(13) Esty Shushan: Choosing the feminism that's right for you
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
Release Date: 01/21/2025
(25) Scaling the heights of halachic scholarship, with Rabbanit Chamutal Shoval
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you. I’m delighted to welcome Rabbanit Chamutal Shoval, Director of the Susi Bradfield Women’s Institute of Halachic Leadership at Midreshet Lindenbaum, and a graduate of its rigorous five‑year program as a Morat Hora’a and Manhiga Ruchanit - empowering women with halachic authority and spiritual leadership and enabling female halachic leaders to claim their place in discourse, advisory roles, synagogues, schools, and more, both in Israel and abroad. She spent...
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(24) Fighting breast cancer through humour, with Gila Pfeffer
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you. Gila Pfeffer is an award winning author, breast cancer prevention advocate and mum of four. Her recent book, , was the 2024 winner of the Gilda Women’s Book award and had me laughing hysterically and sobbing in equal measure. She describes it as “about losing both my parents to cancer, trying not to get cancer myself, then getting it anyway”. We answer questions like: why would you choose humour as a vessel for discussing breast cancer and loss? How do you navigate...
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(23) Finding common ground through feminine traits, with Sharon Rosen
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you. Today I’m honoured to welcome Sharon Rosen, a leader in interfaith peace building in Israel and around the world. Sharon served as Search for Common Ground’s Global Director of Religious Engagement from 2017 until recently. She also co-founded and directed Education for Life, an NGO that provides tools for the development and wellbeing of children within state educational systems. She was also a faculty member at the Jerusalem Center for Near East Studies, teaching...
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(22) Can women do that? Nicole Duke, Kashrut Supervisor & Burial Advisor
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you. Rabbanit Nicole Duke is not an obvious leader, but her guidance behind the scenes at crucial times and life cycle events helps countless people through both difficult and wonderful times. First she is a shomeret, a kashrut supervisor enabling kosher functions to take place. She is also responsible for the chevra kadisha - the organisation dedicated to caring for the deceased and preparing them for burial - at the main Orthodox cemetery in London, and she single-handedly runs...
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(21) Sara Wolkenfeld @ Sefaria: Opening up access to Torah in the digital age
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you. I learn every day with my chavruta in Israel using Sefaria sources. So I’m delighted to be interviewing Rabbanit Sara Tillinger Wolkenfeld, Chief Learning Officer at Sefaria, the online database and interface for Jewish texts. Sara is passionate about Talmud education and about expanding Jewish textual knowledge and its accessibility for all. She writes and teaches widely about Jewish texts and Jewish law, and her current projects focus on applying Talmudic ideas to...
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(20) Szonja Komoroczy: Breathing life into Hungary’s enigmatic Jewish community
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you. What’s it like to be part of the Jewish community in Hungary? Home to the second largest synagogue in the world yet a hidden Jewish population that no-one can count, how does it function and what will its future be? Jewish educator, historian and tour guide Szonja Komoroczy is Vice Rector at the Jewish University of Budapest and has lectured and published extensively in English, Hungarian, Hebrew, and Yiddish. As an educator, her passion is to tell the story...
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(19) Pesach: The power of openness to change, with Tanya White
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you. Dr Tanya White is a much loved teacher at LSJS and Matan, and a lecturer in Jewish Philosophy at Bar Ilan University. Tanya lives in Israel with her husband and four girls, and she writes, teaches and lectures on Tanach and Jewish Philosophy. She has a very unique style that is both inspiring and intellectually stimulating and our students here at lsjs.ac.uk love her. I always learn so much from her approach and her take on ideas – really profound and really personal and...
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(18) Strategic investing in Women’s Orthodox Torah Leadership with Ann Pava and Elizabeth Walder
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
Today, we’re live! I’m at the Orthodox Women’s Torah Leadership Convening with Ann Pava and Elizabeth Walder, trailblazers of Jewish philanthropy, strategically growing the field of Orthodox Jewish women’s Torah leadership. As we sit onstage at the Convening that Ann and Elizabeth made happen, they reveal how they choose where to invest, and how they go forward as partners with those organisations lucky enough to receive their help. We marvel at how far this field has come - programmes in learning and leadership that are now available for women and girls, and positions held by women...
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(17) Suzy Goldberg: Matchmaking in the modern world
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
This podcast is powered by LSJS. Visit to learn about our Jewish learning journeys & find something that suits you. Suzy Goldberg is a pillar of the London community who embodies humble leadership. She’s a mother, grandmother, shadchanit (Jewish matchmaker) and Torah teacher of over 30 years. She’s also a graduate of the and programmes in Jewish Education and she works today with an organisation called , the UK’s branch of the fabulously-named Jewish dating app, and she’s encouraged, counselled and guided many couples to the chuppah with incredible skill. We discuss the...
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(16) Hadassah Ben Ari: Connecting with your inner hero
Women’s Gallery: Showcasing Women in Jewish Leadership
This podcast is powered by LSJS - the London School of Jewish Studies. Connect with our Jewish education courses, tours and events, online and in person, via . Hadassa and I met over Chanukah when she was in London promoting her new book - a book which has made a huge impression on both me and my daughter. Hadassah started this book project in the wake of October 7th to help parents talk about the trauma of that terrible day, and to cope with the trauma that developed in its wake. Hadassah has emerged as a genuine role model in that sense, and I'm very excited to talk with her more about the...
info_outlineEsty is a Chareidi Mizrachi social activist, entrepreneur and trailblazer. We met when she
was in London screening Woman of Valour, a documentary film about her life and activism,
and I was blown away by her bravery and her achievements.
In 2012, she launched No Voice, No Vote, a social media-based protest movement calling
on ultra orthodox Chareidi women not to vote for parties that barred women from their ranks,
and on the back of that she founded Nivcharot, which raises awareness on women’s rights in
Chareidi society. She’s a pioneer establishing all sorts of online forums promoting an honest
exchange of views on subjects like divorce, birth control, sexual harassment, abuse and
arranged marriages, all of which are to some extent still taboo in the Chareidi world.
Esty has a new podcast in Israel called Chareidit Meduberet (Spoken Chareidi) where she
interviews people who share this fresh approach and voice to discuss challenging issues in a
new, open way.
We speak about change management, using a pseudonym to write about politics as a
Chareidi woman, and shifting practises away from that, the potential dangers of the future of Israeli politics, how not to feed the monster of social media, and struggling with the F word -
feminism.
Click here to learn about Esty's film, Akara.