Category: Extremism

It’s time to see ultra-Orthodox erasure of women for what it is: disrespect and devaluation of worthy human beings

Staff Sgt. Ohad Dahan, 20 (left), Sgt. Lia Ben Nun, 19 (center) and Staff Sgt. Ori Yitzhak Iluz, 20, combat soldiers in the IDF’s Bardelas and Caracal battalions who were shot dead on the Egyptian border on June 3, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)
Earlier this month, in a bleak nightmare of national and familial tragedy, three soldiers were killed as they guarded the Egyptian border.

It is always national news when a soldier is killed. Every loss feels personal, even when you don’t know the victims. Because you might have known them. Because you know somebody who knows them. Because it could have been your family member. Because every soldier is someone’s child in an army of citizens.

Israeli news outlets recognize that. They feel it too. Broadcasters speak in somber tones. Print media takes great care to honor the sacrifice. The fact that fallen soldiers are part of the price we pay to have a Jewish state is terrible and tragic — and we mourn each loss together, the name and face of the fallen always honored across the media.

At least, usually.
This time, it was different. The fallen soldiers were St.-Sgt. Uri Itzhak Ilouz. Sgt. Lia Ben Nun, and St.-Sgt. Ohad Dahan z”l. Two men and one woman who died in service to their country, protecting the Jewish state. Most Israeli news outlets named them all, told readers a bit about each soldier, showed their photographs and in that gentle way, honored their loss. Most of the Haredi press, however, did not follow suit.

You see, Sgt. Lia Ben Nun z”l was a woman.

As those who follow this blog and Chochmat Nashim, the organization I co-founded, know well, Haredi publications rarely publish images — even drawings — of women and girls.

And yet, seeing the erasure of Sgt. Ben Nun z”l, a young Jewish woman, 19 years old, who died protecting the Jewish people was shocking in a way that reverberated around the country. Her erasure made national headlines, MKs spoke out against it, at the egregious disrespect shown to a fallen Israeli soldier.

Screenshot from Bhadrei Haderim
Haredi outlets — Bhaderai Hadarim, Jewish News Daily, and Hamodia among them — placed a candle or an image of a border gate in place of Sgt. Ben Nun, while including images of her male counterparts. Kikar HaShabbat was the sole Haredi site that published her photograph.

Outrageously, HaModia, one of the largest Haredi news outlets in the country, not only censored Sgt Ben Nun’s image, but they did not even print her name. They did print the pictures and names of both men who were killed, alongside a picture of the Egyptian border fence.

To them, and their readers, Sgt. Lia Ben Nun simply did not exist.

I know many of you share my outrage at this horrific dishonoring of a Jewish soldier. But some of you may be thinking, “It’s just a few Haredi publications and not publishing pictures of women is their policy. We shouldn’t really expect them to make an exception simply because the female was a soldier. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to establish their own communal norms? Shouldn’t we respect it in the name of cultural sensitivity? Can’t we just ‘live and let live’?”

To this, I can only say: No.

It is time to see Orthodox erasure of women for what it is: a practice that spreads contempt, disrespect, and devaluation of women and their contributions.

No female is safe from this erasure. Holocaust relief workers, Righteous Gentiles, terror victims, the queen of England, a US presidential candidate, and prime ministers have all been erased because they are women. An Israeli Jewish soldier is the latest victim.

Mishpacha Magazine, one of the largest Orthodox publications, has lately begun to heed the pressure of activists against the erasure of women’s images. In some cases, they now publish images of deceased women. In our case, Sgt. Ben Nun was killed in the line of duty, protecting the Jewish people, and still, in death, is being treated as taboo. Do the Haredi publications that will not publish her photo really mean to imply that her image offers a sexual temptation, even in her death? That is the implication of the outrageous policy. And it is vile in its disrespect.

What will it take to understand the warped nature of this policy?

The simple truth is that it is not possible to respect someone properly while regarding that person’s physical presence as a problem.

It is not possible to afford women dignity while erasing them wholly from communal images. Out of sight is indeed out of mind, and the women whose images are erased are largely excluded from communal discussions and decision-making as well (note the absence of women in the ultra-Orthodox political parties in Knesset).

