Separate but equal – on ‘Haredi’ women’s lobbies (Column 233)
With God's help
The story of the past few days is the segregated event in Afula. For those living on the moon, here is the gist. On Wednesday (14.8), a performance by a Haredi singer (Moti Steinmetz) was supposed to take place in Afula. This was a performance intended for a Haredi audience, and therefore it was planned to be held with separate seating for men and women. The Women's Lobby petitioned the District Court in Nazareth, which ruled that under the law a segregated event may not be held with public funding. The singer announced that under those circumstances he would not perform, and the event was on the verge of being canceled (see here). A further petition by the Shas movement, again to the District Court in Nazareth, led to the cancellation of the earlier decision on the day of the event. Judge Ailaboni approved holding the event in accordance with the municipality's proposal. The municipality decided to hold it as planned, but to allocate outside the venue a mixed-seating area where the performance would be screened on monitors for the benefit of the millions of secular Moti Steinmetz fans who might be interested (see here). Our indefatigable Women's Lobby, of course, did not give up. They petitioned the High Court of Justice, which held the hearing after the event had already begun in that format. In the middle of the event, the High Court decided to overturn the second decision of the Nazareth court, but not on substantive grounds; rather, for technical reasons. It held that the decision had been rendered without jurisdiction (the petition should have been filed with the High Court, not with the same court that had issued the earlier decision. See here). Some rejoiced and others lamented, and at times it seems everyone forgot a bit that the High Court did not pronounce on the merits (whether holding segregated events with public funding is legal or not), but merely made a technical determination regarding the legal procedure itself and nothing more. In its own words in the ruling: "It should be emphasized that under these circumstances we are not required to address the substantive dispute between the parties, and we express no opinion on it." The question itself thus remains open for now, at least on the legal plane.
Point of departure
On the merits of the issue, the position of the Women's Lobby seems, on its face, absurd. In the name of liberalism and civil and human rights, they are imposing secular coercion on a public that wants a separate performance and on a singer who refuses to perform before a mixed audience. Even a compromise under which a mixed area and separate areas would be allocated would not have been acceptable to them, because they are not merely concerned for those who want to watch the performance in a mixed setting; in their view, the very existence of separation is exclusion of women from the public sphere. In fact, their openly declared and utterly unembarrassed goal is to impose their norms on the public as a whole. This is a continuation of the "liberal" approach that in recent years has been turning into a fanatical and coercive kind of secular Haredism, like the last of the fundamentalists and without a shred of shame (it is worth noting that this is probably a reaction to many years of religious coercion).
Claims were raised that even on the legal level the first judge's ruling was baseless, but since I have not studied the legal material and am not expert in it, I cannot express a reasoned opinion. All the more so given that, surprisingly, the Attorney General also expressed a position similar to that of the court (namely, that holding such an event is unlawful). Still, I will allow myself to say that in my view any sane judge could have found a way to permit the event even under the existing legal circumstances, by means of one bit of legal hair-splitting or another (proportionality, reasonableness, and the like. After all, juggling these vague concepts is their art). I do not know whether the problem lies in the law, in a 2014 government decision, in Dina Zilber, or in the insane interpretation given to all of these, but the bottom line is folly on a level that is hard to imagine. [Addition after the writing: after I wrote the column it became clear to me that when the case reached the court there was already an agreement between the petitioners and the municipality, and therefore any reasonable judge would have signed and approved it. This was not a decision but a ratification of an agreement]
Electoral pathology
I must note that this whole matter is also rather strange as a social phenomenon. My impression is that a very large majority of Israel's residents, of all stripes and varieties, supported holding the event in its planned format (even in the media and among journalists one could hear quite a few sympathetic voices of this sort). Even when Betzalel Smotrich (one of the more intelligent members of our Knesset, although I disagree with most of his positions) spoke forcefully against the idiotic judge [as noted above, I retract that expression regarding the judge. He merely ratified an agreement that was submitted to him] and our spineless Prime Minister, he was not really pilloried in the media. They spoke to him mainly about style (and following a scolding meeting with Bibi he eventually retreated weakly on the matter of style), but it was evident that the interviewers (at least those I heard) fully understood him and his position, and quite a few (myself included) also found it justified. At times it seems to me that, contrary to all the endlessly repeated chatter about exclusion and "religionization," a sizable part of the broader public is tired of the secular coercion of the "Haredim" from Meretz and the Women's Lobby.
Against all of this stands a negligible but very militant minority, led by the leadership of the Women's Lobby, the Meretz party, and Dina Zilber, which manages to drag legal institutions—and also the government and the Knesset—after it, and to create bizarre norms utterly detached from the views of the majority of the public. This is a strange situation, given ratings considerations and electoral considerations, which ostensibly should have pushed in the opposite direction. In passing I will add that, as usual, the blame does not lie with those actors, who probably truly believe their nonsense (my impression is that these are generally not intelligent people, despite their sometimes fluent speech, and therefore it is hard to speak with them or raise substantive arguments against them)[1], but with the Knesset and the government, which enable this. They could enact clear legislation on the matter and solve all the problems quite easily, but as usual they prefer to rail against the judicial system (which, of course, has duly earned it).
The secular "Mishnah Berurah"
So what, after all, do these unintelligent spokespeople manage to say in the endless arguments about these issues? How can one even try to justify such folly? It seems to me that on this matter they learned from the best. Our Haredi cousins (the nationalist ones too) likewise try to defend a collection of nonsense that cannot be defended, and the way to do so is to entrench oneself behind slogans and exalted, all-knowing authorities (the great sages of the generation and the sages of the generations, who never err and through whose throats God's word speaks). Astonishingly, that is exactly what has been happening in liberal discourse in recent years. It is very difficult to insert arguments into it. It consists mainly of slogans and quotations. One might say that liberal discourse in recent years has become Haredi in many respects. It has dogmas that must not be disputed. It has its great sages of the generation ("men of spirit" / public intellectuals), who know everything and are accorded the protective treatment and reverence that even the greatest Hasidic rebbes barely receive. Every bit of nonsense they utter makes it into the news broadcasts, and those quotations become the basis for vigorous action in furtherance of this bizarre agenda.
As noted, it also has quotations from sources of absolute authority that may not be challenged. Thus various catchphrases, wiser or less wise, acquire the status of the wisdom of the ages, the fruit of the spirit of people endowed with divine inspiration, with whom no mortal of flesh and blood is authorized to disagree, against whom no one may utter a peep, and anyone who does so will be called a heretic with disgust. I have already brought a few such examples here in the past, such as "a woman's right over her body" – a slogan intended to launder permission for cold-blooded murder (together with the unsurpassable sanctity of human life), or determinations regarding LGBT people and gender (especially the removal of homosexuality from the DSM), such as the "scientific" prohibition on calling it an illness or a deviation, or the no less grave prohibition against supporting conversion therapies, heaven forfend, and the like. Which brings us to another clear example of this phenomenon, the issue of separate but equal (separate but equal).
separate but equal
For years, the approach prevalent in the United States held that separation, racial and otherwise, was a policy that did not contradict equality. According to this approach, blacks could be separated from whites, so long as both sides were given the same resources and the same status, and such a situation could be seen as a kind of equality. But in 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling concerning discrimination against blacks (the case of Brown v. Board of Education), according to which the separate but equal approach is illegitimate. This is basically a de facto identification of separation with exclusion.
