Court Says No to Segregating Men from Women on Israeli Streets

The decision by a Hasidic Jewish sect to prevent women from walking on the same streets as men in a Jerusalem neighborhood has been rejected by Israel’s High Court of Justice. In a rare coming-together of religious and secular Jews in the nation’s capital, secular women poured into the Mea Shearim neighborhood to march alongside religious women in protest of the custom of placing barriers on main streets to separate the sexes. The Toldot Aharon Hasidim, who are prevalent in that area, have been erecting barriers during the Sukkot holiday for a number of years. This year, the presence of security personnel enforcing the separation of men and women on two main streets in the neighborhood prompted the legal action against “gender discrimination in public space.”