WRJ Fights Erasure and Abuse

In 2022, WRJ launched “WRJ says STOP: An Initiative against Sexual Harassment and Assault.” The initiative’s goal was two-fold: (1) to help our sacred communities and congregations be proactive in reducing and even preventing the scourges of power dynamic abuse and bullying, and (2) to create environments in which sexual harassment and sexual assault are simply and profoundly understood as violations of our communal norms. Working alongside and in coordination with the URJ’s Ethics Accountability efforts, and marking five years since the #MeToo Movement went viral in 2017, WRJ says STOP filled a critical gap by providing tools to speak with our congregational leadership and learn how to stand in our own power while lifting up others. Our shared commitment was to take personal and communal action to work in sacred partnership as lay leaders, professionals, and clergy leaders to create and maintain communities that clearly reject bullying, harassment, and assault, and enhance safety, equity, dignity and inclusion for all.

At this moment of rising retrenchment, when women and gender-nonconforming people face new forms of erasure and control, WRJ refuses to look away. We have seen this playbook before, and we know that silence is its strongest ally. WRJ has updated the WRJ says STOP initiative materials, including the “Programs in a (virtual) Box,” for WRJ’s upcoming Day of Action on April 12, 2026.  With these tools, WRJ invites and empowers you to take action and speak out. WRJ also has identified Gender-Based Violence as a high-priority issue as part of the 2025 Advocacy Plan, and will be spotlighting these resources and Programs in a Box for Day of Action, alongside Reproductive Rights & Health and Voting Rights.

As the founders of WRJ says STOP, alongside Trina Novak, we now hold many stories of pain and pride that people have shared with us, from childhood abuse never previously shared to daily harassment and the shock and trauma of sexual assaults. WRJ says STOP has created safe spaces for processing and sharing.  

For Trish, the drumbeat of harassment followed her throughout her successful career but never defined her. As she recalls, “When I became a pulmonary and critical care physician, I entered a highly male dominated subspecialty in an already male dominated profession.  Throughout my career, I experienced being ignored, overlooked, belittled with a myriad of microaggressions and even direct insults and advances. When I put forward an idea, it was often only accepted after being repeated by a male in the group. I was often treated as a nurse, an aide or, when doing research, a lab technician rather than a colleague. Throughout the stages of my career, I was not afforded the respect that my male colleagues received. I do not want younger colleagues to have to undergo similar shame, self-doubt, embarrassment, and insecurity just because they don’t fit the gender norm of their chosen career.  This is why WRJ says STOP is such an important initiative.  Only by refusing to let gender-belittling behavior go unchecked can we move forward as a fair and just society.”

Shoshana’s focus on gender equity and advocacy, particularly in Jewish spaces, includes collaborating with fellow lay leaders Carol Ann Schwartz of Hadassah and Deborah Isaacs of Mizrahi to launch the World Zionist Organization (WZO) Women’s Caucus, bringing disparate voices together in the fight for gender equity around the Zionist political table. A victim of assault in her twenties, Shoshana is driven to confront the devastating impact of silence. “When we began naming the everyday harassment we had experienced as women— lay leaders and professionals — in Jewish spaces that should be safe, the reaction was too often a joyless laugh, a whispered ‘me too,’ a story shared, and then a heavy, wordless recognition. WRJ says STOP breaks the silence and gives us tools to bring these conversations into our communities. Only when we speak openly about the inappropriate touching and propositions, the hand on the cheek that forces an unwanted kiss at an after-services oneg, the demeaning language, the mansplaining, the over-talking, and the physical intimidation can we create real change. Silence empowers those who abuse power. WRJ says STOP is the opposite of silence: when we say STOP, we reclaim our physical and emotional safety, our bodies, ourselves, and our sacred spaces. Especially now, in these harrowing times, Jewish spaces must be safe spaces.”

Three years later, we have experienced progress and painful setbacks, reminders of how far we still must go to build an equitable and safe world. More communities have adopted ethics codes, and WRJ’s work on inclusion and belonging continues to focus on how we make a difference in our communal environments through actions large and small, but the horrors of October 7 also included the weaponization of sexual assault and humiliation as tools of war. Daily, returned hostages find their voices and name their trauma to a world that responds too often with silence. The #MeToo-Unless-You-Are-a-Jew climate and intertwined forces of antisemitism, misogyny and homophobia attempt to dismiss their stories and their truths. Annually, we move from International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on November 25 to International Human Rights Day on December 10, reminding us of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s proclamation three decades ago that “women’s rights are human rights.”

Some of the progress of those three decades, and even the past three years, is being dialed back. In 2025, women, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people face a harsher climate on all matters related to bodily autonomy and protection of self. Forces are attempting to silence us in the present, for the future and even into the past; women are being erased from databases, history, medical research, the archives that train artificial intelligence, museums, and the national record. New threats around bathroom laws and sports create a high risk for all people of exposure to invasive gender testing and genital examination. A world in which the erasure of women is permitted is a world in which gender-based violence, from power dynamic abuse to harassment to assault, are permitted. Now is not the time for silence. Now is your time to join us, join WRJ, join the Day of Action, and say, “STOP.”  

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Updated WRJ resources for Education, Action and Advocacy on these issues include:

• The Programs in a Box and April 12, 2026 WRJ Day of Action materials
• Action Alerts for immediate electronic action in the Action Center
• WRJ’s Gender-Based Violence webpage, including:
  • 2024 resolution Preventing Gun Violence Against Women  
  • “What we’re watching” section that lifts up the following pending legislation:  
    • Bipartisan Background Checks of 2025 (H.R. 18)  would close the private purchase loophole by expanding the federal background check requirement to include the sale or transfer of all firearms by private sellers, including those sales conducted online or at a gun show.  
    • Ethan’s Law (H.R. 1564/S. 726)  mandates safe storage of firearms on premises where minors or other unauthorized persons reside and imposes strict penalties for safe storage violations.  
    • Break the Cycle of Violence Act (H.R. 4103/S. 2203) - invest $5 billion over the next eight years in violence interruption programs, which would be an unprecedented and game-changing level of support for these critical programs. Community Violence Interruption (CVI) models try to stop community gun violence and its cascade of traumatic impacts through an evidence-based, community-centered, public health approach by directly by addressing things like underperforming schools, income inequality, concentrated poverty, and easy access to firearms by people who are at elevated risk for violence.