In Israel, ultra-Orthodox women have seven children on average and, if their husbands study Torah full time, which is a communitywide ideal, women may also be their family’s sole breadwinners. RNS photo by Michele Chabin

JERUSALEM (RNS) — Esty Shushan breathed a sigh of relief when Israel’s High Court recently urged an ultra-Orthodox political party to allow women to run for political office or face a court ruling.

“We women are 50 percent of the haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) population but we have no access at the decision-making table,” said Shushan, the founder of Nivcharot, an organization that advocates for the participation of ultra-Orthodox women in local and national politics.  “We have problems no one, including male haredi Knesset members, are addressing.”

Tamar Ben-Porath, a secular attorney, and 10 women’s organizations, all but one of them secular, petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to force religious parties to change their rules. The court agreed to hear the case and gave the ultra-Orthodox party Agudath Yisrael until Sept. 2 to change its policy and allow women to run. If it doesn’t, the court said it would issue a ruling.

“We are women supporting women,” Porath said. “It is unacceptable that a certain sector of society is discriminating against women, claiming this discrimination is based on the sector’s social norms. Today it’s haredi women who are being barred from being candidates. Tomorrow it could be Arabs or another group.”

Although ultra-Orthodox women are not named in the lawsuit because it would imperil their standing within the very community they are trying to reform, Porath said, they are the true trailblazers fighting for change within the insular, patriarchal ultra-Orthodox community.

The demands for representation by Shushan and a small but growing number of religious women come amid a seismic shift in Israeli ultra-Orthodox society, where women give birth to an average of seven children and many support their families financially, allowing their husbands to study Torah full time.

As the community, which comprises 12 percent of Israel’s population, has grown, this spiritually rich but economically precarious lifestyle has become increasingly unsustainable. To meet the challenge, several ultra-Orthodox rabbis have given women greater latitude to study for secular professions, as long as they do so in a gender-segregated environment.

Esty Shushan, right, co-CEO and founder, and Estee Rieder-Indursky, co-CEO, of the organization Nivcharot are demanding that Israel’s ultra-Orthodox political parties allow women to run on their ballots for national and local elections. Photo by Efrat Ben-Yosef

“In the past decade there have been a lot of social changes in haredi society,” Shushan explained. “Haredi women are allowed to become marketers, lawyers, journalists, but the one place they can’t enter is politics. There are zero haredi women in the Knesset, in municipal parties, and it is intolerable.” (Knesset is the term for Israel’s Parliament.)

Kimmy Caplan, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University, says that for ultra-Orthodox society, there is “a huge difference” between a woman working in an office and a woman campaigning during an election.

“Haredi women are having a lot of impact, changing social norms,” Caplan said. “They are meeting mainstream Israeli society and society is meeting them. They are ending stereotypes. But in the eyes of haredi political parties, which take their directions from haredi rabbis, women should not be up on a podium making speeches. There is still an ideological barrier ultra-Orthodox women are up against.”

Since Israel was established in 1948, no haredi party has allowed a woman to run on its ticket, citing bylaws that require the approval of prominent rabbis. In 2015, Ruth Colian, an ultra-Orthodox activist, created U’Bizchutan, a party focused on haredi women’s issues, but it received only 1,802 votes, far fewer than the threshold needed to win a seat in the Knesset.

Only one haredi woman, Tzvia Greenfeld, served as a parliamentarian, from 2006 to 2009, for a party that is not haredi. Today, 35 women serve in the 120-member Knesset.

Shushan said that for ultra-Orthodox women to have any influence in the public sphere, “we need to join the existing parties,” which wield a great deal of power in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Not all ultra-Orthodox women agree. In July, Adina Bar-Shalom, daughter of the late, revered Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, formally registered the mixed-religious political party she helped create, Achi Yisraeli.

But Bar-Shalom, an activist and educator, told the Times of Israel she does not expect to become a candidate.

Ultra-Orthodox women can “make use of politics even without being a member of Knesset,” Bar-Shalom said.

Shushan, however, believes only ultra-Orthodox women working within an established ultra-Orthodox party can effectively tackle the many challenges they face.

“The government is giving many scholarships to encourage more haredi men into the workplace, but haredi women receive much less funding. Haredi women are diagnosed with breast cancer later than other women because haredi society says it’s ‘immodest’ to name female body parts. The pay gap between haredi women and other women in the workplace is something like 30 percent,” Shushan said.

In Jerusalem an ultra-Orthodox woman passes a billboard full of “pashkvilim,” public notices of rabbinic decrees, death notices and other timely information. RNS photo by Michele Chabin

Rachel Stomel, a spokeswoman for the Center for Women’s Justice, one of the court case’s petitioners, said ultra-Orthodox male lawmakers “don’t show up” to Knesset forums on the well-being of women.

