JTA OP-ED: Women Sitting in Back of Bus is “Empowerment�

Shira Leibowitz Schmidt points out that the rule of mandating women to the back of the bus is “empowerment of women.�

Mrs. Schmidt explains,

“Miriam Shear, who objected to sitting in the back of an Israeli bus — not one of the special buses, incidentally — has been compared to Rosa Parks, a black woman who symbolized the U.S. civil rights movement by refusing to sit in the back of a bus.

A better analogy, however, is between Parks, who stood for empowerment of blacks, and religious women who view the right to sit separately, even if it’s in the back of the bus, as empowerment.”

Why not just take this nonsense completely off the cliff? Why not claim that the men who beat the crap out of Miriam Shear are the true heirs to Martin Luther King himself?

“Egged wants to make money and doesn’t want to lose haredi customers, so it added a few extra “mehadrinâ€? lines — optional and stringent — to provide separate seating for those who didn’t want men to have to mix with scantily clad women. This entrepreneurship is as American as apple pie.â€?

Actually, it’s as Middle Eastern as being stoned to death for a theological violation.

“This is multiculturalism and pluralism. “

No – this is fundamentalism. But it’s still an ism of some sort, so perhaps partial credit is warranted?

“Women who chose to ride in the rear of the bus see themselves as partners in, and beneficiaries of, the attempt to encourage family integrity by creating temptation-free comfort zones.�

We are worried about the ones who don’t choose that.

“The Orthodox need to do much introspection to minimize the offense to those who prefer mixed seating.�

No, the “Orthodoxâ€? are not monolithic. The Modern-Orthodox are not a part of this. They did some introspection, and decided it’s meshugeh. May I remind you, it was a Modern Orthodox woman who was beaten, not a “bare midriffed” secularist. The haredim need to do introspection, and quite frankly, I suspect the thugs are not of the B’nai Torah variety, but the dudes with the curlies, and even then, only from specific sects. There is no way Sloanim or Lubavitch Chassidim were pulling this nonsense. Nor, quite frankly, would it make sense for this to be Satmar (and they do have payos), for whom the state is an anathema, and nothing is expected of Egged, a secular Zionist mass transit system.

But such incidents are being committed by someones. But we don’t know who they are exactly, or where this aggressiveness is coming from. And this is the problem with the haredim. Not that they want a segregated bus system, but that they don’t identify the specific haredim who want to enforce it for everyone.

This ill placed solidarity is rampant in the haredi world. They consistently refuse to point the finger at the perpetrators and identify them and their sect, but only denounce their actions specifically, even while praising the stringency effusively.

And that’s empowering the assailants.

And don’t point to Hirhurim” title=”http://hirhurim.blogspot.com/2007/02/empowering-women.html\”>Hirhurim” target=”_blank”>hirhurim.blogspot.com/2007/02/empowering-women.html”>Hirhurim. Hirhurim is not haredi.