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We ARE the Leaders We Need Right Now

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“Where are the Jewish leaders who speak for women?”

Dr. Susannah Heschel asks this critical question in her July 27th opinion piece in the Forward. She celebrates Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent speech on the House floor condemning Rep. Ted Yoho’s demeaning and insulting language and behavior which, unfortunately, is not unusual for women – especially women of color – to experience.

Heschel accurately addresses the ever-present and pervasive marginalization, inequity and, often, harassment that many – if not most – women experience in the Jewish communal world. In particular, she focuses on the professional Jewish landscape.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was speaking for Jewish women because she was sharing an experience to which all women can relate. Her experience as a woman is not “other” than Jewish women, it is inclusive of all of us.

While Heschel poses a critical question and shines light yet again on the very issues that have been fueled by the #MeToo moment, we believe that she, in fact, makes her own point.

“Where are the Jewish leaders who speak for women?” We are right here!

We are working tirelessly every day individually and collectively across our community to speak and advocate for Jewish (and all) women, to shine a light on Jewish women’s work and leadership. We are curating forums, events, and now, webinars, working to end inequity, harassment, assault and abuse. We are speaking and teaching, gathering and organizing, hosting (currently virtual) events, planning and strategizing.

We stand today as a diverse coalition, representing Jewish women from all across the country and the globe, from all walks of life, identities, and religious affiliations: Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal and otherwise affiliated or not; we are Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrachi; we are Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, White, and Multiracial; we are LGBTQ+ and straight; we are philanthropists, CEOs, educators, journalists, volunteers, stay-at-home parents, and more.

And today, as a global pandemic swirls around us, we continue to keep that fight alive even while issues deemed more urgent understandably rise to the top.

Last August, an article titled “The Week That All Jewish Women Turned Invisible” appeared on this website. It was a response to a week where once again, many new male CEOs were announced at legacy institutions, multiple articles were published celebrating male-only leadership, and panels featuring exclusively male-only leadership were convened.

An effort began on a highly active Facebook Group, “Year of the Jewish Woman and Allies” – now home to 3,261 members, and heavily populated with heads of organizations and public speakers and writers who speak out for women every day, and who are in collegial dialogue there – to grow a movement that speaks loudly and powerfully on behalf of Jewish women.

We thank Professor Heschel for shining a light, again, as we seemingly continue to need to, on the egregious inequities and abuses of women in the Jewish community. Doing so as a public figure whose name garners much respect and reverence only helps our cause.

However, we pose a question in return. If someone with her extraordinary background, education, awareness and engagement in the Jewish community is asking: “Where are the Jewish leaders who speak for women?” then how can we expect those who are less informed to support and join this effort? Whose responsibility is it to know who our female Jewish leaders are and raise up our voices and our work? If we do not take an active role in educating ourselves as well as promoting the work of Jewish women’s leadership every day – then how can we rightfully express frustration and anger when others’ voices are not “loud enough” and remain unheard?

“Where are the Jewish leaders who speak for women?” WE ARE RIGHT HERE.

But we ask different questions: Where are the Jewish leaders actively seeking out the organizations, initiatives, and women themselves whose voices deserve amplification? Where are the Jewish leaders actively choosing to fund our work? Where are the Jewish leaders with influence and power who are saying “Look here, these bold Jewish women leaders are valiant and persistent in their struggle for justice, for equity, for safety, and for respect. Let’s join them.”

We are here. We don’t need to be found or for others to speak on our behalf. What we need is the Jewish organizational world to see us as leaders and position us at the heads of our largest tables.

People of stature and influence in the Jewish community: You are part of this work. Make it your business to elevate and amplify Jewish women’s voices, follow our work, use your own voice to give the work greater visibility and credibility. So many women (and men) have stepped up to challenge gender and other inequities, and have spoken as eloquently and forcefully as AOC. Support us, engage with us, listen to our stories.

Nicole Nevarez is National Director of Ta’amod: Stand Up!; Jamie Allen Black is CEO of the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York; Naomi Eisenberger is Executive Director and Co-Founder of The Good People Fund.

