Hadassah
18 Women With Zionist Cred
Hadassah is once again recognizing 18 women who are committing their time, talents and reputations to speaking out for Israel. This year’s list features influencers, politicians, business leaders, artists, Hadassah leaders and even a Hollywood actor and Muslim Zionist. The 2025 cohort models the diversity and passion of pro-Israel advocacy, as exemplified by the four honorees profiled here.
Bellamy Bellucci knew she wanted to convert to Judaism when she was 10 years old.
Jewish friends from her dance school in Johannesburg, South Africa, would invite her to Shabbat dinners, and Bellucci, who was raised Methodist, fell in love with the warmth and togetherness cultivated in their homes. Today, the 34-year-old activist is proud to be a trans, Black and Jewish Zionist.
Bellucci moved to the United States to attend the Washington School of Ballet and, 16 years ago, settled in New York City. In 2011, while touring Israel for the first time, Bellucci decided she was ready to join the tribe after visiting the Kotel.
“I felt safer and more at home in Israel,” she recalled, “and I had less anxiety about being myself, all of me.”
Ultimately, she converted under the supervision of a New York rabbi.
View this post on Instagram
Bellucci was born in 1990, the same year that apartheid in her native country officially ended. As a digital creator, that perspective informs her activism on social media, she said, where she routinely defends Israel from those who accuse it of being an apartheid state.
Now retired from professional ballet, she focuses on advocacy full time and currently is working on a documentary, Finding Home, that will explore contemporary Israel through the lens of her own life.
Bellucci’s Zionism is surprising to some, she said, because “apparently someone who looks like me, with my background, is not supposed to love Israel.
“Israel is not a utopia, but it’s the best dysfunctional family in the world,” she continued. “When I’m there, I truly feel like I’m not trying to fit some kind of narrative and explain my Jewish pride and my Zionism.”
Hilary Hawn sees her work combating antisemitism online as “harm reduction.” After first becoming active on Instagram to support Black Lives Matter, she today uses her megaphone—she has over 25,000 followers on Instagram—to counter the antisemitism she discovered interwoven with that movement as well as on social media since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. Her posts have been shared by celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Demi Lovato and Hailey Bieber.
It was while attending the University of California, Berkeley, as an older-than-usual undergraduate prior to the Hamas attacks that she first understood the takeover of antisemitic voices on college campuses. At Berkeley, she said, some of her professors espoused clearly anti-Israel views.
“I sensed an extreme bias at Berkeley,” said the 40-year-old, who now lives in Southern California, “and it wasn’t against policy and the Israeli government, it was just against Israel existing.”
After graduation, she began to speak out—educating her followers and, in an effort to spread joy and positivity, sharing personal experiences related to Jewish culture and food.
Much of Hawn’s advocacy today focuses on the return of the hostages and the safety of Israelis. In March 2024, she traveled to Israel with Havurah, a Jewish creative collective, and Sachlav Israel, a Birthright Israel partner, to volunteer at Kibbutz Kerem Shalom, where she helped repaint a mural on a wall breached by Hamas on October 7.
“Jewish values of community and connection, and being there for each other, are the biggest things for me,” Hawn said. “It’s about looking out for one another.”
For Allison Tombros Korman, Zionism advocacy goes hand-in-hand with another mission: supporting reproductive rights. The Red Tent Fund, the organization she launched in 2024, is rooted, she said, in some of the Jewish values she was raised with—the right to dignity, bodily autonomy and self-determination. Those values led to her activism after a visit to a Planned Parenthood clinic as a teen.
Also as a teen, Korman traveled to Israel for the first time with Young Judaea. Since 2009, she has visited the country three times, including a trip last year.
Korman, 46, started the Washington, D.C.-based Red Tent Fund to help women around the country who need financial support to access abortions, regardless of their religion or background. But this is not her first foray into the reproductive health space.
When Korman, who lives in Arlington, Va., became the senior director at the DC Abortion Fund (DCAF) three years ago, she thought she had landed her dream job. After October 7, however, working for the organization became untenable when she saw that her support for Israel was alienating her in the pro-choice community. DCAF’s communications team refused to release a statement on the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israelis, including sexual violence, but did vocalize its support for Palestinians.
