Alice Shalvi’s memoir takes readers on a triumphant journey of women’s rights, Jewish ethics and perseverance

Never a Native is for every woman who has ever yearned, aspired or been driven to activism against unethical attitudes and behaviours to women. It is also for every woman who, like the author Alice Shalvi, has the courage to face her failures, doubts and guilt resulting from her activism – particularly mothers and their guilt from putting others’ needs before those of their children.

This is a personal, painful and inspiring memoir which, with no hubris, documents both Shalvi's internal struggles with her campaigns and external courageous self and successes. The reader can imagine themselves in the situation, identify and empathise with the journey behind each campaign, each failure and each success. Shalvi's lifelong dream of an Israeli egalitarian ethical society in accordance with Jewish ethics, and she has campaigned against the corruption of these ethics within an occupying Israel, gaining her international recognition and awards, including the 2008 Israel Prize.

For me, Shalvi is the quintessential Israeli Jewish woman – one that I and many others aspire to be – an outspoken pioneer for women’s rights and a tireless activist for socio-political and state Orthodox religious concerns. So I was surprised by the title Never a Native. Why would an Israeli woman of such renown feel she was not a native? Shalvi begins with her family history, long before she emigrated to Israel in 1949. Her family were ‘Polish Oestjuden’, a derogatory term used by German and Austrian Jewish communities to describe Polish Jewish immigrants, who were regarded as inferior. This was mirrored by her paternal family’s disdain for her mother, thinking her not elegant or rich enough for their son. Add to that the growing Nazi hate and humiliation of Jews during her early childhood, spurring the family’s emigration to London in 1934, and her experience at the elitist University of Cambridge and a history of exclusion from the natives becomes evident.

In the second half of the book Shalvi tells us of her immersion in “feminism, education, religious rebellion, political activism and social reform”, encouraging women to take on leadership roles and promoting peacemaking. Her description of the rise and decline of the Israel Women’s Network, which she founded in 1984, is a difficult account of political and self-interest agendas hijacking policies of unity and consensus leading to Shalvi’s resignation – a sure lesson for all feminist groups.

Born in 1926, Shalvi is still hard at work at 94 years old. Only last year I heard her talk at London's Jewish Book Week, where she joined two panel discussions. The first with fellow feminist Elif Shafak and at the second she was the only woman on an Israeli political platform – the most informed and articulate panel member no less. The packed hall was spellbound, feeling a joint privilege to share in her wise and empathic views.

Never a Native concludes with Shalvi sitting in her garden, at peace with herself and nature. Her journey there is via recent practice in meditation that led to her feeling “part of the entire universe”. It has been a wonderful journey reading this memoir: a moving, informative and largely untold history of seven decades of ethics and human rights issues in the State of Israel. An inspiring call to promote an ethical world.

By Irris Singer

Header photo © Jewish Book Week

Never a Native by Alice Shalvi is out now. Visit halbanpublishers.com/neveranative for more info and to purchase.