Co-signers: (organizations listed for identification purposes only):

  • Ruth Messinger / Jewish Social Justice Consultant
  • Barbara Dobkin / Dobkin Family Foundation
  • Meredith Jacobs, CEO / Jewish Women International (JWI)
  • Sara Shapiro-Plevan, Co-Founder / Gender Equity in Hiring Project; Founder and Lead Consultant / Rimonim Consulting
  • Sally Gottesman
  • Rachel Weinstein, President / Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York
  • Shahanna McKinney Baldon
  • Dr. Judith Rosenbaum, CEO / Jewish Women’s Archive
  • Eve Landau
  • Ginna Green, Strategist and Consultant
  • Tania Laden, Executive Director / LivelyHoods
  • H. Glenn Rosenkrantz
  • Sarah Chandler, CEO / Shamir Collective
  • Rabba Melissa Scholten-Gutierrez
  • Hazzan Joanna Selznick Dulkin
  • Rabbi Rebecca W. Sirbu, Co-Founder / Gender Equity in Hiring Project; CEO / RabbiCareers.com; Engagement Division Director / Hadassah
  • Rabbi Steven Bayar, Emeritus / Bnai Israel, Millburn, NJ / Director JSurge
  • Naama Haviv, Director of Community Engagement / MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger
  • Ann Cohen / Ann Cohen & Associates
  • Susan Weidman Schneider, Editor in Chief / Lilith Magazine
  • Samantha Anderson, Founder & Managing Partner / Ceres Group Advisors
  • Jordan Namerow, Founder and Principal / Jordan Namerow Communications
  • Rachel Gildiner, Executive Director / GatherDC
  • Dana Levinson Steiner, Board of Directors / Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York
  • Amanda Katz, Executive Director/JCADA
  • Rebecca Youngerman, Founder and Principal / RGY Consulting
  • Jodi Bromberg, CEO / 18Doors (formerly InterfaithFamily)
  • Deborah Meyer, CEO / Moving Traditions
  • Naomi Tucker, Executive Director / SHALOM BAYIT, Ending Domestic Violence in Jewish Homes
  • Larisa Klebe, Director / Nishmah: The St. Louis Jewish Women’s Project (a program of the J)
  • Dan Brown, Founder and Publisher / eJewishPhilanthropy
  • Rabbi Dena Klein / The Jewish Education Project
  • Laura Mandel, Executive Director / The Jewish Arts Collaborative
  • Rabbi Yael Ridberg / Congregation Dor Hadash
  • Rachel Eisen, Co-Founder / Mentoring for Equity
  • Sara Miller-Paul, Co-Founder / Mentoring for Equity
  • Rabbi Andrea M. Gouze, Temple Beth Emunah / Director of Pastoral Care, New England Sinai Hospital
  • Cindy Rowe, Executive Director / Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action
  • Susan Adler, Executive Director / Boston Jewish Film
  • Idit Klein, President & CEO / Keshet
  • Stephanie Levin, Chief Engagement & Innovation Officer / Peninsula JCC
  • Karyn Grossman Gershon, Executive Director / Project Kesher
  • Allison Fine
  • Dana Sheanin, CEO / JewishLearningWorks
  • Rabbi Rachel Ain
  • Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
  • Jacqueline Ulin Levey, CEO / WashU Hillel
  • Carrie Bornstein, Executive Director / Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh and Paula Brody & Family Education Center
  • Rachel Wasserman
  • Daphne Lazar Price, Executive Director / Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance
  • Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, President / Hebrew College
  • Laura Hyman, Director / Genesis Pre-college Program at Brandeis University
  • Rivka Cohen, Director of Partnerships and Strategic Development / Lissan
  • Molly Wernick, Community Director/Habonim Dror Camp Galil
  • Rabbi Melinda Zalma / Commander, Navy Chaplain Corps / Program Director, Jewish Community Relations Council-NY
  • Rabbi Lisa Gelber
  • Susan Weiss, Executive Director / Center for Women’s Justice
  • Liz Wolfson
  • Micol Zimmerman Burkeman / Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion
  • Libby Goldstein Parker, Executive Director / Jewfolk, Inc.
  • Susan Holzman Wachsstock, The Jewish Education Project
  • Sarah Waldbott, Director of Development/ National Council of Jewish Women New York
  • Naomi Less, Founding Ritual Leader and Associate Director, Lab/Shul
  • Sara Atkins

Addressing Sexual Harassment in the Jewish Workplace

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The #Me Too movement is coming to the Atlanta Jewish community. The Jewish Women’s Fund of Atlanta is hosting a Change the Culture Summit Feb. 24 to address sexual harassment, sexism and gender discrimination in Jewish workplaces and communal spaces. The half-day program will address issues of safety, respect and equity and is designed for professionals, board members, lay leaders, donors and general community members.

