Photo by Baz Ratner / Reuters file

It’s not because I just finished reading the amazing book, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, a book about segregation in the South in the 60′s, that I’m outraged by the discrimination and segregation of women in Beit Shemesh, Israel, and Brooklyn, NY.  It’s because I read this book that I’m writing about it.

For months, I’ve been reading about the intolerance and segregation in Israel by the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) against women and other Jews.  In January, an 8 year-old girl was spit on because she wasn’t dressed modestly enough for the men in Beit Shemesh, although she was wearing long sleeves and a long skirt.   A few weeks later, an 8 year-old  boy from Ohio, who recently moved to Beit Shemesh with his family, had rocks thrown at him and was spit on by a group of five boys.  The father of the boy believes that the problem is the intolerance of “others” by  Haredi extremists.  This same boy was harassed by a Haredi man when he was walking his dog and was threatened that the dog would be killed because it was tameh (ritually impure).

The police in Beit Shemesh had to remove a sign, for the third time in one week, that ordered women to walk on the other side of the street.

In another despicable outrage, Tanya Rosenblit, who has been called the Jewish Rosa Parks, refused to move to the back of the bus, as ordered by a Haredi man.  Below is an excerpt from Haaretz:

December 18, 2011
A woman passenger on a public bus from Ashdod to Jerusalem Friday was told by an ultra-Orthodox male passenger to move to the back of the bus. The man held the door of the bus open and would not allow it to move for approximately 30 minutes.

Tanya Rosenblit, who said she was dressed modestly, was traveling on Egged bus 451 to get to work in Jerusalem. She said a Haredi man, who boarded two stops after she did, refused to allow the driver to close the door after he saw Rosenblit. Rosenblit said the man called her a derogatory word for a non-Jewish woman, and told the driver it was his right to have her sit in the back and that he had paid to be able to do so.

The strange thing is, Haredi woman seem to think nothing is wrong with this segregation and subjugation.  According to a news report,  “A religious woman on the bus, who gave her name only as Bracha, said there was no humiliation in sitting in the rear.”   The justification of this poor treatment of women  is due to  a traditional edict to avoid sexual temptation (sexual temptation from an 8 year old in long sleeves!!??).   In the name of religion and righteousness, Haredi Jews believe that violence, protests, intolerance, and arrogance, is justified.

Thousands of miles away – far from the Middle East – I was relaxing and reading the New York Post on Sunday, January 22, 2012, when I saw  this big headline of a two page article, “A Jewish Civil War,” with a large photo of the inside of a bus  – a woman in the back; two men in the front – with the caption:

“In Brooklyn, a Jewish woman sits in the back of the bus.  The ultra-Orthodox have pushed for segregated transportation.”

WHAT????????!!!!!!????????????  YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!??? WOMEN IN THE BACK OF THE BUS  15 MILES AWAY FROM ME IN BROOKLYN?????

No way could this be true!!  I read with jaw-dropping shock the article by Ben Hirsch – not about segregation in the South in the 60′s, not about segregation on a bus in Israel, but about segregation in Brooklyn and upstate  New York, and the special treatment the ultra-Orthodox community gets from political strong-arming.  TODAY.  RIGHT NOW. Ben Hirsch  has been accused of being anti-Semitic for speaking out on issues like these:

•  Yiddish signs in the Hasidic village of New Square, New York remind men and women to walk on opposite sides of the street.
• A resident of New Square who dissented with the grand rabbi was set on fire during an attempt to burn down his house.
• On public buses that run between the Hasidic neighborhoods of Willliamsburg and Borough Park in Brooklyn, women have been instructed to sit in the rear of the bus.
• In Williamsburg, New York City workers had to remove signs that instructed women to move aside when they see a man approaching.
• In Midwood, Brooklyn, a wig shop was forced to close because the mannequin’s head was found to be too provocative.
• NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, both Jewish, were compared to Nazis and Russian czars, when Frieden wanted to warn the community of a health risk during a circumcision.  The warning was perceived as a threat to religious freedom and Frieden backed off.
• In 2010, the Hasidic community was able to get bike lanes removed from streets in their neighborhood to eliminate female cyclists in shorts and skirts from riding through their neighborhood.
• The publicly funded organization, Boro Park Shomrim, a private security patrol, maintains a list of suspected child molesters who they do not report to the police because, “the rabbis don’t let you.”
• In May 2011, an Agudath Israel spokesman instructed lawyers and mental-health professionals that reports of child sexual abuse must first be made to rabbis.  Only then, if the rabbis agree, should the police be notified.