By the same token, it is not possible view a person as a sexual object, a distraction, a stumbling block — and also meet that same person’s needs in society.

And, it should go without saying, when women are perceived as something that must be hidden from view lest they bring the men who see them to sin, then the women cease to be treated as human beings; they become objects.

But people are not objects.

Women are human beings, created in the image of God.

The question is: what can we do about the fact that Sgt. Ben Nun z”l was erased? Agreeing that she should not have been is not enough. We must change the culture that treats the images and very names of women as taboo.

We must stop giving tzedakah (charity) to organizations that erase women — to demonstrate that we do not support women’s erasure.

Every time we buy cookbooks where the publisher refuses to include a photo of female authors, we support women’s erasure. Every time we donate to a fundraising dinner or yeshiva that has the policy of only showing men, we support women’s erasure.

Every time we don’t protest the censorship of women, we support the culture that erased a Jewish woman who died protecting our people.

I refuse to believe that we aren’t better than this. I respect the men and women in our communities more than the media that caters to them. Women are not solely sexual objects, and men have both more respect for women and greater self-control than they are allowed.

We need to lift our community up, instead of being dragged into moral madness.

We need to see each other as we are: human beings created in the image of God.

The erasure of women is a disease that is festering in many of our communities, spilling over into our newspapers, social media, wedding invitations, medical facilities, boardrooms, billboards, and buses. It is a pervasive evil that teaches young men that they are animals, young women that they are prey. Young boys, that they are untrustworthy, young girls that their existence leads to sin.

The more we let this insanity continue, the more decrepit our morality.

What will we tell our children when they ask us what we did to stop it?

When we heard that the names of the heroes and heroines of Israel were being erased on the streets of Bet Shemesh, we decided to give them a place of honor in our Sukkah. Please join us in honoring them in yours.

כשנודע לנו שעיריית בית שמש החליטה למחוק את שמות גיבורי וגיבורות ישראל משלטי רחוב- החלטנו לתת להם מקום של כבוד בסוכה שלנו. הצטרפו אלינו בבקשה והכניסו אותם גם לסוכה שלכם.

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Men's access to the grave of Rabbi Yosef Caro zt"l, in Tsfat, Israel. The men are able to draw close enough to even kiss the grave. (Laura Ben David)
Men’s access to the grave of Rabbi Yosef Caro zt”l, in Tsfat, Israel. The men are able to draw close enough to even kiss the grave. (Laura Ben David)

If a picture speaks a thousand words, these images scream volumes. Taken a few weeks ago in the ancient cemetery of Tsfat, they show two sides of the same grave. Rav Yosef Caro zt”l was a mystic, and the author of the Shulchan Aruch, among other works. Thousands come to pray at his graveside. Some have total access to the monument. They can touch it, kiss it, cry on it. Others can talk to the wall behind it.

Women’s ‘access’ to the same grave, from behind a wall. They are unable to even see the grave, let alone approach it, or touch it. (Laura Ben-David)

I cannot think of a better pair of images to illustrate the state of Orthodoxy today, where there is one open accessed reality for men, and one increasingly restrictive reality for women.

You see, today, in Orthodoxy, a man can:

  • seduce a woman to leave her husband by claiming that his is the soul of King David and hers of Batsheva. He can promise to marry her upon the (according to him) imminent death of his wife, and still maintain his position, prestige, and influence as head of a yeshiva, having been granted forgiveness by a religious court of his peers (Rav Shmuel Tal). Some brave souls speak out, but they go unheeded.
  • be convicted of sex offenses, spend time in jail for them, and still be revered by thousands of followers and honored with the lighting of a torch at a government sponsored event (Rabbi Eliezer Berland).
  • confess to having touched students inappropriately (and gone beyond that too), and still teach at prestigious yeshivot, and be defended by some leading rabbis in the community (Rav Motti Elon).
  • protect and defend sex offenders, strong-arm professionals to lie about the mental health of accused abusers, stymie investigations into abuse allegations, and work towards the early release of predators and still serve as (deputy) health minister in the Israeli government (Rabbi Yaakov Litzman).
  • be accused of molestation and rape for decades, preying on the weakest in the community, threaten victims and their families and still be honored and respected as the chief rabbi of Ukraine (Rabbi Yaakov Bleich).

