Bat Melech dedication
Bat Melech dedicationGidi Avraham

Bat Melech is an organization which operates shelters for battered women in the religious community and their children, providing them not only with food and shelter, but with tools to rebuild their lives and start again.

Its very choice of name provides reassurance and a renewed, positive self-image to the women who escape violence within its walls, because Bat Melech means "Daughter of Kings,"

This week, the organization dedicated an expanded shelter in the Jerusalem area - the location is not revealed due to safety considerations – and is now able to double the number of women and children eligible to receive assistance in time of need.

The project to expand the shelter to a size that can accommodate 12 families at the same time was carried out at a cost of 8 m. NIS, all of it raised through donations.

Participants in the dedication ceremony included the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi David Lau, MK Shuli Moalem (Jewish Home), businessman Rabbi Moti Sonnenfeld, Chairman of the Bat Melech Board Attorney Tzilit Jacobson, and Founder and CEO Attorney Noah Korman.

Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Lau, who has dealt with many difficult cases of domestic violence in the rabbinic courts, affixed a mezuzah to the shelter entrance doorpost, expressing the hope that the women residing there now would benefit from the additional accommodations because they would be able choose to leave the shelter only when they felt strengthened and fully ready to build new lives. He added that he always asked religious court judges to look for signs of violence, but that sometimes they were unable to detect a situation if it was not told to them outright..

Bat Melech dedication
Bat Melech dedication(Credit: Gidi Avraham)

"Each of you has the right to a happy, warm home – to a home of her own," he said with feeling.

Founder Noah Korman, CEO of Bat Melech, said: "This is the second dedication ceremony held here. The first took place 18 years ago when we opened the first shelter for religious women. At the time, we had no idea how we would survive the first year financially, but I quoted King Solomon's famous prayer in the Book of Kings, said at the dedication of the First Holy Temple."

"King Solomon prayed the Temple would become the central site for Jewish supplications as well as non-Jewish ones and at the same time a source of blessings from the Almighty. We, too, pray that this house becomes a place to which women turn in time of need and a haven that is able to address those needs in the best possible manner."

Head of the Board, Attorney Tzilit Jacobson, said: "This is a period of financial difficulties for most women's shelters, but Bat Melech has achieved the impossible and completed the expansion of the Jerusalem area shelter. We can now help double the number of women who can benefit from the warmth and safety we provide for them here. We can help more women and children escape the violence and trauma that has been their lot, protect them and help them begin again. I am proud to be among all of you present who made this happen."

Director Einat Engelman said that "this temporary home is intended to bring about the dedication of many permanent homes. Our dream is that women leave the shelter with renewed energies, find a way to like themselves and learn to give and receive love. We know how hard that process is, how hard it is to make that dream come true, but our belief in the possibility of success keeps the dream alive."

MK Moalem-Refaeli was widowed in the IDF 1997 helicopter disaster and has since remarried. She takes special interest in the shelter and said that "Bat Melech is a home in the most basic sense for those women who have the enormous amount of courage needed to change their lives and put a stop to the damage inflicted on them and on their children. It is a home signifying a better present and a happy and hope-filled future. I pray with all my heart that each of the women who finds respite here also finds the energies to build a new family and married life, a fundamental right to which everyone is entitled during his or her life. I staunchly believe that marriage and family must serve as an anchor of stability in all our lives."

Chief Rabbi Lau took the time at the end of the dedication ceremony to visit the children's section of the shelter, handing out the candies he had remembered to bring for them and talking to the children on a level appropriate for their ages, about the approaching Hanukkah festival.