On Thursday, the Museum hosted the official launch of the Women’s Jewish Unity Project (WJUP), a new initiative  founded by Professor René H. Levy. Grounded in the teachings of his newly released book, Jewish Unity in an Age of Sinat Chinam (in English, Hebrew, and French), the program sets out to tackle the enduring emotional and psychological roots of sinat chinam—baseless hatred—that has plagued the Jewish people for two millennia.

“Tonight’s launch of the Women’s Jewish Unity Project is the culmination of 17 years I devoted to implementing the vision of one woman, my wife of 60 years,” Prof. Levy shared, reflecting on the project's origins. At her urging, he left academia to devote himself fully to researching Jewish disunity. That research led to the startling realization that sinat chinam remained, even in modern times, “an intractable challenge for our people for more than 19 centuries,” primarily because it was a condition that neither we fully understood nor knew how to treat.

Through years of lectures and private consultations with thousands of individuals, Prof. Levy began to identify patterns: denial, blame-shifting, and emotional barriers that prevented people from taking responsibility for their negative feelings toward others. “Some people scapegoat others by setting themselves as victims,” he explained, citing the example of a man who publicly blamed his mother-in-law for his resentment. “Victimhood can be a dangerous mental trap.”

His research further revealed that religious observance alone does not immunize a person against sinat chinam. “Some didn’t worry about sinat chinam because they believed that, one day, it will be automatically replaced by ‘ahavat chinam,’” he said. Others believed that since even righteous Jews struggled with it, there was little point in trying. But Prof. Levy was unwilling to accept such fatalism.

The Women’s Jewish Unity Project offers a practical and transformative path forward. With a two-track model—one for learners and one for teachers—the program focuses on self-awareness, impulse control, forgiveness, and the rejection of tribal mindsets. Teachers are trained via regular Zoom sessions and are encouraged to build their own learning communities, using both institutional support and the power of social media to reach others.

“Israeli society is fragmented in groups by culture, geography, ethnicity, and religious denomination,” Prof. Levy said. But in recent years, this fragmentation has intensified into a dangerous form of “political tribalism,” what social psychologists call affective polarization, and what Jewish sages long ago identified as sinat chinam. “Regular citizens… now show moral disdain toward a person who watches a specific TV channel,” he noted. “Such a society is infected by a lethal, suicidal form of tribalism which requires urgent intervention.”

That intervention, he believes, must begin with women. “The idea of a Women’s Jewish Unity Project is not new,” he said. “It had always been a women’s project since its inception.” Women, he argued, are uniquely equipped to reverse the patterns of division by modeling empathy, honest introspection, and moral courage. They are being asked to become role models, not just participants—builders of peoplehood rather than defenders of political or religious factions.

The event dovetails seamlessly with the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem’s broader mission to bridge societal divides, promote dialogue, and combat polarization—values that lie at the heart of both the institution and the Women’s Jewish Unity Project. The women who took part left with that hope—determined to replace cynicism with compassion, and tribalism with enduring unity.