This Week
BEYOND POLITICS
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that [was what] I did throughout my
New York political career."
Messinger's Jewish roots run long
and strong, and the Jewish ideals of
tikkun olam (repairing the world) are
deeply ingrained in her life.
Her maternal grandfather was the
first executive director of the New
York federation; her mother was pub-
lic relations director at the
Conservative Jewish Theological
Seminary for 50 years; her father was
a longtime board member of the
Hebrew Home and Hospital.
• She was raised in an atmosphere of
tzedaka (charity), she recalls. "I was at
home with Jewish religious concerns
and social justice concerns."
Indeed, her first job was as a social
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during a visit to a Conservative syna-
gogue in Milwaukee in 1979, when she
was offered her first aliya, her first chance
to say a blessing over an open Torah
scroll, which she saw for the first time.
"I was 53 at the time and I was just
doing what boys age 13 had always been
able to do. For me, it was a transforming
moment! My desire for equality extend-
ed to religion. I didn't like being behind
the mechitza," the divider between men
and women in an Orthodox synagogue.
Simchat Torah was always a sad
occasion for her, she says, "because I
could only watch the men dance
around with the Torah."
At the time, Shalvi was the principal
of an experimental all-girls Orthodox
SPEAKING OUT
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loves. "I'm interested in power," she
says. "The power to do good things,
not power for its own sake."
Sometimes, says Reinharz, a
woman commands more power when
she says "no." In the mid-1980s, when
she was first offered the directorship of
the women's studies program, she
turned it down. She was an assistant
professor of sociology, still untenured.
"So I said, with total chutzpa, 'When I
become a full professor, I'll become
director of women's studies.' "
She was made full professor in
1991 and has spent eight years work-
ing as director of the Brandeis pro-
gram to make it "the best in the coun-
try"
"On an intellectual level, until the
advent of women's studies in the early
'70s, almost nothing was taught about
IVORY TOWER ACTIVIST
11/26
1999
ILA
worker. Eventually, she became a com-
munity organizer, working as a liaison
for a community-run, integrated ele-
mentary school in New York. After a
few years, the school closed, but her
desire for public action was whetted: a
year later, she won a seat on the
school board, beginning the career
that would take her to the inner cir-
cles of New York City politics.
With the AJWS, she's come back to
her roots. "The opportunity to work
in the Jewish community was excit-
ing," she says. "I'm able to talk to Jews
about how I interpret the obligation
to social justice... ideas that have
always been motivating factors in my •
work."
The AJWS has a volunteer corps
that aims to place 30 adult American
Jews a year — with specific experience
and skills — in communities that
need such expertise. And it recently
started a summer program, the
International Jewish College Corps, to
do similar work with college students.
Last summer, the 30 college corps vol-
unteers were divided into two groups,
one of which went to Honduras for a
month to build a drinking water line,
the other to Zimbabwe to rebuild a
dam.
After their four-week hitch, the two
groups were united in Israel for study
and more community work. "It gave
them the opportunity to learn about
the role Israel plays in international
development," says Messinger.
The AJWS also plays a subtler role.
By simply being a Jewish organization,
it exposes Jews and Judaism to com-
munities whose image of the religion is
ignorant at best, anti-Semitic at worst.
"We change people's attitudes
towards Jews," says Messinger.
Messinger has traveled to Nicaragua
and the Balkans, and has planned a
trip to earthquake-stricken Turkey.
Viewing the poverty, the despair, the
distress of such places has been "an
eye-opening experience."
Messinger is keeping an eye on the
future, hoping to improve the AJWS's
funding and visibility.
Even though she enjoys politics, she
has no regrets about leaving the arena.
"Oh, I loved it, I loved it," she says
emphatically "I was my own person,
pursuing the things that I believed
in." She pauses, then laughs. "I imag-
ined that I could well end up doing
something else. This is a huge chal-
lenge and opportunity."
school, but it evidently wasn't all that
experimental. The excitement over egal-
itarianism she brought back from her
trip was not shared by her colleagues at
the school. Nor were her ideas of teach-
ing the students to read Torah.
Meanwhile, Shalvi was battling for
women on the political front, struggling
with the Orthodox rabbinate to change
patriarchal Israeli divorce laws.
"In Jewish divorce, the man has to
physically place the bill of divorce, the
get, into the outstretched hands of his
wife."
For Shalvi, it is clear that men use
the get to blackmail women, who often
remain in legal limbo, unable to remar-
ry for years if they don't yield to their
husbands' demands. And in Israel there
is no alternative to the Orthodox reli-
gious courts, so there is no recourse.
"So we formed a committee,"
Shalvi explains, "and came up with
five solutions ranging from pre-nuptial
agreements to annulments. Seven
years ago, we took these ideas to the
chief Orthodox rabbis. We're still
waiting to hear from them. Their
hard-heartedness turned me off. I have
a great deal of resentment and disgust
with the religious establishment. What
do I need them for?"
As Shalvi's displeasure with the
Orthodox movement grew, one of her
close women friends was ordained as a
Conservative rabbi near her Israeli home.
When Shalvi decided to join that con-
gregation, members from the Orthodox
community peppered the papers with
vindictive comments like, "Aha! We knew
she was a closet Conservative."
"The funny thing is, I'm no different
now than I was before," said Shalvi.
"The only difference is that now I pray
in an egalitarian environment."
Shalvi says that Israel must be the
center of Jewish life, though she has
"given up on the idea that all Jews will
come back. They won't."
Still, she says the relationship
between Israel and the diaspora is
symbiotic: "The stronger the one is,
the better off the other is." The pock-
ets of Jewish renaissance she sees when
visiting this country make her feel
good, she says. "Something is happen-
ing there. And that strengthens us." ri
idea they can help turn into reality."
In 1993, Reinharz actually turned
down a leadership role. Asked to join a
Hadassah board planning a seminal study
of American Jewish women, she first said,
" 'No, I have programs, two kids, a
board.' But she quickly acquiesced.
"Then the most amazing thing
happens," she says. "They ask, 'Will
you be the chair?'"
She took the job and says "it
changed my life." From that project
— one year later — came the 1995
report "Voices of Change," an explo-
ration of the hearts, minds and souls
of American Jewish women. What
researchers found was that Jewish
women were a very segmented group
— and their relationship to Judaism
differed greatly depending on their
marital status and denomination.
Hadassah next asked Reinharz to
found and head the Hadassah
Research Institute on Jewish Women
at Brandeis University — the first
enterprise in the world devoted entire-
ly to the study of Jewish women.
Currently, the institute is sponsor-
ing a variety of research projects,
including the implications of new
genetic research, the role of women in
building the state of Israel and the sta-
tus of health care for Israeli women.
This fall, Reinharz will move both
the women's studies program and the
institute into a specially redesigned
building. "It's a harbinger of good
things to come," she says.
She loves to network. Everyone she
meets, she says, has something to
teach her — and she offers a gift in
return. "There's nothing special about
what I do," she says. "What's different
is that I bridge the world." ❑
women — almost as if we didn't
exist," she says.
"I think that the women's move-
ment is one of the most progressive
social movements of our times. And
when we achieve the goals of the
women's movement, we will solve
many of the world's problems.
When Reinharz took the job, an
unsolicited check for $1,000 arrived •
in the mail from an appreciative father
of a former student. "It was pretty
amazing," she said. "I was over-
whelmed." She used the money to
hire a grad student for 100 hours at
$10 an hour.
It was the first of dozens of jobs —
and millions of dollars — she would
generate. Reinharz now is a master of
the finer points of fund raising. "It's
not grubbing for money," she says.
Its letting people know about a great
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