Tova Sanhadray

Who was Tova Sanhadray?

Tova Sanhedrai Goldreich was an Israeli politician who served as a member of the Knesset for the National Religious Party between 1959 and 1974.

Born in Ternopil in Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Sanhedrai became involved in Mizrachi and Hapoel HaMizrachi during her twenties, and helped establish Bnot Mizrachi. She also taught Hebrew.

She made aliyah from Poland to Mandatory Palestine in 1934 and initially lived in Tel Aviv. In 1935 she helped establish the Hapoel HaMizrachi Women Workers organisation, and the following year was elected its secretary general, heading the movement for the next fifty years. In the same year she married Rabbi Yisrael Sanhedrai. After his death in 1966, she later married Rabbi Kalman Goldreich.

Prior to the 1949 Knesset elections, the ultra-Orthodox parties, Agudat Yisrael and Poalei Agudat Yisrael formed an alliance with Mizrachi and Hapoel HaMizrachi, with the condition that no women would be on the alliance's list. In protest, Sanhedrai formed a new list, Working and Religious Women, which ran in the election. However, it won only 0.6% of the vote, failing to cross the 1% electoral threshold.