Our day began with a meeting at Tel Aviv University’s NCJW Center for Women and Gender Studies. I was so proud to introduce our guests to Hannah Naveh, founder of the program that began 14 years ago. Hannah recalled, “What NCJW has done for us is unimaginable. No university in Israel had a program for gender studies. NCJW came here when there were no such programs anywhere in this region, invested in teaching students and helped launch a field of study that has transformed knowledge.” She thanked Nan Rich, Susan Katz, and Jan Schneiderman for their vision and their commitment. There are now 135 graduate students in the program.

More recently, the NCJW Women’s Forum has added an important supplementary component, and its head, Professor Daphne Hacker from the Faculty of Law, also spoke with us. The Forum meets on Fridays when hundreds of women come to the campus to listen and learn about a range of topics concerning women’s issues. Four students from the program joined us to discuss their own research and interests. Yifat, one of the students, came to the program after working as a lawyer because she wanted to better understand the issues facing her women clients. Professor Naveh closed the meeting and discussion with a D’var Torah about Purim and Queen Vashti’s role in the Purim story – “she stood up to the King and said no!”

Next we heard from the Shutafot (partnership) group which is receiving the collaborative funding from NCJW and 16 foundations. Shutafot has a 16-point agenda to work collaboratively on advancing change for women in Israeli society. Facilitated by Daphna Fund director, Hamutal Gouri, members of the coalition presented their part in this effort as follows:

• Achoti director, Shula Keshet, talked about her work advancing people of color in Israeli society including Ethiopians, Arabs, and Mizrahi Jews
• Galit Desheh, the Executive Director of the Israel Women’s Network, spoke about her work with advocacy for equal pay and teenagers leading change.
• Barbara Kirks shared the Shutafot platform and the issues the coalition of groups will be tackling in the coming months.    

Prior to lunch with the students and a few other guests, Itach-Maaki — Women Lawyers for Social Justice — presented their excellent work on the implementation of the UN Resolution 1325 (on women, peace, and security.) While Israel was the first UN member to adopt the resolution to ensure proper representation of women on all national policy making committees, this has yet to to be fully implemented.

Before heading to Jerusalem, we visited another NCJW grantee, Turning the Tables, and met with its director, Lilach Tzur Ben-Moshe, as well as Gili Varon the director of Israeli’s Human Trafficking Task Force. This program takes girls out of prostitution, and helps them set a course for their future by training them in fashion design. Women designers volunteer their time and work one on one with the girls. Currently, the program is located at Shenkar School of Design but will soon be moving to its own location. There are 15,000 prostitutes in Israel and one third of them are minors. The trafficking situation has greatly improved in recent years because of the laws passed by the Knesset. Prostitution is legal in Israel, but advertising, pimping, and publicizing escort services are illegal. The emphasis is on penalizing the promoters, not the women themselves.

We arrived in Jerusalem just as the sun was setting, and we stood on Mt. Scopus and recited the shehecheyanu to reflect on our gratitude for being here in Jerusalem together for the first time.