Published: 8 February 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Ultra-Orthodox Israeli woman defies rabbis and runs left (NYT)
It is primary season in Israel, and the creaky Labor Party, hemorrhaging support and desperate to project energy and vitality, has invited its 44 candidates for Parliament to a college campus for a night billed as speed dating with hundreds of voters.
At the front of a classroom sit an array of typical centre-left candidates — a longtime incumbent, a well-known journalist, a leader of the Druze minority — and one who is like no candidate ever seen at this kind of gathering: an ultra-Orthodox woman.
The woman, Michal Zernowitski, grew up in a religious party that does not allow female candidates. The political parties supported by most of her neighbours in Elad, a bastion of ultra-Orthodoxy, belong to the right-wing governing coalition that she abhors.
Ms Zernowitski, 38, has chosen a different path. It is hard to imagine a more arduous one. And yet she seems to relish the steep uphill climb.
Israeli politics is still a (mostly) boys’ club at the top (Times of Israel)
Despite record numbers in the Knesset, few females hold senior government posts -- their absence leaves Israel worse off
How well are women actually represented in Israel’s government? (Times of Israel)
The second in a series of articles and videos prepared by the Israel Democracy Institute in the run-up to April 9, explaining and critiquing what goes on during an election period
Photo: Michael Zernowitski (Corinna Kern/New York Times)