Or perhaps the #MeToo movement is already here. As part of its Change the Culture Initiative, JWFA is seeking anonymous personal stories of discrimination, harassment and assault in Jewish workplaces.

According to Rachel Wasserman, executive director of JWFA, several such accounts have already been received, from both women and men. “We plan to incorporate these stories into the summit,” she said, stressing that she receives the anonymous reports directly from Google. “People are afraid that their stories can be traced,” she acknowledged.

The summit, to be held at The Selig Center, will kick off by sharing national research that shows the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace is not limited to the non-Jewish world. “The numbers speak for themselves,” Wasserman said.

Guila Benchimol is senior advisor to the Safety, Respect, Equity Jewish coalition.

The research was conducted by Guila Benchimol, who is senior advisor to the Safety, Respect, Equity Jewish coalition that addresses sexual harassment and gender discrimination. She is also a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence.

Another national expert that JWFA is bringing to the summit is Nicole Nevarez, the inaugural national director of Ta’amod: Stand Up!, a multi-pronged initiative dedicated to ending gender abuse, harassment and toxic culture in the Jewish communal space. According to Wasserman, Ta’amod is training people around the country to be resources for those who have experienced harassment in the workplace.

Rachel Wasserman is executive director of the Jewish Women’s Fund of Atlanta.

“The country has been engaging in this work for a couple of years now,” Wasserman noted. “We know that, unfortunately, these crimes that happen in the broader community also happen in the Jewish community.” Over the past year, Jewish communities have started to systematically address the issue, with the founding of national organizations and coalitions such as the Safety, Respect, Equity coalition and Ta’amod. These groups are placing special emphasis on the ethical, not just the legal standards that Jews owe to each other.

The summit hopes to attract men and women from all levels of leadership in the Jewish community, said Wasserman, including clergy, professionals, volunteers and lay leaders. “We hope organizations will send teams of people to the summit and see this as a professional development opportunity,” she added.

Wasserman calls the summit just a beginning for the Atlanta Jewish community. The JWFA hopes to become a resource in this area as well as provide training for people to support those who experience harassment in the Jewish world. In March, the JWFA will offer a screening of a documentary about discrimination in the workplace. Although the film is not specifically about harassment in the Jewish world, “some Jewish professionals are interviewed in the film.”

Hello Neighbor, local refugee mentoring agency, creates national network

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Leaders of several refugee organizations from around the country spent several days in Pittsburgh recently helping Sloane Davidson formalize the Hello Neighbor Network.

Since 2017, Ms. Davidson, founder and CEO of Hello Neighbor in Pittsburgh, has pulled together a large team of local mentors and interpreters to contribute to the well-being of refugee families — 95 currently, with 25 families and new mentors added every six to nine months.

Pairing refugees with mentors is an immediate antidote to the isolation that most refugees feel long after relocation agencies have stepped away, she said.

Those services last from three to six months. That’s a reason she started Hello Neighbor.

“I thought, ‘What happens after six months?’” she said. “There was a wide spectrum of opportunity.”

She honed her affinity for this mission during a 16-year career working with nonprofits in microfinance and empowerment projects for women and girls in countries including Congo, Ghana, Guatemala and the Philippines.

She returned to Pittsburgh in 2015 and began mentoring a Syrian family, helping with mail, bus routes and homework. Through that family, she met more refugees. When she asked whether they had any American friends, they all said no.

“They were socially isolated, surviving but not thriving,” Ms. Davidson said.

She mentored more families, 25 from eight countries, before cultivating a base of mentors and interpreters.

Ms. Davidson founded Hello Neighbor in 2017 on a $30,000 grant from the Heinz Endowments, with New Sun Rising as her nonprofit agent. She now has one employee, a program manager and her own nonprofit status, with funding from several foundations.

Her small office is in a coworking space in Shadyside.

When she began a national search for people who do roughly what she does, she said, “We had an automatic camaraderie. Being a nonprofit startup founder is socially isolating, too.

“Sometimes the issues we face are the same. It’s so nice to talk to other people who get it.”