Conceptually, there is no basis for this. Equality is an almost mathematical matter, symmetry between persons or groups. If two persons or two groups are given the same resources in the same way but in a different place, that is equality. If men and women see the same performance from the same distance and with the same degree of comfort, how can one say there is no equality here?! I intentionally do not enter here into the very question of equality as a value, which itself deserves discussion. For purposes of the present discussion, I assume that this value is not in dispute. Again, I should sharpen the point: had the petition been against seating the women in the back or in a less comfortable place, the claim would indeed have been justified. That really is unequal. But the separation itself, ostensibly, does not contradict equality.
And yet there is a feeling that there is something in this matter whereby separation does injure equality. It is hard to accept separation between blacks and whites as a proper and equal arrangement. Separate restrooms for whites and blacks does not strike me as the peak of morality and humanity. Nor does it seem reasonable to separate Sephardim and Ashkenazim in schools (cf. Emmanuel. There too the Haredim follow their own line, which champions separate but equal, yeah right). In the discussion of the Afula event, all sorts of other analogies were raised as well. For example, men's and women's restrooms and changing rooms are separate. There are separate hours at the pool and at the beach. Sports competitions are separate (note: even in chess), in synagogues and at the Western Wall there are separate sections, and so on. There are situations in which separation really is problematic (and perhaps even injures equality), and situations in which it is not. The problem with the militant spokespeople of the approach I have described is that they are unwilling to make such distinctions. For them, this is a clause in a secular Mishnah Berurah given to Moses at Sinai, and it may not be touched: separate but equal is forbidden by Torah law, and no distinctions are entertained.
Limits on legitimate separation
As stated, at least on the conceptual level separation does not injure equality. So why, nevertheless, is there a feeling that separation can be problematic? Where is that true and where not? What are the criteria? I will suggest here a few criteria that can help in analyzing various issues. In light of these criteria one can see why some of the examples mentioned above are unsuccessful and some are not, and why some of the analogies made in this discussion are absurd.
The first criterion is preliminary: when separation is carried out improperly, for example when schools are separated and blacks and whites (see, for example, in the Sweatt v. Painter ruling described here) or Sephardim and Ashkenazim are not given the same resources, that is a problematic separation. Here the principle of equality is violated already at the conceptual level. This is simply not proper conduct even if one accepts the separate but equal approach as legitimate. This is a separate and unequal arrangement, and therefore it is not what concerns our discussion. Here I intend to examine the separate but equal approach itself, that is, to discuss separation that does preserve symmetry and therefore, on its face, does not injure the principle of equality.
As stated, symmetry exists here, and therefore it is hard to claim that the principle of equality is being violated. But equality is not the only value in our world. The fact is that separations, even when they are equal, sometimes arouse in us feelings of discomfort. Let us look at a few of them. For example, what exactly is bad about separate restrooms for blacks and whites? This is of course a completely equal situation. One can also ask how this differs from separate men's/women's restrooms or changing rooms, or separate swimming for women and men, not to mention prayer in the synagogue—phenomena that seem to many people (those who still retain their sanity in this discourse) more reasonable.
Some will say that with men and women it is relevant, since we are embarrassed to expose body parts or perform intimate bodily acts in the presence of members of the opposite sex. But it seems to me that this distinction does not withstand criticism, since people can claim that this is how they feel about blacks (or whites) as well. It seems to me that two relevant criteria can be raised here: consent and the basis underlying the separation.
- In a musical performance like the one in Afula, the separation between men and women is with the consent of both sides, which is not true of separation between blacks and whites in restrooms. This is also why the separation between Sephardim and Ashkenazim in schools is not a successful analogy to the separation between women and men at a Haredi music performance. The former is not done with the consent of both sides, whereas the latter is. But that by itself is not enough. A person or group has the right not to mix with other people even if the others want to mix with them. Therefore we must examine another criterion: the basis for the separation.
- Even if the blacks agreed, there would still be something objectionable about separating them from whites. The separation between blacks and whites (including the feeling of embarrassment I described) stems from a racist consideration, that is, it is based on viewing blacks as inferior. By contrast, the separation between women and men, whether or not the feelings of embarrassment I described are legitimate, clearly is not based on seeing women as inferior. It is not done because they are inferior and I do not want to be in their company. And even if there is someone who does view women as inferior and discriminate against them, it is still clear that even in his view the separation in restrooms and changing rooms is not done for that reason.
The significance of consent
The first criterion is the agreement between the sides. Haredi women and men agree to, and even want, separate seating. At least that is what they declare. The spokespeople for the opposing "Haredi" position claim that this is false consciousness (see Columns 203–4). The women are forced to say this, and perhaps even to think it, because the society in which they live does not allow them to think—and certainly not to speak—otherwise. By the way, it is not clear to me why the discourse constantly assumes that the separation harms women specifically, and therefore the whole discussion revolves around the injury done to them. After all, this is a symmetric situation with respect to men as well. In any case, here I will address the false-consciousness argument as such.
We all know the Haredi atmosphere, and so the claim about false consciousness is probably true to a certain extent. A woman or a man who feels differently cannot say so either, because of the social price exacted by doing so. Moreover, it is quite possible that at least some of the women or men who support separation formed their position without seriously examining all the options. Women do not even have the possibility of doing so, because they are forbidden to study Torah and therefore have no way to criticize the positions in which they are educated. Does all this justify false-consciousness arguments of this sort?
In my opinion, no. An adult who holds a given position is responsible for that position. No one has the right to tell such a person what he really thinks, and certainly not to force him to conduct himself differently from what he says he wants, in the name of his hidden values. Moreover, who among us can say of himself that his positions were formed after he honestly examined all the options? Who among us even knows all the options and arguments? There is no choice but to recognize these limitations and respect a person's positions as he himself expresses them. Of course one need not agree with what he says, and I certainly do not mean to argue here for pluralism. More than that: I am not even intending here to object to the paternalism of a person who tells another what, inwardly (and not falsely), he really thinks. I have done this more than once (see, for example, Columns 203-4 and 229), and to my mind it is entirely legitimate. Quite a few people do not understand what they themselves think. What is not legitimate, in my opinion, is forcing a person to act in a way that he himself says he does not want, on the claim that inwardly he really does want it. That is out of the question.
Liberalism in recent years has a disturbing tendency to accept false-consciousness arguments and act accordingly (see Column 203), and again, here too, this resembles the Haredim. Both sides are convinced that they are right, and therefore tend to see every other position as the result of false consciousness, and on that basis to coerce those who hold it into a way of life in the name of their true and hidden consciousness. The example of Afula is only one example among many.
The trouble is that anyone willing to accept false-consciousness arguments and act on them will lead to a situation in which, by the same measure (if the religious public has the power or the governing majority), it will be decided to force secular people to sit separately at their own concerts, since in the view of many religious people (myself included), the consciousness of most of the secular public was also formed without seriously considering the religious position (which, as is well known, is the absolute truth). According to this view, the secular too are the product of brainwashing that confuses them with notions like exclusion and slogans that reject separate but equal, a woman's right over her body, and the like. In such a situation, every group that happens to gain a random majority in power will permit itself to impose its values on others, and will even justify this morally by claiming that the others really agree with us (they are just not aware of it. They live in false consciousness). We are merely making them act according to the values they truly believe in unconsciously. The next obvious step would be to forbid us to observe the Sabbath and certainly to educate children in religious education, because this is irrational conduct (which even harms the national product), or to force members of other religions to abandon their beliefs, and so forth. In all these situations a claim of false consciousness could be raised. Of course, the same is true of secular people under a religious majority. In short, there is no end to it.
