For International Women’s Day, marked annually on March 8, JNS spotlights five women who are unabashed advocates for Israel and the Jewish people.
What does women’s empowerment have to do with Jewish and pro-Israel advocacy?
“As a Jewish woman working in the legal world, women’s empowerment means fighting as hard as we can to protect Jewish rights so that the next generation of female Jewish leaders will live in a better, more egalitarian world,” says Brooke Goldstein, executive director of The Lawfare Project. “It means stopping anti-Semitism wherever it happens so that the Jewish women leaders of tomorrow will not be afraid to call out anti-Semitism when they see it.”
For International Women’s Day, marked annually on March 8, JNS spotlights five women who are unabashed advocates for Israel and the Jewish people.
Liran Avisar Ben Horin: Advocating immersive experiences in Israel
As CEO of Masa Israel Journey, Ben Horin manages the leader in providing immersive five- to 12-month experiences in Israel for young adults ages 18-30. Previously, she served as chief of staff of the director general of Israel’s prime minister’s reforms.
The Masa Leadership Academy-a first-of-its-kind initiative founded last year that will cultivate and develop 1,000 Jewish leaders from around the world by 2021 – plans to address the Jewish community’s gender disparity in leadership, including by fostering leadership among harediwomen. Also last year, Masa released a survey of nearly 1,000 alumni of its Israel experience programs which found that 53 percent of men and only 42 percent of women consider themselves a “Jewish leader.”
“This is a problem that the Jewish world can no longer afford to ignore. We can cultivate a new culture, which reinforces that Jewish women have a unique ability-and responsibility-to lead, providing women with the tools and opportunities to secure seats in the C-Suites and board rooms of our communal institutions,” Ben Horin has written. “The Jewish future depends on it”.
