An LBGT group filed a complaint against the haredi Orthodox mayor of Beit Shemesh after he said on television that his “holy and pure” city does not have homosexual residents. Moshe Abutbul, who was re-elected three weeks ago after a contentious campaign that pitted secular and more Modern Orthodox residents against haredi Orthodox residents, also…
One of the most bitterly fought cities in Israel’s local elections held on Tuesday was Beit Shemesh, the flashpoint town near Jerusalem. Now, the government is apparently mulling a plan to prevent passions getting so high in the future. Beit Shemesh is famous for its deep tensions between Haredi and non-Haredi residents. In fact, since…
Eve Finkelstein, a Beit Shemesh doctor, and her friend Esther (an alias) first encountered the billboards as they were driving down the Beit Shemesh’s main access road. The billboards surrounded a construction site of a new condominium project being built by Zemach Hammerman. The project wasn’t marketed in the ultra-Orthodox community and isn’t located in…
Somehow, I did not put two and two together. I read Hadassa Margolese’s post (in Hebrew) on the Maariv website back in May about her negative — even traumatizing — experience at her local mikveh (ritual bath) in Beit Shemesh, Israel. Then, recently, I read several Facebook posts she wrote about her family’s move to…
(JTA) — Two years ago, Hadassa Margolese became a symbol of resistance to haredi Orthodox domination after she allowed her 8-year-old daughter, Na’ama, to tell an Israeli reporter how religious men had spit on her as she walked to school. The report made headlines around the world and cast Margolese into the spotlight as a…
The last thing that Rachel Rosenfeld expected when she arrived in Israel four weeks ago was to find herself at the center of an uproar around gender segregation on public transportation that would cause ultra-Orthodox protesters to smash bus windows in angry protests. “It’s been a big shock that this little thing that happened to…
Ultra-Orthodox protesters attacked and damaged three buses in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Shemesh on Wednesday, after a female traveling on one of the buses refused a Haredi passenger’s order to move to the back and sit separately from the men. Following her refusal, demonstrators blocked the path of the bus and smashed its windshield,…
Next to the Modern Orthodox Orot Banot girls school in Beit Shemesh, fresh mounds of dirt and a huge hole in the ground indicate the spot where a community center is being built. Orot Banot was at the center of conflict between local haredi Orthodox extremists and Modern Orthodox residents in late 2011, after a…
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