Naomi Ragen, Israeli Feminist Author and Activist, and Shari Eshet, Director of NCJW's Israel Office, Briefing on Gender Segregation on Some Israeli Buses

On June 18, 2007, the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) hosted a teleconference with Naomi Ragen, feminist author and activist, and Shari Eshet, director of NCJW's Israel Office. The following is an edited transcript from that conversation.

SHARI ESHET: For those of you who are not familiar with Naomi, I think Naomi is on her eighth book now. Many of you have read The Women's Minyan, The Ghost of Hannah Menendez, or The Covenant. And a new book is coming out called The Saturday Wife about a rebbetzin who lives in Connecticut, and her congregation drives her to the edge. Beyond writing books, Naomi comes from the Haredi community and has been an activist and a feminist for many, many, many years. Naomi has lived in Jerusalem since 1971 and has written hit plays and writes columns for The Jerusalem Post, and for Y-Net and The Times of London. Naomi also happens to be a very modest, sincere woman who has become a crusader in a very courageous way within the Ultra-Orthodox, Haredi community, but also is known all over the world for speaking about the issues that concern women in Israel and Jewish women all over the world.

NAOMI RAGEN: I want to begin by just giving you a little background. I think I should start by telling you how I got involved in this. This was totally accidental. I was not on my high horse. I wasn't looking to do something ideological. I wasn't involved in a women's right issue. I was trying to get home.

I was in the center of town. I was doing a new exercise regimen where I decided to do a lot of walking. I hadn't taken a bus in many, many a month, especially because of the intifadah, and I wound up taking a bus that, I guess, was a line new to my neighborhood. I'd never seen it before. It was a number 40 bus to Ramot in Jerusalem that I took in the center of town.

I get on the bus. It's totally empty. There's not another person on this bus. I pay the driver. He doesn't say anything to me. I sit down in a single seat toward the front of the bus. I took a single seat because sometimes Orthodox men also get on the bus, and they don't want to sit next to a woman. So I thought I'd be considerate and sit in a single seat.

Well, all of a sudden, people start getting on the bus, and the man sitting in front of me turns around, and he says to me, "You know, you're not allowed to sit there." I said to him, "Excuse me?" He said, "No, no, no, you have to sit in the back of the bus." I looked him in the eye, and I said, "Look, I'm not sitting in a double seat. No one has to look at me. No one has to sit next to me. But I will sit exactly where I please. Thank you very much."

I thought it was very rude. I didn't realize -- which I realized later -- that he was trying to help me. As the bus began to get more and more crowded, more and more men came over to me, insisting that I get up and move to the back of the bus. Well, by this time, I really did start feeling like Rosa Parks.

Then another person got on the bus. The rest of the people so far were pretty polite. He was 300 pounds. He looked like a sumo wrestler with a beard and a black hat. He's leaning all over me, sweating all over me, screaming at the top of his lungs, saying to me, "It's against the law. How dare you? Who do you think you are? Get up." At that point -- sometimes a person feels there's a moment of truth. Are you going to get up with your tail between your legs because you're a woman and let this guy who -- I don't know how he treats his wife at home, but I'm old enough to be, I won't say his mother, but definitely his aunt, his young aunt -- was I going to let him tell me what I was and was not allowed to do?

It was one thing in the Haredi community for them to have their laws between men and women. It's another thing for them to bring it to a public bus. So I told him very simply. I said, "Look, you bring me a code of Jewish law, and if you can show me where it's written that a woman is not allowed to sit in this seat, then I'll move. But until then, get out of my face." And I said it pretty aggressively. Well, he didn't get out of my face.

The bus driver never turned around. No one on the bus came to my aid, and I was abused and insulted and screamed at the entire ride, until he finally got off, and he threw something in my direction... a verbal thing he threw in my direction. I know exactly what he said. But I remember looking up over my shoulder, saying, "You're a great tzaddik" [a very pious man] -- and that was the last conversation I had on that bus. When I got off, I was shaking. It was a very brave front. But you feel that you've really been in the middle of a lynching. The first thing I did when I got home was to call Egged, the bus company. I said, "I want to speak to your public relations, to your customer relations board."

