Kolech – Religious Women's Forum

Kolech — whose name means "your voice" in Hebrew — has been described as the institutional home of Orthodox feminism in Israel.[5] It is a religious feminist forum directed toward Orthodox Jewish women, though its founding membership included both women and men.[6] The organization's Hebrew full name, קולך, פורום נשים דתיות, translates as "Kolech, Religious Women's Forum," and this bilingual form appears in the National Library of Israel's institutional index.[7]

Kolech's core premise is that engagement with Torah and halakha, rather than rejection of religious tradition, can provide a path toward improving women's religious status. Its activities span publishing, advocacy, litigation, education, and dialogue with rabbinic authorities. Its agenda has encompassed agunot (women denied a religious divorce), women's synagogue participation, sexual harassment within the religious community, gender segregation in public spaces, representation on religious councils, and access to religious leadership.[3][2]

Kolech was founded in Jerusalem in 1998.[2][8] The organization emerged amid the broader expansion of advanced Jewish learning for women that took shape in Israel and the United States during the 1990s. Women studying Talmud and halakha were emerging as talmidot hachamot — women possessing substantial talmudic knowledge — and becoming participants in halakhic discourse on questions of women's religious authority and personal status.[1]

Dr. Hannah (Chana) Kehat is identified as Kolech's founder and early head.[3][5] Among its founders was Professor Chana Safrai (1946–2008), a scholar who taught at the Shalom Hartman Institute, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem.[4] After Safrai's death, Kolech named its first beit midrash for gender studies after her, and the organization received a "Women Breaking Through" award from the Civil Rights Movement for its work.[9] A 2009 Jerusalem-published anthology, Make Your Voice Heard: Readings in the Jewish Calendar and the Torah Portions, edited by Rachel Keren, celebrated a decade of Kolech by collecting articles from its monthly bulletin that examined Torah interpretation and the Jewish calendar from an egalitarian perspective committed to Jewish law.[10]

A contemporaneous account described Kolech as having been founded by female volunteers to give voice to the silenced religious woman in Israel.[11] Its founders sought to highlight and strengthen the status, position, and role of women through their interpretation of Jewish sources.[6]

Kolech's defining characteristic is its insistence on working within Orthodox halakhic parameters rather than outside or against them. Kehat argued that the expansion of women's Jewish learning enabled women to distinguish between social norms and Torah values. "The women can argue with the rabbis in their own terms," she said, describing how growing halakhic literacy was beginning to change how rabbinic authorities addressed women's issues.[1]

Within the broader religious feminist movement, this approach differed from strategies favoring civil divorce, Conservative or Reform alternatives, or other systems outside Orthodox rabbinical courts. Nurit Fried, director of the advocate program at Midreshet Lindenbaum, said that its advocates sought creative solutions within halakha rather than attempting to change halakha itself. Lawyer Sharon Shenhav offered a contrasting view, arguing that lawyers could advocate more effectively in family courts and questioning whether Orthodox women advocates had a special advantage before rabbinical judges.[1]

Kolech advances Orthodox religious feminism and works to expand women's inclusion in religious life. Its activities have addressed sexual harassment, get refusal, sexual abuse, sexuality, sexual orientation, education, LGBT issues, and alternatives to the haredi rabbinical-court monopoly.[3] Dr. Ayelet Wider-Cohen, who served as chair of Kolech's board, described an evolving focus: earlier struggles centered on women denied a Jewish divorce, sexual abuse, Kaddish, and Torah reading, while later activism sought to express feminist change across life-cycle rituals such as marriage.[12]

Hannah (Chana) Kehat was Kolech's founder and early head. She resigned in 2004, after which a committee of twelve women, including a chair, was chosen periodically to lead and operate the organization.[2][5] Kehat delivered a plenary lecture at the organization's 2015 conference in which she reflected on how religious feminism had influenced Israeli life-cycle practices and efforts to challenge the haredi monopoly over rabbinical courts.[3]

