ultra-Orthodox
Image via RNS/Reuters/Michal Fattal
An Orthodox Jewish organization opposed to female-led prayers at the Western Wall bused in between 1,000 and 2,000 Orthodox high school girls to prevent a feminist group from praying.
Liba, an organization whose goal is to prevent pluralistic prayer at the holy site, instructed the girls to fill up the women’s section so the feminist group, Women of the Wall, could not enter to perform their monthly prayer on Feb. 27.
Kim Kardashian leaves the Cathedral of Saint James in Jerusalem’s Old City. Photo via REUTERS / Ammar Awad / RNS
This has gotta be a first: Kim Kardashian is not in the picture.
But it’s happened, in Israel, on an ultra-Orthodox Jewish news website, which covered or blurred her face in a picture taken of her during her stopover in Jerusalem this week.
Kim and husband Kanye West had dinner on April 13 with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, but the picture of the three of them was altered.
It showed only Kanye and the mayor, with Kim’s face covered by a picture of a receipt or just blurred to the point of oblivion.
Nissim Ben Haim, an editor at the Kikar HaShabbat website, said April 15 they removed Kim because she is a “pornographic symbol” who contradicts ultra-Orthodox values, according to The Associated Press.
The website wasn’t too happy with Barkat, either, because he dined with the couple at a high-end but non-kosher restaurant, and supposedly the bill was was nearly $700.
In its article, the website referred to Kim as merely “West’s wife,” which must have been amusing to both.
El Al Boeing 767-300 in the air. Photo courtey of Aero Icarus via Flickr/RNS.
A Chicago woman has launched an online petition asking El Al Airlines to allot a section of its planes to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who do not want to sit next to women.
Sharon Shapiro initiated the petition on Sept. 28, after two instances when several ultra-Orthodox men flying on Israel’s national carrier refused to sit in their assigned seats, which adjoined a seat occupied by a woman. The flights were delayed after female passengers refused to relinquish their assigned seats and the ultra-Orthodox men refused to sit down.
Incidents like these have been going on for years, according to women’s rights advocates.
Gender segregation is a core precept in ultra-Orthodox society, which believes that contact between unrelated men and women is strictly forbidden by Jewish law.
In Israel, attempts by some ultra-Orthodox men to impose gender segregation in public spaces such as offices, public buses and even streets in certain neighborhoods have prompted legal action by groups opposed to what they view as religious coercion.
Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm. Photo courtesy RNS/Wikimedia Commons.
The chancellor and head of the seminary at Yeshiva University, the flagship U.S. school for Orthodox Judaism, resigned his posts on Monday and acknowledged that he had mishandled sex abuse allegations against staff members in the 1980s.
In a letter sent to students, faculty, alumni, and donors, Rabbi Norman Lamm, 85, said that in failing to report the abuse complaints to police, he was acting “in a way that I thought was correct, but which now seems ill conceived.”
“I understand better today than I did then that sometimes, when you think you are doing good, your actions do not measure up,” wrote Lamm, for decades a leading figure in Orthodox Judaism.