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,…
Hundreds of Hebrew University faculty members last week signed a petition protesting a plan to create special gender-segregated classrooms for ultra-Orthodox students on campus. For them, it represented a blatant affront to women’s rights and equality in higher academia. But for Debora Spar, the top administrator at all-women’s Barnard College, the issue is more nuanced….
New rules from the Education Ministry of the Islamist Hamas movement ruling the Gaza Strip will bar men from teaching at girls’ schools and mandate separate classes for boys and girls from the age of nine. The law, published on Monday, would go into effect next school year and applies throughout the coastal enclave, including…
As on talk radio everywhere, the announcers on Israel’s Radio Kol Barama are constantly urging listeners to call in — so long as they’re the correct gender. The most popular religious radio station in Israel, Kol Barama, a biblical phrase that in colloquial Hebrew today means “quality voice,” took to the airwaves three years ago…
Jewish pluralism and women’s rights groups are up in arms over a series of presentations featuring only men to be held at the Israeli town of Petah Tikva’s municipal cultural center. In a letter to Petah Tikva’s Mayor Yitzhak Ohayon, the groups said they would boycott the center unless he ensured that women appear in…
In order to avoid any possibility of featuring women in ads and angering the ultra-Orthodox, the Egged bus company and the Canaan Media advertising company have decided to stop using any photos of people in Jerusalem bus ads. The decision appears to have been confirmed according to correspondence between Canaan Media and the lawyer representing…
El Al passengers are noting a recent phenomenon involving clusters of ultra-Orthodox men approaching female passengers prior to take-off and requesting to switch seats, according to El Al customers and tour operators. While the phenomenon of lone Haredi men approaching female passengers is not new, and has in fact gone on for years, large groups…
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