It is this refusal to bow - neither to personalities nor conventions - that has characterized Israel's life odyssey, which has taken her from Teheran schoolgirl, to Technion engineering student, to one of the 15 top-paid women CEOs in Silicon Valley. Now it has brought her back to this country to become the only congregational Masorti woman rabbi currently serving in the country. Along the way, she also married and raised two children.

But back in 1968, Israel was an 18-year-old high-school senior in a French-speaking school which was the alma mater of the shah's wife, Queen Farah. Every year, the school gave one outstanding student a scholarship to study in France.

Israel was chosen. She was registered and had even reserved dormitory space in a French university. All that remained was to receive the final approval of Queen Farah's mother. However, when Israel entered the room for her audience with the royal mother-in-law, like her landsman Mordecai the Jew, she refused to bow. The scholarship was canceled.

'So in January 1969, I arrived in Haifa to attend the Technion,' Israel relates. 'I knew almost no Hebrew and I was the only woman in a class of 300 electrical-engineering students.' The first year was not easy. 'The other students would come up to me and say, 'What are you doing here? You are wasting the place of a man,'' Israel recalls. 'I would pretend that I didn't understand their Hebrew. Some of the professors would remark during classes, 'Sorry, guys, I can't tell the usual jokes because the woman is here.' But I worked hard and proved myself. By the second year, both my teachers and fellow students had developed a deep respect for me.'

After four years, Israel graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. 'I felt really lucky that I had managed to finish my degree despite the odds - my difficulties with Hebrew and English, being the only woman in my class and without family here. At that point, I felt I could do anything I put my mind to,' she notes.

'When I look back, I realize that this was the first time I managed to break the old boys' network. I learned that when a woman is really good, the network breaks. This gave me the confidence to break other old boys' networks,' she adds. After graduation, Israel set out for London. She knew almost no English, had no experience and arrived in the middle of a recession. Nevertheless, she was confident she would land a job. And she did - as a design engineer for computers. It was in London that she met and married Abraham Israel, a Jewish engineer from Spanish Morocco.

The couple decided to move to Iran. 'I wanted my husband to understand Iran,' Israel explains. Their first child, Solomon, now 23, was born in Teheran. But with the revolution fast approaching, the family relocated to northern California, where daughter Yael was born two years later. 'We thought we would go to California for two or three years and then go to Israel,' she says. 'But our stay turned out to be 20 years.'

Israel went to work as a project manager for Fairchild, the first Silicon Valley semiconductor company.

She earned an MBA from Santa Clara University and moved into marketing electronics. She became a first vice president of marketing for a semiconductor company and then CEO and chairman of the board of an electronics marketing research firm. She was named one of the 15 highest-paid women CEOs in Northern California. 'I thought I would become the CEO of a major company,' Israel says, 'but then I started to learn about spirituality and meditation.'

Although her grandparents, who lived in Shushan, were very religious, Israel's parents had not been. 'In California, our family kept Pessah and Yom Kippur and that was it.'

In 1988, she started studying Judaism with a hassidic rabbi. 'I felt like someone who had spent years in the desert and suddenly began to receive water,' she recalls. 'I became so involved with my Jewish studies that I didn't want to work anymore.'

Israel became involved with the Jewish Renewal movement, which teaches Jewish mysticism to men and women in an open, egalitarian way. In 1995, she decided to become a rabbi. A Palo Alto Conservative rabbi, Sheldon Lewis - known as Rav Shelly - interested her in studying at the Conservative seminar in Los Angeles, the University of Judaism. After two and half years in LA, she decided to come to Jerusalem to complete her studies at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, the Masorti (Conservative) Movement's graduate and rabbinical school in Israel. In 1998, Israel and her husband arrived in Jerusalem.

'In engineering, I felt I was a pioneer - also in the business world,' she explains. 'But when it came to religion, Jewish Renewal and the University of Judaism were so egalitarian that I thought I had finally found an area where I didn't have to prove myself as a woman. Now, when I look back, I realize that I was so naive. My first Shavuot in Israel, I got hit on the head with a bottle while praying with the Masorti minyan at the Western Wall. It literally hit me that there is still a lot to do with respect to religious egalitarianism in Israel.'

In November 2000, Israel was ordained a rabbi. She has just begun serving as the first woman rabbi in the history of Safed and the only Masorti woman rabbi currently with a congregation in Israel. 'I also think I am the only Conservative rabbi in the world of Iranian extraction,' she notes. She will be dividing her time between her congregation in Safed and her husband in Jerusalem.

'I feel that becoming a rabbi has opened up a wonderful opportunity to teach people the beauty of Judaism and let them come to terms with it. Once people see the beauty of Judaism, they will want to keep Shabbat and Halacha,' Israel believes.

One of the ways that Israel wants to do this is by concentrating on promoting and developing the importance of Jewish life cycles in different layers of the community.

'This is a way of bringing religious consciousness to people's lives, to show them that you do not have to be Orthodox to have a connection with Judaism. I want to bring Judaism alive for people, to serve a bridge between the non-Orthodox and spirituality and religion,' she states.

Israel especially wants to promote ritual celebrations of women's life cycle events. This includes instituting baby-naming ceremonies for newborn girls, setting up a special bat mitzva program in cooperation with the School of Eastern Music in Jerusalem and developing ceremonies for women focusing on the spirituality of family purity.

'There is a spirituality in Judaism that is deeper than the 'dos' and 'don'ts' of the Halacha. Once we are aware of this in our bodies, we can relate to our religion. The soul has a yearning for this. We have a spiritual treasure before us just waiting to be had. I invite women to be open to explore this and to connect with it,' she concludes.

This article was written by Gail Lichtman and published in the Jerusalem Post on Friday, May 4, 2001.