Two items made the news this week. While they may seem unrelated the reason they are in the news β gender segregated seating β makes them related indeed. Chabad planned an event to be held in Kikar Rabin, a large public square in the heart of Tel Aviv.
The outdoor event will have a divider and gender segregated seating. The revocation was then overturned by the court, with the event slated to move forward as planned. How did seating arrangements become the stuff of court cases?
Since when do we need a judge to declare it illegal to ask a person to move on the basis of gender? And why is an event with separate seating controversial if the organizers want it that way? In Israel, the gender segregation that exists in Orthodox synagogues has been imported to other spaces. More and more, spaces that are not religious have become segregated. This includes certain bus lines where women are told to sit in the back which has also been determined to be illegal , college campuses, where women cannot teach men or be in the areas where they learn, medical conferences where women β even doctors and researchers whose work is being discussed β are put behind a curtain, and, in some places, are even barred from some areas of public streets another illegal one.
Some health clinic offices have gender-segregated waiting rooms. In Beit Shemesh, women were required to sit in the back of the room at the opening of a health clinic. In Beit Shemesh, a city of tens of thousands β secular, traditional, Modern Orthodox and Haredi, publications do not include images of women or girls, and women have been told that they cannot advertise with pictures of women on city billboards yet another illegal requirement.
There are people who see no connection between the increasing segregation and erasure of women and girls. I see an inherently damaging phenomenon that is getting worse. In places where women have been told where they can sit, stand, walk, and so on, the women have also been verbally and physically assaulted by men β who acknowledged the view that they should not have been where they were.
