For the second time this month, the Tel Aviv District Court postponed ruling on a petition asking it to order the municipality to allow gender-separated davening on Yom Kippur on public grounds.
In the hearing on Thursday, Judge Erez Yakuel instructed the municipality to obtain by Sept. 19 a position paper from the Tel Aviv Religious Council, which is subordinate to the Chief Rabbinate, on the municipality’s claim that halacha does not require a mechitza when the minyan is outside.
The municipality claimed this at a preliminary hearing last week on a petition by 14 residents and the Rosh Yehudi group, whose mission statement is strengthening Jewish identity. The petitioners went to court following the municipality’s refusal last month to issue a permit for the annual Yom Kippur minyan that Rosh Yehudi has been organizing at Dizengoff Square in recent years. Yom Kippur begins this year on Oct. 11.
The events of last year’s Yom Kippur davening at Dizengoff Square, which Rosh Yehudi held with a permit, shocked Jews and others across the world. Secular activists interrupted the event, tearing down Rosh Yehudi’s dividers—frames made of flexible materials to symbolically separate the genders while respecting the municipality’s ban on physical barriers. Some activists threw siddurim into the square’s fountain as they harassed and chased away Jews trying to daven on the holy day.
At last week’s hearing, the judge postponed ruling because he wanted the parties to compromise. Rosh Yehudi told the court it would move the event to anywhere in the city. The municipality insisted that it could not allow gender-separated prayer because this would discriminate against women. (JNS)
{Matzav.com Israel}