June 23, 2014



When I count the many perks of my job, "encounters with extraordinary women" is one of the prominent ones. In recent years I have become an ardent admirer of four Orthodox women from Beit Shemesh, Nili Philipp, Eve Finkelstein, Miriam Friedman Zussman, and Rachely Yair Schloss. Last Tuesday they gave their testimonies in our court case against the municipality of Beit Shemesh for failing to remove the modesty signs that are lining the streets of Beit Shemesh.

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has issued a report that declares such signs discriminatory and illegal. Nevertheless, the municipality continues to give excuses for why the signs have yet to be removed.

Mati Chuta, the city's Director General was questioned on the stand by our lawyer, Orly Erez Likhovski:

Orly: Why are you not ordering the city inspectors to take down the signs?
Chuta: “The city has to be managed with great sensitivity towards the different communities, removing the signs is not a priority for us at all…it causes unnecessary disquiet…when I weigh these issues, I put the signs aside… There's no point in removing the signs. As soon as we take one down another comes back. It's a very expensive endeavor…We have no way to deal with it."
Orly: "What steps have you taken to implement the Attorney General's report?”
Chuta: “I haven't seen the report, I haven't done a thing”

The city's spokesperson Matti Rosenzweig was also questioned. He claimed “Women can alleviate the insult caused to them by simply removing it from their agenda. The minute women turn the signs into a symbol, they aggravate things."

The four women were given the opportunity to tell the judge how the signs affect them. Their testimonies showed that to avoid causing offense and to respect religious sensitivities, women are asked to relinquish far more substantive rights. These women demand to know why they should they be the ones to bear the cost of the religious needs of a group of extremist Haredi men. They are asking the judge, the municipality and Israeli society to take notice: the placing of signs in public spaces demanding that women observe extreme modesty standards is hurtful, it's illegal and it should be stopped.

In a Bat-Mitzva we bless the young girl, May you be like the foremothers of Israel who built our nation. There are many ways to build the sovereign Jewish state of Israel. Nili, Eve, Miriam, and Rachely are the foremothers on the front lines of the struggle for a sane Beit Shemesh. There will, one day, be a sign in Beit Shemesh commemorating their audacity, sisterhood, and unique contribution to their home town.

The Pluralist Newsletter

May 26, 2014

Jenny Baruchi challenged the Israeli economic system. She matriculated to Hebrew University and, in doing so, lost many rights afforded to her by the state as a destitute single mother. The state assumed that if she could afford university, then she did not need financial help. Jenny questioned whether if she was a poor yeshiva student instead of a single mother, would she still receive economic stipends for her studies? These types of questions inspired a series of landmark decisions by the Supreme Court, culminating yesterday when IRAC won an important victory against this kind of preferential treatment.

Jenny was right. Some 10,000 yeshiva students who fit specific economic criteria receive stipends from the State of Israel paid directly from the Ministry of Education to their pockets. Such payments are supposed to be given, according to Israeli law, only to people who are unable to work, and therefore students are not eligible because they choose to study rather than to enter the workforce. However, for decades the State has continued to pay these stipends to yeshiva students even though the Supreme Court ruled the payments to yeshiva students illegal. The payments were subsequently limited to 5 years for each student under the age of 29. In January 2011, IRAC filed a petition at the Supreme Court stating that this practice is discriminatory.

The government argued in the court that these stipends were helping economic integration of the Haredi community, but the reality was the exact opposite. The stipends encouraged Haredi men, who have the highest unemployment rate in Israel, to remain in yeshiva instead of learning hard skills and joining the workforce. Usually by that point in the yeshiva student’s life, he has a large family and would be unable 

to earn a living in any other way. Even if he wanted to enter the workforce, he would be trapped in 

self-imposed poverty.

Yesterday, a panel of 7 judges unanimously ruled in IRAC's favor stating that economic assistance for yeshiva students is illegal and will be ended by 2015. As Justice Rubinstein stated in the court's decision, this is a critical step both for the Haredi sector and for the society as a whole. What makes this victory significant is the historic step in the direction toward all members of society contributing equally and having the opportunity to benefit equally from the state.

Combining Torah study with real world experiences is as old as Jewish learning itself. The great sages of the Talmud could all have been found in the Yellow Pages of their time. Maimonides was a physician, Hillel a lumberjack, and Yochanan ben Zakai was a cobbler. They all had professions and worked for a living, and they were all models of Torah scholarship. Our Israeli Torah scholars are capable of doing the same.

Yours,
Anat Hoffman