Encouraged by my own uneventful ride on a once sex-segregated bus a few months ago, I thought the whole topic was dying down and we were miraculously learning to live and let live. Unfortunately, the story of Tanya Rosenblit has brought the reality of bullying fanaticism masquerading as religious piety roaring back into the headlines again, with greater force than ever.
Traveling to the Givat Shaul neighborhood in Jerusalem from her home in Ashdod, she’d boarded the 451 Egged bus from Rova 7 in Ashdod, which would leave her a five-minute walk from her destination. Innocently, she selected the seat behind the driver simply because she wanted to ask him when to get off.
Who or what is convincing apparently non-mentally-ill religious Jewish women to parade around like human laundry baskets? I am referring to the phenomenon of the “Taliban women” recently condemned and lambasted by the Eda Haredit (Badatz) for ironically being a little too modest, even for them.
In the beginning, there was one woman in Beit Shemesh (where else?) who decided to cover her head and face with a shawl. Since she herself was indicted and convicted of child abuse, and her children admitted to engaging in incest, one would think it unlikely she’d engender a following.
How little you know. The movement is not only alive and kicking, but apparently growing. How much is a matter of great debate. Some …
Oh my, oh my, the impassioned (if minuscule) protests we’re seeing against the new amendment to the 1965 libel law, which recently passed its first reading in the Knesset! You’d think that the government was about to legalize strangling budding Woodwards and Bernsteins.
MK Shaul Mofaz (Kadima) declared (I’m assuming with a straight face, even if his head was screwed on backwards) that “1984 is already here, and it’s awful.” Kadima leader Tzipi Livni called it a “silencing law.” A Tuesday protest organized by (who else?) Peace Now and Meretz which met (where else?) on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv chanted: “Bibi, Bibi, you have gone too far. Israel is not Iran.” Later, at Tel Aviv’s Cinematheque, journalists and wanna-bes …
The recent stabbing of a teenager in the northern Jerusalem suburb of Ramot, apparently by a resident of Beit Iksa, hit me hard. I lived in Ramot for 23 years, 16 of them directly across the wadi from Beit Iksa. All during the intifada when buses were blowing up all over the country, the men of Beit Iksa walked across the wadi and up the steps next to my house to work as laborers, without incident. Often, they passed me by in groups, watching as I tended my fruit trees and grape vines. Sometimes I even offered them fruit, which they smilingly declined or accepted. The sound of their muezzin and darbuka (drums) filled my …
How did we get here? What is it going to take for this government to act in a responsible way which shows it is running a sovereign state?
Rockets launched from Gaza are falling again. Nothing new. What I love is the way the press reports this stuff: “The quiet was disturbed,” writes Ynet. It reminds me of what my daughter Rachel used to say on fast days when she was little: that she was weak from all the fasting she was doing between breakfast and lunch.
Enough with the phony Egyptian-brokered “cease-fires” that last only as long as it takes to reload. Enough with the warnings, the finger shaking, the attempts to hit back without hurting anyone so that …
The electrifying news that a deal had been reached to free kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit came a day before the Sukkot holiday. The initial euphoria that this national nightmare was finally coming to an end soon gave way to a mixture of emotions, from outrage over the dangerous murderers to be released as part of the deal to fear of allowing Hamas to claim a major victory, setting a precedent for the future.
For me, there was a particular anguish: Nasser Batima, convicted of planning the 2002 Passover suicide bomber attack on the Park Hotel, was one of those to be released.
My mind went back to 2002. There I was in the Park Hotel in Netanya moments before …
Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist, playwright and journalist who has lived in Jerusalem since 1971 and who writes regularly to her mailing list about Israel and Jewish issues.
Naomi has published eight internationally best selling novels, and is the author of a hit play (Women's Minyan) which has been performed more than 500 times in Israel's National Theatre (Habimah) as well as in the United States and Argentina. She is a tireless advocate for women's rights in Israel, campaigning against gender segregation on Israeli buses and bias in rabbinical courts.
Naomi is a sought-after lecturer all over the world. If your group is interested in hosting Naomi, please click here.
Women to the Back of the Bus!!I Am Not Sitting in the Back of the Bus (published in the Jewish Chronicle on 23 Feb 2007) - Why, together with other women, I filed suit to put an end to the primitive and degrading gender-segregated bus lines now popping up all over Israel.
Read my original article about how I was attacked by a religious fanatic because I refused to move to the back (the "women's section") of a Jerusalem bus.
Read about an American woman beaten because she refused to move to the back of a Jerusalem bus.
Read my article explaining why segregated buses are just the latest crazy idea of fanatics with too much free time on their hands.
Read about haredi women who want to sit with their families and don't want to be forced to crowd together in the back of the bus.
Israel Bus Rule Sparks Religious Row - How the liberal western media perceive all this fanaticism.
October 2011 - The Ghost of Hannah Mendes is published in French as Le Fantôme de Dona Gracia Mendes.
October 2011 - The Tenth Song published in paperback.
May 2011 - Four-time Tony nominee Tovah Feldshuh directs a staged reading of Women's Minyan at New York's Westside Theater. The reading was produced by One Circle Productions, in partnership with Safe Horizon.
Watch the reading.
Watch an interview with Naomi and Tovah Feldshuh.
April 2011 - The Tenth Song is published in Hebrew, as השיר העשירי.
January 2011 - Israel Supreme Court declares gender segregation on buses illegal, but says women may continue to "voluntarily" move to the back of the bus.
January 2011 - Jephte's Daughter is published in Italian, as Una moglie a Gerusalemme.
October 2010 - The Tenth Song published.
October 2010 - Jephte's Daughter is published in French, as fille de Jephte.
November 2010 - Sotah awarded the Prix WiZO for 2010.
June 2009 - Sotah is published in French.
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