Development towns in the Negev

Meet Leah

Leah Shakdiel is an Israeli peace activist, feminist, and scholar. She initially made headlines in 1988 when she won an Israeli Supreme Court decision allowing her to become the first woman to sit on a local religious council.

Leah was brought up in a Modern Orthodox home in Jerusalem, where Judaism and Zionism played a big part in her identity. In the 1970s she spent time in the political Zionist group Gush Emumin, a messianic, right-wing activist movement committed to establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. With slogans like “The land of Israel won’t wait, the people of Israel will wait,” their attitude was that securing all of greater Israel was more important than social issues to do with education, housing, food and health.

Leah quickly began to question that idealism. It contradicted what her parents instilled in her; the idea that Zionism was “committing yourself to the welfare of other Jews…and if there are no people with full humanity, to carry the reality of Zionism in its own light then we have nothing.”

In 1975 she started the Jewish religious peace movement Oz Ve Shalom. “The settlers would hijack religion and Torah and tell the world that the only interpretation of the Torah is that you need to actively inherit the land. Jews were misreading and misteaching what Judaism is about,” explained Leah.

In 1978 Leah decided to move with her family to Yeruham, a small development town in the northern Negev, 15km south of Dimona. Leah believes that moving to Yeruham was the most important decision she has ever made, claiming it realised her views of living as a modern Zionist. “Building the people was very important and that’s why I came here.”

Around the world, Leah is considered a trailblazer of the pro-active Zionist humanist movement that challenges Israel to be a model state for all people – Jewish and non -Jewish. For the past 36 years she has continued to inspire people to focus their efforts on development towns within the green line, rather than fighting a religious war over land in the West Bank. “It is possible to find religious sources and religious role models and historic precedents for religion to be an extremely important tool for making inroads for peace, for coexistence, for human rights, for social justice.”