It is important for me to emphasize that I do not intend here to make only the practical/self-interested argument, namely that this is a dangerous approach that could return to haunt all of us like a boomerang, which is certainly true. My claim is that beyond the practical argument, such coercion is also morally improper. An adult is responsible for the positions he has formed, whether right or wrong, and has the right, and perhaps even the duty, to act in accordance with them. No one is entitled to tell him what he thinks. Again, not because that is necessarily mistaken. Many people live in false consciousness, but it is their right alone to decide this for themselves and determine their way of life. The "Haredi" approach of the Women's Lobby and the people of the Meretz party is both very dangerous and morally improper.
And what about genuinely false consciousness?
But there are extreme cases in which we would indeed accept such arguments. Thus, for example, with regard to Goel Ratzon's wives. Is their consent to a polygamous life also a position that must be respected? And what about Stockholm syndrome among victims who develop identification with the abuser? Should their positions too be treated as they stand, and should they be allowed to continue living under ongoing abuse? And what about positions expressed by children? May they be coerced on the claim that these are not their true positions? And what about drug addicts who want to continue their way of life, or those who want to commit suicide because of a temporary emotional crisis?
I should begin by saying that, precisely with respect to Goel Ratzon's wives, I tend to think that one cannot and should not force them into a life contrary to their declared outlook. If an adult woman declares that she sees a polygamous life as a worthy form of life and wants it, then although I suspect false consciousness, I have no right to force her on the claim that this is not her true position. Only she is authorized to decide that. The same is true of a brother and sister who want to live together in a sexual relationship (if we momentarily set the children aside). But in Stockholm syndrome or similar situations, where it is clear to us that a person cannot express or form a position freely, we do tend to act paternalistically. A drug addict who wants to continue on his path we would try to coerce (at least if we had an effective way of doing so), and similarly a person who has fallen into a temporary crisis and wants to commit suicide.
The line between these situations is not sharp. The fundamental claim is that there are situations in which a person really does not form a position freely, and therefore the positions he expresses cannot be treated as his true positions. In extreme cases it is justified even to force him to behave differently (contrary to his declared positions). But it is not clear what those situations are, or what criterion distinguishes them from the situations I described above (such as the Haredi desire to sit separately at a performance). Thus, for example, if I am convinced that belief in God and observance of commandments is correct and that others are like children taken captive and raised away from the truth—why should I not coerce them? Ostensibly, from my point of view this is like a drug addict or a person under the influence of a cult, or simply of brainwashing.
I suspect that even a psychiatrist or psychologist has no tools to determine when we are dealing with a case of false consciousness that justifies coercion. These determinations are, to a large extent, a function of worldview. If I think position X is utter folly, I will tend to view the person who holds it as someone living in false consciousness. Perhaps one criterion is the existence of a contradiction in someone's doctrine, since if there is a contradiction I can prove that this is not really his position and that he has another implicit position. But even here it is hard to determine things categorically. A person sometimes holds contradictory positions (and perhaps the mistake is mine and in fact there is no contradiction?!). In short, I do not have sharp criteria, but it is clear that there are cases of one kind and of another. The spectrum is varied and vague, but at the extremes there are clear cases. The conclusion is that in all situations that are not unequivocal, one must not intervene or coerce. Of course, this does not make the issue superfluous, since a dispute still remains over what those extreme cases are. Our liberals think that sitting separately at a singer's performance is an extreme case that justifies coercion. Absurd though it is, that is what they claim.[2]
[1] My feeling in such discussions is that it really is no contest. Opposite Smotrich stands a collection of blatantly unintelligent spokespeople (mainly women), which of course only sharpens further the absurdity I described: a position whose public weight is negligible and that has no reasonable justification whatsoever receives such dominant legal status.
[2] In Column 224 I argued that the women who complain about rabbis like Tal and Sheinberg, who exploited them, are not free of responsibility. The underlying point is similar to what I am arguing here. These are adult women who are responsible for their decisions, and therefore I do not accept their claim that all the blame lies at the rabbi's doorstep. An adult is responsible for his decisions, and shifting the responsibility onto someone else cannot be accepted, except in pathological cases. Of course, this does not absolve the rabbi of responsibility, but I claim that the woman too should not be absolved of her responsibility.
Discussion
As usual, words as sharp as goads.
Even so, I am compelled to protest on behalf of our Haredi cousins against the comparison between them and the women’s lobbies and the liberalism that you call here “Haredi.”
I completely agree about the points of similarity mentioned in the post: the use of false-consciousness arguments; appeal to the authority of the “great sages of the generation”; and silencing those who express “heretical” views.
Nevertheless, in my opinion the women’s lobbies are dozens of times worse than the Haredim. The Haredim, at least openly, do not act on behalf of the values of equality and liberty, and certainly do not believe in the supremacy of those values over others. From that point of view, coercion, silencing, and appeal to external sources of authority are quite understandable. Their “liberal” counterparts, by contrast, use those same anti-liberty (and anti-equality) tools to promote values of liberty and equality.
In my opinion, the use of these tools teaches that they do not truly believe in the values they supposedly promote. They want to *force* “freedom” on others, and it does not bother them at all that by doing so they are depriving others of the very freedom they purport to grant. Therefore, calling them Haredi does a great injustice to the real Haredim, who at least sincerely and wholeheartedly believe in the justice of their path.
I’m on Dina Zilber’s side. I still remember how a group of Haredim attacked a woman who was riding a public bus to the Western Wall, laid hands on her, and snatched off her head covering just because it didn’t suit them that she was sitting in the front and enjoying public resources exactly as they were.
And since Haredi political activism keeps growing stronger and taking over one more good plot and then another while disguising itself as religious zealotry—acting like Zimri and asking for the reward of Pinchas—it is a good thing that wise women rise up against them and decree restrictions upon them, forbidding them to rob women of public space that belongs to women exactly as much as to men. If Haredi society had remained modest as it once was, there would have been no need to impose these decrees on it. Since idleness in the kollels has increased and there is no devotion to Torah, the evil inclination enters and sin follows. And since “the wicked are full of regrets like a pomegranate,” they become more extreme in order to hide their weakness, and begin to act zealously while in fact being hypocrites. People have grown accustomed to the army and the police protecting them (the Torah certainly does not protect them, for they have no Torah in their hands), and to their wives supporting them while they are idle and do nothing. What is needed is to send all these idlers to serve in the army, and let them teach their sons a trade, as the Gemara says (that is, English and mathematics), and stop acting like crocodiles by foisting their children on the public through all kinds of transfer payments. Instead they should go work like normal human beings, and then decency will return to Haredi society and it will be possible to remove the stringencies that are being imposed on them today.
The sentence *It is a good thing that wise women rise up against them and decree restrictions upon them and forbid them
should be replaced by *It is a good thing that wise women rise up against them and decree restrictions upon them and forbid them…
(changing 3 grammatical forms in one sentence is excessive, after all)
The issues of false consciousness and coercing values are certainly matters that require clarification and distinctions, and more power to you for that.
I agreed with almost the entire line of argument, and I want to say something regarding the issue of the limits of coercion.
I agree with what you said about how a person’s conceptual contradictions may show that he is not in an integrated state, and sometimes that is even visible on the surface.
For example, as far as I know there are cases in which people addicted to this or that may say part of the time that they want to get rid of it and seek treatment, and at another time disregard what they said before. In such cases, where the internal struggle is clear, and I assume it causes suffering to the person himself as well, it seems reasonable to permit coercion, because not only does the person lack a clear and orderly worldview on the matter, but he also suffers from it.
