Lo Nivcharot, Lo Bocharot

Lo Nivcharot, Lo Bocharot began as a Facebook campaign and developed into Nivcharot, an organization focused on political representation and leadership development for Haredi women. Its defining demand is that Haredi parties include women as candidates, coupled with a call for voters to withhold support from parties that exclude them.[1][2]

The movement treats participation inside Haredi parties as central: Reider-Indorsky argued that electing a Haredi woman through a non-Haredi framework would not meet the same objective. Nivcharot also develops activists through leadership programs and public advocacy while presenting its work as change from within Haredi identity.[3][2]

In October 2012, Haredi activist and filmmaker Esty Shoshan created a Facebook page carrying the slogan "לא נבחרות לא בוחרות" — "If we are not elected, we do not vote."[4] The page called on Haredi voters not to support ultra-Orthodox parties that excluded women from their electoral lists, arguing that parties could not reasonably ask women for their votes while denying them political representation.[1] Shoshan later recalled that the initiative initially seemed unusually radical: Haredi women were afraid to join it, and the concept of "Haredi feminism" seemed almost impossible to discuss openly.[4]

The campaign's founding statement argued that no halakhic prohibition barred a woman from serving as a member of Knesset, and accused the parties of concealing that position.[1] Activists cited the biblical figure of Deborah the Prophetess as a historical precedent for women in public leadership, and drew a pointed contrast between the parties' exclusion of women from the Knesset and the accepted reality of Haredi women working as lawyers, school administrators, journalists, editors, and executives.[1] By December 2014, the campaign had been relaunched with more than 3,000 online supporters, while its core activist group consisted of dozens of women.[5] The organizers stated they came from different Haredi communities, had no external backing, and intended to work from inside Haredi society.[5]

The movement was led by Esty Shoshan alongside co-founder Esty Reider-Indorsky, who served as co-director. Additional prominent organizers included Tali Farkash, Racheli Ibenboim (also rendered Eibovim), and Michal Tsarno-Witzki (also rendered Tzernovitzky).[4]

In 2015, the initiative was formally registered as an association under the name "Lo Nivcharot Lo Bocharot" and was subsequently renamed Nivcharot.[4] Reider-Indorsky described the movement's core objective as securing the election of a Haredi woman to the Knesset specifically through a Haredi party — not merely placing a Haredi woman in another political framework — so that representation would be meaningful within the community.[3] She framed the slogan as a reciprocal political principle: if women are not candidates, they should not automatically deliver their votes to the parties seeking their support.[3]

Nivcharot runs long-term training programs for ultra-Orthodox women, with dozens reportedly joining each year and additional women applying for admission.[2] The programs develop leadership tools and create space for participants to share personal experiences, including experiences with rabbinical courts.[2] The organization also operates a popular podcast co-hosted by Shoshan and journalist-activist Efrat Shukrun.[2]

The movement spread its message through a combination of social media, posters distributed in religious neighborhoods, and engagement with ultra-Orthodox newspapers and radio.[6] Its central tactic was a pledged boycott of ultra-Orthodox parties that failed to include female candidates, and its core message was direct: "Don't give your vote to a party that doesn't think you're qualified to run."[6]

Nivcharot began holding secret meetings in a basement in Bnei Brak before expanding into public conferences and workshops.[7] It petitioned secular politicians for assistance and eventually held meetings with government officials, Knesset members, and President Shimon Peres to raise issues of health, education, and working conditions affecting ultra-Orthodox women.[7]

Before the 2019 Knesset election, the campaign launched a public action called the "Chair Protest." Activists placed benches around Israel bearing the message "Seating for men only," circulated photographs of the benches in Haredi women's Facebook groups, and produced an explanatory video urging women not to vote for parties without women on their lists.[3] The chair served as a metaphor for systematic exclusion from public decision-making.[3]

