About: גרעין קול לנשים

Mission Statement:

We, the members of Garin Kol L’Nashim, understand both the vulnerability and power of the human body. We believe that every person should have ultimate control of his or her physical and sexual domain. Rape, prostitution and abuse are all violations of the body and stifle the voices of women everyday. For the members of Kol L’Nashim, living in Israel has been a formative and empowering experience, which has allowed us to find our voices. Our mission is to help those women who are the victims of sexual abuse and trafficking to break their silence.

Goals/action plan:

-Intern at the Rape Crisis Center of Tel Aviv, an organization which aims to be a safe haven for the sexually abused while raising awareness to prevent such abuse.

-Volunteer with battered women and their children in the Tel Aviv area.

-Involve ourselves with the Door of Hope, a shelter and soup kitchen for prostitutes in the red light district of Tel Aviv.

-Provide Jewish youth movements and school groups with educational materials about sexual health awareness.

-Start an awareness campaign in the Tel Aviv area that brings to light the issues of sexual abuse and sex trafficking in Israel.

-Raise money to enable us to complete these goals and help fund the various organizations we are involved with (further details to come).

About Our Work with Sex Trafficking:

“I expose slavery in this country, because to expose it is to kill it. Slavery is one of those monsters of darkness to whom the light of truth is death.”- Frederick Douglass

There are 20,000 cases of rape of sex slaves in Israel each month.  Women are brought in by the hundreds every year to serve Israeli men. They come from a wide variety of countries, yet face the same fate once they reach the border. Until they can no longer be used, they will be forced into the sex trade, being raped up to twenty times each day. Israeli women are also roped into the industry and abused equally. This is modern day slavery and it is happening all around us.

We are a garin* of six Young Judaeans* who have come to together to fight sex trafficking in Israel among other women’s issues. Sex trafficking, a tremendous problem in this country, is overlooked by most Israelis as well as Diaspora Jewry. We are calling on Jews around the world to join together in taking on this cause. We believe that if we raise enough awareness about this industry, we will be able to help turn the tables through public opinion and legislation.

Over the next six months of Year Course*, our gap year program, we will be raising awareness on the Israeli sex trade in both America and Israel. Through engaging youth movements as well as Jewish newspapers and community leaders, we plan to mobilize American Jewry to put pressure on the Knesset and congress. Through legislation, we hope to be able to raise awareness in order to better the situation for the women of the sex trade. In addition, we plan on launching a campaign against sex trafficking here, in Israel. Since visiting a brothel is such a common thing, we plan to spread awareness on the true nature of the sex trade. We will also be working with various organizations and shelters to help the women more directly.

Wherever you are, you can help with this crucial cause. It is all of our responsibility to act and only together will we see a change. Over the next months we will be producing materials to spread education and will be blogging about our experience on the ground. If you have any questions, please feel free to email kol.lnashim@gmail.com.

*Literally translated to seed, garin is a word used for a nucleus of activists dedicated to working on a specific cause.
* Young Judaea is a politically non-partisan, religiously pluralistic, peer-led, Zionist youth movement, which strives to better the world through acts of tikkun olam (healing the world).
*Year Course is Young Judaea’s nine month long Gap Year program.