2018 has been a watershed year in the fight for LGBTQ equality in Israel. A Wider Bridge has played a significant role in advancing equality in Israel and equality for Israel through our LGBTQ leadership missions to Israel, media campaigns and advocacy work, numerous delegations bringing Israeli LGBTQ leaders to the US, inaugural grantmaking initiative, and ongoing […]
The nationwide LGBTQ strike in Israel last month, sparked by a Knesset vote to ban men and gay couples from surrogacy, culminated in an incredibly moving and powerful 100,000-person rally in Rabin Square. The strike’s potency underscores the need to build capacity for Israel’s LGBTQ community organizations. A Wider Bridge (AWB) is proud to announce […]
This weekend, April 27-28, members of Israel’s LGBT religious Jewish communities will gather on a beachfront near Haifa for the annual Kehila Dati Shabbaton (religious community shabbat weekend). Funds from an AWB Impact Grant will help provide scholarships and cover general event costs. Co-organizer Zehorit Sorek (far right) with her wife Limor and daughter Ariel […]
As we open 2018, YNET brings you a list of the top 50 Activists in Israel, including a number of A Wider Bridge’s LBGTQ partners. Below are list of the LGBTQ activists mentioned in YNET’s list of 50 Israeli activists making a difference. We congratulate everyone for their hard work! Chen Arieli Chair of the […]
Zehorit Sorek, from the Israeli lesbian religious group Bat Kol, recently attended the Limmud conference in England, where she discussed her ten-year fight for LGBT rights in Israel. Zehorit indicated that she and fellow activists feel the problem with LGBT rights in Israel is a social one, rather than a Halachic one. As an activist, […]
A Wider Bridge is sharing our eight greatest achievements of the past year. Modeled after the eight days of Chanukah, we celebrate the miracles of our work and its widespread reach and impact. As we head into 2018, we wish everyone a happy Gregorian calendar New Year! Will you honor our work, and make a recurring, tax-deductible […]
Shirel, a transgender man, speaks about struggling with his gender identity in a religious household. “Even in the summer I would wear a hoodie to hide my breasts and I would never go to the beach.” He unexpectedly found the freedom to be who he is in an LGBTQ group on an orthodox religious university […]
Building upon the theme of this year’s Jerusalem Gay Pride which focused on the coexistence of religion and LGBT, members of Israel’s LGBTQ religious communities held an “Erev K’helah” conference on Sunday, October 8 to discuss LGBTQ relationships, marriage and family within the orthodox community. The conference, sponsored by the Schusterman Foundation, was well attended […]
Nadia Aizner from Belarus found an important home in Bat Kol, an organization for Orthodox lesbian women. “We’ve started a revolution and there’s no turning back the clock,” she says. Two weeks ago on Shabbat at Jerusalem’s Kehilat Zion synagogue, Nadia Aizner stood with glistening eyes under a canopy together with her partner Lena Kuznetsova, […]
Back in January, we launched A Wider Bridge Impact, our organization fundraising arm to financially advance and support the struggle of the LGBTQ community in Israel. Our first project, The Orthodox Visibility Project, aimed to help the religious LGBTQ organizations fund a visibility campaign in the media. See the outcome! “Our Faces, Together” The Orthodox […]