Two-thirds of the organizations are operating on less than $250,000 a year and one-third on less than $100,000, Ms. Davidson said.

The network’s purpose is to collaborate, sharing processes and methods to determine what’s working and what isn’t, she said.

“We all want to find a way for our organizations to strengthen ourselves so we can have a stronger impact on refugees,” she said. “We need collaboration now more than ever, so I went to a funder to build the network.”

Ms. Davidson found two, the Harnisch Foundation, which gave $5,000, and the Good People Fund, which gave $10,000. That $15,000 paid for travel expenses and costs of a two-day gathering of the organization leaders.

Naomi Eisenberger, co-founder and executive director of the New Jersey-based Good People Fund, said Hello Neighbor’s work is compatible with the fund’s mission.

“We fund grassroots efforts, people who are inspired to do good work,” she said. “We learned about Sloane, and when we started interacting, we emphasized the importance of bringing together other small programs like hers. She said, ‘Wow, that’s exactly what I was thinking of doing.’

“I know all these programs are struggling to do good work, and the refugee situation is such that it is all the more important that they do this together,” Ms. Eisenberger said.

The network members are Hello Neighbor; Dwell Mobile, Alabama; Heartfelt Tidbits of Cincinnati; Hearts and Homes for Refugees in Westchester County, N.Y.; Homes Not Borders of Washington, D.C.; International Neighbors of Charlottesville, Va.; Miry’s List of Los Angeles; Refugee Assistance Alliance of Miami; and Soft Landing Missoula, Mont.

Sheryl Rajbhandar founded Heartfelt Tidbits as a nonprofit in 2016, but she had been helping immigrant and refugee families in Cincinnati since 2008.

“My first refugee family was from Bhutan,” Ms. Rajbhandar said. “They were settled for 10 days in a hotel, eight people in one room, and they had not left the room because they had no concept of a door.

“They didn’t know how to get out,” she said. “With my husband translating, I asked the man what I could do to help, and he said, ‘Send me back to the refugee camp.’ I said, ‘I will guarantee you that this will be your home and you will be happy here.’ That is what drives me every day.”

Ms. Rajbhandar said she had been following the work of Hello Neighbor when Ms. Davidson called her.

“I said, ‘I can’t believe this, I’m so excited,’” Ms. Rajbhandar said. “I felt isolated, too, even though there are groups working with refugees, they only do one thing, like resettle or advocacy. That isn’t all these folks need.

“The program Sloane is running reminded me of our Adopt-a-Family program, but she was so much smarter, and I am so enamored of her work.”

One belief that drives all the women of the network, Ms. Rajbhandar said, is “that everyone in the world is pretty much the same, just in different places.”

Needed: A Jewish response to mass incarceration

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I am a formerly incarcerated Jewish lesbian and the child of two Holocaust survivors. I served time in two federal prisons, including stints in solitary confinement.

On the first day of my incarceration, I requested and was given a Siddur – a Jewish prayer book. By the second day, I began saying the Sh’ma prayer over and over every day.  It took no more than a few seconds to realize why I was repeating the Sh’ma and holding the prayer book. A story my father told me came to mind immediately.

In 1940, after the Nazis conquered Poland and came to power, a Jew carrying a Siddur, a tallit, and tefillin could be shot. Still, my father took his velvet pouch, which held his siddur, tallit and tefillin, to work. A Nazi stopped him, saw the items and decided to make an example of him.

The Nazi summoned other Jews to watch as he beat my father. Summoning his strength and faith, my father looked up to G-d and said, “if you let me live, I will honor you every day through prayer.”

He survived 12 labor and concentration camps and was liberated at Dachau in 1945.

As a three-year-old child, I would watch my father prepare to pray. When he put the leather straps around his arm, I ran over held out my arm so he would put them on my arm too. It was my father’s absolute joy of davening and lacing up the leather strap on his arm that I remembered. It was his love for Judaism that I saw clearly.

And it was the Jewish values my parents would repeat and model throughout my childhood that stayed with me and were so important during my incarceration, that is, that Jews have a moral obligation to care about the dignity of every person. It was my parents’ reminder of our moral obligation that led me to watch, learn and record in my mind everything that happened in prison.

I formed Witness to Mass Incarceration to position the voices of formerly imprisoned women and LGBTQIA people at the front of the movement for alternatives. It was my Jewish eyes, soul and values guiding me.

