Jews We Love: Allison Tombros Korman

Hi everyone, 

Ariel here, bringing you the second installment of our column Jews We Love, where we feature, well, Jews we love! It’s a way for us to highlight fascinating people you might not have heard of, or show you a different side of someone you’re already following. Our first installment featured Gabby Deutch of Jewish Insider, whose reporting from Washington, D.C. has only gotten more relevant. 

I recently had the chance to talk to someone Stephanie and I have had on our radar for awhile: Allison Tombros Korman, the founder of Red Tent Fund, an abortion fund rooted in Jewish values. Alli made national headlines last year when she resigned from her role at the DC Abortion Fund over a nasty internal dispute over the Israel-Hamas war. Her story ended up traveling well beyond the reproductive rights sphere because it reflected what many Jews working at nonprofits and other left-leaning organizations across the country were experiencing.

Alli turned a disheartening professional setback into an opportunity to prove how intertwined Jewish values and reproductive rights truly are. Here’s my conversation with Alli about Red Tent Fund and the challenging new landscape for abortion seekers and those who support them.  

What does it mean to be a Jewish abortion fund, and how does it operate differently than what we might call a secular abortion fund?

When I say that we're a Jewish abortion fund, what I mean by that is we fund abortion for all people, but we do it by raising money and operating through the lens of our Jewish values. For me, it would not be in alignment with my Jewish values to only fund Jewish abortion seekers. I don't think that's who we are as a community and I don't think that's how we approach tikkun olam. We raise money predominantly, but not exclusively, through the Jewish community, and we get that money out to all abortion seekers, regardless of their religion, political affiliation, income, or gestational age.

I also think about this work being Jewish in a couple of other ways. First, Jewish laws and teachings absolutely affirm the right to abortion. We just read Parshat Mishpatim as a team a couple weeks ago. It’s the text from the Torah that inspires all the laws and teachings that affirm the right to abortion for us as Jews. I think of this as an issue of religious and reproductive freedom. 

For so long, if you said the words abortion and religion in the same sentence, I think there was an assumption that you were talking about the Christian Right and that abortion was one hundred percent not on the table, whereas for Jews, it's entirely the opposite. Our laws and teachings make it so that for us to have religious freedom, we also have access to abortion. 

Finally, I just think of this as another chapter in the very long book that is Jewish people being at the forefront of the reproductive health movement. I'm lucky enough to work with so many Jewish people who come to this work through a lot of the same lenses that I do—tikkun olam, personal dignity, bodily autonomy—and they work in all aspects of the field. They provide abortion, they run the clinics, they are researchers, they are writers. This is part of a long tradition of who we are, and I think is really built into the fabric of our community.

As a Jewish organization, has Red Tent Fund been able to engage people who may otherwise consider themselves too centrist or conservative to be part of the reproductive rights movement?

Jews have been so at the forefront of this movement for so long that I think a lot of supporters of abortion access across the United States are Jewish. This is meaningful and important to us. 

But what I do think is really interesting is that there are some people who now want to get involved because they are familiar with my story and the idea of Jews being excluded from abortion-funding spaces across the country. And a really important piece of this story that is sometimes glossed over is that Jewish people are staying at the table to continue to fund abortion in this movement despite all the things that have transpired over the last year and a half. And we're bringing new funders to the table that were never there before, building a deeper bench of supporters for abortion work in this country as a result.

I think part of the reason why your story gained so much traction is because, as extreme as it was, it also reflected what was happening at progressive organizations across the country. Did you hear from people in similar situations?

Yeah, one thousand percent. That is literally how Red Tent Fund came into being. I was hearing from people all over the country through DMs or on LinkedIn saying, “I'm in reproductive health, I'm in progressive spaces, and these same things have been happening to me,” and “Oh my gosh, I thought I was the only one going through this.”

It occurred to me that all of these Jewish people who had been and wanted to continue funding abortion in this country were going to leave the movement because they weren't going to continue to give money to organizations which didn't align with their values and weren’t interested in having a conversation with them when they raised concerns.

Obviously a lot has changed since you left the DC Abortion Fund and since you founded Red Tent Fund. The conflict in Israel and Gaza is still ongoing, but the temperature and amount of attention it garners in the media has decreased. What does the future of the fund look like beyond this acute crisis?

Look, there's Red Tent Fund, and then there's me personally. Do I still personally think about the crisis? Absolutely, every single day. But Red Tent Fund, from its very first moment, didn't have a take on the war and the crisis in the Middle East because that is outside of our lane. Our lane is domestic abortion funding through a Jewish lens. 

Now, who knows what's coming down the pike, but I think that with the support of the Jewish community, the sky’s the limit. So many people feel out of control in this moment that we're living in. They feel like it’s just chaos every two minutes. And so many of these things are not in our locus of control to help or fix or change, but this is something people can do.

Another big change since you launched Red Tent Fund a year ago is the new administration. Are there any issues regarding abortion access that are on your radar?

Interstate travel for abortion is something we think a lot about at Red Tent Fund. It has traditionally been the case that if you, say, have someone traveling from Texas to New York, where abortion is very much legal, you would not be able to charge that person with a crime back in Texas. I don't think that that's necessarily true anymore. I think that we're going to see a lot of legal spaghetti getting thrown at the wall and just seeing what will stick and seeing what will work in certain courts.

The thing that really scares me is who then gets held accountable in that scenario. What does it mean to support someone traveling to get an abortion? There’s the abortion seeker, of course, but now the lens is being pulled back. You could be looking at the provider. If the abortion seeker is a minor, maybe their parent or guardian. It could be the abortion fund that's paying for their procedure. It could be the Uber driver that's driving the person from the airport to the clinic. All of those things are not out of the realm of possibility. 

That’s bleak! What does Red Tent have planned?

The need is so tremendously great and I'm so proud of what we've done so far. We are on trend to fund $500,000 in abortion procedures in 2025—that is incredible for an organization that's been around for less than a year. At the same time, abortion care is expensive. Half a million dollars is, give or take, 1,200 abortion procedures. That's 1,200 lives that we've been able to help impact. There's still so many more people who need access to funding for abortion, so there's a lot of room to grow.

And “Red Tent Fund”—was the name inspired by the book?

I think if you know the book, then it tells you everything you need to know about who we are and what we're doing in an instant. It says we're Jewish. It says that this is about the life cycle of reproductive health. The beauty of that book is that it touches on everything from the beginning of your reproductive lifespan through pregnancy and pregnancy loss and birth and death and everything in between. And it's about creating a big tent, which is what I'm really trying to do.

Is The Red Tent author Anita Diamant aware of your organization?

To my knowledge, Anita Diamant doesn't know what we're doing, but I have had so many conversations with people who are like, “Oh, I know someone who knows someone, I should put you in touch.” I'm like, “Yes, please!” I would love to get her blessing on this.

Thanks so much to Alli for taking the time to speak with GOLDA. Stephanie will be back in your inboxes later this week with all things motherhood—and MotherCould.

In the meantime, are you following GOLDA on Instagram?

Stay GOLDA,

Ariel