Irit Rosenblum

Attorney Irit Rosenblum is the founder and driving spirit behind New Family organization, and the woman leading the civil revolution in family law and life in Israel. She has practiced family law since 1985 and is a member of the Israeli Bar Association. She is educated in law and philosophy and married with three children.

Irit Rosenblum has stood out as an innovative leader over the course of her career. While serving as Legal Advisor and Director of the Department of the Status of Women at Women’s International Zionist Organization WIZO, she worked on issues such as prevention of violence in the family, the status of women and single-parent families, and the plight of women denied divorce. She led the campaign proposing rapid sentencing of family violence offenders.

Irit Rosenblum served as a presiding judge in the police disciplinary court from 1987-1997. Rosenblum was elected to the Local Council of Shoham as the first female deputy mayor in Israel from 1996-2003 and established the first public high school and music conservatory while holding the education portfolio.

Driven by commitment to universal justice as the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Advocate Irit Rosenblum pioneered a new sphere of human rights surrounding the family. Rosenblum’s innovation is the articulation of a universal right to family. Development of her philosophical and social agenda, which had no previous expression, was triggered by a paradox she discovered-that family law is primarily dedicated to dismantling families-and not to creating them. She sought an explanation. She questioned why the family is considered a religious institution. She discovered that nowhere in the world is ‘family’ legally defined.

Perplexed by the absence of a definition, Rosenblum investigated the philosophical and legal development of the family. From her analysis, she cultivated a groundbreaking theory: Every individual, regardless of religion, nationality, sexual orientation, or status, has an inalienable right to establish a family. The right to family derives from individual free will and consciousness, which transcends religious authority. She dedicated her professional life to helping people establish families.

Irit Rosenblum offers an original perspective in which every individual’s right to establish a family and exercise equal rights within it regardless of religion, nationality, sexual orientation and legal status must be acknowledged as a human right and protected as a critical aspect of a free society.

Rosenblum founded New Family organization in 1998 to fill this crucial gap in law and human rights: to attain the right of every individual to establish a family in Israel and to exercise equal rights within it. In two decades of legal innovation, Irit Rosenblum helped change Israeli laws, policies and social norms to contribute to the transformation of society from a place in which only conventional families enjoyed legal protection and social acceptance to a place where people of all religions, nationalities, sexual orientations and status’ can exercise their human rights to family. The profound need she identified is evidenced by the 17,000 families a year New Family aids in legally establishing and exercising rights.

New Family,  of which Rosenblum has served as executive director since its inception, serves all families in Israel subject to legal inequalities, including people who can’t marry their partner or can’t marry at all in Israel, gays, lesbians, singles, immigrants, Reform and Conservative Jews, minorities, interfaith and bi-national couples, migrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers, rape and domestic violence survivors, women denied a divorce, religiously taboo unions, people who don’t meet the religious definition of any faith, and more.

One core of Rosenblum’s work is circumventing misogynist religious authorities on marriage and divorce by creating civil alternatives that bypass religious jurisdiction. Rosenblum’s legal innovations potentially serve hundreds of thousands of couples who can’t marry in Israel, including interfaith, bi-national, same-sex, and religiously taboo couples, alongside common-law couples that choose not to marry with the Orthodox religious rites required for government recognition. When relationships are not recognized or documented, legal solutions developed by Rosenblum give unrecognized families- families whose members don’t all hold legal status, or whose relationship to one another isn’t recognized, or whose rights as families aren’t protected by law-who otherwise have no legal recognition-status and rights. They substantiate families’ requests for legal status and rights, prove children’s eligibility for education and health benefits, and help unrecognized families live in dignity in Israel.

Irit Rosenblum’s latest legal innovation is the Common-Law Marriage ID Card. Common-Law Marriage ID’s are picture identification cards that entitle couples to equal legal status and rights on the basis of a legal affidavit that its holders are common-law spouses. They serve as legal proof of couples’ status as common-law spouses in Israel and abroad. They are recognized in Israel’s institutions, including social security, the army, government ministries, municipal governments, driving license authority, health services and hospitals, the post office, recreational facilities, banks, insurance companies, and more. Common-Law couples are often referred by government agencies to get Common-Law Marriage ID’s to prove their eligibility for status and rights as a family.

Contractual marriage is a legally-binding agreement developed by Irit Rosenblum that divides family rights, responsibilities and assets between common-law partners, and can be confirmed in court to carry the authority of a court ruling. It provides an egalitarian alternative to orthodox religious marriage that discriminates against women in status and rights by circumventing the religious jurisdiction over the couple and prevents women from becoming ‘agunot‘ or mesurvot get-women religiously chained to their marriage. In case of separation, guarantee women fair custody and child support arrangements without subjecting her to pressure characteristic of religious divorce.

