Protest service held in Tel Aviv after city rejects gender-segregated public prayer
Hundreds join gender-separated Dizengoff Square event, organized after request for segregated public Yom Kippur service in the square was rejected by municipality as discriminatory
Hundreds of right-wing activists attended public prayer services in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square on Thursday afternoon to protest what they said was the city’s decision to ban gender-segregated public prayers during the High Holidays later this year.
The gender-seperated protest service was organized after a letter from the deputy director general of the Tel Aviv Municipality was published earlier this week in which he rejected a request from an organization seeking to hold outdoor public prayer events in the run-up to Yom Kippur, which this year will be on October 11-12.
The city has a long-standing policy against segregation in public places, arguing that there are enough private synagogues to accommodate all religious streams who want to pray with men and women separated from each other.
In the letter, which the right-wing Channel 14 television station published, the municipality’s Rubi Zluf explained that the practice of holding public prayer events began during the COVID-19 pandemic when large events could not be held indoors. Since this was no longer an issue, the letter said, the request for a privately organized gender-segregated prayer event in a public space would not be approved.
The municipality issued a separate statement on Tuesday, however, in which it clarified that each request for a public prayer event would be examined on a case-by-case basis, stressing that in Tel Aviv “everyone can pray wherever they want.”
The request for a Yom Kippur prayer event in Dizengoff Square was rejected as it would have disturbed public order by enforcing gender segregation in a public space, Channel 12 reported on Thursday.
Despite the municipality’s clarification, by Wednesday, nearly 800 people had joined a WhatsApp group that was set up to organize the protest prayer service in Dizengoff Square — which over the past ten months has become a makeshift memorial for the victims of the October 7 massacre — the following day.
The prayer service encompassed both midday and evening prayers, with gender-segregated dancing filling the time between the two services.
During the service, one protester was seen walking around the square holding a sign that read “straight to jail with the antisemite Huldai,” referring to Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai.”
Another attendee was reported by Channel 12 to have likened the Tel Aviv municipality to Nazi Germany, saying that “the exact same thing” was done to his grandfather in Germany.
Also during the protest, a woman was pushed aside and told by police that she was being a public disturbance for standing amid men while they were praying.
Adi, a resident of Tel Aviv who did not give her last name, said that she was told to leave the space as the men started to pray.
“They said I’m Muslim, that I’m not Jewish,” she said. She was taken aside by police, who told her that she was causing a public disturbance.
In the break between prayer services, men broke out into dance and called for revenge on the Palestinians — a demand apparently separate from the protest against the municipality.
Participants chanted a passage from Judges 16:28, in which Samson asks God to help him take revenge on the Israelites’ Philistine oppressors.
The far-right activists substituted the “Philistines” with “Palestine” and added, “May its name be expunged.”
The event ended peacefully, with no major disturbances, and protesters dispersed of their own accord once it had ended.
During a protest prayer at Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Square Thursday, a crowd dances, paraphrasing Judges 16:28 to ask God help them take revenge on "Palestine, may its name be expunged." pic.twitter.com/lii8yBH1hJ
— Noam Lehmann (@insomniacalpaca) August 8, 2024
The issue of public prayer on Yom Kippur in the majority secular city is not a new one.
In 2023, an Orthodox religious group defied the Tel Aviv municipality and the Supreme Court and set up an improvised barrier to divide people by gender at a mass prayer event in Dizengoff Square.
The event was protested by liberal activists, who effectively prevented the service by removing the chairs and the barrier, causing bitter arguments to break out between the two sides, as resentments boiled over after a year of unprecedented civil divide.
