What is Kolech?
Kolech Religious Women’s Forum was established in July 1998 to unite observant Jewish women into a women’s community, to use dialogue to raise public awareness of the inferior status of religious women in religious life. The forum’s professional committees work to advance education towards equality between the sexes in religious society, resolve the legal problems of mesuravot get [women who have been refused divorce] and agunot [“chained women”], prevent violence, particularly sexual violence against women and girls, and to advance solutions to integrate and increase the participation of religious women in religious life and the public life of the religious community.
The forum’s goals:
1. To raise the awareness among the religious community and its leadership of the change in the status of women in general in order to enable observant women to become an active part of the various frameworks of religious public life;
2. To raise awareness among educators of the changes in the image of contemporary women and to design curricula accordingly;
3. To promote public awareness of the need to battle domestic violence against women and girls, sexual harassment and the exploitation and humiliation of women and their bodies for commercial purposes;
4. To carry out activities in schools for girls and boys to prepare them for an married life in an egalitarian relationship;
5. To promote initiatives for halachic and legal solutions to the problems of agunot, mesuravot get, division of property between husbands and wives at time of divorce, etc. in the context of a changing reality;
6. To initiate aid, guidance and consultation systems for women to help them deal with their twofold role in the religious family, to improve their health and enhance their professional development;
7. To promote frameworks for the spiritual-religious development of women both through the study of Torah and the expansion of options for the fulfillment of commandments.





31 Yehuda St. Jerusalem 93467 Tel: 972-2-6720321 Fax: 972-2-6730595 kolech@kolech.com


Current activities of the forum:
1. Torah culture for women.
2. Advocacy to improve the state of women in distress and their families.
3. Health and welfare for religious women:

4. Advancement of reforms in the religious education system to educate towards equality between the sexes.
5. Activities to advance interreligious dialogue between women in Israel.

On the program:
 The formation of an information center, library and communications center on the subject of Jewish women.

You are invited to visit our new Web site at www.kolech.org.il .

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