And a woman can:

  • have her motivations questioned and her learning belittled, even while her opportunities to learn are more numerous than ever before.
  • expect all male committees to be the ones who define her communal roles and opportunities to participate in ritual.
  • be increasingly shut out of holy spaces. The Kotel, Kever Rachel, the ancient cemetery of Tsfat, and more holy sites have smaller and inferior women’s spaces.
  • be required to give up her rights, dignity, and possessions in exchange for freedom, in the event that her husband refuses her a divorce.
  • hear from rabbis in positions of authority that spousal abuse is not grounds for divorce.
  • see no images of women, even at an all-women conference.

And she cannot:

  • use her own face to advertise her business.
  • see images of other women like her in advertisements or publications.
  • read an Orthodox publication that uses the correct words for BREAST CANCER or discusses what it may look and feel like.
  • Participate alongside men in setting policy for communal issues.
  • influence the determination and execution of policies that affect her.

Should she seek to change these policies, and ask:

  • for women to be included in conversations and decisions that affect them…
  • to have a headshot in her bio…
  • to have a seat in shul where she can see and hear…

…she can expect to be called a “feminist with an agenda.”

Why are God fearing, religious women being increasingly shut out? Why are our motivations constantly and consistently questioned?

Why are the things that mean so much to us, walled off from us? And who gave the wall- builders that right?

Why is male access guaranteed, while female access shrinks?

The contrast between the way that the Orthodox community in general treats men with the way it treats women has never been stronger. Time and again, we see that men are “innocent until proven guilty.” It might be more accurate to say “innocent even when proven guilty.”

Yet for women, it is almost the opposite: women are “presumed guilty until proven innocent.” Even the wish to dance with a Torah scroll on Simchat Torah is considered subversive unless it can be “proven” to come from a pure, spiritual place.

Once we stood at Sinai together, men and women, “like one person with one heart.” Today, the heart of Orthodoxy is broken, splintered into a dangerous and gaping divide.

In November 2018, I sat with Elly Sapper, Dassi Erlich and Nicole Meyer, the three sisters from Australia who have been working for years to bring their alleged sexual abuser, Malka Leifer, to justice. They were in Israel to try and pressure a justice system that they knew was being manipulated, even if they didn’t know by whom.

We sat there discussing possible culprits. Health Minister Yaakov Litzman was at the head of the list, along with a number of other rabbinic leaders in the Haredi world. As it turns out, we were right. It became clear this past month that numerous rabbis have been working to prevent Leifer’s extradition.

Who Is Malka Leifer?

Leifer is a former girls schools principal who stands officially accused on more than 74 counts of molestation of girls from Australia in Australia, and unofficially of many more girls in Israel and Australia.

She headed the ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel girls’ school in Melbournefrom 2003 to 2008, with some saying she moved to Australia to begin with because of accusations of abuse in Israel.

When allegations began to emerge in Australia that she had sexually abused between eight and 15 of her students, a plan hatched by the school’s administration had Leifer on a plane back to Israel.

Australia officially filed an extradition request in 2012, yet Leifer was first taken into custody in Israel in 2014, and later released to house arrest.  She evaded justice here in Israel with delays and claims of ill health. Most recently, in June 2016, testimony from a state-appointed psychiatrist claimed that Leifer was unfit to stand trial. This led to a Jerusalem District Court halting extradition efforts, citing a law that permits stopping proceedings when a defendant is deemed unfit to stand trial.

Many doubted the mental health declaration and indeed, a private investigation run by Jewish Community Watch, a US-based group, tracked Leifer and showed conclusively that she was indeed mentally fit. As a result, she was re-arrested last February.

Who Is Helping Malka Leifer?

The following figures of the Haredi world are supporting the alleged abuser, some behind the scenes, some in the open.