“Haredi women need the opportunity to speak for themselves,” Stomel said.

And while ultra-Orthodox lawmakers deny religious women the right to serve, “they have no problems working with secular women in the Knesset,” Shushan noted.

A spokesman for the Agudath Yisrael political party that Ben-Porath and others are suing declined to comment, but during the recent court hearing, the party’s lawyer told a judge: “Just as you would not expect us to give representation to children, you would not expect us to give representation to women.”

While these words may sound patronizing, Chevy Weiss, an American-Israeli ultra-Orthodox religious strategist to political parties in the U.S., said women are “very respected and revered” by ultra-Orthodox society.

“The greatest rabbis of our generation consult their wives on pressing issues,” Weiss said. “We have a great deal of influence behind the scenes.”

Weiss questioned how ultra-Orthodox women who want to become lawmakers can call themselves haredi if they do not follow their rabbis’ rulings.

“In haredi society we follow the leadership. They tell you who to vote for, what schools to send your children to. You don’t have to listen, but then you’re not really haredi,” Weiss maintained.

Shushan acknowledged that she and other female ultra-Orthodox activists “have paid a price” for demanding that women be allowed to run for office, even if they didn’t spearhead the court case.

“There are people in the community who either ignore us or shame us on the internet and elsewhere. One rabbi said we’re schizophrenic and need psychiatric help.”

She moved her four children to different schools after receiving threats.

Though she has high hopes for the court case, Shushan is realistic about its potential impact, even if it succeeds.

“The parties will find a way to get around it, but I feel the change in our community,” she said. “Slowly, slowly things are happening.”

The Supreme Court has told an ultra-Orthodox political party that it needs to allow women to run on its slate as candidates for national and local elections. The court on Tuesday gave Agudath Israel until September 2 to resolve its position with its rabbinic leadership and allow women to run for office. “If you do not agree we will be forced to issue a legal ruling,” the judges said.

The petition was brought by Tamar ben-Porat, a secular woman, but was supported by Nivcharot, an ultra-Orthodox women’s movement which likens itself to the suffragettes of the early 19th century. The court case related to a specific clause in the party’s regulations that states that only men may be on the slate for elected public office.

Even though the court did not give a ruling, and the point was relatively minor, the case may have far-reaching consequences.

“This is a historic decision,” the group’s founder Esty Shushan told Channel 10 news. “We feel something big happened today.”

Esty Shushan, founder of the ultra-Orthodox women’s group Nivcharot, interviewed on July 31, 2018. (Screen capture: Channel 10 news)

Agudath Israel, founded in 1912, predominantly represents the Hasidic branch of the ultra-Orthodox community, and joined with the non-Hasidic Degel Hatorah party to form United Torah Judaism, which has a total of six seats in the current Knesset. Neither group, nor the Shas party, which mainly represents the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi Jewish community from Spain and north Africa, has any women candidates for Knesset or for municipal elections.

Nivcharot posted on Facebook that the lawyer representing Agudath Israel admitted that there was no clear basis in Jewish law (halacha) to ban women from public office, but that according to the customs of the community it was not permitted.

“While there is no halachic problem with having women representatives, it is inappropriate,” he reportedly told the court.

Estee Rieder-Indursky of the ultra-Orthodox women’s group Nivcharot, interviewed on July 31, 2018. (Screen capture: i24 News)

Even if the parties allow women to join their electoral list, either voluntarily or by court order, it may only be a symbolic victory. The parties would be able to ensure that women were not placed high enough on the list to have a realistic chance of election.

But Nivcharot representative Estee Rieder-Indursky told i24 news that symbolic victories were also important. “For us it is not 2018. It is 1918,” she said. “We are in the middle of the suffragist fight.”

About 11 percent of Israel’s 8.5 million citizens are Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox. Recognizable by the men’s black hats and long black clothes, they often lead insular lives, separated from the more secular Jewish majority and closely adhering to Jewish laws. Ultra-Orthodox women traditionally dress in long skirts and long-sleeved shirts, covering their hair if they are married. Men and women sit separately at synagogues and weddings and women and men who are not relatives refrain from physical contact.

Not only are women excluded from politics, but most of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox media — which include four daily newspapers, two main weeklies and two main websites — refuse to show images of women, claiming it would be a violation of modesty.

When I moved to Israel 20 years ago, I assumed that the idea of women fighting for the right to hold political office was a debate safely in the history books. Surely this is not relevant today. Yet it was only recently did I realize how wrong I had been.

