Religious feminist Alice Shalvi was a lifelong revolutionary - editorial

Often, when an iconic figure passes away, tributes pour in that tend to embellish the subject’s accomplishments. Sometimes they go overboard in the superlatives.

In the case of Alice Shalvi, who died Monday just shy of her 97th birthday, it would be difficult to overemphasize her importance and contributions to modern Israeli society.

What is striking about all of the remembrances by those who knew and were affected by the person considered by many to be the mother of religious feminism and a trailblazer in women’s activism in Israel was that they all focused on different areas of her rich life.

According to the New York Times obituary, Shalvi “developed a brand of feminist activism that drew on her experiences as a mother and a teacher, along with her deep knowledge of Jewish text, to help galvanize the nascent women’s movement in Israel beginning in the mid-1970s.”

She did that most prominently as the founder and principal of Pelech, the much-acclaimed school in Jerusalem that provides an egalitarian secular and religious education for Orthodox girls, something unheard of in 1970s Israel.

A lifelong institution-builder, whose work will last

On a par with that were her formation and leadership of the Israel Women’s Network (after being inspired by a visit from US feminist icon Betty Friedan to Israel) which lobbies to reform Israeli laws that treat women differently from men – whether in the military, employment, or health care.

Later, aligning herself with the Masorti (Conservative) Movement, she served as rector, acting president, and chair of the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem from 1998 until 2004.

Among her accolades were the Ministry of Education’s Education Prize in 1991 for teaching Talmud to girls. In 2007, she won the Israel Prize for her life’s work, and in 2019 a National Jewish Book Award for her memoir, Never a Native.

Any of those achievements would have been the pinnacle of most careers, but even in her golden years, Shalvi continued to play an active role in Jerusalem’s religious life, serving on the board of Kehilat Zion in Baka.

Judaism, Zionism, and feminism

As Rabbi David Golinkin, the president of the Schechter Institute, wrote in Monday’s Jerusalem Post, everything Shalvi did was based on three basic principles: Judaism, Zionism, and feminism.

Today, thanks in large part to Shalvi’s pioneering work, there are many opportunities in Jerusalem and beyond for both religious and secular girls to study Talmud and other holy texts, which were once solely a male domain.

Writer and Jewish feminist Elana Sztokman wrote for JTA that Shalvi pioneered feminist ideas in Israel in the early 1970s when there were only a handful of women doing such work.

“She fought crucial fights decades before the rest of the world caught up with her, before the religious community had any kind of language for what she was doing, before there was any kind of feminist movement to speak of in Israel,” wrote Sztokman.

Witnessing a sea-change she helped bring about

Speaking to the Post in 2019 upon the release of Never a Native, Shalvi reflected on the growing acceptance of women as leaders in the religious sphere.

“I’ve found myself increasingly discontented by being a spectator. I am very happy with the change that has overcome Modern Orthodoxy, as a result of a growing number of feminists – many of them, to my great delight, are Pelech graduates who are really leading that revolution,” she said.

“I see what is happening in Modern Orthodoxy, as far as the status of women, equality between the sexes, is concerned, as probably the major revolution of our time. Women have to overcome more. They have to overcome not just the legal system, or convention, they have to overcome Halacha. They are doing it.”

And in what could be considered the perfect epitaph for the remarkable life she led, Shalvi summed up her life’s work with these words:

“We now have a generation of women who are knowledgeable. As I always told my pupils, knowledge is power. Men have status by virtue of being male. We have to earn that status, and the only way to achieve that is by showing you know what you’re talking about.”

Her contributions to Jewish education and feminism in Israel will be lasting, and her memory will continue to inspire generations who believe in a just and equal society.