The English-language newspaper Haaretz launched a project ahead of Independence Day: a list of 66 Israeli women worth getting to know. The list includes MKs Tamar Zandberg and Eilat Shaked, along with Dalia Itzik and media women Carmela Menashe and Tal Schneider. The list also includes the daughter of the Rabbi Yosef, Adina Bar Shalom, who was chosen to light a torch at the Independence Day opening ceremony and will receive the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement.
And so it was written about Bar Shalom:
She is the eldest daughter of the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who was the longtime spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party Shas, but she is difficult to catalog. Adina Bar Shalom, 69, is a speaker and educator. She lives in the yuppie stronghold of Ramat Aviv, and supports a two-state solution. She is still part of the traditional Sephardic Haredi community.
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In 2001, she founded the Haredi College in Jerusalem, the first academic college in Israel for Haredi women (the college is also open to men, although in separate classes). An impressive achievement for someone who almost missed out on formal education herself. She began learning sewing at age 14 and married when she was 18. Only much later, with the blessing of her husband and father, did she return to school.
This year she won the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement, for her work in imparting knowledge and education in the Haredi sector.".