Health Minister Rabbi Yaakov Litzman of United Torah Judaism: After a months-long undercover operation, the police questioned Litzman on suspicion of pressuring a court psychiatrist to falsify his psychiatric report that prevented Leifer’s extradition on medical grounds. Police supposedly have recordings of Litzman and officials speaking to Health Ministry employees and pressing them to act on Leifer’s behalf.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Shafran of Bnei Brak: Shafran came to court to support Leifer and gave his blessing to have Leifer put under house arrest at the home of girls’ school principals.

Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman of Migdal Ohr: testified on her behalf and offered to house Leifer until he came under tremendous fire from supporters of his network of programs for orphans.

Rabbi Yosef Direnfeld of the Belz community in Ashdod:  Direnfeld put out a heartfelt plea call for donations to “save” Leifer. “An important woman, the daughter of the great and the righteous… has been imprisoned for a long time under harsh and cruel conditions… for the purpose of extraditing her to a gentile state.”

Why Are Rabbis Helping Malka Leifer?

Support for Leifer is being deemed “Pidyon Shvuim” — a serious commandment of redeeming captives that effectively created a moral imperative to save young Jews enslaved by the Romans, held by the Spanish Inquisition, in the Russian Gulag or even modern day Iran, but would be hard to apply to this case of an accused pedophile being extradited to a democratic country to face her accusers in a fair trial.

And those of us with knowledge of Jewish history might be tempted to sympathize — IF these Hasidic leaders showed any attempt at safeguarding children from Leifer by ensuring that she be prevented from access to them.

Note: It is important that Leifer’s protectors are Hasidic. Because Hasidic communities are predominantly insular, they often have their own rules. Each sect is run according to the word of its Rebbe. What he says, goes.  If the Rebbe says to exclude children from school, they are excluded. If he says shun this woman for asking for a divorce, she is shunned, and if he says raise money for a woman who is righteous and being persecuted unfairly, the Hasidim raise money. This can also work to the benefit of the community, rallying around those in need, but only if the rebbe chooses.

Had the Rebbes decided to shun Leifer and protect their community- they could have done so. It is within their power. But, instead, they chose to protect Leifer, and in so doing dismissed the sisters and their claims of child sexual abuse.

The Response to the Sisters

In January, when the sisters were in Israel, they were at the Knesset to drum up support for extradition with lawmakers. MK Yehuda Glick was their guide through the hallways, and when their paths crossed with that of MK Litzman, Glick introduced them. It seemed providential, since Litzman had repeatedly refused the sisters’ requests to meet with them. Until he exclaimed: “I want nothing to do with this! I’ve heard the other side of the story. I will not support the extradition!” The women maintain that he did tell them he would “not interfere with the extradition either.” which, according to police and their recordings, was a boldfaced lie.

And last week, here again for another hearing on Leifer’s health and possible extradition, they met with Rabbi Shafran. In a heartbreaking Facebook post, Dassi Erlich described their meeting. They asked the rabbi why he supported Leifer. Shafran replied:

“It’s my duty as a rabbi to support a fellow Jew”.

When asked why Leifer’s Jewishness deserved his sympathy over their own, he refused to answer them. Instead, he explained the importance of supporting the underdog — in this case, he estimated, the alleged abuser. The girls were left deeply pained by this meeting.

I am not a Hasid, and do not live in the Hasidic world. Yet, I and others in the broader community are left asking how rabbis, supposed caretakers of our physical and spiritual well being, trade the freedom of one alleged abuser for the well being and safety of her victims, and the many more children to whom she has access.

The safety of the community’s own children has been disregarded in the rabbis’ push for Leifer’s protection. Indeed, according to parents in Immanuel, the town that offered her shelter and its trust largely based on the support of these rabbis, she has done it again.

Public Benefit or Public Harm?

Litzman, in his only public statement since the accusations against him, claimed to be working for the public’s benefit and according to the law.  What public and whose law??

This battle to protect an alleged abuser proclaims to all abusers that they can find a safe haven among the Hasidim in Israel. It is an painful declaration to all victims, letting them know they will not be believed nor protected.

