City to pay women NIS 15K for illegal modesty signs

The Beit Shemesh municipality will have to pay NIS 15,000 ($3,750) to four local women after the local Magistrate’s Court ruled Sunday that the city was grossly negligent in not removing illegal modesty signs in some neighborhoods.

Judge David Gidoni found that the municipality’s failure to take down the signs urging women to wear modest clothing in certain ultra-Orthodox Beit Shemesh neighborhoods violated the civil rights of the city’s women, and caused severe mental anguish to the plaintiffs.

Some of the signs even gave specific guidelines for acceptable clothing.

The plaintiffs were represented by the Orly Erez-Likhovski from the Reform Movement’s Israel Religious Action Center.

Beit Shemesh, a city of some 80,000 approximately 19 miles from Jerusalem, has been a flashpoint for conflicts between ultra-Orthodox and secular residents over the role of religion in the public sphere.

In a widely publicized incident in 2011, an 8-year-old religious girl was spat on by ultra-Orthodox men on the way to school for her perceived immodest dress. More recently, the city was divided over the takeover of part of a secular school by an ultra-Orthodox girls’ school.

Mayor Moshe Abutbul of the Sephardic Orthodox Shas party narrowly won re-election in a do-over ballot in March 2013 after his followers were accused of vote tampering.

JTA contributed to this report.