Passionate about upholding women’s rights to equality, dignity and justice, whenever they are threatened by State religious institutions, Nitzan joined the Center for Women’s Justice (CWJ) in 2014. As a senior lawyer at CWJ, Nitzan represents women in the Israeli family courts, district courts, rabbinic courts and the Supreme Court on issues relating to personal status. Nitzan began her legal career at the State Attorney Office and prior to joining CWJ, served as a legal assistant to two prominent family court justices.
In 2018, Nitzan established the CWJ private rabbinic court, headed by Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber, which convenes to annul the marriages of complex aguna cases and in 2020, Nitzan was awarded the Dafna Yizraeli z’l Gender Activism Prize by Bar Ilan University in recognition of this initiative.
Nitzan is also the co-creator of groundbreaking prenuptial and postnuptial agreements that increase women’s marital autonomy and thwart marital captivity (aginut) and leads CWJ’s efforts to mainstream the use of these agreements among the Israeli public. Together with rabbinic pleader Rivka Lubitch, Nitzan hosts the CWJ podcast “Critiquing the Rabbinate”, exposing what happens behind closed doors in the rabbinic courts and analyzing the rulings from a dual gender and civil liberties perspective.
Nitzan holds a law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Master of Laws, cum laude, from Bar- Ilan University and is currently conducting research at the Gender Studies Center of Bar Ilan University into the attitudes of rabbinic court judges towards women who are victims of domestic violence. Nitzan is also a trained rabbinic court pleader, has studied at several women’s yeshivot and is a sought-after lecturer on matters of religion and State and gender/feminism. Nitzan’s op-eds regularly feature in the Hebrew media.