I asked, "Do you have a rule that on your public buses, women have to sit in the back of the bus? And if you do have such a rule, how come the buses aren't marked? And how come the driver didn't do anything to help me? Why didn't he turn around? Why didn't he say to the person who was harassing me to stop harassing me?" And they said, "Well, we'll have to think about this. Why don't you put in writing and send it to us?" So that's what I did. I wrote them a long letter, explaining to them what had happened to me on this bus.

I get back a form letter from them which was absolutely infuriating. Now all this happened in 2004 -- three, four years ago. The letter says, "Listen, it's totally voluntary. We allow the passengers to decide where they want to sit. There is no Egged rule that controls behavior on these buses. But this bus is meant to be helpful to the Ultra-Orthodox community in your neighborhood, and it's meant to make them feel more comfortable. But Egged -- they just do not get involved in this at all." They ignored the idea that the bus had not been marked. They ignored the fact that there had been no rules, and they assured me that the drivers on this bus are first and foremost are concerned about the well-being of their passengers. Which I can certainly attest is not true.

So I wrote them back another letter. They wrote me back another letter. Nothing happened. I said, "This is just disgusting, and I, personally, am not going back on any of these buses again." And I actually was afraid. I'm afraid to take any bus because they're not marked at all.

Then about a year and a half ago, I get a phone call from a lawyer working for the Reform movement, which has a Jewish Pluralism Center. And he says they've had a number of complaints from women about the treatment on these buses, including a woman who was physically attacked on a bus that was not part of these lines. First, a little history of how these lines started. Ten years ago, the Haredi community, or certain rabbis in the Haredi community, went to the Ministry of Transportation and to Egged. They said they were going to start their own bus company, because they didn't like the way women dressed on these buses.

Their poor yeshiva bucherim (students) had to go on these buses and look at women dressed immodestly. They wanted to open up two lines in B'nai Brak. It would be voluntary, totally voluntary and experimental, that women would get on at the back door, and the men would get on at the front door, and then the men and women would sit separately, and there wouldn't be any problem.

That was ten years ago -- two lines in B'nai Brak. Now there are 30 lines, and they're all over the country. They're opening up another line at the rate of one a month. So you have this situation where there are absolutely no rules. No one is coming to the defense of women who are being abused and maltreated on these buses. The Center for Jewish Pluralism took up this case and went to the Supreme Court. They sued the bus companies and the Ministry of Transportation to show cause why these buses should not be shut down or at least suspended until such time as the bus companies would be able, first of all, to show that the Ultra-Orthodox community wants these buses.

I am absolutely not convinced that Ultra-Orthodox women or even the men are happy about these buses. Because men and women can't sit together, it means husbands and wives can't sit together. I know for a fact that many in the Ultra-Orthodox community are very unhappy about that. We want them to at least mark the buses. We want them to make rules for the behavior on such buses, and we want there to be parallel lines. I took this bus because it was the closest route to my home. It's the fastest way for me to get home.

I do not live in an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. I live in a neighborhood which is totally mixed. There are Ultra-Orthodox, secular, and Modern Orthodox, like myself, and the buses do not just serve the Ultra-Orthodox community. In fact if you want to go from Ashdod to Safed and pay a certain price, then you can only take an Orthodox bus and sit in the back. There is no other bus in town. Or you have to pay twice as much money and take two different buses. This is true of many, many of the buses on this line.

So we want equality. It's a slippery slope. Ten years ago, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is a very brave Somali woman, who is still under a death threat for making a movie in the Netherlands for depicting the brutal treatment of Muslim women -- her director, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered -- said that 20 years ago, none of the women in Somalia wore veils. Then a few men decided to force the issue. Now every single woman in Somalia wears a veil.