Rachel Keren has served as chair of Kolech and is identified as an active member of the forum; she also edited the 2009 anthology marking the organization's first decade.[9][13] Hayuta Deutsch has served on Kolech's executive committee.[9] Attorney Yael Rockman was identified as Kolech's chief executive officer in May 2018 and again in November 2019.[14] Dr. Ayelet Wider-Cohen has served as chair of Kolech's board.[12] Board member and conference co-organizer Ofira Krakauer represented the organization publicly at its 2015 conference.[3] Karen Miller-Jackson has served as a board member.[15] Rabbanit Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld has been associated with Kolech's Lamdaniot program in Jerusalem.[16]

Alice Shalvi, a prominent figure in Israeli feminist and educational life, described Kolech as having had a tremendous impact in elevating religious women and their level of education.[17]

One of Kolech's principal achievements has been its monthly bulletin, which addressed the weekly Torah portion, halakhic issues, homiletics, and other Torah subjects.[2] The bulletin supplied the source material for Make Your Voice Heard, a 462-page anthology of Torah and Jewish-calendar writings by women and men, framed around an egalitarian approach to women's place in Torah and Jewish life.[10] Kolech also published studies and held seminars that influenced Israel's religious-cultural discourse.[6]

Kolech produced a guide for rabbis and communal workers on responding to women seeking advice about intimate and other matters.[2] The National Library of Israel catalogs a bilingual Hebrew–English Kolech publication, Midrashim of Women for Passover Seder, attributed to Nechama Weingarten-Mintz and drawing on Dirshuni – Israeli Women Writing Midrash, edited by Weingarten-Mintz and Tamar Biala and published by Yediot Sefarim in 2009.[18]

Kolech established the first beit midrash for gender studies in the Orthodox world, named in memory of founding member Professor Chana Safrai.[9] The organization also engaged in Knesset-related work concerning laws affecting women, with the goal of changing women's image and status in religious society.[2]

Kolech has held recurring conferences. A 2013 account described its conferences as annual, while the Jewish Women's Archive records international conferences held every other year.[5][2] At a conference held on the eve of Sukkot, 800 people participated, and half of the attendees were women under 30. Kehat contrasted this with earlier years, when participants were mostly aged 40 and above.[5]

The 2015 conference, held on July 13 at the Wohl Conference Center at Bar-Ilan University, attracted approximately 450 people.[3] Board member Ofira Krakauer said at the event, "We are witnessing real evolution," and noted that topics for which Kolech had long fought had become mainstream.[3] The conference addressed women's participation in synagogue life, women's ordination, sexual abuse, sexuality, sexual orientation, LGBT issues, and the status of religious girls in science.[3]

At the same conference, physicist Dr. Rachel Knoll presented research showing that girls graduating from Israel's state religious school system participated in the sciences at lower levels than religious boys, secular girls and boys, and Arab boys and girls. Fewer than two percent of religious girls received a Technology Matriculation Certificate, which facilitates entry into technology-related fields.[3]

Kolech organized the Shabbat Dorshot Tov program — a nationwide Torah-learning initiative — to give female Torah scholars public platforms in synagogues. In 2016, 30 prominent female Torah scholars were scheduled to deliver sermons and religious lessons in almost 50 synagogues, including congregations in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Modi'in, Beit Shemesh, Ramat Beit Shemesh, Lod, Ra'anana, and Gush Etzion. The initiative was conducted with Midreshet Lindenbaum of the Ohr Torah Stone network, Matan, Midreshet Ein Hanatziv, and the Beit Hillel rabbinical association.[15] By May 2018, the program had run for a third consecutive year, involving 10,000 women and men studying Torah in 140 synagogues where at least 80 female rabbis, Torah scholars, and halakhic authorities delivered classes.[19]

Kolech board member Karen Miller-Jackson described the program's purpose as highlighting the growth of women's Torah leadership and bringing it into public view. Kolech director Yael Rockman described women's Torah scholarship as "rich and deep" and said the program aimed to make the broader public aware of it.[15]

