Last year, the Jewish world was shocked by the brouhaha on Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv. In an attempt to understand how a small cluster of secular Israelis came to crash the outdoor Kol Nidrei and Ne’ilah tefillos in Tel Aviv’s iconic Dizengoff Square, I spoke with both sides in the ensuing months. In the run-up to this year’s Yomim Nora’im, I hoped that a sense of Jewish identity would ultimately prevail, given the catastrophic events of last Simchas Torah and its aftermath. As it turned out, I would be in suspense until the very end.
History of the battle
One of the spinoffs of the COVID pandemic was the sprouting up of outdoor minyanim everywhere. Among the groups that held their tefillos outside was the Orthodox Rosh Yehudi outreach organization, founded some 30 years ago by Yisrael Zeira. The Rosh Yehudi shul is located on Bar Kochba Street, but during the pandemic, its minyanim assembled in nearby Dizengoff Square.
That year, the Kol Nidrei and Ne’ilah davening attracted many people who weren’t particularly religious. These people might not have felt comfortable entering a shul, or perhaps they were dressed too casually or didn’t know their way around a machzor. The tefillos were so popular that after the COVID restrictions were lifted, Rosh Yehudi decided to continue to hold Kol Nidrei and Ne’ilah in Dizengoff Square. In 2021, frum media personalities Sivan Rahav Meir and her husband, Yedidya Meir, were active in the Yom Kippur minyan, further promoting the venue. The following year, 2022, a whopping 2,200 people, most of whom were non-observant, flocked there on Yom Kippur. The davening was conducted by the Rosh Yehudi nucleus, and there were movable mechitzos separating the men and women of the core of the kehillah.
On the periphery, however, thousands of men, women and children stood around in the spacious Square, wanting to connect to Jewish tradition on the holy day. They were partly spectators and partly participants. Some had cell phones, tablets, bicycles or even pets; others looked like they had just come from the nearby beach. Nonetheless, the event was dignified and orderly. The de facto format was that whoever wanted to be in the mechitzah minyan was welcomed, while those who wanted to stand farther away could do so.
That year, the mayor of Tel Aviv, Ron Huldai, proudly praised the Rosh Yehudi Yom Kippur tefillos, boasting about how open and liberal yet simultaneously traditional his city could be. As Yisrael Zeira later stated, “After our first huge Yom Kippur in Dizengoff, the relationship between Rosh Yehudi and the mayor continued. The following Adar, he graced us with his presence at our Purim Megillah reading.” Huldai was photographed attentively following the leining and joking amicably with Yisrael Zeira.
But if everything was really so peachy keen, what transpired in the interim that caused such verbal and physical antagonism to last year’s outdoor tefillos?
Unbeknownst to most people, there was an unusual regulation lying dormant ever since 2018 in the bylaws of the Municipality of Tel Aviv. Fearing increasing Orthodox steadfastness, the city had passed a regulation stating that “events may not be held in the public domain with gender separation using physical means.” This was the codification of a 2012 governmental report on “the phenomenon of exclusion of women in the public domain.” The year before, in 2011, a small group of extremists called “the Secular Forum” had coalesced to fight a phenomenon they called “hadatah,” literally “religionization,” forcing someone to be dati. For the next dozen or so years, members of this group were actively looking out for any perceived sign of it while many in the secular media fanned the flames of dissension.
Examples of media hyperbole
Why do many secular Israelis fear an “Orthodox takeover”? One reason is that the media magnify even such minuscule steps taken by the religious sector to hold events such as musical performances or the showing of films that are gender separated. Some of the coverage is deliberately inflammatory, like the recent article written by journalist Or Kashti that appeared in the avowedly secular Haaretz newspaper whose headline seemed to imply, “Oy, gevald! The chareidim are going to foist their lifestyle upon us!” The headline read: “Tel Aviv Municipality Said Public Pool Was Closed; They Opened It for Ultra-Orthodox with Gender Segregation.” It should be noted that the residents of Tel Aviv have dozens of mixed swimming options. But when observant Jews were given a few hours for separate swimming in a public pool, a hue and cry was raised.
Another headline read: “Tel Aviv Allowing Women-Only Film Screening Despite City Pledge to End Gender Segregation.” Residents have hundreds of theaters to choose from, but when one single film was shown in a women’s-only venue, Kashti presented it as an alarming threat to the status quo. A third article by the same journalist bore the headline “A Tel Aviv Suburb Gives in to a Creeping Orthodox Takeover,” a reference to the municipal elections that were held in the spring.
Occasionally, there is a humorous ray of light. Chasidic singer Motty Steinmetz refused to sing at an open-air concert in Afula five years ago unless there was a mechitzah in place. The concert started with a mechitzah, but then the Supreme Court in Jerusalem nixed it. However, the news of their decision didn’t make it to Afula until the concert was almost over!
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