Ben Hirsch ends his article with the following plea:

Woe unto anyone who dares criticize the rabbis.  I did so and was accused in print of being an anti-Semite….

The reality of Jewish demographics is no different here than in Israel – the ultra-Orthodox birth rate dwarfs that of the general Jewish community.  Thus, there is a real likelihood that this “Taliban Judaism” – that has women and men walking on different sides of the street and rabbis defending life-threatening practices – will in time become the dominant form of Judaism in the US.

But this is an issue for the broader Jewish community.  Silence is acquiescence.  It is incumbent upon major Jewish organizations and moderate Jews – and that includes moderate Orthodox Jews – to step up and condemn the creeping extremism of the ultra-Orthodox community.

The fact that these communities have been able to extract all sorts of special treatment has implications for the larger society.  If this group can get a health commissioner to back down, bike lanes removed, NYPD officials deferring to unsupervised security patrols, and most troubling of all, the DA to allow rabbis to handle sex-abuse cases – what might be next?…

And, when the strictly Orthodox rabbinic leadership’s conduct falls to levels so deplorable that they begin to tarnish the credibility and reputations of the communities they’re employed to serve, it becomes time to replace them.

And I don’t think it makes me an anti-Semite to say that I believe that time has come.

And I don’t think it makes me an anti-Semite to agree 100% with Ben Hirsh and to say with unequivocal conviction, that there is  no way in no religion and no culture and no country that there is any rationale that can justify any kind of segregation and special treatment against anyone anywhere.  No way.

De-classified report documenting atrocities at Auschwitz

Incident #48
Informant remembers that in ‘Nov 43 there occurred the celebrated incident when a notorious S.S. SCHARTFUEHLER, SCHILLINGER, one of the worst murderers and henchmen in BIRKENHAU, was shot dead with his own revolver by a French Jewish actress who had already been stripped naked and was about to be gassed.  Incidentally, informant states that men in the KWARANTENENLAGER were able to witness the almost daily spectacle of open lorry loads of naked women who were being carried from the adjacent FRAUENLAGER for liquidation in the gas chambers.

In May 31, 1945, a 33 year-old Polish man told British intelligence about a  Jewish woman’s final act of resistance in the undressing room of crematorium II in Birkenau, the antechamber to the gas chamber.  In November 1943, the woman, stripped naked and about to be sent to the gas chambers, realized the danger she was in.  She seized the pistol of the SS soldier, Josef Schillinger, and shot him dead.  She shot another SS soldier, Wilhelm Emmerich.  The SS suppressed the mutiny and killed all the women.

The woman is believed to be a French actress named Franceska Mann, although this hasn’t been positively verified.  This brave act of resistance was discovered by The Archive Muckrakers,  who obtained a copy of a rarely viewed 10 page report, which was found in a U.S. Army intelligence file and was declassified in 2010.  There is a slightly more detailed description of this account at the Auschwitz-Birkenau website.

Yesterday , January 27, was Holocaust Remembrance Day.  It was on this day in 1945 that Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by Soviet forces. My husband’s uncle, who died last year, was a Holocaust survivor.   The number 128103 was tattooed on his left arm by the Nazis.  He participated in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and was imprisoned at three concentration camps – Madjanek, Auschwitz.  He was liberated from Buchenwald.

This April 19, 2012, when I light a candle for Yom Hashoah, I will also be thinking about Franceska Mann, a brave tragic actress, and the millions of innocent people lost and the millions of descendents who were never to be.