A central concern of the religious feminist movement surrounding Kolech has been the plight of agunot — women bound in marriage by a husband's refusal to grant a religious divorce, known as a get. Growing awareness of the injustice experienced by hundreds, if not thousands, of women who are refused a divorce shaped religious feminist advocacy from its early years.[1][2]

Activists associated with the movement engaged in dialogue with rabbinic authorities in pursuit of broader halakhic solutions to agunah and divorce-refusal issues.[1] One result of the expansion of advanced Jewish women's learning was the creation of women rabbinical-court advocates. The Monica Dennis Goldberg Women's Advocate Program at Midreshet Lindenbaum, established in the early 1990s, offered an intensive two-to-three-year course. Women who passed the advocate examinations could represent women and men in divorce, child-custody, and financial cases before rabbinical courts. At the time of the published account, sixty such advocates were practicing.[1]

Efforts connected to women's advocacy in rabbinical courts also produced work toward a prenuptial agreement intended to prevent divorce refusal and blackmail. The proposed agreement sought more equitable terms within halakhic parameters and coordination between religious and secular courts.[1]

In a 2009 dispute over a proposed expansion of rabbinical-court jurisdiction, Kolech's legal adviser, attorney Shapira, argued that the proposal would harm women in divorce proceedings. She warned that women without money for legal representation could lose access to civil-family-court remedies and described civil damages claims as one of the few tools available to pressure a husband who refuses to grant a divorce.[20] Kolech has also addressed the absence of women from religious councils and the Chief Rabbinate's handling of agunot as part of its broader advocacy on religious coercion and women's rights.[21]

Kolech has been active in confronting sexual harassment and abuse within the Orthodox religious community. Under Kehat's leadership, the organization defended women who had filed accusations in a sexual-harassment scandal involving prominent Orthodox rabbis and expressed disappointment with the public reaction to those events.[22]

Kolech participated in the Takana forum, a body of rabbis, women's organizations, legal professionals, and therapists dedicated to addressing and preventing sexual harassment by authority figures in the religious community. The forum allowed women who reported sexual harassment by rabbis to file confidential complaints; its panels heard both sides and could condemn a rabbi or educator and determine whether that person could continue serving in a position of authority. Takana panels included a rabbi, an educator, a therapist, and a legal professional, with equal numbers of women and men. By the time of a 2008 account, the forum had handled dozens of cases. The complainants in those cases typically did not wish to approach the police, while the forum encouraged police reporting when complainants wanted to pursue that option.[11]

Some of Kolech's most visible work has taken place in Israeli courts and public-policy arenas. Together with the Israel Religious Action Center, Kolech led a lawsuit against the Ministry of Transport concerning gender segregation on public bus lines. A 2014 account reported that the lawsuit resulted in gender segregation on buses being made illegal, with buses displaying signs stating that women could choose where to sit. At that time, fewer than 50 segregated lines remained, compared with more than 150 in 2011.[23]

Kolech and the Israel Religious Action Center also brought litigation against Kol Berama, an ultra-Orthodox radio station that had refused to broadcast women's speaking and singing voices. In September 2018, the Jerusalem District Court fined the station NIS 1 million and ordered the money placed in a designated fund for organizations helping ultra-Orthodox women. The presiding judge stated that the station's "total and deliberate exclusion" damaged women's dignity and self-worth, deepened perceptions of female inferiority, and prevented women's influence in public discourse.[24]

The case continued through an appeal. In 2019, Kolech and the Israel Religious Action Center sought to increase the penalty to NIS 20 million, but the parties ultimately withdrew their competing appeals after Supreme Court justices criticized the requested increase as disproportionate, bringing the seven-year litigation to a close.[25]

Kolech was also among the petitioners in a petition to Israel's Supreme Court concerning control and management of the Western Wall. The petition sought an end to the exclusive control of the Western Wall rabbi, equal representation for women and different Jewish movements in the site's management, and changes to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation.[26] The Supreme Court approved Kolech's motion to join a Western Wall case as a plaintiff in a proceeding concerning women's rights to religious expression at the site.[27]

