Segregation Forever!

Street scene in Bnei Brak (TOI)

I love Bnei Brak. It was my “home away from home” during the 1970s and 1980s, when my parents lived there. They had made aliyah to a city that reminded them very strongly of the lives they had lived in pre-Holocaust Europe. They had grown up in exclusively religious kehillos—large sections of cities that were almost entirely Jewish. Back then, if you were Jewish, you were more than likely religious (by Orthodox standards).

After the Holocaust, my parents immigrated to the United States and lived in a largely mixed environment consisting of secularized Jews and non-Jews. My father believed that the world in which he had been raised had been destroyed forever, never to be rebuilt. Upon his first visit to Israel, he was surprised and amazed to discover that this world still existed in a city called Bnei Brak. Shortly after that visit, he bought a condominium, and a few years later, in 1974, he made aliyah.

My frequent visits to my parents gave me the feeling that their home was my home. I loved the neighborhood and the feeling of being part of a world that was not only entirely Jewish, but entirely religious.

The entire city shut down for Shabbos. The main thoroughfare, Rabbi Akiva Street, became one giant sidewalk. No vehicles of any kind—other than emergency vehicles—were seen there. On Friday nights after the Shabbos meal, it was common for families to take a leisurely walk down Rabbi Akiva.

I had never seen anything like it. There was a sea of people walking on both sides of the street and right down the middle. It was an amazing and exhilarating sight for someone like me, who was accustomed to seeing cars driving on Shabbos down Devon Avenue, one of Chicago’s main thoroughfares running through my West Rogers Park neighborhood, home to an enormous Orthodox Jewish population.

But that was then.

Today, I’m not sure such a scene still exists. And if it does, it may eventually be legislated out of existence by the city’s leaders. As reported by the Times of Israel:

The Bnei Brak municipality is working to establish gender-segregated sidewalks inside the largely ultra-Orthodox city.

In accordance with a decision by the city’s rabbis, Bnei Brak plans to segregate the bustling Shlomo Hamelech and Ezra streets with barriers and signage to prevent men and women from crossing each other’s paths, Channel 13 reported.

The plan has been in development for several years and is likely to be expanded to other busy streets in the city, municipal officials told the channel.

An official message by the city instructed residents of all ages to abide by the new guidelines, the report said.

The municipality told Channel 13 that the rabbis’ instructions are “very clear and speak for themselves. The city’s public, which is committed to obeying the great Torah leaders and heeding their words, will comply with their request.”

I wish I could say I was surprised by this development. But as noted in the article, there are already other cities where similar policies have been implemented. It was only a matter of time before a city like Bnei Brak followed suit.

I understand the concern about violations of tznius. But legislating policies of extreme segregation of the sexes out of fear of incidental contact undermines normal civility between men and women in public. By further isolating the sexes from one another, the city’s leaders are continuing the “Frumkeit chase” that has become increasingly common in recent decades.

This sends the wrong message to young people…

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