On paper, the statistics are straightforward enough: the religious Zionist community makes up a relatively small percentage of Israel’s population, yet its men serve disproportionately in combat units and reserve duty. But statistics rarely capture what happens after midnight, when exhausted mothers finish another day of work, put children to bed alone, and prepare for another morning shaped by uncertainty.
For Frieda Ross, President of World Emunah, these moments have become the rhythm of everyday Israeli life. “The women are still part of the workforce, and they still have to take care of the home and the children when their partners are away,” Ross says. “When we talk about resilience, I think one of the things that’s most important is to highlight their strength, how much they carry on their backs.”
That message is expected to be a prominent feature when Emunah representatives appear at the upcoming Jerusalem Post New York Conference. But in conversation, Ross and her colleagues quickly move beyond the language of resilience alone. What emerges instead is a portrait of an organization focused on continuity: childcare centers functioning under fire, schools improvising wartime support systems, and women quietly building social infrastructure while the country remains in prolonged crisis.
“Everything is intertwined,” Ross says. “The daycare is important, the resilience of the children in the homes is important, and continued education is important. Everything affects everything.” Today, Emunah's leaders increasingly frame the organization as a long-term investment in women’s leadership, particularly within the religious Zionist community.
Ross points to one initiative launched decades ago: a businesswomen’s network created by professional religious Zionist women in their 30s. “They shared professions, abilities, and contacts. They used each other almost in a barter system, and that club is still active today.”
Now, nearly three decades later, Emunah has launched a new initiative aimed at younger women entering politics, business, and professional leadership. The program, called Rishonot, provides mentorship, networking, and leadership tools to women around the country.
But even those programs rarely remain confined to networking alone. World Emunah Director Meira Lerner describes how one woman from the business council was instrumental in opening a jewelry studio inside one of Emunah’s residential homes for at-risk youth. “The purpose wasn’t just jewelry-making,” she explains. “The kids learn responsibility and work ethic. How to run a business, essentially.”
As these teenagers assist in running the studio, their skills grow into confidence, which in turn opens new possibilities. "It’s been a tremendous success,” Lerner smiles, noting that Emunah’s work encompasses multiple generations in more ways than one. The women who once built professional support systems for themselves are now creating opportunities for vulnerable children, children who may someday become leaders in their own right. But if professional empowerment forms one pillar of the organization’s work, the war has placed another issue at the center of its public message: the burden carried by religious Zionist families during Israel’s prolonged military campaigns.
Ross notes that although the national religious community represents a relatively small percentage of Israel’s population, its men make up a significant share of combat units and reserve service. “The husbands are away on reserve duty,” she says, "And the women are still part of the workforce. They still have to take care of the home and the children.”
The result is a form of strain that is both national and deeply intimate. Women become, simultaneously, sole parents, emotional anchors, financial providers and caretakers of communal morale. “We represent a specific sector of society,” Ross says. “And these women are going through a very, very difficult time.”
Yet unlike the dramatic images that dominate television broadcasts, the labor these women perform is largely invisible. It happens in kitchens, schools, WhatsApp groups, and daycare centers. It happens at 6 a.m., before work, and at midnight, after the children are asleep. And it continues, regardless of war. One of the clearest examples came when schools across Israel repeatedly shifted into emergency modes and to distance learning.
In Pardes Hanna, where Emunah operates both a children’s home and a high school, staff members improvised their own support network. “Some of the teachers from the high school came to the home on their own,” Lerner recalls. “They came to help the kids with distance learning, with questions, just to be there. No one instructed them to come."
That willingness to continue functioning under impossible conditions is foundational to Emunah’s leadership. The daycare centers remained open whenever authorities allowed them to operate, even though many staff members themselves had relatives serving in the military.
“The teachers were also mothers, sisters, daughters of people serving in the army,” Ross says. Still, the doors opened. If there is a unifying theme running through the conversation, it is foresight – Emunah is not just reacting but planning ahead.” That planning now includes one of the organization’s newest and most sensitive initiatives: a treatment center for women and children leaving shelters for abused women.
The project remains in its early phases, Ross notes, but its purpose is clear: to help women transition from protected shelters back into everyday life. “It will support these women with counseling and whatever assistance they need to reenter the real world,” she explains. “We all face moments where, one second, you’re waiting for sirens and rushing into a safe room, and the next, someone snaps their fingers and says, ‘Okay, carry on with your life.’ That is their daily struggle in a nutshell, and I wish returning to normal was as simple as that. For women leaving abusive environments, stepping out from a secure space into a potentially unpredictable or unsafe world can be challenging. The new treatment center will be built upon years of counseling experience already integrated into the organization.
Emunah has run family counseling centers across Israel for many years, including in Sderot, an area that experienced rocket attacks long before October 7 shifted the national focus. “The attacks on the Gaza envelope didn’t start on October 7,” Ross states. “People in Sderot have been suffering for many years.” She recalls one counselor in Sderot who continued phone sessions with patients on October 7, even as her own sons fought in the army. “The counseling experience is deeply rooted in the organization,” Ross adds.
Lerner concludes by widening the lens even further. Beyond welfare services and emergency response, she says, Emunah also sees itself as part of a broader effort to preserve and elevate women’s role within Zionism itself. “People sometimes think of Zionism only as history, but it’s constantly evolving.” Women, she argues, are shaping that evolution in real time – as municipal leaders, emergency responders, educators, and community organizers. “One of our responsibilities,” she says, “is to highlight where women are having such strong impact.”
Perhaps that is the story Emunah ultimately intends to bring to New York: Resilience not as an abstract Israeli virtue, but a daily labor performed overwhelmingly by women whose contributions often remain out of frame. Women who continue teaching during wars, who sustain homes while partners fight, build systems that outlast crises, and plan for the next generation while carrying the current one. Or, as Ross puts it more simply: “Everything affects everything.”
Written in collaboration with World Emunah