Jerusalem – At least two of the women who asked Israel’s Supreme Court to remove signs in Beit Shemesh that demand women dress modestly have been targeted with death threats.
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The women said they received calls on Thursday and Friday threatening them with a kabbalistic ritual calling for their deaths, Israel’s Ynet new website reported.
Posters also were hung in the city, which has a large and growing haredi Orthodox population, giving the women’s personal details including their addresses, phone numbers and the names of their children. The posters urged people to call the women and stop agitating against the signs, according to Ynet.
The women lodged a complaint with the Beit Shemesh police.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the municipality of a lower court order in July to remove the signs. The high court ruled the signs must come down by mid-December, with the justices saying they exclude women from the public sphere.
The court also ordered the Israel Police to prevent new signs from being put up to replace the old ones.
On Thursday, the municipality attempted to remove the signs for the second time in less than a week, but were blocked by extremists, who immediately began to replace the signs.
Beit Shemesh was first ordered to remove the signs in 2015, when the high court said that they “cause serious harm to human dignity, equality, personal choice and autonomy,” Ynet reported.
Two years later, when the signs were not removed, the women who filed the original lawsuit turned to an administrative court to enforce the ruling.
Beit Shemesh has seen conflict between haredi and non-haredi and secular residents over restrictions on women’s dress and gender-segregated seating on public buses. In a widely publicized incident in 2011, an 8-year-old Orthodox girl was spat on by haredim on the way to school for her perceived immodest dress.
My bro Munch says that since the people making death threats are not frum anyway, they might as well become the fun kind that parties all the time.
Zos Torah – at Zos Chanukah? Perhaps a posek can tell these uber-chareidim to study mussar to banish their machshavos shel tumah instead of punishing women for being women. Last I looked, Torah isn’t Talibanism.
Many similarities with extreme Islam. If you don’t agree with us and my Gd, we will kill you.
It is a shame that Jews have to resort to tactics that the Muslims use to coerce people to do what they ‘think’ is correct.
In reality, if one were to study the Talmud (or Chumash) in depth we would see that Jews have always had deep disagreements on what the Halacha is and yet were able to treat the other with respect.
I feel that this overly frum group is incapable of thinking and can only see themselves as the way G-d wants us to live; yet they can not see that they are wrong in this and that it is so totally wrong to threaten another Jew who disagrees with them.
You don’t live with these psychos, I do. But I heard there’s some fantastic community retribution in place…. spurred on not by the moderates, but by community services. I really hope it is true, because that will put an end to this garbage.
Personally, as a Chareidi woman -with a (gasp) Smartphone AND a home computer (we have 3 actually), there is no way I am going to defer to these crazies. If I need to walk up the men’s side of stairs because of my infirmity, I will do so. And if some man starts yelling & pushing, I’ll do what I’ve done before – hit him with my stick. That usually works.
Its all a hoax. No death threats. Its just to paint the chareidi community in bad light. NO harm can come from frum erlicha yidden. Its all Zionist propoganda.
“…mixed swiming, dancing, texting shabbos summer walking around in biki….you lable that FRUM??!! NO…”
Of course not…and it’s both false and a Torah issur for you to make such an outrageous accusation.
Friends who are REITS grads are among the most meticulously tznius and Torah observant people I know. In addition, they are well educated…and don’t go around saying “Goita” or “Schvartze” with a sneer.