Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit came to an agreement to soften the Justice Ministry’s policy against exclusion of women with heads of religious and ultra-Orthodox parties in a meeting Wednesday so that it would be “more suited to the religious and ultra-Orthodox way of life.”
At the meeting Mendelblit held with Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, MK Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi), Interior Minister Arye Dery and United Torah Judaism MK Moshe Gafni, the religious MKs threatened to advance legislation that would codify the right of the religious public to conduct gender-separated events, and Shaked backed their position.
In the end it was agreed that Mendelblit would formulate a policy that will interpret the 2013 government decision on the matter less stringently. It was also agreed that there would be no public statements on the matter so as not to disrupt the implementation of the new policy.
Following considerable publicity of a series of incidents involving issue of women’s exclusion from the public sphere, including women being banned from Haredi radio broadcasts, the ban on ads featuring women on buses, and other cases, then-Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and then-Culture Minister Limor Livnat decided in 2013 to deal with the issue.
The attorney general set up a committee of jurists that formulated recommendations, which were adopted by the cabinet. Deputy Attorney General Dina Zilber was tasked with implementing the recommendations.
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Zilber was vigorous in her enforcement approach, angering the religious parties. For example, last year, when Haaretz revealed that a pre-Rosh Hashanah prayer gathering in Rabin Square was to feature only male singers, Zilber told Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai that the city should not have issued a permit for the event, which was eventually canceled due to the controversy.
That same summer Zilber instructed the Jerusalem municipality to include women singers in a public prayer event, ordered a divider between men and women removed at a second Simchat Torah event and even reprimanded local authorities for maintaining separate beaches for men and women.
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