In my opinion, the issue of coercion upon a private individual moves along that spectrum (how clear and unequivocal the person’s view is, and how much he suffers from it).
But regarding an entire community, the matter becomes much more complicated, since we are dealing with a clash between two complete normative systems, and so ostensibly it seems that all there is is a political arrangement. Yet here too there are extreme cases in which there are strong intuitions that coercion is required, such as extreme harm to another group or of the group toward itself. The problem is that it is not clear what criteria govern those intuitions.
In Hazal there are interesting discussions both regarding cases where a person lacks דעת (“a deaf-mute, an imbecile, and a minor,” though as far as I know that is in other contexts), and regarding whole communities (“an idolatrous city”). But unfortunately I don’t know enough about these subjects; perhaps it would be worthwhile to elaborate and go into them as well.
The whole earth is full of proportionality (ibid., ibid.)
Hello Michi,
I’m copying here part of a response I wrote to your remarks elsewhere. I’m in the middle of writing an article on the subject and will send it to you if and when the full version ripens.
The recognition that within gender separation there is also discrimination and exclusion (and that there are also motives connected with hierarchy), and not only concern for preventing sexual tension and preserving modesty, is very difficult for many in Religious Zionism (I know there are some who do recognize it). If they were to acknowledge this, it would shake a substantial part of their way of life. Here are a few examples—
The educational system to which they send their sons and daughters maintains gender separation in classrooms from a very early age, and the overwhelming majority of high schools are entirely separate—meaning schools only for boys or only for girls. “From the inside,” people tell themselves this is a separate but equal system. It is not. It is a religious educational system in which boys learn the immense importance of Gemara study in Judaism, and devote many, many hours in middle school and high school to that study. In the end, the great majority of them take the 5-unit matriculation exam in Gemara. And the girls? They are discriminated against and excluded (in the vast majority of schools entirely, and in some almost entirely) from these studies. They have a different curriculum. And when there is already Gemara study in a religious girls’ high school, in 99% of cases the teacher will be a man. In the boys’ high school, it would be unthinkable for a female teacher to teach Gemara. Gemara studies are the clearest example of this unequal separation, but if you dig you will find quite a few more.
Let’s continue to the synagogue—the separation there is rarely equal in the seating arrangements. In the overwhelming majority of synagogues, the men are in front in a large hall, and the girls/women are in back (or up in back) in a small area behind a partition that obscures what is going on. But of course that is only the tip of the iceberg. Everything that happens in the segregated synagogue is an entirely discriminatory and exclusionary arrangement. Women are not counted for a minyan, do not serve as the rabbi of the synagogue, are not called up to the Torah, do not lead prayers, etc. A clear house of discrimination and exclusion. And so every morning the men gather—usually with the women’s section completely empty because of the discriminatory “exemption” of women from positive time-bound commandments—and together recite the blessing “who has not made me a woman.” At that same time, the woman praying usually in her home says, “Blessed is He who made me according to His will.”
This continues with many more examples. A woman is disqualified from testimony that is not spontaneous, the wedding ceremony, the divorce process, the rabbinate as an institution, and in general subordination to halakhic decisors who are men בלבד and who grew within an all-male yeshiva system. And so on and on.
All this does not stem only from an attempt to prevent sexual tension and be modest! There is no connection between modesty and disqualifying a woman from testimony, or not counting her for a minyan, or excluding her from the role of halakhic decisor, or excluding her from Gemara study (etc.). It stems from a conception—devised, created, and written only by men—according to which men and women have different roles in the world, and all positions of authority and power are male. It stems from an ancient chauvinistic conception. And yes, for many it very much stems from a hierarchical conception scattered through countless quotations from the Torah, through the literature of Hazal, onward through the Geonim and Rishonim and even the Acharonim. Even the greatest thinker of Religious Zionism, Rabbi Kook, held a distinctly hierarchical conception in which women are inferior to men.
In other words, it’s not only the Haredim. Religious Zionism lives routinely with discrimination against and exclusion of women, and many, many good people within it simply do not recognize this. They tell themselves that separation is not discrimination and exclusion, and they are blind to the fact that in their own home these things go together. Separation and exclusion. Stuck to one another. For the overwhelming majority there, it simply seems normal. It’s tradition. It’s halakha. Girls in school are taught that in fact this whole matter is because they are superior, more spiritual, and naturally closer to the Holy One blessed be He, and therefore simply do not need all this authority. And some really do believe all this nonsense.
To understand that gender separation at a performance for religious reasons “of modesty” is rooted fundamentally in racism, discrimination, hierarchy, and exclusion, and therefore by Michi’s own criteria is invalid, one must painfully and difficultly recognize everything I wrote above. This is Michi’s blind spot.
By the way, even at a performance the exclusion will of course be expressed symbolically in that even if the separation is equal in terms of comfort and access to the stage (which is rare at events in Haredi society), it is obvious that it will not be equal on the stage itself. A performance for Haredim with separation will always, always be a performance that excludes women from the stage. Michi did not write a word about this, even though he knows it, because recognizing how problematic this is means recognizing how problematic a very substantial part of the education and lifestyle in Religious Zionism is. And this is the root of the enormous gap and disagreement. To write in the face of all this that the speakers opposing Smotrich are unintelligent, that the judge is an idiot, and all the other contemptuous epithets in the article—this is burying one’s head deep, deep in the sand.
A very interesting article indeed.
I think today’s left is simply gripped by a communist frenzy, in which “equality” has become a holy value, almost a religion. And note this—equality itself, meaning symmetry, is not a value. It has no moral dimension whatsoever. It acquires value when we speak of equality of opportunity, including non-discrimination by state authorities.
But when men and women are forced to be together at a performance—which moral ideal is realized here? Which right is being protected?
And conversely, how does separating women (assuming the quality of the performance for them is preserved, as you noted) violate their rights? To me there is simply a very severe philosophical ignorance and shallowness here. Saddest of all, this shallowness has spread among the very bodies responsible for formulating the state’s legal position. Or in other words—the people most possessed by irrational frenzy, lacking any rational and coherent reasoning—are precisely the ones who will decide for me and for you how to live.
I have a few comments regarding the legal aspect of the story.
1. Just to set the record straight, Judge Avraham’s first ruling was given on the basis of the parties’ consent, meaning on the basis of the municipality’s folding, not a judicial decision between the competing claims.
What would have happened if the judge had had to decide? There is no way to know. On the one hand, when the Attorney General takes a position, the court tends to move in that direction. On the other hand, we were in the midst of court recess, the timetable was short anyway, and I’m not sure he would have initiated a precedent-setting ruling that would have required a great deal of effort from him.
So in my view the address for complaints is more the weak Afula municipality than the court.
2. Since the municipality’s decision to compromise was indeed disgraceful, a petition was filed to cancel it for unreasonableness, before Judge Eilabouni.
The decision was canceled in a relatively fine and reasoned ruling, which emphasized the guiding line in the case law so far, namely that gender mixing should not be forced on audiences with religious sensitivities on the matter.
3. However, that is an illegal decision. This was a de facto cancellation of a district court ruling by a district court, and that contradicts basic rules of procedure. Hence, in my opinion, the High Court’s ruling was correct.
And one last point:
The religious camp, in all its shades, came out looking very hypocritical in this story. Individual liberty is a very fine thing—but only when it belongs to them. When other people want stores or buses on Shabbat—aha, the importance of autonomous choice disappears, and coercion is legitimate.