What Can the Concerned Public do?

It is clear to me that the right thing to do is extradite Leifer to Australia so that her alleged victims can seek justice in a fair trial, and to caution every abuser and anyone thinking of abusing children that the Jewish community will not allow our children to be harmed — not even if it means facing a non-Jewish court.

Our children must mean this much.

On Wednesday, March 13th, a general protesting public congregated outside the district court house on Salah Ah Din Street in Jerusalem. The demand was that Leifer be extradited, and our protest is that the abuse of children and the protection of their abusers will not be tolerated.

Follow the sisters’ journey and offer them your support.

 

Originally published in the Times of Israel, by Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll

In the 10 years I’ve lived in Beit Shemesh, I have seen things I thought I’d never see. I’ve seen signs telling women what to wear and signs ordering them to walk down a specific staircase. I’ve seen young girls spit on and called shiksas. I’ve been spit on, for trying to protect these girls.

This is a story about runaway extremism. About the apathy of the local authorities and the silence of local religious leadership. It is a story in which the heroines are a few courageous women dedicated to stopping these acts, and whose efforts have brought together a motley crew best seen a few weeks ago when we toured the city’s landscape of modesty signs with a Christian Arab Israeli Member of Knesset and a varied group of Jewish women and men. It was one of the strangest and most inspiring experiences of my life.

For it wasn’t the police, or the rabbis, or MKs from the religious parties who came to see, to hear and understand. It was an Arab Christian MK, other MKs from across the religious and political spectrum, and men and women from IRAC (Israel Religious Action Center – the public and legal advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel) with whom we found common cause. And despite the problems in Beit Shemesh, I came home from the day proud of the State of Israel that had brought us together.

*

Tensions in Beit Shemesh, a suburb 30 minutes west of Jerusalem, began over a decade ago, when groups from the most insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects settled in a newer section of the city, Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet. This neighborhood abuts an established Religious Zionist neighborhood where women, both native Israeli and immigrant like me have made a home for our religious Zionist families.

Signs declaring “MODEST DRESS ONLY!” began popping up around town. Teenagers were harassed for hanging out in groups by ultra Orthodox men; girls were called “shiksas” or “whores.” On a few occasions, men threw rocks.

Most famously, the local religious Zionist girls’ school and its students were subjected to regular yelling, spitting, and vandalism by grown men in an effort to convince the school to vacate the premises.

A group of women, all of whom had endured physical or verbal assault, decided to try to end this harassment. They attempted to work with the city, and were all but ignored. Moderate haredi leaders refused to get involved.

And so, the women turned to the law, filing a civil suit against the signs.

Throughout all this, the women and their supporters were subjected to skepticism and criticism. Local politicians and residents criticized the religious women, accusing them of being “reformim” (Reform Jews) and using that to delegitimize their cause and besmirch their names in local magazines. Those who themselves had turned blind eye to the women and girls were now shaming them for accepting assistance where they at last found it. Many people, local and on social media demanded to know why they were causing such problems. “It’s just a sign,” they were told, over and over.

Finally, in 2015, the women had a big victory. The Magistrate court ruled in favor of the women’s civil suit and awarded them damages, all of which the women donated to charity. The city took some of the signs down.

Within hours, they were back up.

*

The new sign was even more specific: “Welcome to a haredi shopping center. Women who come / visit / buy/ work are requested to come in modest dress that includes long skirts, long sleeves and closed necks. Thank you for the understanding. Rabbis of the area and the residents.”

The thing is, it’s not just a sign. This past summer, religious teens who walked through Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet on Shabbat to volunteer with special needs children had trash and invective hurled at them by youngsters and adults. When their parents attempted to end the weekly harassment by meeting with haredi community leaders, they were told, “Don’t you see the signs? We are telling you how to dress. If you don’t follow those demands, naturally, you will be attacked.”

In other words, the signs were being used to justify violent behavior. In June of 2016, the administrative court ordered the signs removed. But as of February 2017, they were still up. In June, the city was ruled in contempt of court. The city then turned to the Supreme Court to appeal this ruling.

