Projects We Support

The Arev Fund supports organizations taking an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to moving the Jewish community forward in the areas of spiritual leadership, social justice, education and communal life.

Current Grantees


Nishmat’s Midreshet Masa Identity Seminars is a project of Nishmat's Ethiopian-Israeli women’s academic advancement program. The seminars are led by Nishmat's Ethiopian-Israeli students who have been empowered to explore their rich heritage at Nishmat.  Through partnerships with elementary and high schools across Israel, these Nishmat students lead seminars on identity, Ethiopian Jewish heritage, combatting racism, and modern Zionism. The seminars reached 6,000-7,000 students last year alone. During wartime, the seminar staff have also pivoted to provide programming to displaced families and youth, and to support schools struggling to hold together their students while civilian life has been disrupted.

https://nishmat.net/


The Sister to Sister Network empowers divorced women to create their next chapter by providing a supportive network and community of local chapters, events, and one-on-one support.  The project Arev is supporting will allow Sister to Sister to strategically grow and expand its work with clients, providing them with the opportunity to have individual consultations with a series of professionals who can offer support in a number of areas, including financial, employment, rabbinic, dating, legal and beit din services.

https://www.sistertosisternetwork.org/


ORA’s  Cheirut Network, brings together agunah activists from around the globe who focus on individual casework to create an international coalition of Agunah advocacy organizations. ORA Cheirut assembled a robust network of advocates from a range of locations and organizational sizes, featuring both large agencies and small start-ups. ORA Cheirut believes the protracted refusal to issue or receive a get is a form of domestic abuse which must never be tolerated. This coalition creates a unified advocacy community that can share resources, work together on international cases, and partner on important initiatives. 


The Conversations with Esti Rosenberg Podcast has begun with a series called “Israel at War,” which features conversations on faith and Torah between Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein and Rabbanit Esti Rosenberg.  The Arev Fund is honored to sponsor two Torah giants – a mother and daughter duo – in conversation sharing their personal perspectives on tefilla, Torah, religious identity, family and community during this most difficult time.


NATAL offers psychological and emotional treatment and support to victims of trauma caused by war and terror. Since its establishment in 1998, NATAL has provided psychological assistance to individuals in Israel from all sectors of society, irrespective of age, gender and ethnicity, and has also focused on bolstering national resilience. In these unprecedented, dire times, NATAL remains steadfast in its mission to provide vital emotional support to help Israelis cope with the trauma and anxiety inflicted by the harrowing events of October 7th and its aftermath. NATAL has had an impact on the lives of over 450,000 people to date through its Helpline, Community Resilience Unit, Clinical Unit, Trauma Studies Center, and Testimonial Center. 

https://www.afnatal.org/


ITIM continued its work to increase the number of women on municipal councils, which is part of ITIM’s ongoing commitment to foster equitable management of religious services within local authorities.  ITIM initiated a campaign encouraging women to stand for positions on local religious councils, focusing on increasing inclusivity and diversity in our communities.  ITIM has also established a hotline to provide resources around war-related issues. https://www.itim.org.il/en/


The Dvora Institute established The Civil Commission on Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children.  This independent, non-governmental commission was created to document and archive testimony and information, and to research, advocate for, and support the investigation of war crimes committed by Hamas against women and children both during the massacre on Oct 7th, and subsequently towards abducted women and children.  The Civil Commission is producing reports, creating a secure and verified archive, and has been briefing government and legal entities around the world to produce a report to document war crimes against Israel.  

https://www.dvora-institute.org/cco7


Past Grantees


The Author Initiative is a project of Sefaria, the free online living library of Jewish texts. The Author Initiative is working to place more works by esteemed women authors on the Jewish bookshelf, with the goal of influencing Jewish learning for generations to come. The Author Initiative works to make women’s Torah scholarship more proportionately represented, by providing scholars a roadmap to publication along with mentorship and a supportive peer group. Through an annual retreat, monthly writing workshops, a personal writing coach, exposure to literary agents and more, the authors in the cohort will move towards published authorship.


The Matan Kitvuni Fellowship, echoing Esther’s call of kitvuni l’dorot - for her writings to resonate for the generations -  promotes the publication of high-level Torah scholarship by women. The Fellowship provides female Torah scholars with the support necessary to facilitate their ability to complete a book in a field of Torah scholarship.



