SHATIL Profile: Shira Ben Sasson Furstenberg

NIF News, October 25, 2007

In honor of SHATIL’s 25th anniversary, we will be running monthly profiles of SHATIL staff – the talented, committed professionals who work to make Israel a more equal and just society.

When Shira Ben Sasson Furstenberg saw the listing on the SHATIL web site, she thought she had died and gone to heaven. SHATIL was looking for a coordinator of its Religious Pluralism Project, and Shira felt the job description had been written specifically for her.

Shira was 29 at the time, with a Master's in cultural anthropology and five years of work as a Knesset researcher behind her, she had landed the job of her dreams. 

"I wasn't sure SHATIL would hire an Orthodox woman to help break the Orthodox hegemony in Israel, but the fact that they did was itself a pluralistic act," says Shira.

The euphoria she felt when she got the job has not diminished, Shira says. 

"You really feel lucky when you get to work for something you utterly believe in and when work achievements touch your personal life in a real way," she says.

While she was raised in a traditional Orthodox home, Shira's life reflects her pluralistic values. She agitated at her son's Orthodox kindergarten for girls to be able to lead services, and she and her husband recently started a halachic egalitarian minyan in their neighborhood. This year, she learned to chant the Torah portion and led the Kol Nidre service for the second year.

In addition to consulting to pluralistic organizations, Shira spends a lot of time "meddling and poking" as she puts it.

Preparing a sign for a demonstration

"I say, why don't you collaborate with them, or their program is something you could adopt, or did you read this? From my broad perspective, I can see things that a single organization doesn't see. This is the benefit of being SHATIL."  For example, Shira recently made a suggestion to the International Coalition for Agunah Rights (ICAR), a collaboration of 27 organization with whom she consults, that they prepare text study kits with "those beautiful halachic solutions that Maimonides used in the 12th century and rabbinical court judges today are simply too cowardly to implement".  And, to get pluralistic study houses, secular yeshivas, kibbutzim, pre-army preparatory programs and Jewish women's groups throughout the country to devote a study session to agunot (chained women) on International Agunah Rights Day. 

"ICAR is composed of very learned women and this would not be additional work for them; and the feelers I sent out received enthusiastic responses from many study groups. This will enable ICAR to reach hundreds of new people in places they don't normally touch."

When asked what she does in her spare time, Shira, who has two young children and is expecting a third, laughs. While her husband Yair, who works at the Shalom Hartman Institute and the Hebrew University and is writing his doctorate in Talmud and Classics, is a full partner, Shira says, "I feel like I start a second job at 4 p.m." For relaxation, she likes to read, especially Meir Shalev and David Grossman. She also enjoys Israeli singers Motti Caspi and Chava Alberstan.

Shira at the International Agunah Rights Day demonstration last year

"I'm very old fashioned," Shira says. "My only rebellion was not getting a doctorate." Her father, MK Professor Menachem Ben Sasson, has a PhD in Jewish history and is head of the Knesset Committee for Constitution, Law and Justice and her mother, Ada, is a physician. Her grandfather was Dr. Yosef Burg, a National Religious Party leader and minister in many governments, who liked to say he "lived on the hyphen between religious and Zionist."

Shira likes to live on the hyphen as well. "It means you can connect to different kinds of people and different streams of Judaism," she says. "You can stand on the borders."

Shira has just returned from the US, where she participated in the NIForums in New York and Miami.

"Every time I go abroad, I learn how much people in the US connect to SHATIL and the NIF davka through religious pluralism," she says. "What draws a lot of people to NIF is our concern for the Jewish faith of Israel and our work to promote liberal Judaism here."

** Correction to last week’s SHATIL News: The SHATIL seminar to strengthen civil society in the North reported on last week was organized by the SHATIL Haifa office as well as the SHATIL office in Rosh Pina.