By the beginning of December 2017, not only were the original signs still up, but new signs had appeared. These new signs went beyond ordering a dress code to delineating where women were and were not permitted to walk:

“By request of the leading rabbi, women are asked to move from this sidewalk to the other side of the street and don’t go near the Shul and of course do not hang around on this sidewalk!” Read one.

“At busy times (mainly morning and afternoon ) on way to and from schools and Shuls, men – go on the right side of the stairs , women on the left,” demanded another.

On December 4, the Supreme Court held a hearing on the city’s appeal. Mayor Moshe Abutbol tried to claim that it was the job of the police to remove the signs. After all, he had taken them down once and the signs simply reappeared.

But the judges, were having none of it. Judge Hannan Meltzer was fiery in his response.

“There is no such thing as a street closed to women in the State of Israel. There never has been and there never will be!” Meltzer roared.

“Telling women how to dress and where to go in a public space is against the basic law of a person’s right to honor and freedom,” Judge Uri Shoham continued.

The judges gave the mayor two weeks to remove the signs or face jail time.

*

The judges’ decision made national headlines and on December 24, the Knesset Committee for the Status of Women and Gender Equality came to see for themselves if the mayor had fulfilled his obligation.

And that is how I came to be talking with MK Aida Touma-Suleiman about tzniut and hijab signs.

Touma-Suleiman is an Israeli Arab woman, who, in her capacity as head of this committee, has had to chair meetings on matters pertaining to women in Judaism. In preparation for debates, she has studied up on issues such as tzniut (modesty) and mikveh (the ritual bath). More than once, she has been heard correcting her Jewish counterparts on Jewish ritual and even quoted the Shulchan Arukh — the Jewish Code of Law — to a haredi member of Knesset during a debate on women’s rights in the mikveh.

Touma-Suleiman and six other MKs, members of IRAC, as well as members of the press joined the fact-finding mission.

In traversing the city by private bus, the MKs spontaneously decided to alight in the city center. Touma-Suleiman said she needed to get a feel for what happens in Beit Shemesh, and she wasn’t going to from the seat of a bus.

Here the visitors were treated to the sight of the women’s health clinic, where the word “woman” was spray-painted out. It is here that the largest modesty signs hang ominously above the main circle (now replaced with graffiti): “Passage only in modest clothing!”

Across the street was a segregated staircase with the word “women” in Hebrew painted going down on one side and the word “men” down the other.

As our group looked around at the graffiti, paper banners, and stickers plastered around the city to replace the signs, a crowd formed around us. One woman approached, dressed in ultra-Orthodox attire, wanting to know how we could enter the neighborhood with such disrespect, indicating the few women wearing pants (the signs specify skirts).

“Why can’t you respect our place?” she asked. “I have non-religious relatives. When they come to my home, they dress with respect.”

Touma Suliman told her that public streets are not anyone’s home, but a place where people do business and walk freely.

Their conversation was cordial, but increasingly tense, as dozens of men gathered around, some yelling “shiksa” and “prutza” — Yiddish for “non-Jewish woman” and “promiscuous woman” respectively.

Ironically, none of them knew that their name-calling was accurate, and one of the women they targeted, the Christian Arab MK, was actually not Jewish.

After the tour, the group sat together to debrief and discuss. Touma-Suleiman described the situation as a battle similar to others in the world, where wars over territory have been fought on the backs of women, often the weakest element of society and easiest to control. She said that the extremists were trying creating a “state within a state,” where their rules are law.

When the director-general of the city tried to suggest that the signs were really a matter of cultural sensitivity, Touma-Suleiman cut him off, saying, “Don’t talk to me about cultural sensitivity; that is only ever used to justify oppression of women. I’m not buying it.”

She compared the Beit Shemesh signs to posters in Arab towns that exhort women to wear the hijab, recognizing them as similar phenomena.

It was strange to find myself having more in common with this woman from Nazareth than with some of my neighbors.

We all — religious women, native Israelis, new immigrants, Russian MKs, secular male Israelis, and a Christian Arab, with widely divergent political views — sat together and discussed the need to protect the rights of every citizen without harming the rights of others.