Shalom Task Force’s Purple Fellowship brings teen voices in the complex problems that face our communities.  The Purple Fellowship aims to take a preventative and educational approach to issues of domestic violence in the Jewish community.  The Purple Fellowship works with teen fellows at local day schools to educate them about abuse prevention work and culminates with the fellows planning a schoolwide “Purple Day” event that aims to educate the school community about issues of domestic abuse. 


Project Kesher’s Emergency Support for Project Kesher Ukraine.  Over the past thirty years, Project Kesher has built a large grassroots network of Jewish women leaders in Belarus, Israel, Russia and Ukraine that advocates for Jewish community and women’s empowerment, health, and safety.  Project Kesher’s mission is to build Jewish community and advance civil society by developing women leaders. Following Russia’s launch of the war on Ukraine, Project Kesher Ukraine activated its grassroots network of over 300 trained leaders from more than forty cities. The Arev Fund grant provides operational support to this network as they work to provide safe accommodations and food, mental health and wellbeing support, crisis consultation and legal support, and safe and reliable evacuation transportation, all while protecting displaced women and children who are vulnerable to trafficking and sexual violence. 

 

VATICHTOV - Yeshivat Maharat’s Va’tichtov: She Writes, aims to elevate Jewish women's scholarship by building a cohort of scholars and providing the skills, support, and resources necessary to produce new content and bring to publication a new generation of scholarly women’s voices. The Fellowship provides mentoring and writing coaching over the course of a year to selected participants to support women scholars in their writing, with the aim of bringing their works to publication.


JOWMA: DERECH -  Direct Evidence Based Reproductive Education and Chinuch - The Arev Fund is supporting the DERECH project of JOWMA, the Jewish Orthodox Women’s Medical Association. JOWMA is dedicated to providing support, mentorship, and networking opportunities to Jewish female physicians, trainees, and pre-medical students. It also provides preventative health education, women's health education, and patient advocacy to the Orthodox Jewish community nationwide.  The DERECH project, an acronym for Direct Evidence Based Reproductive Education and Chinuch, is a teen reproductive health initiative aimed at the traditional orthodox community.  The project aims to provide teens and their educators age-appropriate, accurate and comprehensive educational materials around reproductive anatomy, pubertal development, sexual health and identity, body protection and sexual safety. These evidence-based educational materials are created to be culturally sensitive and tailored in speech and style to a conservative audience.


 Itim - Arev supported Itim’s work in challenging key public policies of the Israeli state religious establishment: one policy which bars women from taking state exams that certify proficiency in halacha, and another policy that prevents women who are studying in midrashot from receiving State preschool discounts for their children, a financial benefit offered to men pursuing parallel studies.  Itim has made good progress towards their goal of gaining state recognition for women’s advanced religious studies in Israel.


Sanctuary for Families Orthodox Jewish Matrimonial Initiative (OJMI)  - Sanctuary for Families is New York's leading service provider and advocate for survivors of domestic violence, sex trafficking, and related forms of gender violence. The Orthodox Jewish Matrimonal Initiative was launched in response to the lack of free, high-quality direct legal services for Orthodox Jewish women seeking civil and religious divorces from abusive spouses. Beyond legal needs, many Orthodox Jewish women experience poverty, food insecurity, tenuous housing situations, safety concerns, and extensive abuse-related trauma. Sanctuary also recognized a need in NYC’s insular Orthodox Jewish communities to build awareness of the prevalence and dynamics of domestic violence, and share survivor-centered resources. The Arev Fund is supporting OJMI’s work in providing culturally competent legal advice, advocacy, and representation delivered by a member of the Orthodox Jewish community, who can connect with survivors and understand the unique challenges they face—and serve as a credible messenger within the community.  The OJMI collaborates closely with service providers, religious authorities, and other stakeholders in the community.


It Works: Vocational Training and Job Placement for Single Mothers - Arev has funded a project of IT Works which equips single mothers with professional skills and knowledge with the goal of placing them at  high-tech companies.  The program provides tech training, soft-skills workshops (from resume writing to preparing for job interviews and contract negotiations) and job placement services. The program targets women who are their household's sole source of income working in low-paid jobs or currently unemployed or under the poverty line. The goal of the program is to narrow income gaps between single mothers and the rest of Israeli society and allow single mothers to support their families with dignity and financial security


When the Covid-19 pandemic began, the Arev Fund pivoted to provide emergency relief to communities we were already supporting and were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. As such, for the 2020-2021 cycle, the Arev Fund funded two distinct projects at UJA Federation of New York, one which provided emergency cash assistance for single mothers and one which provided emergency aid to victims of domestic abuse during the coronavirus crisis.


