the bill. He rose from his seat and yelled that it was “none of your business,” and that he was interfering with coalition agreements of which this bill is a part. Then he stormed out.
With Gafni gone and the clock ticking, MK Amsallem finally allowed four non-MKs to speak and learned a bit about what is at stake beyond a coalition agreement — and on whose (naked) backs this legislation tramples.
The first of these four, Keren Hadad Taub of Advot,, explained that most of the people affected by this bill are women, not only because it is women who use the mikveh regularly, but because the overwhelming majority of converts in Israel are female. The male MKs’ were surprised to learn this critical piece of information, the knowledge of which is vital to knowing how the bill will play out in practice. There is no way one can understand the real life implications of a bill without knowing who the bill affects.
“I hope you sleep well at night knowing that women have stopped going to the mikveh because of you,” saidfounder of T’nu Litbol Be-Sheket (LINK), a movement advocating for women’s rights in the mikveh, and secretary general of Yerushalmim party.
Rivka Shimon of Women for the Mikdash also pointed that, “this [bill] prevents women — married and single — from going up to Har Habayit.”
MK Amsallem interrupted her: “Wait, you’re saying that if a single woman shows up to the mikveh to immerse, they will tell her no?” The frustration in the room was palpable as the women answered with an exasperated “YES!”
The Core Issue
Amsallem was one of few male MKs in the room to pay attention to the implications of the bill (newest MK Glick and MK Stern did as well), and that is the crux of the issue. The bill will affect those who use the mikvah most, and not the Conservative and Reform conversions it’s purportedly designed to deter. But the Charedi parties that wrote the bill – for whom Torah observance should be of paramount importance – turn a blind eye to the pleading of the women to be heard and considered. Could it be that they simply do not care? Shouldn’t that be unthinkable? Yet when a high ranking charedi official in the the religious council of Jerusalem was told that, because of this bill, women won’t use the mikveh, he shrugged. “So, they won’t use the mikveh.”
This bill is supposedly about preserving Judaism, safeguarding the Torah, and the Jewish people. But it is not; it does none of those things. Rather, the bill is about power and control — about a coalition deal. The fact that it may result in the suffering of religious and traditional women, who by their very actions are preserving Judaism and safeguarding both Torah and the Jewish people, is of no concern. The women’s suffering and discomfort, the dismissal of their needs is simply collateral damage in the Charedi MKs’ service of a larger cause — their own political clout.