Now we're at the beginning here in Israel. First, it's the buses. Now people are saying that at public offices in a certain town called Beit Shemesh, they don't want women to be able to come in to the national insurance office at the same time of day as men. They want there to be only men serving the crowds of people who come in with national insurance issues. They want certain sides of the street in Measharim sometimes to be closed off to women. You get to the point where you have signs all over saying, "Dress modestly or else," and you have women getting paint thrown at them and bleach thrown at them.

You say to yourself, "We're at the beginning of something, but we don't know where it's going to end. We want to be considerate to the Ultra-Orthodox community. We want to allow them to live the kind of life style they want to live, and we should be generous, and we should be open." Yes. But we don't know where it's going to end.

It's a slippery slope situation, and I think that we women in Israel and women outside of Israel have to speak up loudly and clearly and decisively and say, "This far and no further. This is not a religious issue. There is no rabbi who has come out with a Halakic [Jewish legal] decision that women are not allowed to sit next to men on a bus or ride in a bus when men are in the same part of the bus that they are." Reb Moshe Weinstein, more than 20 years ago, was asked about the New York subway system, and he said you can use the New York subway system, men and women together. Even during rush hour. There's no Halakic problem.

But once you get -- I call them makerim [the big shots] -- once you get everybody who thinks he's a big shot deciding what religious law is going to be, putting women in their place, bullying women and using all kinds of made-up reasons to do it, then we do not know where it's going to end. That is why I invite the participation of women in Israel and outside Israel to let their thoughts be known to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to the Ministry of Tourism.

When we took this case to the Supreme Court, the Egged bus company and the Ministry of Transportation had a few months to answer all of the affidavits of women like myself who wrote in about their abuse on these buses -- to say what they were planning to do about it and to give cause why these buses should not be closed down. They missed the deadline. They were given an extension. Finally, they came back, and with great disappointment, I read their answers. It was like a dialogue among the deaf. Again they repeated the same thing that the Egged spokesman had, with great chutzpah in my opinion, written to me three, four years ago: "These buses are voluntary. We don't tell anybody where to sit. The safety of our passengers is the most important thing to us." Blah, blah, blah. So now we're in the hands of the Supreme Court. And let us hope that the Supreme Court will come to some decision in which the rights of Israeli women and Jewish women will be at the forefront, and that they will give us cause to feel that our rights are being protected.

SHARI ESHET: Naomi, thank you very much for giving this background on the legal issues and the update. When will the Supreme Court hand down their decision? Where does it stand now?

NAOMI REGAN: Well, the truth is, we never know when the Supreme Court's coming in with a decision. They don't have a time limit.

QUESTION & ANSWER CALL-IN PERIOD

CALLER 1: I think it's wonderful that NCJW USA is making an issue of this, because it is beyond comprehension that this could be happening in what is supposed to be a democratic state of Israel.

NAOMI RAGEN: When I was being inundated by calls from all over the world, from all the media, you can't imagine the kind of interest that people had. My purpose in life is to defend Israel and to cherish her. So then, you would say, "Why would you get involved in an issue like this?" My answer is that these things are happening, and that I think the best possible news about Israel is that women like myself and many other women in Israel have taken this stand against fundamentalism. Many other countries have a problem with fundamentalism. If you look at Britain, you've got full-blown fundamentalism, and in many parts of the United States, you've got it as well.

I think that if you have a situation where women are clearly battling fundamentalism and going to the Supreme Court and have the right to go to the Supreme Court, that's actually good news about Israel. I don't think that anybody should feel that this needs to be hidden or that this is a terrible thing that's happening. I think that Israeli women and American Jewish women are taking a firm stand against religious fundamentalism which is harmful to women's rights, and that's positive news about Israel, and I think we should be proud of it.

CALLER 2: I have two questions. Can you explain a little bit further the non-answer, as you referred to it, from the bus company to the Supreme Court? And, then, considering the makeup of the Supreme Court, what can you anticipate as their answer?