In the area of food insecurity, we funded two organizations, one based in the United States and one based in Israel. Leket Israel: The National Food Bank, is an Israel-based organization that focuses on food rescue and Met Council: The Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty's COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund.


To address issues of access to accurate health information in the ultra orthodox community, the Arev Fund supported the EMES Initiative, founded in 2019 by a group of dedicated nurses in response to the measles outbreak in the ultra Orthodox Jewish community and the recognized need for increased health literacy in the Orthodox Jewish community. The Arev Fund grant funded a podcast and hotline for the ultra-orthodox female world that aims to provide important and accurate science-based health information, including information on vaccinations and preventing viral spread.


In recognition of the importance of issues of equity and inclusion, we funded Based in Harlem, a community-based center that creates programs that build ties between the Jewish community, including Jews with different racial and ethnic identities, and those that identify as communities of color in Harlem.

 

Chochmat Nashim

Chochmat Nashim combats extremist positions around the exclusion of women from communal citizenship that have become increasingly influential in Orthodoxy. They work to shift this trend by establishing women’s presence in Orthodox society through various means, including ensuring that images of women and girls are present in religious publications, promoting women’s health as a communal concern, raising women’s voices in Torah scholarship, and incorporating women’s voices in policymaking.

https://www.chochmatnashim.org/

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Deracheha

Deracheha is an online platform in both English and Hebrew which provides halakhic and philosophical analysis of current issues. The website offers users a layered examination of particular topics, from basic overviews to detailed Jewish legal dissections to philosophical perspectives. It provides access for the entire community to deeply knowledgeable and thoughtful female voices, and seeks to build a bridge to move women's spiritual leadership from a siloed female space into more public space. This also expands the availability of Modern Orthodox halakhic voices online and fosters community among learners and between the English- and Hebrew-speaking world.

https://www.deracheha.org/


Hadran

Hadran works to make Talmud study central to the lives of modern Jewish women and girls. Hadran's signature event will be an unprecedented women's Siyum HaShas in Jerusalem on January 5th, 2020, marking the completion of the Daf Yomi cycle and celebrating the achievements of women studying Talmud around the world. The siyum will draw thousands of participants and be live-streamed to an international audience and will serve as a springboard for an innovative online Talmud resource center for and by women. It unites institutions that promote Talmud study, a number of which have received grants from the Arev Fund in the past, and will inspire the next generation.

https://hadran.org.il/

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Itim

Itim helps people navigate the religious authorities’ bureaucracy in Israel by providing information and advocacy services. Arev is partnering with Itim in their work to reform two Israeli state policies that impede women’s pursuit of Torah study: a policy of preventing women from taking state exams to certify halachic proficiency, and a policy of refusing to grant women studying in midrashot the same preschool tuition discounts for their children as men studying in yeshivot. Granting women the ability to sit for rabbinic exams will create greater official recognition for women who have attained the highest levels of halachic knowledge. Indeed, many of the institutions we have funded in the past have provided these educations. The lack of financial support for childcare for women studying Torah, which is provided to male students, disincentivizes women from continuing their Torah studies. This project seeks to remove these barriers to enable and incentivize women to continue to pursue ongoing, high-level Torah study

http://www.itim.org.il/


The Matan Shayla Project

The Matan Shayla Project provides an online English-language platform for women to ask halakhic questions to qualified female halakhic decisors.  Through whatsapp, text, email and an online platform, people all over the world have an address for their questions.  The resulting teshuvot are published online, enhancing access to high-level teshuvot written by women. 

https://www.matan.org.il/en/new-shayla/

 
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The Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women

The Rackman Center for the Advancement of Women at Bar Ilan University exists at the intersection of legal representation, research and reform and works to improve the status of women and end gender discrimination in Israeli society, with a focus on Jewish family law.  The Rackman Center utilizes a multi-prong approach to create change through legislative and policy reform, impact litigation, and access to justice through legal aid and pro-bono representation of cases in the rabbinical court system.  They also work to promote the appointment of observant women to positions of power in the rabbinic court and religious state systems. 

http://rackmancenter.com/


Lakita

Lakita is an innovative and broad-based model for enhancing and enriching students' experience across the broad spectrum of Israeli society, as well as empowering teachers. Arev is proud to support their work in leveraging the larger community through a crowd-funding platform which brings that community into the work of schools.