According to Shoshan, she investigated whether electing women to the Knesset posed a halakhic problem and concluded that their exclusion was cultural rather than halakhic in origin. She said that an unnamed learned rabbi then produced a Torah booklet stating that no halakhic obstacle existed, although he declined to attach his name to the document.[2]

In 2014, no woman served in the Knesset as a member of either of Israel's two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas or United Torah Judaism.[6] Both parties defended the exclusion of women before the Central Elections Committee, presenting it as a requirement of halakhic modesty.[1]

In 2018, Nivcharot joined a High Court case concerning a clause in Agudath Israel's regulations stating that only men could appear on the party's electoral slate.[8][4] Agudath Israel agreed to remove the explicit reference to men, but stated that the change was symbolic because candidate selection remained under the authority of the Council of Torah Sages, whose position had not changed.[8] The broader legal effort was later described as leading both United Torah Judaism and Shas to amend party-bylaw clauses that had implied women could not join the parties.[4] An article published in the periodical Kesher (issue 51, 2018, pages 59–68) examined the campaign's Facebook protest in an academic context, reflecting the movement's growing scholarly attention.[9]

These legal gains did not immediately produce Knesset representation. Even where women were formally permitted to join an electoral list, parties could place them too low to have a realistic chance of election.[8] At the time of the later reporting, no woman had yet been elected to the Knesset through a Haredi party.[4] At the municipal level, 14 Haredi women ran in the local elections discussed in that reporting, and two were elected to local councils.[4] Haredi women were also appointed by court order to lead religious councils; former Nivcharot activist Hila Hassan-Lefkowitz became chairwoman of the religious council in Kfar Yona.[4] Shoshan presented these developments as evidence that the movement had built political awareness even without achieving Knesset representation.[4]

The movement's work takes place against a documented backdrop of near-total female exclusion from formal Haredi political structures. A 2021 Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research study of gender representation in Jerusalem's community administrations found that in neighborhoods that were almost entirely Haredi, no women were elected as public representatives — a result the report attributed to a conservative communal position that women should not hold elected office.[10]

The same study examined Jerusalem community-administration elections held in 2020–2021. In the first election round in December 2020, women constituted approximately 25% of candidates overall; 13 women were elected, and three additional women signed rotation agreements, giving women approximately 22% of elected public representatives across all administrations, or 24% when counting only administrations where elections actually took place.[10] Each community-administration board comprises 15 members — nine elected neighborhood representatives and six appointed by the municipality and the Society for Community Centers — and women remained underrepresented even when appointed seats were included.[10] The report recommended reserving at least three seats for women on each administration board.[10]

The movement faced sustained opposition from ultra-Orthodox rabbis and political figures. Activists reported being labeled mentally ill, "schizophrenic," "Reformists," and "traitors to Israel."[2] Rabbi Mordechai Blau discussed Shoshan on the radio, asking pointedly, "Who is this woman? Where do her children study?" Shoshan interpreted the question as a threat to her children's schooling and said the controversy led her to move them from Lithuanian ultra-Orthodox schools.[2] A false rumor was also spread that she was divorced while still married.[2] Activists additionally reported pressure connected to their children's Haredi educational institutions; these accounts are presented as statements by the activists themselves.[4]

On the substantive religious question, Rabbi-lawyer Dov Halbertal rejected the campaign's halakhic arguments as inflammatory rhetoric and described women serving in the Knesset as public exposure and "immodesty in its purest form."[1] Shas and United Torah Judaism jointly defended women's exclusion before the Central Elections Committee on modesty grounds.[1] A contrasting rabbinic position was voiced by the Am Shalem party, which supported women's right to vote and be elected, citing Rabbi Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel and Rabbi Haim Amsalem in support of women's political participation.[1]

The campaign's claim of broad Haredi support was contested: as of 2014, many potential supporters were reported to conceal their sympathies for fear of social ostracism, making the true scale of backing within the community difficult to establish independently.[6]