“I was devastated that organizations that were so adamant about believing women stayed silent,” Korman said. “How can you be a feminist organization and not have something to say about rape as a weapon of war?”
Since starting the Red Tent Fund, she said she has heard from fellow Jews working in women’s health who have felt similarly isolated: “A lot of folks just reached out to say that they felt seen.”
When she arrived in Israel on October 20, 2023, Yocheved Kim Ruttenberg planned to stay for two weeks. A year and a half later, the Baltimore native has rented an apartment in Tel Aviv and said she never wants to leave.
The 24-year-old was living in Dallas and working in construction sales at the time of the Hamas attacks. She then flew to Israel to see her brother, an Israel Defense Forces soldier stationed in the south of the country.
What she encountered when she landed was an Israel still numb from the invasions and in immediate need of both volunteers and a system to organize the legion of men, women and even children who wanted to help. So Ruttenberg co-created, with Israeli American Yael Yomtov-Emmanuel, the Facebook group Sword of Iron-Israel Volunteer Opportunities to connect English-speakers with opportunities throughout Israel, from visiting injured soldiers in hospitals to rebuilding kibbutzim and aiding farmers. The Facebook community today has over 50,000 members.
View this post on Instagram
After months of developing her organization without pay—relying on grants and donations to keep it running—in April, she received her first paycheck.
Ruttenberg, who was raised in an Orthodox home in Baltimore, visited Israel for the first time on a Birthright Israel trip. Although her Jewish identity was always strong, she said that her connection to Israel only solidified after October 7, culminating in her decision to make aliyah.
“I’ve never felt such a pull to do something in my entire life,” Ruttenberg said. “It was a gut feeling I knew I needed to chase.”
Virtual Event — Young Zionists Take Up the Fight
Join us on Wednesday, June 18 at 7 PM ET when Hadassah Magazine Executive Editor Lisa Hostein moderates a panel discussion with young women speaking up for Israel today as well as some leaders working with Gen Z communities.
Guests include Yocheved Ruttenberg, who founded the 40,000-strong Facebook group Sword of Iron-Israel Volunteer Opportunities in the immediate aftermath of October 7; Reform Rabbi Ashira Boxman, who has written about the need for Jewish unity in a time of threat for Israel and Jews everywhere; David Hazony, editor of the 2024 anthology Young Zionist Voices: A New Generation Speaks Out and director and senior fellow of the Z3 Institute for Jewish Priorities; and Adina Frydman, CEO of Young Judaea, the oldest Zionist youth movement in America.
Galia Amram | Attorney and Jewish nonprofit leader
Anila Ali | President of American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council
Emily Austin | Sports journalist and influencer
Bellamy Bellucci | South African-born digital creator
Suzanne Patt Benvenisti | Executive director of Hadassah Offices in Israel
Stephanie Bonder | Hadassah National Board member and Chair of Hadassah Speakers’ Bureau
Caroline D’Amore | Businesswoman, DJ and model
Hilary Hawn | Educator and digital creator
Patricia Heaton | Actor and Catholic ally
Michal Ilai | Press strategist and Israel educator
Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll |Advocate for women’s rights in Orthodox Judaism, co-founder of Chochmat Nashim
Allison Tombros Korman | Founder of the Red Tent Fund
Esther Panitch | Member of the Georgia House of Representatives
Mazi Pilip | Ethiopian-Israeli-American legislator in Nassau County, N.Y.
Yocheved Kim Ruttenberg | Co-founder of Sword of Iron-Israel Volunteer Opportunities
Deborah Villanueva | Chair of Evolve Hadassah for Long Beach and Orange Counties and Hadassah Southern California board member
Samantha Vinokor-Meinrath | Managing director of the Jewish Education Project
Elena Yacov | Executive director of the Milstein Family Foundation and TalkIsrael Foundation leader
Alexandra Lapkin Schwank is a freelance writer for several Jewish publications. She lives with her family in the Boston area.
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
Leave a Reply