And I felt pride in that moment. Pride in people, in their basic desire to do good and be good, and in the State of Israel where all of these people from divergent backgrounds were brought together.

I also felt deep disappointment and shame. Disappointment that we, religious women, had to leave the confines of our local and rabbinic leadership to try to resolve a situation that should not exist in the first place. Shame that these extremists and those who do nothing to stop them reflect so poorly on Torah and Judaism.

We who know that righteousness comes in all shapes and sizes will work with the Israeli Supreme Court, an Arab MK, and, for that matter, anyone else who wants to join the cause to protect Beit Shemesh — and the wider Jewish community — from the extremism in its midst.

Originally published in The Forward on January 11, 2018

In the city of Bet Shemesh, a struggle is playing out between two ways of life, the repercussions of which will affect the future of Israel.

If you’ve heard of Bet Shemesh, chances are it’s because of the “crazy fanatics” who live here, because someone you know moved here, or both.

Nestled in the beautiful Judean hills, Bet Shemesh started in the 1950s as a development town for Romanians and Moroccans. Russians, Ethiopians, Anglos, and Strictly Orthodox (Charedim) soon joined them.

Within the past 15 years, Charedim from the most radical sects of Judaism, those who don’t believe in the state, the army, or respect any form of Judaism other than the one they practise, have come to live in the city. They settled at the edge of the existing Charedi neighbourhood, across the way from an established neighbourhood of religious Zionists — a large portion of whom hail from Western, English-speaking countries.

Tensions began when Charedi residents wrote letters to their neighbours across the street, telling them to move their televisions and cover their windows so they didn’t have to see unholy things. Teenagers were harassed for being in the streets, women and girls were called “shiksas” or “whores”, and most famously, an entire girls’ school was subject to near daily harassment from men yelling, spitting and vandalising the school in an attempt to get them to move. This battle for turf ended only when the media was brought in, as too few local residents were willing to get involved to force the bullies to stand down. Similarly, there have been local riots against the IDF, police are called Nazis and Charedi soldiers have been attacked.

At this point, you may be wondering why on earth we still reside here. Rest assured, on an average day these things are not seen and this city is a very pleasant place to live. In fact, concentrated in Bet Shemesh is a community made of the most incredible and sincere people working hard to make this city, and country, better for everyone.

It is no wonder that the battle for the future of the Jewish state is being fought here, where the most zealous and least law-abiding men have come up against the most ideologically motivated, educated, and religious, Zionistic women.

At the centre of this battle are the “modesty signs”, symbolic of the small minority imposing its will upon a large part of the city. In addition to local circulars, billboards, and even health-clinic brochures being devoid of images of women, these large posters hang in various parts of town and tell women how to dress and where they can and cannot walk.

Five local women, all of whom were verbally or physically assaulted by local extremists, asked the city to remove the signs, which denote a sense of turf. Mediation failed and a lawsuit was filed. The women won but, although taken down, the signs were soon up again. Since then, more have been added. This month, in a dramatic and historic hearing, the Supreme Court ordered the city to remove the signs.

Judge Hannan Meltzer, appalled at the idea of forbidding women in any public place said, “There is no such thing as a street closed to women in the state of Israel. There never has been and there never will be.”

Judge Uri Shoham proclaimed: “Telling women how to dress and where to go in a public space is against the basic law of a person’s right to honour and freedom.”

The judges ordered the signs be taken down and stated that the police are to accompany any woman who wants to walk where the signs were located. These definitive statements and accompanying forceful directions are a huge win for the women of Bet Shemesh — and of Israel.

It is true that each time the signs are taken down, they are replaced with new ones (or graffiti), it is also true that the bullies who seek to control the city are feeling the pressure. In a show of desperation, they publicly identify and insult the women who brought the lawsuit even by making calls to their children and threatening death-rituals and violence.

But the women remain positive and encouraged. The struggle of Bet Shemesh is a struggle between thuggery and the rule of law. Every woman involved in this suit is proud and grateful for the opportunity to be part of something historic that will bring more freedom to the women of Israel.

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