What makes a heroine?
Students at AMIT Ulpana High School for Girls got a chance to learn exactly what makes a heroine when they welcomed Avital Sharansky for a visit and discussion about women’s empowerment, a subject that Sharansky, a leading figure in the movement to free Jews, including her husband Natan Sharansky, from Soviet imprisonment, knows quite a bit about.
In meeting the students, Sharansky described her life under a totalitarian communist regime and told them about Jewish life in the former Soviet Union. There, she said, many Jews knew little about their faith but had a strong desire to rekindle their connection with Judaism and with Israel.
Sharansky also shared her personal story of how she rediscovered her Judaism, fought for the rights of Jews in the former Soviet Union to be able to live Jewish lives and immigrate to Israel, and most importantly, about her worldwide struggle in the 1970s and 1980s to free her “refusenik” husband from the Soviet gulag. He was released on February 11, 1986.
Sharansky’s visit to the recently opened ulpana in Alei Zahav underscores AMIT’s philosophies, among them to empower its female students, many of whom come from the geographic and socioeconomic periphery. Meeting women like Sharansky help students see the limitless possibilities for their own lives. Sharansky is a role model for the girls and an exemplar of drive, persistence, and living Jewish values – again a message that AMIT schools impart.
Needless to say, the students were rapt throughout the meeting, which concluded with Sharansky telling them that, “each one should find her unique way to contribute to the people of Israel.”
Said one of the students, Nili M, “It was incredibly moving to meet such a unique and strong figure as Avital. We learned from her that emigrating from Russia was like the exodus from Egypt, and that even today we are living in a time of redemption.”
Leah Steinmetz, the schools’ principal, said it was their privilege to host Sharansky at the ulpana. “She is an exemplary woman and an example of female and Jewish determination – a woman who fought with all her might for the truth she believed in and won.”