With God’s help, on the eve of the holy Sabbath, “and you shall speak to us” 5779
The warped ruling of the first judge, who banned the separation while harming the rights of Torah-and-commandment-observant Jews to live according to their faith and not be excluded from consuming cultural events, was also procedurally flawed.
You come to create a precedent-setting rule that changes existing practice? Then issue a reasoned ruling that allows an appeal to the Supreme Court. But to determine facts through a decision to postpone the hearing in such a way that it will necessarily lead to the cancellation of the event and heavy financial loss to the artist and anguish to his audience—for what purpose? Could one not wait a few days to create the “precedent-setting rule” after hearing the parties and their reasoning? What is this “running around” to harm the religious for?
The honor of the judicial system was saved by Judge Atef Eilabouni, a respected judge who specializes in handling complex cases of companies being dissolved after getting into financial trouble, and he knows how to maneuver wisely so as to enable companies to recover and continue operating efficiently without causing the dismissal of dozens and hundreds of workers, while on the other hand bringing about a reasonable arrangement for repaying debts to creditors.
That same insight—that the court is intended to repair society by mediating between opposing wishes—Judge Eilabouni also brought to this case. He approved a compromise agreement according to which there would be three areas at the event—separate areas for men and for women for those who desired that, and an area open to all without separation where the show could be watched by closed-circuit screening.
Perhaps there rested upon him (knowingly or unknowingly 🙂) the spirit of the tanna Rabbi Matya ben Heresh, buried in his village of Eilabun, who sat in Rome in the period of recovery after the Bar Kokhba revolt and taught: “Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for fear of it, a man would swallow his fellow alive.” A wise government knows how to find the golden path on which everyone can find his place without needing to “swallow one another alive.”
Regards, Sh.Tz.
Rabbi Matya ben Heresh was also known for guarding his eyes, in that he did not lift his eyes to women; and when Satan put him to the test and he felt he would not be able to withstand it, he took a heated nail and blinded his eyes, and did not agree that the angel Raphael should heal him until the Holy One blessed be He promised him that the evil inclination would never again rule over him (brought in Yalkut Shimoni, as noted on Wikipedia).
Rabbi Matya ben Heresh surely takes satisfaction in the judge from his village, who upheld the Jewish custom of separating men and women at events involving intense excitement, as explained in the Mishnah in Sukkah regarding the Rejoicing of the Water-Drawing, that “a great enactment” was instituted there, and as explained in the Jerusalem Talmud, first chapter of Sanhedrin, that at a funeral the custom was for women to walk at the end “for the honor of the daughters of Israel, so that men should not cast their eyes upon women.”
With God’s help, 15 Av 5779
In contrast to the strange conduct of the first judge who heard the case, who rushed to establish a “precedent-setting rule” through an interim decision that would lead to cancellation of the event while causing heavy financial loss to the artist and much anguish to the audience, which found itself excluded from a cultural event because of its faith and tradition.
Judge Atif Eilabouni’s balanced ruling stands out, as he found a mediating path—the creation of three areas: an area for men, an area for women, and an area open to all to which the performance would be broadcast. Thus everyone could enjoy it, both those interested in separation and those who do not desire it.
This is also Judge Eilabouni’s way in his principal field of expertise, the dissolution of companies that have run into financial difficulties. He finds ways in which the company can continue producing without dismissing its workers, while on the other hand the creditors receive an arrangement for repayment of the debts owed them.
Perhaps Judge Eilabouni drew inspiration from the tanna Rabbi Matya ben Heresh, buried in the village of Eilabun, who established the necessity of government to prevent situations in which “a man would swallow his fellow alive”; and when one finds a wise solution, opposing desires can dwell together.
Regards, Sh.Tz.
Rabbi Matya ben Heresh was also known for standing firm in the trial of “guarding one’s eyes,” and presumably he takes satisfaction in the judge from his village, who found a way to uphold the Talmudic custom of separating men and women at events involving intense excitement, as explained with regard to the Rejoicing of the Water-Drawing, that it was “a great enactment,” and as explained in the Jerusalem Talmud, first chapter of Sanhedrin, about separation at funerals, “for the honor of the daughters of Israel, so that men should not cast their eyes upon women.”
1. Michi’s claim, if I understood correctly, is that even if the separation or exclusion is indeed invalid in your opinion, you are still not justified in coercing people not to exclude, because בכך you deprive them of the freedom to behave according to their own understanding, and such intervention should be reserved only for extreme cases (both for moral reasons and for pragmatic ones).
Therefore, even if you are right that the separation is based purely on discrimination, that does not justify coercion at all.
2. I’m not sure there is anyone who thinks that separation between the sexes in all the contexts you mentioned is based on modesty alone—I think you are fighting a straw man here.
The argument of supporters of the separations you mentioned is, among other things, that men and women ought to have different roles in society. True, assigning different roles to men and women will necessarily create inequality, even at the level of unequal opportunity (and not only unequal outcomes), but in the eyes of the supporters of separation that is entirely proper. And still, in a certain sense the value of equality also exists, because there is a fairly long list of basic rights that are granted equally to men and women.
When the separation does not preserve equality, there is no discussion. I noted that.
Completely agree.
This measure-for-measure approach will bring disaster upon them. People are already starting to get sick of them. I noted this in the discussion of LGBT silencing.
Beyond that, taking specific cases and learning from them about the character of the Haredi public in general is not fair. By that logic, you can take the chocolate-on-the-plane case or any other case and infer from it about secular people, Religious Zionists, and so on.
There is some truth in all this, but not always. The question of the specific criteria is of course very complicated. In the column I wrote only the general principles as I understand them.
Phil, you saved me from having to write a response. The separation there is not connected to racist discrimination and the like, but to a halakhic and principled conception. You can disagree with it (and so do I), but one should not mix it up with separation between whites and blacks.
Ta'ir,
1. I don’t know whether you are aware of what goes on in court. Agreements reached under a judge’s guidance mean nothing. A judge can make it clear in various ways to each side that he is about to rule against them, and thereby cause them to agree. If the municipality had agreed, why did they come to court in the first place? These things happen in court every day.
2-3. You are repeating here what I wrote.
The religious camp’s argument for freedom is an argument according to the logic of the law and of the liberals. They themselves do not advocate it. See Phil’s apt comment in the second talkback on this column.
I’m sure I’m not aware as Your Honor is, but yes, I’ve happened to be in a few courtrooms.
Sometimes the judge tells one of the parties during the hearing that he intends to impose costs against him and suggests a compromise. That is true.
But here the municipality submitted notice of an agreement in principle *before any hearing had taken place in the case*, after receiving the Attorney General’s position. So how exactly were they cornered?
“So why did they come to court?”—perhaps the municipality initially refused and then changed its mind after receiving the Attorney General’s position? Things like that happen too.
As for hypocrisy—you are speaking about the Haredi religious camp. There are also religious people whose agenda purports to be liberal, like Shaked and Smotrich, for example. And there it is hypocrisy.
Whether it was pressure from the judge or from the Attorney General, it is still clear that there was no real consent here.
Smotrich is not a liberal and Shaked is not religious. Liberal religious people generally really do oppose religious coercion as well.
The State of Israel is first and foremost a democratic state, as opposed to an egalitarian state. In an egalitarian state there could be no such concept as an elected representative, since everyone would be equal.
The rule that “everyone is equal” is a rule that the majority established, and therefore it is valid so long as it does not contradict the principle of majority rule.
The question is not about equality. It is whether in a certain democratic state it has been decided that every subgroup can itself also be a small democratic state and determine things for itself according to the majority within that group.
That is the whole question.
