This is how the situation looked to a chareidi cartoonist
The city of Afula, located in the lower Galil, with a population of about 50,000. It has a small but active chareidi community, and there are no regular conflicts between religious and secular people there.
During the current year, the city is sponsoring 360 cultural events for the general community. Out of these, it wanted to hold one event for its own chareidi community: a concert of chassidic music by Motti Steinmetz. The chareidi community only attends events where men are seated separately from women. Steinmetz also only performs at events where men and women are separated. Thus it was natural, understood and accepted by all that the event would be held with separate seating.
In recent years there has been a systematic attack against events or any public affair in which men and women are separate. Public funeral halls are no longer allowed to post signs directing men and women to separate areas, or to announce that men and women should remain separate during the levaya. And a group of women mounted a legal attack on the Afula event.
A judge in the area court in Nazareth found that the Afula concert was illegal because of the separation of the sexes. He ordered that there be no separation of the sexes and that the police be present in force to ensure that there is no such separation.
The city of Afula appealed the order and was joined by the Shas party. The judge scheduled the hearing four days after the date of the concert.
It was suggested that the chareidi community attend and just sit their separate ways. However the organizers said that hundreds of tickets had been sold in recent days and it was suspected that they were bought by people who would come in and demand no separation. The chareidi community said that they did not want to attend an event that was not organized according to their chosen social way of life.
As things turned out, an administrative judge canceled the order of the first judge and the event was held with separation. The outside women filed with the High Court in protest, and just before the event ended, the High Court said that the administrative judge erred in overriding the first judge.
The ruling caused shock waves among all the sectors of the population.
Strong support was heard for the chareidi public in its fight against anti-religious coercion. A secular media program opened its Monday morning broadcast with a moving musical rendition by Motti Steinmetz as an outright protest against the ruling which in effect causes the chareidi public to boycott a cultural event designed especially for them for the bein hazmanim vacation period, stating that this was illegal discrimination since the law specifically allows for such events to be organized.
Boogie Yaalon, a leading figure in the Kachol Lavan party, expressed his view in a media interview: "The court made a mistake in its decision regarding Afula, but I wouldn't have attacked it."
His party colleague, MK Yoaz Hendel reacted to the offensive ruling and said, "In the public spectrum, one should be tolerant and not employ force. One should organize events for the chareidim with separation, if they so request."
These words were said in reaction to the backing which Yair Lapid hastened to give to the court for its unfortunate decision, while newspapers revealed this past Monday an event which Lapid's wife attended "for women only". The responses were many and varied, most of them outspokenly criticizing the secular coercion and discrimination against the chareidi public in `stealing the poor man's sheep.'
Political pundit Amit Segal attacked the court's decision, saying, "Courts are also subservient to the law and should not practice fashionable liberalism over protection of minority rights." But not only did newspaper columnists and `men of culture' express dissatisfaction from the ruling of preventing the religious public access to cultural events according to it path and belief; all parts of the general society as well expressed their protest.
Yated Ne'eman discussed the issue with UTJ chairman, Rabbi Moshe Gafni, who was involved in this past Knesset term with legal issues flooding to the fore by the deputy attorney general, Dina Zilber, in her attempts to prevent the chareidi public to make separated public gatherings as expressing discrimination against women, as it were.
Rabbi Gafni sat in his office in front of a desk piled high with documents, visibly overwrought. "The judge who dissolved the public event in Afula was ignorant of the law. He made a grievous mistake. Have we reached a time when a cultural event is not a spiritual vital need? What is this wickedness? Even if the performer would have agreed to a mixed crowd audience, the women would not have attended and the place would have remained empty. Why do they hate us so?"
In order to understand the muddied wave of anti-religious coercion and chareidi discrimination engulfing the shore of Torah-true Jewry, one must first attempt to understand and make acquaintance with the Women's Lobby, a highly radical feminist body. In 2015-16, this lobby received 850,000 shekel from the New Israel Fund, the European Union and the U.S. consulate which was during President Obama's tenure. During this period, various government offices gave this lobby 100,000 shekel. It is hard to understand why the Israeli government feels it has to support such a body through various government departments. Even if the support from New Israel Fund was stopped, the lobby has enough support from other avenues, but small wonder since all those involved are birds of the same feather.
According to what was reported in "Midda", the women's lobby was established over thirty years ago with its express goal being to promote women's interests, whereas in truth, it serves as a political body aiming to thwart traditionalist and religious groups. This group was active in the battle against separation of the Simchas Torah hakofos in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv.
Nonetheless, this lobby holds feminist events for women only, like one which took place in the Tel Aviv University, but no protest was heard from this body!
We must not fail in this battle. The religious representation must demand to anchor in law the basic right of people to choose to separate themselves according to their religious faith and not be estranged from the right of leisure like all citizens. Not that this is guaranteed to help, for since when have Israeli judges shown interest what legislation the Knesset passes?
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