Motivated by the belief that parenting is a human right, Rosenblum litigated legal precedents for family rights that could serve as global examples of reproductive rights. To attain the right for every individual to establish a family, she cultivated a new realm of medical, legal and social possibilities by advocating use of IVF, artificial insemination, surrogacy, freezing ova, and posthumous sperm retrieval by those who otherwise can’t have children. By generating systemic legal changes in public policy, raising public consciousness and changing attitudes, she enabled people to utilize technologies to have children in ways that were inconceivable and legally impossible a decade ago. People from all walks of life have benefited from access to these innovations, from single women who wish to have children without a partner, same-sex couples, common-law couples, and more.

Irit Rosenblum was the first to articulate a right to biological continuity and promote the right to leave a biological legacy in case of premature death through the establishment of the world’s first and only Biological Will Center. Irit Rosenblum pioneered a new legal concept called ‘Biological Wills’: Biological wills can be left by any individual who wishes to donate their sperm, eggs or embryos for use after their death. Biological wills, specify how an individuals’ reproductive material may be used posthumously, who may use it, how long it may be preserved, how many children may be created with it, and legal status of the children. As the only organization in the world drafting and storing biological wills at the Biological Will Bank©®, New Family has helped terminally ill people, soldiers, widows, and others, fulfill their biological legacy. Biological Wills offer a new alternative for women and couples that seek sperm donations from a known donor with a family.

In 2001, Irit Rosenblum proposed the establishment of a sperm bank for soldiers. In 2007, she represented the Cohen family in their petition to the attorney general to allow her to use the sperm of their son, Kevin Cohen, who was killed in action in Gaza. In April 2011, a family court approved the Biological Will of Baruch Posniansky, (Z”L) which requested that the sperm he froze and stored be used to conceive a child after his death. This is the first time that a written Biological Will will be executed by court order. This is an important milestone in the struggle for the right to biological continuity that Irit Rosenblum has been leading since 2001.

Irit Rosenblum is a prolific contributor of opinion pieces to the Israeli media.

Selected Achievements:

§  Breaking new ground by pioneering a new sphere of human rights in the family.

§  Litigating groundbreaking legal precedents advancing legal protections for equality in partnership, children’s, reproductive, and parenting rights.

§  Providing 150,000 families legal consultation since New Family’s inception in 1998!

§  Issuing 5,000 thousand couples who can’t marry in Israel or choose not to marry with the religious rituals required for government recognition Common-Law Marriage ID’s, conferring them full legal rights and status,  since the initiative was launched in 2008.

§  Promoting 20 laws legislating equal rights for all families in Israel.

§  Publishing 17 legal rights guides and reports, each disseminated in 110,000 copies.  Among her publications is the book, “Theory of the New Family”.

§   Irit Rosenblum fought to first allow homosexuals to adopt their partners’ biological children and then to allow joint adoption of a child not biologically related to either parent. Same-sex couples may now adopt children together and both be recognized as parents.

§   Irit Rosenblum won global legal precedents in 2007 and 2009 by gaining court authorization for single women to be inseminated with the sperm of a known donor who was not her spouse, expanding the reproductive options available to women.

§   Equalizing the rights of single women to have the same reproductive treatments as heterosexual married women in 2003.

§   In 2009, Irit Rosenblum conducted the Wedding of the Century marking 100 years of the city of Tel Aviv, where she married four same-sex couples.

§   Petitioning the High Court of Justice to cancel age limitations for adoptive parents in 2009.

§   Obliging the National Insurance Institute (Israel’s Social Security) to recognize a gay couple’s eligibility for equal state parenting rights and benefits.

Rights gained include:

§   Parenting leave and grants and child benefits for male couples.

§   Granting same-sex widows’ survivors benefits.

§   Permitting lesbian spouses who have a baby to share maternity leave.

Recognition for Irit Rosenblum includes:

§   Irit Rosenblum was a finalist for the 2006 Ernst & Young Social Entrepreneurs Award,

§  Irit Rosenblum was one of Globes business journal three most influential social entrepreneurs in 2007.

§  Irit Rosenblum was one of The Marker’s 2007’s 40 most influential women.

§  Irit Rosenblum was one of Lady Globes’ 2008 and 2010’s 50 most influential women.

§  In 2009, Irit Rosenblum and New Family became the first Israeli jurist and organization to win the prestigious InnovAction Award from the College of Law Practice Management in Colorado, USA, for exemplary innovation in law.

§  In 2010, Irit Rosenblum and New Family also became the first Israeli jurist and organization to win the Hubbard One Marketing Initiative of the Year when the Common Law Marriage ID Initiative was chosen as the most outstanding legal marketing initiative of 2009.

§  Irit Rosenblum was awarded the 2010 Oguntê Social Leadership Award in the Campaigns for Social Change category, by Oguntê Ltd, in conjunction with the Royal Society for the Arts.

§  Irit Rosenblum was chosen as the # 2 Most Influential Person for Gay Rights in Israel in 2010 by publication ‘City in Pink’.

§  The National Council of Jewish Women chose Irit Rosenblum as the Jewel Bellush Israeli Feminist of the year 2010.