I cannot, in good conscience, encourage women — especially young women — to make aliyah. I would reverse that only when life for women in Israel actually improves. Not the slogan. The law, the street, the army, and the religious institutions the state still pays for.

I wanted to live a gentle life, but life for a single woman in Israel placed pressure on me to become tough, and at times downright cruel, in ways I never had been before.  I learned how to fight back because my space was invaded daily.

Sitting on a beach in Tel Aviv was virtually impossible back in the day, and probably not much better today. I was simply denied the right to be left alone to enjoy the sunset. More times than I can remember, somebody was always invading my space.

The state helped pay for another version of the same lesson. I spent years in a women’s ba’alat teshuvah seminary. I did not get job training. I got a head trip: dress, voice, marriage track. I cooked Shabbat meals and watched other people sing while I sat like a potted plant. I am a singer. I was told I could perform — women only, for women only — because kol isha, my voice, might cause a man to become aroused. Why would I care/ How does his personal problem have anything to do with me at all? Why should a man’s “stumbling block” be allowed to run my life?

I was pushed toward the back of the bus more than once while living in Jerusalem; I did not feel elevated; I felt like Rosa Parks. Six years later, I was still unmarried (BH). I left with no job skills.  The Israeli government had spent its money to make me a compliant Jewish mother. I started college in my late twenties after my return to America. I got an education and paid my own way. Life as a woman got a lot easier.

I grew up Reform and was raised on stories about the life of Hannah Szenes and Golda Meir. We saw amazing things happening........

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