http://www.lakita.org.il/

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Bat Melech

Bat Melech works with battered women from the observant community as well as with their children, providing shelter, support and skills training. Arev is partnering with Bat Melech on the Skills for a New Life project, which is designed to provide skills training and education for battered women to better empower them to leave shelters, support themselves and their families, and prevent future cycles of abuse and need for themselves and their children

https://www.batmelech.org


Emunah Kashrut Supervisors Training Program

The Emunah Kashrut Supervisors Training Program is working to create a cadre of women who will take up official positions as kosher supervisors. Arev is partnering with Emunah in this work, which expands women's leadership into roles that have lower barrier to entry than some of other spiritual leadership models and seeks to expand women's positions in the official religious biosphere in Israel.

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Beit Hillel: Meshivat Nefesh - Women’s Spiritual Leadership Initiative

Beit Hillel is an Orthodox leadership forum in Israel that includes rabbis, along with community scholars and leaders of both genders.  Arev is partnering with Beit Hillel on the Meshivat Nefesh project, which works to arm women scholars with professional tools to expand the number of women serving as halakhic decision-makers and to support women’s authorship of high-level Torah scholarship. 

http://eng.beithillel.org.il/


Eden Association

Eden Association provides educational, social and therapeutic services to underprivileged women and girls living in the Negev.  Arev is partnering with Eden to support Bet Bogrot, a project that addresses the gap in state-mandated services for young women living on the geographic periphery of Israel who are aging out of foster care. This project provides safe haven, counseling, and tools to help these young women transition successfully to adult life. 

http://www.edenassociation.org/


 
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Ohr Torah Stone Susi Bradfield Women’s Institute of Halakhic Leadership

Ohr Torah Stone is a multi-faceted organization dedicated to highlighting the relevance of Torah Judaism in the modern world.  Arev’s grant will help support the Susi Bradfield Women’s Institute of Halakhic Leadership, which aims to close the educational and professional gap in women’s spiritual leadership in the Orthodox community.  This program features a five- year full-time Talmud and halakha curriculum, practical and communal training, and partnerships with external organizations to create and fund professional opportunities for its graduates.

https://ots.org.il/


ORA - The Organization for the Resolution of Agunot

The Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA) seeks to eliminate abuse from the Jewish divorce process through agunah case advocacy, early intervention programs, and initiatives for education and agunah prevention.  Arev is partnering with ORA on its aggressive publicity campaign to raise awareness of issues around get refusal.

http://www.getora.org/

 
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Machshava Tova

Machshava Tova provides underprivileged populations with technological training in a supportive and empowering environment.  Arev is partnering with Machshava Tova on the App2U project, which trains disadvantaged women in app-building and related skills and provides these women with access to careers in the high-tech sector.  As their final project, the students build apps for non-profit organizations. 

http://www.mtova.org/index.php/en/


Matan Morot Halakha

Matan is a center for women’s Torah scholarship in several locations in Israel.  Arev funding will help support the Morot Halakha program,  which seeks to create a pool of female leaders and teachers who are deeply learned and versed in broad areas of halakha.  These women plan to serve in communities in both the geographic center and periphery of Israel to positively impact women’s lives, well-being, and commitment to Torah and halakha

https://www.matan.org.il/eng/

 
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Mavoi Satum

Mavoi Satum provides legal and emotional support to women in Israel who have been refused a Jewish divorce, and works to find a solution to the problem of get refusal in Israel.  Arev funding will help support Mavoi Satum’s social media advocacy project. 

http://mavoisatum.org/en/


Nishmat’s Miriam Glaubach Yoetzet Halakha Program

Nishmat is a Jerusalem-based center for women’s scholarship, leadership, and social responsibility.  The Miriam Glaubach Yoetzet Halacha Program is the American platform for the training of Yoatzot Halacha—female halakhic advisors—a role created by Nishmat.  Arev will help fund the leadership training component of this curriculum, which will include mentoring programs and workshops to develop and expand professional development. 

http://nishmat.net/

 
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Yeshivat Maharat Pastoral Torah curriculum

Yeshivat Maharat provides a path for women in the United States to gain the skills, training, and certification to become spiritual leaders within the Modern Orthodox community.   Arev funding will help support the Pastoral Torah Curriculum, a uniquely integrated pastoral, spiritual, and leadership-training program that employs Torah texts along with those of contemporary social sciences to grapple with key issues of human life and development.

http://www.yeshivatmaharat.org/