The American Jewish community knows about mass incarceration but must do more to end it. By allowing incarcerated people to be in prison in 120 degree temperatures with no air-conditioning, by ignoring daily threats of sexual violence, to tolerating prisoner slave labor or, most importantly, by allowing for the over-incarceration and sentencing of people of color and LGBTQIA people is to forget that we are all created in G0d’s image, b’tzelem Elohim. 

Being released from prison was harder than being in prison. I was released homeless and penniless. I was given a Greyhound bus ticket and 30 dollars and that was all. There was no place for me to go, no services to help me get housing, a job, a community, and no immediate help for my deteriorated mental health.

Formerly incarcerated people need help on the first day of their release. Current reentry services that have been funded for decades haven’t provided the jobs and housing we need.

I ask the American Jewish community to not only make a commitment to end the era of mass incarceration but to welcome home the strangers that are being released from prison.

The task of welcoming home a newly released person is not easy. They start with less than nothing because, in addition to their poverty and homelessness, they have to fight the anxiety, fears and triggers from their incarceration.

Witness partners with Jewish synagogues to meet and greet a newly released person, provide them with a suitcase with critical items and, going forward, a community.

While our “Suitcase Project,” as it is called, is an important first step, a much broader Jewish Response to Reentry is a necessary second step, mobilizing the Jewish community to embrace its core values and lessons of its own history with oppression to engage with justice and fairness for others.

In this way, we honor all of G-d’s creations – Kavod Ha-Briyot – and repair the world, Tikkun Olam.

2019 Russ Berrie Making a Difference Award

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Fraidy Reiss was 19 when her family arranged her marriage to a violent man. With no education or job, and in a religious community where only men can grant a divorce, she was trapped for 12 years.

Reiss became the first in her family to attend college; she graduated from Rutgers at age 32 as valedictorian. She went on to become an investigative reporter at the Asbury Park Press, got divorced and won custody of her two daughters.

In 2011, Reiss founded unchained At Last to help other women in New Jersey and across the United States to resist or escape forced marriages and rebuild their lives. Through Unchained, she has provided crucial, often life-saving services – always free of charge – to more than 500 women.

When girls under the age of 18 started reaching out to Unchained for help, the organization couldn’t help them — because marriage before 18 was legal in all 50 states.

Reiss brought her reporting skills to bear, conducting research that revealed an estimated 248,000 children, some as young as age 12, were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010. Most were young girls married to adult men. In New Jersey, she discovered, more than 3,600 children as young as 13 were married between 1995 and 2015, over 85 percent of them young girls married to adult men.

Reiss drafted a bill to end child marriages in New Jersey and worked for months to convince two legislators, Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz and Senator Nellie Pou, to introduce it. Her efforts paid off on June 22, 2018, when Governor Murphy signed the bill and made New Jersey the second state, after Delaware, to end child marriage.

On May 3, Reiss was rewarded for her efforts with one of New Jersey’s most prestigious honors: the Russ Berrie Making a Difference Award top prize, which includes a $50,000 cash award.

The Russ Berrie Making a Difference Award honors New Jersey’s most extraordinary unsung heroes, whose outstanding community service and charitable contributions have made a substantial impact on the lives of others. The awards, established by the late Russell Berrie, are funded by The Russell Berrie Foundation and administered by Ramapo College, with recipients selected by a panel of independent judges. The 23nd annual awards, accompanied by cash prizes ranging from $7,500 to $50,000, were announced at a ceremony at Ramapo College.

A Year In, Combating Gender Harassment Is Just Beginning

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Just over a year ago, we convened hundreds of Jewish community members and presented harrowing, deeply disturbing stories of some of the nameless who have endured and suffered gender harassment across the spectrum of our Jewish communal spaces.

Painful, but we know that personal testimonies have the collective power to upset the order.

Naomi K. Eisenberger (left) and Jamie Allen Black (right)

Just over a year ago, we convened hundreds of Jewish community members and presented harrowing, deeply disturbing stories of some of the nameless who have endured and suffered gender harassment across the spectrum of our Jewish communal spaces.

Painful, but we know that personal testimonies have the collective power to upset the order.