The secular think not. They want the absolute majority in the state to impose its entire worldview on every subgroup within that state.
You decided that there was no real consent here. The municipality itself declared that out of 360 events it holds per year, one event is dedicated to the Haredim, so a situation in which they simply give it up is not all that implausible.
Among the jumble of nonsense heard this week from the women of the lobby, there was actually one statement that may have some merit. One of them mentioned the issue of separation on buses, which still exists today on certain lines. Of course there are many differences between separation on buses and separation at a singing event, but the principle of rule by the power-brokers is similar.
As is known, separation on buses began when a number of activists (who had just finished checking the lengths of the skirts of the daughters of Israel) decided that there was a problem with men and women mixing on buses. The court at the time apparently did not stop the madness, certainly not on the practical level, since today “mehadrin” buses still exist (in Haredi cities).
As a Haredi who lives in a Haredi environment, I know many women who do not want the separation, who suffer from it (it is not pleasant to drag yourself with five children to the back of the bus—something that happens every day), and who have no patience for this nonsense, but what can you do—go fight the holy activists and their whims. So true, no one really enforces it, and true, a woman can in practice sit in front too, but in reality—it is not always pleasant for them to do that.
The question is where the border stops. Yesterday it was a mehadrin bus and we kept quiet; tomorrow they will decide to make separate sidewalks for men and women. (https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1021261 Get ready.)
If these were isolated cases lacking any broader context (I too have no interest in slandering an entire public), that would be one thing. The problem is that this is a conscious, deliberate campaign that is trying violently and thuggishly to take over public transportation and mark it as their own. When that is the reality, I am not willing to show tolerance, and despite all my distaste for the State Attorney’s imperialism, in this case all credit to their counterreaction (in that sense, the balance of power between these two giants guarantees my individual liberty in the long run).
The issue of the basis for separation is more complicated. I am somewhat surprised at the rabbi on this point.
As for myself, I do not believe in equality. I believe in justice. I think equality is a concept that is (almost—and perhaps even that not) empty of content. What is usually called “equality” is the result of applying justice in cases where we have no way to distinguish between particulars. (A kind of assumption on which, for example, the uniform distribution in probability is built.) In any case, in the case of separate but equal, I think the common intuition that it is wrong to separate, even in a case where there is equality in resources and opportunities (not that I see how that is possible in practice), is mistaken. It confuses “not nice” with “not right.” I do indeed agree that it is not nice, but it is not “unjust.” In matters of thought there is no coercion. There is only right or wrong. Whites are allowed to think they are better than blacks (racists in thought), even if that is a mistake. And they are also allowed, according to that way of thinking, to live separately from blacks. South Africa was boycotted (justifiably) because of apartheid, but I have not heard that anyone even thinks of boycotting India because of its caste system. So long as no one is forced to live in a certain society (as in Communist Russia), that society is morally permitted to separate itself from the rest of humanity and live among itself as it wishes, so long as it does not harm those outside it.
And if the rabbi says that Hitler too would say that he is allowed to think Jews are rats, I will tell him he is right; and if Hitler claims that according to that thought he must also act to exterminate them from the world, he will still be right. One can only come to Hitler with moral accusations if we are convinced that deep down he knows it is not true. If Hitler really thinks we are rats, then as far as I am concerned he is mistaken (and also insane), and I must fight him as best I can in order to defend myself, but there is no basis for accusing him morally. He is not “unjust” (or more precisely, he is not “immoral”). But certainly there is no basis for forcing Germans who think like him to live together with Jews.
Correction: in the first paragraph: “Whites are allowed to think they are better than blacks (racists in thought), even if that is a mistake. And they are also allowed, according to that way of thinking, to live separately from blacks.”
Incidentally, the very ruling of the American Supreme Court on this subject is a kind of admission of the fundamental correctness of those whites’ way of thinking. If those courts really did not think like those whites, then they would simply consider them insane—so why should they care if a few insane people want to live by themselves? And why should blacks care that a group of lunatics does not want to live with them? All the hysteria around the issue only emphasizes that in a certain sense everyone is afraid there is some basis for this way of thinking and that it may perhaps be true. But if it is not true, what is there to fear?
It is true that Judaism generally designates different roles for men and women, but this also works to men’s disadvantage. For example—the husband’s duty to support his wife according to Maimonides: even more than he has…
(and the influence of Jewish law on this issue is what causes so many divorced men to commit suicide…)
B. There is also such a concept as modesty, which is unrelated to the previous point, and which extends the separation that exists today in restrooms between men and women
(to other places as well, since Judaism educates also toward subtleties that Western society, through habit, no longer notices).
(What about equality? Why aren’t there urinals for women like there are for men? Why aren’t there mirrors for men like there are for women?)
It may be that the religious camp came out hypocritical, but as has already been argued, the central hypocrites in this story are those who, in the name of exalting liberty, brutally suppress liberty…
I find it hard to believe that secular people actually think that, in light of the fact that they themselves are less than 50%…
I fear that the conception is not that “the majority will decide,” but that “the enlightened will decide”…
There is no connection whatsoever between stores and separation at events.
Is closing businesses on Independence Day / Memorial Day coercion?
When there is an issue that concerns the public as a whole, there is no choice but to act according to one view even though others will lose out, just as a red light forces drivers not to drive and allows others to do so.
And on a day whose character is disputed, one side must necessarily be coerced.
And preserving the public character of the public sphere is something that concerns everyone, and there is no choice but to enforce it.
That has nothing to do with a gathering for a particular public that wants to conduct itself according to some custom of its own (however bizarre).
I do indeed need to qualify my statement בעקבות your comment. What I said about the judge was incorrect. He received a situation in which there was an agreement, and any judge in such a situation would approve the agreement. I also corrected this in the body of the column.
But I really do not understand your comment here. I am talking about the municipality’s consent that the event would not be separate. And I already explained above how such “agreements” are obtained.
Rule by the power-brokers is indeed a serious Haredi problem, but it should be solved by the Haredim and not by paternalists who decide for them what they want. When Haredi women petition and say they do not agree to separation, that will have some point. When secular people decide for them, that is an outrage. And if the women do not petition—that is their problem. People need to take responsibility for the positions they declare.
Eilon, you are conflating issues. If a person is truly racist, then perhaps he should not be blamed, because that is really what he thinks. Still, there is every reason to act against that conception, and certainly not to fund it publicly.
I disagree with you. Even if there is such thuggery, the way to deal with it is to punish the thugs and force them to stop their thuggery, not to employ counter-thuggery and punish innocent people. That is neither a logical nor an effective approach. It only strengthens the thuggery (because now they can point to the secularists’ thuggery and further reinforce the Haredi sense of victimhood).
More power to you for these sharp and straightforward words.
I think one can find differences between cases of false consciousness.
In the case of Goel Ratzon’s women, there is doubt whether this is false consciousness at all, or fear
that stems from the aggressive silencing by the cult leader. In the case of the Haredi women,
they could simply have chosen not to come to the performance in question, or alternatively to participate in the countless other mixed performances.
The points are clear and illuminating. What I find missing is the distinction that the doctrine of separate but equal necessarily leads to inequality in many cases. Suppose, for example, racial separation in the United States in a situation where whites control the centers of power in politics, economics, and academia; this will necessarily entail that blacks will not be able to achieve as much and will not take an equal part in scientific, economic, and political life.
You missed something huge.
