Story

Mothers with Meaning, JWRP's main partner organization in Israel, was founded by Shimon (Shimmy) Kaufman, his partner, Eitiel Goldwicht and "Founding Mother" Michal Melamed Cohen. The three founders recruited Israeli participants for JWRP's trips in May of 2014, and following the trips, a community slowly began to form. The new JWRP sisters were excited to continue with the inspiration after their experiences on the Momentum Trip. Aish Israel was already providing programming for tens of thousands of Israelis around the country, making Mothers with Meaning a great next step in creation of communities dedicated to empowering women to lead a movement. 

In April 2015, Mothers with Meaning (MWM) invited the 30 founding mothers for a strategic planning process, lead by a MWM all-star Anat Ben-Borouch. These woman were tasked with defining the core values of the organization and the framework of the programming that they would like to initiate as a community of mothers. This strategy session led to the development of two types of projects for MWM: monthly study programs, and social impact initiatives. It also led to the definition of MWM's central vision: to foster an Israeli women's movement that stimulates broad social change in Israel and in Jewish communities around the world through learning and teaching Jewish values, personal development, influence and social action.

"The idea is a community of women- not a program – lending to a sense of building off each others success and helping each other on shared projects", says Shimmy. MWM hopes to create mini communities throughout the country that work together to change the Jewish world. The MWM philosophy is that if Israel is inspired as a country, then Israel can revitalize the Jewish people throughout the world. 

While MWM has no official website yet (coming soon!), you can click here and here for a preview of their newsletter!