Over the past year, while researching women’s issues in Israel, I learned about the story of two brave Haredi activists, Esti Shushan and Estee Rieder Indursky. As one of the many examples in which art is being used as tool for social change, I heard that they were using the film “Suffragette” as a tool to raise awareness in Israel. The film tells the story of the struggle for women’s voting rights in Great Britain in the early 20^th century

And why is this relevant today? Because ultra-Orthodox women are not able to be elected to office within their political parties. Yes, they are permitted to vote. But they can only vote for men.  As written into the bylaws of the ultra-Orthodox parties, they are prohibited from holding an officially elected public role.

And so, as Esti and Estee explain: “The starting point is absolutely zero for Haredi women. Nothing, not even one woman on a city council or a school committee from Metulla to Eilat.” Their own personal journeys gradually led them to understand the price of this silence, and the link between a lack of political representation and the rise in ultra-Orthodox efforts to exclude women from all public life. In speaking out publicly against this, Esti and Estee — these “Haredi suffragettes” — are making history in their battle now, just as women who fought for the vote a century ago did too. It was the understanding of what has been sacrificed by excluding women from public decision-making processes that has led them to take on this herculean effort.

Ultra-Orthodox extremism in recent years has rightfully grabbed headlines. We hear of battles by activists to challenge the efforts to erase women from public life within the Haredi community — from the removal of women’s images in children’s books to the “men only” sidewalks, from segregated university classrooms to women relegated to the back seats of public buses.

Yet what has managed to remain under the radar for 70 years is the fact that there are no elected female representatives within the Haredi political apparatus. It has actually been the status quo since the establishment of Israel. What is groundbreaking now is that a group of Haredi women activists are willing to challenge this reality.

So is this battle worth the risks involved? As Esti and Estee explained to me, they have been told time and time again by both women and men that their struggle is not worth the heavy price. This price includes the threats and ostracism that they themselves and others face for their activism, where social sanctions can even affect marriage prospects and educational opportunities for their children. They have also been told, most irritatingly and predictably, that men can and do represent women’s interests best. We have all heard this argument before of course — back 100 years ago when suffragettes fought for the right of women to vote.

And this should matter to all of us, regardless of whether we are Haredi. Consider, if you will, what Israel could be like if there were greater efforts to engage women in politics, especially within the ultra-Orthodox parties.  History has shown us that more attention would be paid to social issues that deeply affect the health of families and the strength of communities. Topics such as drug use, divorce, child abuse and domestic violence that are taboo subjects now, particularly in the Haredi community, might be brought more to the fore. So it is in all of our interests to support this struggle within the ultra-Orthodox community even if we do not believe that this is our struggle or that the struggle has already been won for us.

Esti and Estee, who established “Nivcharot” in 2014, are working to create support networks both from inside and outside their community to advance women’s representation in politics. The “Nivcharot” organization, with its campaign: “Lo Nivcharot Lo Boharot” or “No Voice, No Vote,” is daring to challenge the restrictions against women in the ultra-Orthodox political parties that have been in place for so many years. Their fight has now gone all the way to the Israeli Supreme Court and even the United Nations, as the barring of women from holding public office is a violation of international law.

The momentum is slowly moving in their direction, and we can only hope that this will be a time when we can see history in the making.  All of us, regardless of religious affiliation, gender or political leanings, should recognize that denying political representation to over half a million women in Israel is unacceptable in 2018.

There is almost nothing overtly Jewish about the book called “Masala Mamas.”

The book called “Masala Mamas” is a deeply, overwhelmingly Jewish book.

Both these things are true at the same time.

How can that be?

“Masala Mamas,” written by Brooklynite-turned-Israeli Elana Sztokman, is a cookbook featuring kosher vegetarian Indian recipes. It’s an art book, full of lusciously, extravagantly colorful photographs of food and the women who create it. And it’s a storybook, telling the tales of those women’s lives.

The Masala Mamas are Indian women who moved from villages to a massive slum called Kalwa, itself a tiny part of the massive city of Mumbai. They’re all poor and uneducated, at least if you count only formal education; they’re all rich in life experience and knowledge.

These women take care of their families, and then they come to a central kitchen in Kalwa to prepare meals for schoolchildren.

That’s all local.

They’re funded by a group called Gabriel Project Mumbai, founded by Dr. Sztokman’s husband, Jacob Sztokman. Jacob was a high-tech marketer in 2012, when he went to India and was affected by what he saw there to the point where he could not let it go. “So he started the organization to help the kids he saw; to help fight child labor and promote education.