Tel Aviv residents petition court to allow public gender-segregated Yom Kippur prayers

Tel Aviv residents petition a district court to order the municipality to allow gender-segregated prayers on public grounds on Yom Kippur.

In their petition to the District Court of Tel Aviv, 14 residents and the Rosh Yehudi organization, which encourages Jews to embrace an Orthodox-religious lifestyle, call the municipality’s refusal to approve their request to hold the prayer event “discriminatory,” citing sex-segregated Muslim prayers, among other arguments.

“Just as nothing prevents a separate policy for Tel Aviv-Jaffa’s Muslim minority, which has segregated events, so there should be no opposition in principle in our multicultural society for the practices of the Jewish-religious minority,” reads the petition.

The petitioners note that thousands of Muslims attended a segregated Eid al-Adha public prayer at Charles Clore Park in Tel Aviv on June 16, where the partition between men and women was made up of fencing emblazoned with the municipality’s logo.

The municipality, the petitioners note, claimed it had never authorized the event. But by allowing it to take place without a permit, the petitioners argue, it also creates a discriminatory reality benefitting minorities that hold segregated prayer without permit and punishing those who seek to obtain it.

The petition follows a letter last week by the municipality’s deputy director Rubi Zluf, who declined the organizers’ request from April to hold a prayer on Dizengoff Square. “The municipality does not make available intensively-used public spaces […] to serve as synagogues,” the letter states.

Segregated prayer on public grounds in Tel Aviv is a controversial issue. Some Tel Aviv residents say it’s religious coercion at taxpayers’ expense, claims that led to clashes last year on Dizengoff Square between worshipers and anti-religious activists.

The municipality says it’s reviewing The Times of Israel’s request for comment about the petition.