Grant-Making Impact
Strengthening Jewish Girls
Teen girls, ages l4 to 20 in the Chicago Jewish community with questions and problems about relationships can head to the Response Center's Medical Units in Skokie and Prairie View. Seven years ago, the Response Center staff faced an alarming reality--increasing numbers of girls presented as victims of sexual assault: rape, date rape, and incest.
“Our staff needed new skills to deal with what we were seeing. They needed specialized sexual trauma training to treat these very complex cases,” recalls Robin Stein, Response Center, Executive Director. With proper treatment sexual abuse/assault survivors can rebuild their lives and increase the chances of avoiding dangerous relationships in the future.
JWF grants assisted the Response Center with providing appropriate and effective services to clients who reported histories of sexual assault or abuse. Our support of the Medical Units (1999-2003) enabled them to add a part-time clinician, offer staff training, and offset program expenses for support groups for rape victims. Additionally, our dollars allowed consultation and special training of Medical Unit staff to offer programs related to dating violence and sexual assault and abuse.
“Jewish Women's Foundation funds made all the difference when we needed them most,” says Stein. Over the JWF funding period of five years, grants of $43,900 provided specialized sexual assault training and professional consultations for staff; a library of materials for teens dealing with sexual violence; a support group for teen victims; and counseling for the pained counselors themselves.
“In these years,” says Stein, “the Medical Unites have served l0l rape victims, 83 sexual abuse victims and 237 girls in abusive relationships. Without JWF funding, 421 Chicago-area teen girls could not have been assessed and treated properly.”
While JWF funding for the Medical Units has expired, Response Center has now leveraged a Priority Grant from the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago to support ongoing staff training and sexual trauma services. JWF is proud to have been the first funder to support these young victims and to help put in place a system prepared to effect change and healing.
For more information about the Response Center, please visit: http://www.responsecenter.info/
Reported By JWF Trustee: Merle Gross
Strengthening Jewish Women
"After l5 years of bondage as an 'agunah" I am experiencing for myself the Exodus. I feel like a bird, or maybe even a butterfly." So tells Ziona P., 49, of Jerusalem, one of thousands of "agunot", Orthodox women denied a "get" (divorce) in the Rabbinic Courts for years or decades. For these women without a get there can be no re-marriage and no status in the community. The aguna languishes; the husband moves on.
Ziona was "given back my life" by a project funded by JWF and developed by Yad L'Isha in Jerusalem--a Women's Legal Aid Center which hires and trains women to serve as advocates inside the Rabbinic Courts for long-term agunot with nowhere left to turn.
"All my resources--my youth, my energy, my money--were wasted running from lawyer to lawyer for l3 years," says Ziona, whose husband left her and their three daughters for another woman. Yet, repeatedly, her local Rabbinic Court denied her a get.
"I had lost hope and my savings. Then I was referred to Yad L'Isha and Vardit, my advocate. She gave me back my life. She was professional, warm and patient, without asking for anything. She brought back my self-confidence, explaining over and over what we could do. She told me it is forbidden to despair. She should only continue to be strong and help women like me."
Pushed by changes of venue and civil court appeals, another Rabbinic Court ordered Ziona's husband finally to give her a get. Upon his refusal, Vardit petitioned the civil court to impose sanctions. He was sentenced to jail-- and four days later Ziona had her get.
Yad L'Isha advocates are the first women in history to represent agunot inside the Rabbinic Courts. In l997, the year Yad L’Isha opened, there were seven long-time agunot freed. From 2000-2006 there have been 240 gets handed down. Working with a small staff they handle 40 to 60 cases a year and a hot line. Importantly, they print booklets four times a year each detailing l5 cases, their decisions, and the rabbinic reasoning. The booklets are distributed to both the rabbinic and civil courts to publicize their cases and to hopefully set new religious-legal precedent.
According to Batsheva Sherman, an attorney and Executive Director, Yad L’Isha the advocates are accepted and respected by most of the Bet Din rabbis for their "expertise, strength and Halachic (Jewish law) knowledge." She feels that the religious courts know, as she does, that if legal and moral abuses continue in the name of Halacha, the Bet Din will in time lose their power to the civil courts.
To learn more about Yad L’Isha, please visit http://www.legalaid.org.il/
Reported by JWF Trustee: Susan Mednick
Additional Success Stories
- "In the Family," a film supported by a grant from the JWF, explores the hard choices that come with genetic knowledge.
- Building healthy futures: JWF provides funding to MaTan - Allied Health Professionals Program
