It took years to get equality ads on buses in Jerusalem. When they finally appeared, ultra-orthodox Jews stoned the vehicles.
Dozens of ultra-Orthodox Jews, according to this report, hurled stones and slashed the tires of buses bearing ads promoting female worship at a key Jerusalem holy site.
The attack, which happened on Monday night in Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Mea Shearim neighborhood, underscores the still simmering tensions in Israel over religious extremists who want to separate the sexes in public spaces.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police units were dispatched to quell the violence in Mea Shearim where about 50 men slashed tires and pelted the buses with stones.
The ads were posted by the group Women of the Wall, which seeks to achieve gender equality at the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray. The advertisements showed girls and women wearing prayer shawls and holding a Torah scroll — rituals seen by many Orthodox Jews as reserved for men only.
Video footage on the YNet News site showed the words “end the obscene pictures” spray-painted on a bus.
The ads aimed to promote Bat Mitzvah ceremonies for girls at the Western Wall. The coming-of-age ceremonies for girls are only allowed to be held at a nearby prayer site, designated for worshippers who don’t follow the Orthodox tradition adhered to at the main area of the Western Wall.
For boys, Bar Mitzvah ceremonies are held at the main Wall area. The Women of the Wall does not consider the nearby area an appropriate worship site.
Said Shira Pruce, a spokeswoman for Women of the Wall:
This is only about gender roles and discrimination against women and the image of women. If those were boys in the ads, this would not be a news story.
Many ultra-Orthodox oppose the Women of the Wall’s struggle for rights to equal worship at the Western Wall and view the group as provocative. The women have endured arrest, heckling and legal battles in their struggle to worship at the Wall as men do.
The extremists have faced criticism in recent years from Israel’s predominantly secular society, which has complained about attempts to ban mixing of the sexes on buses, sidewalks and other public spaces. Ultra-Orthodox have defaced posters and billboards bearing photos of women, which they consider immodest.
About half of the Women of the Wall ads, which have run on dozens of buses since the campaign began on October 12, have been vandalised, Pruce said. The ad campaign was the group’s first and it had no role in deciding what routes the ads would run, she added.
Failed Messiah reported that Egged initially refused to run the ads. It took a long court battle, pressure from the High Court of Justice, and then long negotiations with the Government for Egged to finally give in. But it only did so after the government capitulated and agreed to pay for any damage violent haredim do to the ads or the buses.
The ads are modest in every respect but one – they show women’s faces. The haredi community, which has gotten progressively more extreme with regard to this issue, now largely bans the depiction of any human females in ads or in haredi publications, and it is not unusual to see retail product packaging covered with stickers to blot out females – even infants and toddlers – in stores that cater to the haredi community.
This is by no means the first time Egged has been stoned over gender issues. In 2009, when Egged ended segregation of men and women on one bus route, infantile ultra-Orthodox Jews responded with rocks.
Menachem Kenig, head of a committee that had been demanding segregated buses, said that Egged, was in effect:
Forcing religious people to sin. The one place where men and women are forced to be together is on the bus. People are crowded in, men and women push up against each other. There are sudden stops and sharp turns and men fall on the women. This really angers us, it is a violation of the concept of modesty that is at the basis of the ultra-orthodox community.
Egged temporarily suspended service on the disputed line after stone attacks. A Mea Shearim store-owner said:
According to the Jewish religion, it is forbidden to damage property. These people are causing shame to the ultra-Orthodox community, which is made up of very delicate people. It is true that Egged does not give good service to the ultra-Orthodox but you don’t solve this through ugly violence.
Kenig said the violence was caused by the Transport Ministry’s decision to end a free segregated service his committee had launched. He termed the stone-throwing “very awful” but predicted there could be more violence.
Egged, which has a monopoly on bus services in Jerusalem, said it would not change the disputed line into a segregated one because secular passengers use it too. It runs segregated lines where nearly all passengers are ultra-Orthodox, a spokesman said.
In 2010, Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled that public bus companies could continue the practice of gender segregation on dozens of lines serving the ultra-Orthodox sector, as long as there is no coercion or violence involved.
Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein wrote in his ruling:
A public transportation operator, like any other person, does not have the right to order, request or tell women where they may sit simply because they are women. They must sit wherever they like.
As I now read over these lines emphasizing this I am astounded that there was even a need to write them in the year 2010.
He then asked:
Have the days of Rosa Parks, the African American woman who collapsed the racist segregation on an Alabama bus in 1955 returned?
Hat tip: Barriejohn