NAOMI RAGEN: To answer your first part of your question -- the Ministry of Transportation says: it has nothing to do with them. They don't deal with this kind of issue. This is for the individual bus companies to deal with; it's not their problem. As far as the bus companies are concerned, their non-answer is that it's voluntary. They keep saying that again and again. They're saying that there's no rule that a woman has to sit on the back of the bus. People want to sit at the back of the bus because the only people getting on this bus are, apparently, according to them, Ultra-Orthodox people who are delighted to separate into two different sections the way they would in an Orthodox synagogue, and they are thrilled to have the opportunity to do this. They are delighted that Egged is providing this valuable service to them. And it's absolutely voluntary. If you don't want to go on a bus like this, then there are other buses you can take. They do not point out that the buses are not marked and that a person can accidentally get on a bus, as I did, and not know that they're getting on a bus like this.

They also don't point out and they don't deal with the fact that there are, in some places, no other bus lines to take, or that the bus driver on some of these buses tells them -- even if they want to sit in the back -- whether or not they're modestly dressed enough to be able to sit on this bus. There are women that have gotten on these buses that have been willing to sit in the back, but who were dressed in pants, or the driver felt that their shirtsleeves were too short, or they were wearing a sleeveless shirt.

One woman who was part of this affidavit was put off -- they wanted to put her off in the middle of the road in the middle of the night because her clothing offended them. They haven't dealt with those issues at all. As far as the makeup of the Supreme Court, it's very interesting. The Supreme Court has been in many instances, when it comes to Palestinian rights, ultra, ultra-liberal. But it's very difficult to know in advance what the Supreme Court is going to do. They tend to be very careful when it comes to issues that they think are rabbinical or religious issues and oftentimes do not want to get involved in these things. They want to set separation between church and state. When it comes to the Palestinians and Palestinian rights, they don't have a problem with that. So I honestly don't know what's going to happen.

PHYLLIS SNYDER, NCJW President: Naomi, let me ask you about the press that goes on in Israel about this. I know that when NCJW wrote an op-ed and put it out in the Jewish press in the United States, it was picked up throughout the country. Lots of information got out. What about the press in Israel?

NAOMI RAGEN: I have been shocked at the lack of interest in Israel. This has been covered by NPR, by The Times of London, by Italian TV, by reporters in the Vatican, Switzerland, German reporters, you name it. Everybody is fascinated by this issue. But if you look at the Israeli newspapers and Israeli television, they had maybe one article about it. Not interested at all. They're just not interested. I find it very curious that Israelis themselves seem to be less interested in this issue than everybody else in the world. I guess they just think, "Listen, it's just one more Ultra-Orthodox craziness, and it doesn't affect us," until one of them gets on one of these buses, and then they're going to feel it. Right now it's not something that impinges on their life. It's something that happens over there in B'nai Brak and Measharim, and it doesn't really concern them or worry them that much. Outside the country, this is unheard-of. But in Israel, people are sort of inured to this kind of thing. They hear about all of these things happening in Ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, and they say, "Well, just don't go there. That's their problem. That's the way they want to live." It worries me.

SHARI ESHET: This issue about the buses reminds me very much of the issue of the Agunot -- the issue of the women not getting divorces -- and the issue with women at the Wall, of women being allowed to pray in a minion of ten at the Wall. And I want to ask you, Naomi, if you agree with my theory that Israelis are not that interested in it. You spoke about it somewhat -- that they think these are issues that don't involve them, that the issue of Agunot, the issue of women at the Wall, are religious issues and not human rights issues. I think that the job that we need to do, and when I say we, I'm talking about Jewish women, whether they're in Israel or in America or anywhere else, is to really educate the Jewish community at large that these are not women's issues. These are human rights issues.

NAOMI RAGEN: I do agree they are human rights issues, and I think that Israelis tend to think that it's a secular/religious divide, and the ones that are secular say, "This is just one more religious craziness." And they don't understand the deeper implications -- that this is possibly going to change the character of the country that we live in, and that it is not a religious issue. Again and again I say this: if it were a religious issue, if a rabbi said, "This is something that the Torah forbids or that our Talmud says that you can't do," then I would say, "Okay -- there's a place here for dialogue. There's a place here to say this is a religious belief, like keeping the Sabbath or eating kosher food, and that we believe in it, and you don't believe in it."

