After talks between senior haredi community leaders, police and the
Jerusalem city government, leaders of the Toldos Aharon hasidic dynasty –
the leading drivers behind forced public gender segregation in
Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood during the Sukkot holiday – reportedly agreed
that Toldos Aharon won’t use “ushers” to gender segregate Mea Shearim’s
streets this year or to impose the sect’s “modesty rules” on passersby.
Originally published at 9:27 pm CDT 9-29-2012
Police, Haredim, City Reach Deal Over Forced Gender Segregation – But Is the Deal Legal?
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
After talks between senior haredi community leaders, police and the Jerusalem city government, leaders of the Toldos Aharon hasidic dynasty – the leading drivers behind forced public gender segregation in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood during the Sukkot holiday – reportedly agreed that Toldos Aharon won’t use “ushers” to gender segregate Mea Shearim’s streets this year or to impose the sect’s “modesty rules” on passersby.
But police and the city agreed that a “safety fence” would be set up on the street to maintain order.
"The road and sidewalks will be open to the entire public (apart from an 8-meter section at the exit from a yeshiva); there will be no ushers during the event; a 2.2-meter (7.2 feet) fence will be set up on the southern side of the road.
"The fence will be built for safety purposes only. It will not be covered with jute cloth or any other cover preventing or blocking the view from both sides of the fence…
"The event will be held between 9 pm-12:30 am. At the end of the event the fence will be dismantled, and reinstalled starting 8 pm the next day,” Ynet reports that police said.
In other words, the city and police have apparently agreed to allow Toldos Aharon to set up a fence that will almost certainly be used as a mechitza, a separation between men and women, which according to Jewish law does not have to be opaque.
Police finally updated Jerusalem City Council Member Rachel Azaria, whose petition to the High Court of Justice complaining about the forced gender segregation (and police refusal to do anything about it) resulted in a High Court ruling banning the practice and specifying guidelines that must be followed to prevent such forced gender segregation in the future. Azaria’s repeated requests to police for details of their plans to enforce the High Court’s ruling had gone unanswered.
"There will be no separation between men and women," the police reportedly wrote in a letter to Azaria's lawyer, explaining the deal with haredim. "The Israel Police and Jerusalem Municipality will have representatives in the area to guarantee that the details of the agreement are being upheld."
"We hope the police keep their promise to enforce the law, so that Jerusalem can restore its role as the capital of all its residents, both men and women, allowing them to rejoice together in the city streets during the Sukkot holiday,” Azaria’s lawyer told Ynet.
If the fence is used to gender segregate, this would be another in a long line of attempts by haredim to skirt Israeli law. But it would also be another in a long line of craven deals made by police and politicians to placate haredim and allow them to violate that law by creating a quasi-legal fiction or by outright deception.