Sidelined by war, fight over gender-segregated prayer in Tel Aviv resumes in court
Residents file petition alleging discrimination in city’s refusal to permit Yom Kippur service, citing Muslim public events where municipal barriers separated male, female worshipers
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter
Eclipsed by the outbreak of war last year, the dispute about sex-segregated public prayer in Tel Aviv is reemerging in a legal challenge that alleges discrimination against Jews by the municipality.
In a petition filed Sunday to the Tel Aviv District Court, 14 Tel Aviv residents and the Rosh Yehudi group accused the municipality of facilitating sex-segregated prayers on public grounds by Muslims on their holidays, while preventing similar activities by Jews on Yom Kippur and beyond.
The petition and the reasons behind its submission mark a return to a polarizing debate on the role of religion in public life that divided Israelis in unprecedented ways during last fall’s High Holiday season – until the outbreak of war, which deprioritized the issue in the eyes of many Israelis and in the media.
Then, the municipality of the predominantly secular city argued that it does not permit discrimination in public spaces, and that there were enough synagogues to accommodate all those who wanted worship according to Orthodox rites.
However, the petition notes that thousands of Muslims attended a gender-segregated Eid al-Adha public prayer at Charles Clore Park on June 16, where the partition between the sexes was made up of fencing emblazoned with the municipality’s logo.
The municipality, the petitioners note, has claimed it never authorized the event. Even so, allowing it to take place without a permit created a discriminatory reality benefitting those that hold segregated prayer without a permit and punishing those who seek to obtain it, they argued.
“Just as nothing prevents a separate policy for Tel Aviv-Yafo’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 municipality “is arbitrarily and in a discriminatory fashion preventing the traditional Yom Kippur prayer in the public space on Dizengoff Square. This move undermines the basic rights of a whole community, violated the principle of equality and gravely undermines the freedom of religion and worship, which is grounded in the Basic Laws of the State of Israel,” the document states.
Devout Orthodox Jews and observant Muslims generally follow religious laws that prohibit the mixing of sexes at public functions and especially during religious ceremonies and prayer services.
The petition follows a letter last week by the municipality’s deputy director Rubi Zluf, who rejected 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.
Contacted by The Times of Israel, the spokesperson’s department of the Municipality of Tel Aviv declined to comment immediately on the petition.
Left-leaning activists supported the municipality’s stance.
“Bravo to the municipality for banning segregated prayer in the public space on Yom Kippur,” said Shmulik Duek, a prominent activist for left-leaning causes and celebrity hairdresser from Ashdod. “Tel Aviv is a free, liberal city, the most secular one in the country. If people choose to live there, there is no reason to interfere with their lifestyles and force them to engage in religious ceremonies,” he wrote.
Advocates of the prayer event noted that Tel Aviv has many thousands of religious Jews as well as secular ones. Some viewed the municipality’s ban as a divisive act despite appeals for unity in the wake of the October 7 onslaught, in which Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 Israelis and abducted 251.
“It’s as though nothing happened,” said Elazar Strum, a presenter on the TOV Jewish news channel. “Our society was just rocked to its core [on October 7], reconnecting millions with their Jewish identity and tradition. And [Tel Aviv Mayor Ron] Huldai doubles down on a fringe, sectarian position of hate and rejection as though nothing happened,” Strum told The Times of Israel.
In addition to Rosh Yehudi, a group whose mission statement is to strengthen Jewish identity, the petitioners include Irit Linur, a right-leaning novelist and columnist, singer Michal Greenglick, and financial analyst Edward Gorban.
Rosh Yehudi’s sex-segregated event on Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv last year led to clashes between locals who objected to it because they saw it as religious coercion, and worshipers who viewed the event as a community-building spiritual enrichment. The sight of prayer books that were torn and thrown into the fountain on Dizengoff Square shocked many Israelis across the country.
Anti-religious activists disrupted the Yom Kippur event, causing it to end prematurely. The activists forcefully took apart a frame that separated the sexes that had been erected without permission and disrupted the prayers on September 24 and disrupted a second prayer on September 25, although it featured no dividers.
Following an outcry, the Tel Aviv Municipality on October 6 acquiesced to Rosh Yehudi’s request to hold a Simhat Torah event in central Tel Aviv, after the High Court of Justice criticized the city’s conduct on the matter and urged the sides to reach a compromise.
The municipality and Rosh Yehudi subsequently agreed that the Simhat Torah event would take place on October 7 without physical barriers between men and women, and with segregation being voluntary. The organizers also agreed to move the event out of the central square to a nearby location. The event did not take place because of the devastating Hamas onslaught that happened on October 7, which plunged Israel into war.
The compromise followed a High Court ruling on a petition by Rosh Yehudi. The Court said that the city’s claim — on which it based its refusal to allow a sex-segregated event — that Rosh Yehudi had violated the terms of the permit was insufficient to justify the limitation on freedom of worship.