But it isn't. That is what frightens me, because once you turn this into a religious issue, then you can no longer argue the greater issue, the human rights issue. You can make up all kinds of laws and make it part of Judaism and make it part of the Jewish religion when it doesn't exist. Then you can do to our religion what some Moslems have done to their religion, and that is, turn it into a woman-bashing religion in which women have no rights.

If you think that "Oh, this could never happen to us -- we're not like them," it's true that there's absolutely no comparison between Judaism and Islam at this point. But the problem of fundamentalists is that you give them an inch, you do no know where it's going to end, as I said at the beginning. You cannot know. That is why this is such a dangerous problem and an issue that must be dealt with.

CALLER 3: Naomi, as I've been listening to your response to other people's questions, I understand that the international media has taken an interest. I wanted to also understand what would be the feasibility -- you mentioned Rosa Parks -- what would be the feasibility of a boycott of these buses?

I would also like to know, what would be the feasibility of getting a higher religious authority? For example, a Beis Din (rabbinical court) on the area of human rights? Good idea, or not such a good idea?

And, what might your suggestions be to the international community and especially the international media that we can all take some kind of action in order to help the situation? Finally, what is the feasibility of getting the UN Human Rights Commission involved?

NAOMI RAGEN: As far as boycotting the buses is concerned, most of us who use the buses, and I have to say myself included, don't drive or don't have a car. I can afford to take taxis, but most people can't. The buses are the only form of transportation for most average Israelis and, certainly, for many women. To ask them not to use public buses would be an enormous financial burden upon them, and I think it would be very hard to organize. I think that we certainly could symbolically hold pickets and protests in front of Ultra-Orthodox bus lines to say that these are lines in which women are abused.

I wanted to organize something like that right at the beginning, but we felt that we would let the Egged bus company and Dan bus company and the Ministry of Transportation have their say and see what they answered. We would try to go through this process of the court system before we went to the streets. But I think, in the end, that's what is going to happen, and that is what we're going to have to do.

We're going to have to start handing out leaflets. We're going to have to start picketing. We're going to make our feelings known in the time-honored way in which every civil rights movement and human rights movement makes its wishes known. It's just that Israelis are burdened with so many issues, so many protests. It's very hard to get them into the streets, and, on top of our whole security concerns, to get people to rally about something like this is not an easy thing to do. But I think it's probably going to be done at a certain point.

I'll answer your fourth question by saying I do not trust the UN. I certainly would not want them to get involved in this issue at all.

Speaking to the international media, I have mixed feelings. But I certainly think that people that come to Israel and love Israel and people who are not going to use this as another Israel-bashing issue should be informed about what's going on. Believe me -- letters to the Foreign Ministry and to the Ministry of Tourism and to your local Israeli Embassy, horrified protests against the abuse of women on public transportation, will go a long way, because politicians do not like bad press. I really think that pressure needs to come from the outside.

SHARI ESHET: Naomi, I want to ask you another question. Last week, I saw in the newspaper that 42 percent of Israelis feel that Diaspora Jews have no right to interfere in Israeli internal affairs. I'm assuming that means that 58 percent think that they can and should be involved. Do you consider this an internal issue? And how do you respond to that 42 percent of the Israeli community? And I would venture to say, you know, a certain amount of the Diaspora community also feel that Diaspora Jews should not get involved in Israeli internal affairs.

NAOMI RAGEN: First of all, I don't think that this bus issue is an Israeli internal affairs issue. We're talking about people who are doing this in the name of the Jewish religion. Israel doesn't own the Jewish religion, and if you are going to create a situation where you bully women in the name of the Jewish religion, and you do it in the Jewish state, or you do it in California, or you do it anyplace else in the world, then I think every single Jew in the world not only has the right, but has the obligation to weigh in and to throw their weight behind this -- to say that we as Jewish women, we in the Jewish world, will not allow fundamentalists to take over and to pervert the Jewish religion. That's number one.