On religion-and-state policy more broadly, Kolech has cited among its achievements a higher number of women appointed to religious councils, implementation of the mikveh law, the opening of positions to women, and public funding for female halakhic advisers in local authorities. The organization has simultaneously warned that weak female representation in the Knesset could endanger these gains.[28]

A recurring theme in Kolech's work has been the expansion of women's roles in religious leadership, synagogue life, and halakhic authority. The broader movement in which Kolech operated sought increased participation for Orthodox women in synagogue ritual and religious authority, including women's prayer groups, Torah reading, and positions of religious leadership, while remaining within a halakhic framework.[2]

By the time of the 2015 conference, approximately a dozen women had been ordained as rabbis or quasi-rabbis within the Orthodox or Orthodox-adjacent world, additional women were enrolled in relevant programs, and programs were being developed to train women as rabbinic judges. More than 20 partnership minyanim of different types were regularly meeting throughout Israel.[3]

Rabbanit Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld, representing Kolech Lamdaniot in Jerusalem, participated in the World Jewish Congress online forum "Women in Contemporary Judaism: Jewish Unity and Religious Diversity," organized in partnership with Israel's Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. Rosenfeld articulated the wider vision driving Kolech's work: "Different faces of religious leadership are needed today in the various religious communities that exist. The more communities that open their doors to women and to female leadership, the more it will have a snowball effect. From my own experience, that can truly benefit people."[16]

Kolech occupies a distinctive position in Israeli religious life as an institution that challenges gender norms in Orthodoxy from within, using the tools of Torah scholarship rather than rejecting them. Its insistence that women versed in halakha can engage rabbinic authorities on their own terms has contributed to changes in Orthodox discourse on women's status.[1]

The organization's influence on Israeli religious-cultural discourse has been noted by multiple observers.[6] Alice Shalvi stated that Kolech had a tremendous impact in elevating religious women and their level of education.[17] Conference board member Ofira Krakauer observed in 2015 that topics for which Kolech had fought had become mainstream — a measure of the movement's development since 1998.[3]

Kolech's publications have constituted a significant contribution to Orthodox Jewish thought. Its monthly bulletin generated a body of writing substantial enough to fill a 462-page anthology by its tenth year, and its bilingual publications — including Midrashim of Women for Passover Seder — extended Orthodox women's interpretive voices into classic genres of Jewish textual tradition.[10][18] The beit midrash for gender studies named for founding member Chana Safrai stands as an institutional expression of the organization's educational ambitions.[9]

By combining scholarship, public advocacy, litigation, and community programming, Kolech has demonstrated the scope of Orthodox feminist activism in Israel. Its conferences — reported in different periods as annual gatherings and as biennial international events — drew hundreds of participants and an increasing proportion of younger women, reflecting the movement's growing reach within parts of Modern Orthodox life in Israel.[5][2]

Kolech's advocacy has drawn criticism from Orthodox figures who contest the organization's approach to women's religious roles.[2] The questions Kolech engages — women's ordination, women's participation in synagogue ritual, rabbinical-court reform, gender segregation in public spaces, and women's halakhic authority — remain contested within Orthodox legal and communal frameworks.

Differing strategic approaches have also emerged among advocates addressing divorce refusal. Lawyer Sharon Shenhav argued that secular family courts and civil or non-Orthodox alternatives provided more effective remedies than advocacy within rabbinical courts, questioning whether Orthodox women advocates had a structural advantage before rabbinical judges.[1]

Several of Kolech's legal campaigns involved contested interpretations of religious practice and public rights. The Kol Berama litigation, which concluded in 2019 after seven years without the substantial fine increase the plaintiffs sought, illustrated both the reach and the limits of litigation as a tool for changing religious norms.[25] Kolech's involvement in the Western Wall petition likewise engaged contested questions about governance of the site and the rights of non-Orthodox and feminist Jewish practice there.[26]