The fate of the State of Israel will ultimately depend on how this silent majority reacts to the growing religious extremism. Yoav Ari Dudkevitch/Stillsbank
“She learned at a very young age that there are some not very nice people out there. That is not something I had to deal with as a kid,” said Na’ama’s mother Hadassah, 31, who came to Israel from Chicago with her parents when she was a toddler. In Beit Shemesh, she observed, there have been ongoing tensions for some time between two sides: the Human rights activists protest the segregation of women and men on the streets in Mea Shearim. relatively new, more conservative ultra-Orthodox community and the veteran secular and more the stage in her stead (men and women liberal Modern Orthodox residents had to sit separately at the event); and In the preceding weeks, the is- the news about a medical conference on sue of gender discrimination against infertility that was not allowing women women in the public sphere had come to give presentations. These two events to the forefront of the national Israeli ignited a foray of indignation within the discourse, with the attack on Na’ama secular and more moderate religious setting off a series of large protests. segments of Israeli society. Gender segregation on buses, sideThe rifts continued. Protesters dewalks, health clinics and in other areas picted the Jerusalem police commander was discussed at length in the media. as Hitler on posters because he instructThen there was the news about a Minis- ed public bus lines with mixed-sex seattry of Health (haredi-controlled) award ing to drive through ultra-Orthodox ceremony where a prestigious female re- neighborhoods; vandals blacked out searcher had been asked to send a male women’s faces on Jerusalem billboards; representative to accept her award on when a female soldier refused to move
to the back of a Jerusalem bus, an ultra-Orthodox man accosted her while others screamed “prostitute” and “shiksa” (he was indicted for sexual harassment and unruly misconduct); the chief rabbi of the air force resigned his post because the army refused to excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform. And despite a new ministerial directive presented to the Knesset instructing burial societies and municipal rabbis that they may not prevent women from giving eulogies at funerals, concerns remain that the directive will not be enforced. Though violence against women by the extreme ultra-Orthodox seemed for a moment to have decreased under the increased media scrutiny and cold rainy winter weather, Israelis were once again outraged when in late January a woman was viciously attacked by an ultra-Orthodox mob of men in Beit Shemesh as she put up posters for the national lottery. Such incidents leave Israelis like Balton-Laor and Margolese wonder-
SPRING 2012
Na’amat Woman
11