If we're talking about interference in the political process, I think this political issue definitely goes both ways. But when we talk about this issue of the buses, we're not talking about a political issue. We're talking about something that goes through every boundary and every guideline.

And who's to say? They already have these buses in America. You've never run into them. But I know for a fact that they have these buses. They go from Monsey, NY, to Manhattan, and they have been segregated for a very long time. I don't expect that there's going to be a sudden increase in the number of segregated buses in America. But as far as American Jews are concerned, when they come to Israel, they want to feel comfortable. They want to feel that they can take a vacation here and that they can bring their children here. There should not be a situation where children are publicly abused on public transportation. That is something we have a right to fight for. If Israel wants our support and deserves our support, we're trying to make this a beautiful Jewish country, and we should not let fundamentalists take it over.

CALLER 4: On the question of the press -- when you say that people aren't interested in it -- is that the case or is the press is actually afraid to report on it? I can't help thinking about the fundamentalist control in the Muslim countries with fatwas, et cetera. I know I'm not speaking about the same thing with Israel, of course. But I just wonder whether the press isn't afraid. The second question I have is: What percent of the Israeli population is Haredi?

And third, is there something we can do about it? I'm involved in an NGO representing the International Council of Jewish Women at the UN, and we have Jewish caucus meetings once a month, where all the Jewish NGOs get together to talk about issues relating to Israel. I have every intention of raising this at the next caucus meeting and, because I totally agree that it is a human rights issue, seeing whether our group would say something to the Israeli consulate with whom we are very close in New York.

NAOMI RAGEN: I think that the Israeli press is never intimidated by anyone or anything. So, I would really, really doubt they are afraid of the Ultra-Orthodox community.

I think that your plan to bring this up as an NGO at the UN to the Israeli ambassador is an excellent idea. It's exactly the kind of thing that we need, exactly the kind of pressure that we need to give, because once this issue is perceived as something that goes beyond the issues of the Jewish state, it is a human rights issue. It is something we are not going to allow to fade away and die, and we're not going to take these mealy-mouthed non-answers from bus companies and from the Ministry of Transportation. And we are going to pursue this issue until the end. I think that is an excellent strategy and it gives me great hope.

SHARI ESHET: Naomi, would you close with just a few minutes about the social and political issues.

NAOMI REGAN: I'd like to say that we're coming into this situation where we're finding more and more pressure from fundamentalists to shape Haredi society, and more and more pressure is being put on women in this society, because of deeper social issues. There is a crisis of leadership in the Ultra-Orthodox world because many of the leading rabbis, who have for many, many years been the spokesmen and those who decided these issues, are growing old.

You have Rabbi Elyashiv and other rabbis who are men, of course, in their 80s and 90s, and there is now a rush towards who's going to be the successor. Many people view coming out with more and more extreme stands, especially women's issues, is going to give them greater prestige in the community among their fellow men. Recently, they canceled the programs for women who could earn BAs in Ultra-Orthodox women's schools. Women who couldn't get jobs as teachers. After all, the women have to support the families who are living in dire poverty. They wanted to give them a chance to get a BA so they could work in computers or they could be accountants or do other jobs.

The rule came from down on high, as if it was coming from one of these leading rabbis. But everyone doubts it came from him that women can no longer get these degrees. This broke the hearts of many women. And the increasing emphasis on modesty -- they had a house-to-house search for immodest clothing and a bonfire a few months ago. This kind of extremism is coming from underlying issues -- issues of leadership, of political maneuvering. There's great poverty in these neighborhoods. All of these are a boiling cauldron is which is, as always, leading to greater and greater fundamentalism. This is something we need to be aware of, and we need to stand up to.

SHARI ESHET: Naomi, I really appreciate your speaking out, and I think that all of us at NCJW who have been involved in funding women's organizations and activities in Israel understand the significance of funding the fight of Ultra-Orthodox women for more civil rights within their own communities. I want to thank you again for speaking to us.