We called the gathering “Revealing #MeToo As #WeToo,” a jump-start moment to do just that — build awareness, create discomfort, and spur a conversation and reckoning about what we as a community could and should do about an insidiousness that steals dignities and worse.

A culture in which gender harassment — and the power dynamics supporting it — exists needed to be stared down, diminished, and eliminated. And, as importantly, it needed to be replaced with a more evolved and respectful sense of how we interact with each other.

In the year since, our community has absorbed more than a few shocking headlines and applauded the bravery of women willing to go public with tales of harassment and exploitation based on their gender and steeped in antiquated notions of hierarchy.

In some instances, perpetrators and those silently complicit in this abuse have been exposed and separated from organizations that take seriously the Jewish values they represent. In other cases, they have not, shielded by individuals or organizations valuing philanthropic support and favor above respect.

“Why is it such a challenge for Jewish communal leaders to acknowledge that gender harassment isn’t just some other organization’s issue?”

As much as we live in an age characterized unfortunately by short attention spans and even briefer news cycles, we recognize that our focus as a community can’t be on the drama alone. It must also be on the hard and tedious work building communal infrastructure, channels and conversations to affect lasting cultural change. B’Kavod (“with respect”), a joint initiative of our two organizations, The Good People Fund and the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York, is now a director-led office existing exclusively to help Jewish communal institutions and all who work, learn, or worship at them develop sustainable environments of safety, respect, and fairness.

One of the challenges of addressing gender harassment and abuse in the Jewish communal workplace is the dearth of resources for those who need them. As organizations move toward legal and ethical compliance, there has been a scramble to find the right trainer, coach, lawyer, trauma expert, and others who can work specifically with JEWISH organizations — professionals who understand the complexities and nuances of our community.

Through B’Kavod, we have adopted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) Safe Respectful Workplace training program, reframed it for the Jewish community, and created a growing corps of certified trainers working with Jewish organizations throughout the country to create and advance just what the name says — workplaces and shared spaces that are safe and respectful, where harassment based on gender or sexual orientation meets a zero-tolerance standard.

In the past year, nearly 30 trainers have joined our corps, each educated, certified and supported by Fran Sepler, designer of the EEOC program. Already, in a short amount of time, B’Kavod has delivered Jewish-communal specific, and legally compliant trainings to over 50 organizations throughout the United States. These include Jewish federations, synagogues, educational institutions, social justice organizations, and other Jewish agencies.

In addition, B’Kavod has created channels of communication so that those who have been subjected to gender harassment in Jewish workplaces have a trusted address to report it and receive support. And it has built a collection of relevant and timely resources, including webinars, to help individuals and organizations in the realm of gender harassment in all of its forms.

Throughout this past year, we have often found ourselves to be the agitators within the established Jewish community, spotlighting a troubling reality and creating a movement that challenges a status quo that tolerates and even protects organizational structures that have no systemic barriers to gender harassment.

With the rise of the #MeToo movement and its natural trickle-down effect into our community, we are compelled, as leaders of organizations that put the empowerment and uplifting of women and girls and other voiceless populations at the heart of their missions, to take on this role in both a vocal and strategic manner.

We know that change comes slowly, and that even small incremental advances, like the ones we’ve had, are invaluable.

But as we have spent the last year building, forming alliances —including with members of the Safety/Respect/Equity Coalition, a generous funder of B’Kavod — and spreading the word, we are also cognizant of inertia, even within organizations and among allies that are sympathetic.

Why is it such a challenge for Jewish communal leaders to acknowledge that gender harassment isn’t just some other organization’s issue? Why is there resistance to fostering internal dialogues and having uncomfortable conversations? Why aren’t the boards of our Jewish institutions stepping up and recognizing their role in changing this dynamic? Why aren’t more agencies embracing trainings even as a fail-safe mechanism? Why aren’t more of our community’s generous funders demanding that grantees adopt formal policies addressing this issue?

Moving past this inertia and leading organizations to what is certainly the right place is one of the greater challenges, for sure. So until our leadership embraces this effort with a full heart and determination, we will keep telling our stories, raising the issue in appropriate forums, and reminding everyone — as we so firmly believe — that gender harassment is NOT a Jewish value and that we can do so much better.

Jamie Allen Black is CEO of the Jewish Women’s Foundation of New York. Naomi K. Eisenberger is co-founder and executive director of The Good People Fund.