Summary of story from the Guardian, December 9, 2011

A faction of the ultra orthodox Jewish Haredi community has recently been calling for segregated public areas in Jerusalem for women and men, with many advertisements in the city torn down or defaced (see WVoN story).

This week citizens have joined together to sing and dance in central Jerusalem to protest against the Haredi campaign.

The performers were mostly women, as was the audience.

They sang, swayed and danced, united in indignation at the exclusion of women and mounting gender segregation in the public arena.

The Haredi Jewish community, who are a growing minority, due to their high birth-rate, demand modest dress, the separation of men and women in public and a prohibition on women’s images featuring publicly or their singing or dancing in mixed groups because it may arouse impure thoughts.

This led to criticism by the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, last weekend (see WVoN story).

According to reports, she said at a private meeting in Washington, that the vilification of women was reminiscent of extremist regimes and that the practice of separating women and men on public buses reminded her of racial segregation in the American south in the 1950s.

Despite an Israeli court ruling outlawing enforced segregation on buses earlier this year, “voluntary segregation” is permitted in a number of public areas in the capital.

Women mostly sit at the back and men mainly at the front on some buses in Jerusalem. Additionally some supermarkets, post offices and medical centres have different entrances, queues or waiting areas for men and women.

With the blessing of rabbis, religious soldiers have walked out of ceremonies at which women soldiers sing or dance, making the protest particularly symbolic.

Advertisers have bowed to Haredi pressure to remove images of women from posters and billboards. Many that have continued to show women have been ripped down or defaced, prompting outrage.

“We won’t stop singing or showing women’s faces or dancing until this ugly phenomenon which is foreign to Judaism or to any democratic society has vanished,” said Micky Gidzin, of Be Free Israel, the organisers of the musical protest.

“This issue is a symbol of what kind of society we want to be.”

Sue Grodetsky, a participant in the event, added; “The values of a minority are increasingly encroaching on public life”.

In October, a Jerusalem city councillor went to court to force the police to stop the Haredim erecting barriers down the middle of a public street to separate men and women during the religious festival of Sukkot.

“We will not tolerate an extremist group dictating the way we live,” said the petition. The councillor, Rachel Azaria, was fired from the council’s ruling coalition for bringing a legal action against her own authority.

The campaign to eradicate women has also dismayed many ultra-orthodox and modern orthodox as well as secular Jews.

“It’s a mistake to see Haredi society as monolithic,” said Gershom Gorenberg, the author of The Unmaking of Israel.

“What we’re seeing is the actions of the most hardline elements. Within the community, legitimacy comes from how strict you are. So it’s hard for more moderate elements to openly oppose the extremists.”

However, religious and secular Jews opposed to the extremist Haredim are becoming increasingly vocal, according to Shira Ben Sasson Furstenberg, of the New Israel Fund, which has helped finance campaigns and projects.

“The issue here is about choice, and the need to enable and respect choice,” she said. Things were getting a little better, she said, but there was a long way to go. “We’re starting to see the flowers that come before the fruits.”