{"id":31353,"date":"2019-01-11T03:41:07","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T11:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=31353"},"modified":"2019-01-09T15:02:09","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T23:02:09","slug":"shalvi-reaches-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/01\/11\/shalvi-reaches-the-sky\/","title":{"rendered":"Shalvi reaches the sky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alice Shalvi, an Israeli professor and\neducator, has played a leading role in progressive Jewish education for girls\nand advancing the status of women in Israel. Her autobiography, Never a\nNative<\/em> (Halban Publishers, 2018), reads almost as a personal diary.\nOtherwise, how could this 92-year-old recall the most minute details of her\nlife?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The youngest of two children, Shalvi was born\nin Essen, Germany, to Benzion and Perl Margulies, religious Zionists who owned\na wholesale linen and housewares business. In 1933, soon after Hitler\u2019s rise to\npower in Germany, their home was searched, prompting her father\u2019s move to\nLondon, England. The rest of the family followed in May 1934.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In London, Shalvi\u2019s father and brother imported\nwatches and jewelry. When the Blitz began, they temporarily moved to Aylesbury,\n50 kilometres north of London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1944, Shalvi studied English literature at\nCambridge University. In 1946, she was sent to the Zionist Congress in Basel as\na representative of British Jewish students and, in 1949, after completing a\ndegree in social work at the London School of Economics, she immigrated to\nIsrael, settling in Jerusalem. She became a faculty member in the English\ndepartment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and she earned her PhD there\nin 1962.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May 1950, Shalvi met Moshe Shelkowitz\n(changed later to Shalvi), a recent immigrant from New York, whom she married\nin October of that year. They had six children between 1952 and 1967; Moshe Shalvi\ndied in 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 25th issue of Nashim: A Journal of\nJewish Women\u2019s Studies and Gender Issues<\/em> (fall 2003) was dedicated to Alice\nShalvi, \u201cwho made the dream of a journal devoted to Jewish women\u2019s and gender\nstudies possible.\u201d When the concept of Nashim<\/em> was first presented to\nher, the special issue notes that Shalvi greeted it not only with enthusiasm\nbut as an idea whose time had finally come \u2013 she and her friends, pioneers of\nsecond-wave Jewish feminism, had raised it long before. \u201cSubsequently, as rector\nof the Schechter Institute (1997-2001), [Shalvi] added her voice to the\napproval process for the issue\u2019s first publication. She has remained on Nashim<\/em>\u2019s\neditorial board ever since, contributing her wise and warm guidance on issues\nof editorial and academic policy and herself serving as consulting editor for\nour issue on Women, War and Peace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview by Elana Maryules Sztokman for\nthe Lookstein Centre at Bar-Ilan University some years ago \u2013 after Shalvi had\nbeen awarded the 2007 Israel Prize for life achievement \u2013 Shalvi commented: \u201cI\nfelt that, through the work we had done on behalf of women, an enormous change\nhad occurred in the status of women, in the self-image of women, in the\nself-assurance of women and, most importantly \u2013 because that\u2019s what the prize\nrecognized \u2013 in the awareness of the importance and centrality of the subject\nof the status of women in society at large.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shalvi spoke about the Pelech School for Girls\nand the Israel Women\u2019s Network. \u201cThe school has created a generation of young\nmodern Orthodox women who are changing that entire social system within modern\northodoxy,\u201d she said. \u201cThe other thing I\u2019m proud of is the years at the\nnetwork, which saw the largest number of legislative changes and reforms in\nwomen\u2019s status because what I call the \u2018alumnae\u2019 of the network were so\nprominent in the Knesset.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her autobiography, Shalvi emphasizes \u201cthat\nit\u2019s all about the home,\u201d and acknowledges the impact her parents had on her.\n\u201cWhat I saw at home,\u201d she writes, \u201cwas an open attitude, observance but\nopenness. My mother always used to set an extra place at the table on Shabbat\nin case my father brought home a stranger from synagogue, as was the custom in\nthose days. And, in my family, I learned about tzedakah in the very best sense\n\u2013 always a readiness to help others, not only from my father, who did it on a\nboth public and personal level, but also from my mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe other thing I absorbed was Zionism. It was\na strongly Zionist household, and my father was very active in the religious\nZionist community. From very early on, I knew that I would come on aliyah one\nday. I didn\u2019t know when, but it was definitely there in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked to convey one message to the next\ngeneration, Shalvi said, \u201cReach for the sky and don\u2019t give up. Don\u2019t ever give\nup. Even if you know you\u2019ll never attain what you\u2019re reaching for, persist.\nKeep at it. I like to quote Robert Browning\u2019s \u2018Andrea del Sarto\u2019: \u2018Aye, but a\nman\u2019s reach must exceed his grasp \/ Or what\u2019s a heaven for.\u2019 Keep on striving\nbecause, even if you don\u2019t attain that goal yourself, the chances are that, for\nthe next generation, it will be easier.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sybil Kaplan <\/strong>is a journalist, lecturer, book reviewer and\nfood writer in Jerusalem. She created and leads the weekly English-language\nShuk Walks in Machane Yehuda, she has compiled and edited nine kosher\ncookbooks, and is the author of <\/em>Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman\nJournalist in Israel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alice Shalvi, an Israeli professor and educator, has played a leading role in progressive Jewish education for girls and advancing the status of women in Israel. Her autobiography, Never a Native (Halban Publishers, 2018), reads almost as a personal diary. Otherwise, how could this 92-year-old recall the most minute details of her life? The youngest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31354,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[8626,4242,4330,3021],"class_list":["post-31353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-alice-shalvi","tag-history","tag-israel","tag-women"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}