If the separation were by consent, with each gender simply going voluntarily to a different side, there would be no one to petition against. But we are talking about a situation where the municipality stations ushers (at public expense) who make selections. If a Haredi woman without false consciousness comes and wants to go to the men’s side, or vice versa, force will be used against them to impose the separation. This is using public money to impose Haredi values on someone who does not want them (the person who does not voluntarily choose the area of their own gender) and to restrict his freedom of movement.
In short, you fell into the trap of Haredi/Smotrich demagoguery (by the way, he’s not really intelligent)—slick rhetoric.
I wish each of us never misses anything bigger than this nonsense.
This is the public’s conception. And if there is one woman who does not want it—her opinion is nullified (or she is welcome to sit in the outside mixed area, as they finally decided). Public policy is not supposed to bow to every whim of a lone individual at the expense of an entire public.
The state and the municipality also station ushers at their expense so that no one enters without paying or behaves wildly. And if someone דווקא wants to behave wildly? What’s wrong with that? It’s his right, no? In short, you should take a few lessons from Smotrich. 🙂
The goal of the women of the lobby (at least if we are being naive) is to represent all women, secular and religious (I’m not at all sure there are no Haredi women in the lobby as well). They simply used an existing law in order to petition; they did not invent it. It may be that the law itself imposes values on a public that does not believe in them, and that the problem lies in it and in its legitimacy, as you wrote in the article, but as long as they petitioned on the basis of the prohibition in the law—it is the judge’s role to decide whether the law applies in such a case and how to deal with it. It makes no difference who the petitioner is or what his dark intentions are. (And the antisemitism, of course…)
In the case of separation at the performance, I also think an injustice was done because of an incorrect conception of the nature of the separation. The service there was given equally to everyone, and the women themselves chose that separation, and as I understand it that was the argument of the judge who permitted it. When one speaks of separation on buses, in banks, on sidewalks, and various other ideas—there, in many cases, separate but equal is discrimination (for many reasons). If that violates the law—why should we care who the petitioner is?! On the contrary, if a Haredi woman so greatly desires separation on a bus (and apparently she does not), let her petition against the law that prohibits separation.
According to your argument, any activist can tomorrow—in the name of the entire public, of course—come up with ideas contrary to the law, and nobody says a word. Therefore it is good that there is a women’s lobby, or simply someone, who restrains the power of those who rule the public.
Do you really think this is a technical, dry interpretation of the law? You make me laugh.
If you’ve started using vague concepts like “the public’s conception,” apparently you yourself understand that you’re talking nonsense and that I’m right. If the public wants, the public can separate itself—who is stopping it? A few power-brokers are afraid that couples who don’t want to separate will show up, and so in their impudence they demand to impose norms of modesty in public space with public money. Another bit of foolishness on your part is that you didn’t notice that all the cries of persecution are really only cries about being prevented from using public money (to which the Haredi contribution is negligible). In other words, just another dispute over earmarked funds.
Even if the Haredi contribution to creating the money is negligible (although most of them work, and I don’t understand the condescension), still one out of 300 performances is a fair arrangement for a public that contributes little, because it also receives very, very little.
And as for your ridiculous position: just as you understand that a woman who wants separation has no right to impose it at a mixed performance, so too a woman who wants a mixed performance has no right to impose that when everyone else is sitting separately. Every public can decide according to its needs.
You see—you managed to bring me, all by myself, to understand that I’m talking nonsense. Fortunate are you.
To Yos: just as it is obvious to you that if some women gather separately from the men there is no need to mix them by force, so too one should not separate by force those who do not want separation. Certainly not in public space and by ushers appointed with public money. It is surprising that intelligent people buy the Haredi rhetoric about human rights, etc., which even they themselves do not believe.
Absolutely right.
The upshot of all this is that there is no ideological disagreement here at all. It is a dispute over control—whose ideas will rule—not a dispute over whose ideas are more worthy. And any attempt to challenge their ideas is like crashing into a concrete wall. There is no door.
With God’s help, 18 Av 5779
Separation on buses in Haredi areas is essential for the simple reason that passengers there are packed in like sardines, and because of the severe crowding it is almost impossible to avoid contact between men and women, a situation from which women suffer no less than men.
And see on Wikipedia the entry “gender segregation,” which notes that in Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo, the law requires that during rush hours separate places be designated for women. It appears that not only Haredi women feel uncomfortable with contact with men caused by overcrowding.
Women and men who do not desire separation have more than enough mixed lines running on the same routes, so that each and every one can find the style of travel they prefer, whether separated or mixed.
Regards, Sh.Tz.
The solution proposed by Judge Atif Eilabouni to the problem of separation at the performance in Afula was likewise built on creating three areas for the audience: one for men, one for women, and one open to all without separation. Which proves that with a bit of creativity and goodwill, one can “satisfy everyone.”
It is worth noting that Judge Eilabouni often applies this approach of finding a creative solution that locates the “golden mean” between opposing desires in his main field of expertise—the dissolution of companies that have run into financial difficulties. He tries to reach agreements that will allow the company and its workers to continue functioning, while on the other hand providing reasonable debt-repayment arrangements for the creditors.
And regarding the difficulty you mentioned for women with many children in walking to the back of the bus—on many bus lines, regardless of whether they are “mehadrin” or not, there are validation stations for the Rav-Kav card inside the bus as well, allowing all passengers to board from the middle and rear doors too, sparing the driver the need to deal with the Rav-Kav and reducing crowding near his seat. What is practiced on all crowded lines should certainly apply all the more so to mehadrin lines.
Regards, Sh.Tz.
Incidentally, Egged also has quite a few female drivers, and when there is a female driver on a “mehadrin” line, the women sit in the front section…
Sh.Tz.,
I’m not entering the debate over whether mehadrin lines are in practice good or not. As with anything, sometimes it is something women also want, and sometimes it is annoying.
I am mainly talking about the fact that the activists take the law into their own hands and impose separation according to their whims. Today it is buses, tomorrow it is sidewalks. (By the way, I believe many women would enjoy separate sidewalks. No one would harass them, no one would shove them, and there would be no contact whatsoever, not even by accident.)
Women have no say at all in the matter; they always “want” it, of course. Therefore I am glad there is someone who stops this madness and makes the activists’ self-appointed “holy” work a bit harder. (And thus, of course, their reward will grow, etc.)
Again, all this is true regarding separation that creates discrimination, unlike the case of the performance, where the women receive exactly the same product.
The state funds performances where people who storm the stage are forcibly removed! It actually arranges ushers for that.
The state funds a performance that is conducted according to the rules of the organizers of the performance. As long as there is no discrimination or racism involved, the organizers can run it however they want.
Raises a question: what would happen if this were a halakhic state? The majority of the public would be Haredi, and there would be a minority secular public that wanted to hold a mixed performance, perhaps not modest, and there were a petition by the association of conservative Haredi women to the rabbinical court—how do you think the rabbis would rule? In my opinion, there would need to be a gentile judge to rule in favor of the secularists.
That is probably the way of the world. Every group believes that all truth is on its side, and that the deviant minority must be educated.
One can hold a performance that is separate according to halakha and mixed according to the secular outlook, such that some of the women define themselves as men and some of the men define themselves as women, so that according to the secular conception there is a mixture here, while from a Haredi standpoint there is complete separation 🙂
Regards, Shams Raziel
And as for the question itself, perhaps one might argue that if the problem is only the mixing of women and men, there would be room to be lenient, as is customary with regard to secular Jews today, who are considered like “captured infants,” whom one should draw close by pleasant ways—there may be room to rely here on the lenient opinions and say, “Leave them alone; it is better that they be inadvertent sinners than deliberate ones.”
