PKI: Promoting Democracy and Religious Freedom

Protesting religious coercion and Rabbinate monopoly over marriage and divorce in Israel, 2018

Project Kesher Israel (PKI) is the foremost advocate educating the Russian-speaking community (RSC) on democracy and religious freedom ahead of the April 2019 elections. 

In past year PKI has trained 25 leaders to be experts on the status quo of state and religion in Israel, including issues like the need for civil marriage and divorce, women's rights at the Western Wall, and public transportation on Shabbat. For the past ten years, PKI’s leadership has been teaching workshops on this issue within the PKI network, speaking on panels at conferences, and to Russian-speaking MASA groups across the country.

This year in partnership with Crossroads/Israeli Alliance, PKI is conducting innovative programming before and after the 2019 elections to ensure that Russian-speaking Israelis vote consistently with their unique needs and values.

The Russian-speaking communities in Israel can have significant influence in shaping policy, when they vote their values. Project Kesher Israel handpicked the coordinator of Russian-speaking communities outreach, is overseeing the phone banking, is training members of Russian-speaking communities to blog about voting their values, and, is translating the platforms of all 47 parties into Russian so that Russian-speaking communities understand how each party will vote on issues they care about. This work will be instrumental in getting out the vote on election day and is new in Israel and in particular, in the Russian-speaking communities.