Israelis tour Bay Area to better women’s lives at homea

The group's agenda included touring two shelters for battered women, meeting with an expert on child abuse, visiting a women's self-employment project and convening with female politicians.

"I want to do my best to motivate women to be involved," said Etty Green-Revach, a retired army major who serves on Kiryat Shmona's city council.

Green-Revach and the others come from five Upper Galilee communities that have been paired with the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation as part of Partnership 2000. The project links American Jewish communities with economically undeveloped areas in Israel.

In the Upper Galilee, one of the project's goals is improving the status of women. Green-Revach's group, called the Regional Women's Forum, was born about a year ago to tackle problems collectively.

"Most of us were dealing with women's issues, each in her own community," said Armelle Lehman, who lives in Kibbutz Malkiya and heads the division for women's advancement for the council of Upper Galilee kibbutzim.

At first, most of them felt their situations were too diverse to work together. One comes from a kibbutz. Others come from villages. The rest come from Kiryat Shmona, JCF's partnership city and the region's largest city with a population of 22,000.

"But we found out we have a lot of issues in common," Lehman said.

They hope that working together will give them the ability to deal with problems more quickly and more in-depth. The forum received a $40,000 grant from the JCF to proceed.

The seven visitors from northern Israel, all part of the women's forum, have several goals.

Women need help learning how to run their own lives, Green-Revach said, "and not let others do things for them. That's the main issue."

They also want to get more women onto city councils and into city government jobs.

In Kiryat Shmona, for example, only three of the 15 city council members are women, and none of the top city managers is a woman. In the village of Yesod Hama'ala, no women sit on the five-member council.

A campaign slogan, "Women Vote for Women," for example, will be used for the next municipal elections in 1998.

As a result of the visitor's lack of political clout in their own country, meeting two Jewish women in San Francisco's top elected seats -- Supervisor Leslie Katz and Board of Supervisors President Barbara Kaufman -- was a highlight for the group members.

"I am so proud to see here how the Jewish community is involved in the non-Jewish community," Green-Revach said.

The group's other activities include conducting workshops to teach assertiveness skills, challenging gender stereotypes in schools and helping women with limited skills who are seeking jobs.

The group will survey women in the Upper Galilee to determine their needs for employment and political involvement. The questionnaire will also ask women whether they are willing to join efforts to help other women.

"We want to create a network," Lehman said, such as the informal one among men who return each year to military reserve duty.

In addition to visiting women's advocacy agencies in San Francisco from Nov. 5 to 12, the group spent time at Jewish organizations such as the JCF, the Bureau of Jewish Education, Jewish Family and Children's Services and Jewish Vocational Service.

They celebrated Shabbat at Congregations Sha'ar Zahav and Sherith Israel. They also attended Glide Memorial Church's Sunday morning services.

During their trip, the women didn't check into hotels. They stayed with local Jewish families.

Overall, these Israeli women had nothing but praise for women's status in the United States. Asked whether they could teach anything to American feminists, they drew a blank.

"We are some years [behind]," said Rotem Ashkenazy, who lives in Yesod Hama'ala and heads the village's education department. "I don't think there is an issue that you can learn from us."

Debra Pell, chair of the federation's work with Partnership 2000, had to agree.

"They were overwhelmed by what they saw. The depth of service here and the quality of service here is so different from what they experience day-to-day," Pell said.

"These women are fighting every known obstacle. There is a growing consciousness in Israel, but there are so many other pressing issues...American women are much further along."