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…
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…
As the girls made their way home from Beit Shemesh’s Orot Banot school late last month, they appeared relaxed and carefree. Among the students was the strikingly blonde second-grader Naama Margolese, heading confidently home accompanied by her friend. For Hadassa Margolese, who waited at home for her daughter to arrive while cuddling her youngest child,…
Little Na’ama Margolese is not the first Israeli child to be harassed on her way to school by members of a fundamentalist ultra-Orthodox sect who resent her presence in or around their neighborhood. But the 8-year-old girl is the first to have her plight featured on Israeli television and turned into an international news story….
Israel has a new and unlikely national heroine. She is a small, blond, bespectacled Orthodox 8-year-old girl, the daughter of American immigrants who live in Beit Shemesh. Her name is Na’ama Margolese and she was featured in a news broadcast on Israel’s Channel 2 about the ongoing Haredi harassment of the girls who attend the…
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