Today we had the wonderful opportunity to hear Alice Shalvi in our Israel seminar on Women in Israel. She is the former President of the Women's Network in Israel and a strong activist for Israeli Women Rights. How Judaism tends to push patriarchy and rejection of women and how that influenced her own decision to join the Masorti movement. She discussed the exclusion of Jewish women from the 3 Batim- Beit Knesset, Beit Hamidrash, and Beit Din (agunot and conversion) She spoke about many different aspects of women in Israeli society. I was intrigued by her discussion about the Israeli army and that frequently thos with high army positions tend to go into high political positions except women. There are now 18 women in the Knesset.

As part of our exposure to women in Israel my group visited Bat Shalom a center that brings together the voices of Israeli and Palestinians from a feminist perspective. Was really interesting hearing how much the group does.

Afterwards we had a synthesis of our visits and a lunch regarding various volunteer projects my classmates do. It was very interesting and I hope to get to visit some of them.

The weirdest part of the day was the weather in the evening. All of the sudden it got dark with this grayness to the air. It was very windy and almost brown outside. Apparently it was some storm and with the pollution made for a cold night. Electricity companies were on high alert for high power usage. S'deh Dov airport ( a small minor airport) closed for a bit in the evening and some flights incoming to all of Israel airports were sent elsewhere. ......The next morning we woke up to a brown film on the steps outside the apartment from all the wind. Israelis compared it to a summer sandstorm only in the cold and not as sandy.