The Reform movement in Israel sued to impose their values upon chareidi Jews.
A letter was laid this week upon the desk of the government legal advisor, Dina Silber, with a copy to the Jerusalem municipality, with a demand from the Reform Movement to deny funds to municipal public libraries in chareidi neighborhoods until the separate hours for boys and girls are discontinued and everyone may come at all times.
The Reform express their concern that chareidi families in Jerusalem cannot visit the libraries together as families. They maintain that this situation is illegal and irregular and that this untenable situation must be brought to a halt immediately. They apparently are unable to sleep at night because residents of neighborhoods like Ramat Shlomo or Ezras Torah can only exchange books at designated segregated hours.
The libraries in these neighborhoods are run the way they are because all the neighborhood residents prefer them that way. The Reform are suing to prevent the Orthodox from living the way they wish to live.
After publication of the letter, the chairman of the Knesset finance committee, Rabbi Moshe Gafni, spoke with the legal advisor of the Jerusalem municipality, Lawyer Eli Malka, clarifying the severity of the matter. The UTJ chairman in the Jerusalem municipality, Rabbi Eliezer Rauchberger, also spoke to said advisor, explaining, "The chareidi public libraries will conduct themselves only according to the directives of our Torah leaders and not according to any general rules of conduct dictated to them by other bodies. A library is a place of extracurricular activity and not a grocery or pharmacy designed only for purchases."
As of now, the advisor has publicized an order to abolish the separate hours in libraries, but according to an agreement between him and Rabbi Rauchberger, this will be a temporary ruling until further study of the problem is conducted in the future.
MK Rabbi Gafni said this Monday to Yated Ne'eman, "This does not involve a specific case in point but rather a general objective. The people operating in the Reform spirit in Israel have sought to secularize the chareidi public in many ways. They tried through the draft, the Core educational curriculum, blows to the Torah educational system etc. but saw that they are not succeeding and that they are not making any inroads whatsoever by us. So now they have made a new attempt which sits better with the media but their overriding goal is to thwart us and make our lives unbearable. They aim to abolish total separation between men and women."