However, if we are speaking of immodest dress, there is no greater “objectification of women” than that, and even an upright and honest secular outlook ought to admit that this is improper.
Regards, Sh.Tz.
So perhaps one can put it this way:
Where there is “separate but equal,” one must examine the reason for the separation.
Racism, or something substantive.
But what does one do in a case where there are both racist reasons and substantive reasons?
For example, Immanuel. Substantively—there were religious differences, in level of piety, between the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim, and that justifies a desire for separation.
On the other hand, there was also racism, because they were Sephardi.
So, what decides?
As a public-transportation passenger in Jerusalem, including in Haredi areas, I do not understand what you are talking about or what coercion there is there.
Where I ride, everyone rides and sits wherever they want, and no one says a word about it.
In Immanuel about a third of the female students were Sephardi. The Sephardi parents too were jailed for the offense of “racism.”
Regards, Sh.Tz.
I should correct that in my remarks I amended my reference to Judge Avraham’s ruling, because when an agreement between the parties comes before him, naturally he approves it without entering into the substantive issue itself.
There is no principled problem here. Each case (student) must be examined on its own merits.
With God’s help, 19 Av 5779
To Rabbi Michael Abraham—greetings,
Regarding the ruling of Judge Yonatan Avraham, it is worth raising a few questions here:
A. Suppose the Afula municipality agreed to waive the separation at the event—what about the hundreds of people who paid good money for tickets to the event? And what about the artist who lost a substantial sum because of the cancellation of the event? Did they too give their consent to an arrangement that harmed them?
B. It appears that the judge was aware of the existence of Haredi organizers of the event, and took the trouble in advance to forbid them to put up signs and use a public-address system calling on the audience to sit separately. Since when is it forbidden to ask people to sit separately? And what explains His Honor’s enthusiasm in demanding that the municipality turn to the police in order to prevent the organizers of the event from asking their audience to sit separately? And all this without giving the artist, the organizers, and the audience the elementary right to a hearing?
C. When representatives of the Haredi public submitted before Judge Avraham their appeal against the ban on separation that would cause the event’s cancellation—why did his alacrity suddenly cease, and he decide to postpone the hearing by four days, to a point at which the hearing for those harmed by his decision would take place only after the harm had become irreversible?
D. The municipality published an expression of regret that it had been deprived of the possibility of upholding what had been agreed with the organizers, namely that the event would be separate, but said it would obey the court’s order. It gives the impression that the municipality’s retraction from its agreement to separate was not made willingly…
And these matters require further study…
Regards, Sh.Tz. Lewinger
In line 1
…the Sephardi parents as well…
On Judge Atif Eilabouni—see the article by Chen Maanit, “The Judge Who Opposes Closing Companies and Saves Thousands from Layoffs,” on the Globes website, dated 19.3.2014.
On Judge Yonatan Avraham—see the article by Yaniv Aidan, “Honor: Judge Yonatan Avraham Nominated for a Seat on the Supreme Court Bench,” on the Emek News website, dated 16.1.2018.
Regards, Shatzal
Hello Rabbi,
I read your latest article regarding separation and secular coercion.
Sorry if I’m writing in a disorganized way; I’m simply in a hurry and writing from my phone.
I felt I had to try to bring an important fact to your attention. Separation in Israeli religious/Haredi society almost always leads to inequality in resources.
Before we made aliyah, as a child, I had very positive experiences with separation. In the Caucasus Jewish community, in our community, there was always gender separation at events and even at small family events. But the women always got the comfortable places—the center of the house, the center of the table—and the men sat outside or in the outer section. Women always ate first. This stemmed from the perception that women belong in the home, within a protected space, in the center, in the middle; they need to be protected, and men can manage outside. True, this did not stem from equality, but this perception seems to me much more natural and respectful.
When I became religious, I was shocked anew each time by the way gender separation looks among the religious and Haredim here in Israel… women always sit in a much less comfortable and smaller place; usually at performances they can’t see anything; less food, fewer resources, etc.…
Two cases by way of illustration:
1. At the engagement party of a friend who became religious and went in the Haredi direction, there was separation. They are both relatively modern and educated. Although my friend has many more female friends and many more women came, the men sat in the spacious living room around tables and chairs, and the women were crammed into the kitchen, standing like sardines. That was how the whole event was run.
2. I traveled by bus with my mother to Safed, and there were many yeshiva boys on it. The boys sat and the women stood; no one even thought to give up his seat, even for the older women. One woman with a baby and 3 children even sat on the floor at the back of the bus.
I am not against separation, but the form and manner in which it is practiced in certain societies is very difficult for me.
This is not connected to your arguments, but it does touch on the issue, and perhaps it is the reason people perceive separation as something that creates discrimination.
Hello A',
As I wrote, when separation leads to inequality, I agree with the arguments against it. Even here, however, one must take the parties’ consent into account (even if one argues that Haredi women consent to their own exclusion against their will, as I explained, adults are responsible for the views they express. They want rights? They are welcome to express their will, even if they pay a price for it).
By the way, the cases you described are not characteristic of all situations. Beyond that, in many cases the women are willing to accept this because it is a natural arrangement. Only the awareness of equality and feelings of discrimination create difficulty with these phenomena. Thus, for example, in a synagogue it is not reasonable to allocate women a place equal to men, because they are hardly there and are not obligated in it either. Therefore claims of inequality in the synagogue are in many cases not substantive. In Haredi society there is a very clear division of roles, whether one likes it or not, and sometimes the differences in treatment derive from it. Therefore this is not necessarily discrimination in its negative sense.
Specifically, case 1 is also an indictment of your friend, who agreed to that arrangement (see what I wrote above about the duty to speak up despite the costs). Case 2 is one that I believe is exceptional.
Goodbye,
The Attorney General returns to sanity:
https://www.srugim.co.il/366894-%d7%94%d7%99%d7%95%d7%a2%d7%9e%d7%a9-%d7%9b%d7%9c-%d7%a2%d7%99%d7%a8-%d7%a8%d7%a9%d7%90%d7%99%d7%aa-%d7%9c%d7%a7%d7%99%d7%99%d7%9d-%d7%90%d7%99%d7%a8%d7%95%d7%a2-%d7%91%d7%94%d7%a4%d7%a8%d7%93%d7%94
Strange that this is receiving almost complete media silence (after the carnival there was in the early stages of the saga)
I am attaching for your consideration a court ruling I just saw (sent separately).
This is a decision made on the spot, and it seems reasonable to me.
These are only technical justifications (relating solely to the municipality’s manner of conduct and to the way the decision was made and reasoned in court).
As a side note I would only add that the singer מוטי שטיינמץ is unwilling to perform before women. When soldiers or listeners at public events do not want to hear a female singer, it is argued against them that legitimizing this will deprive female singers of a livelihood because they will not be invited to military and public events. What about the rights of singers who are unwilling to perform before a mixed audience? Why should the state fund all singers but not the Haredi ones?
Another point that in my view is worth noting is whether separation entails hierarchy. At a performance it is clear that the separation will not create hierarchy beyond the hierarchy in which the singer is above and the audience is below; there is no difference between spectator A and spectator B. But in a synagogue, for example (without discussing whether this is proper or not), it is clear that the partition leads, at least in its current format, to the man being in control. He is the cantor, the Torah reader, and the entire act takes place on his side. If in the Knesset there were separate seating for men and women and the speakers’ podium were on the men’s side, it is clear that this would lead to hierarchy.
This admittedly goes beyond the word “equality,” but it defines it more precisely.