Modesty Squad Dressing Down Secular Israelis

In pursuit of a lunchtime yogurt, Ronit Fahima crossed a narrow street from the Education Ministry, where she works, to a corner grocery. Dressed in a sleeveless pantsuit, she was ambushed by a group of ultra-Orthodox women who swaddled her in a blue cloth and told her she was indecent.

“May your home be destroyed!” they cursed as she ran. “Disaster will befall your family!”

As Fahima tells it, a veritable riot broke out between ministry employees and ultra-Orthodox men, until police arrived. Three of the ultra-Orthodox were arrested for attacking police officers.

What happened to Fahima was the latest skirmish in a culture war between Israel’s politically powerful ultra-Orthodox Jews and its majority secular Jewish community--with their clashing visions of how people should live their lives.

It is a battle that is heating up as a challenge to the new government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who vowed in his campaign to reduce religious influence in state affairs.

The Education Ministry is ground zero because it sits on the rim of Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighborhood, a deeply entrenched enclave of the most conservative of the ultra-Orthodox. Harassment of female employees there has gone on for years.

Now, however, the ministry has become an especially provocative symbol because it is the domain of Barak’s education minister, Yossi Sarid, who leads a staunchly secular leftist political party. Barak’s appointment of Sarid this summer removed the portfolio from the hands of the ultra-Orthodox and, in so doing, threw down the gauntlet to the radical religious.

Fahima goes to the corner store these days with a security guard. Far from remarkable, though, her story is commonplace.

“After my story was made public,” the 33-year-old secretary said, “hundreds of women came to me to confess that similar things happened to them.”

Smadar Cohen also works as a secretary at the Education Ministry.

“They throw oranges and eggs and yell things,” Cohen, 26, said as she stayed close to the ministry building on the way to her car. “Now I just run straight to my car, and I never cross the street to the store.”

Employees’ cars parked outside the ministry are frequently vandalized, the tires slashed, police say. Women say they are often spat at and called names.

“What we are seeing this year we did not see before,” said Simcha Mizrahi, who supervises the licensing of teachers at the ministry, where she has worked for 33 years. “There is more action this year. There is more harassment.”

The last month also has seen a surge in public brawls between the ultra-Orthodox and secular demonstrators over the closing of streets to automobile traffic on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath--although most of these disputes, like those over modesty, are confined to two neighborhoods in the capital.

The ultra-Orthodox, or haredim, make up an extremely pious community that follows strict rules of modesty. Men wear long black coats and black hats. Women must cover their bodies, including their arms, and married women must conceal their hair. Some women shave their heads and then wrap their bald scalps in plain scarves.

In Mea Shearim, which resembles a crowded East European ghetto, signs posted throughout the neighborhood admonish visitors, in English and other languages: “The Torah prohibits a Jewish daughter to dress immodestly, i.e., mini-dress or slacks or short sleeves. Please dress modestly, according to Jewish law.”

Many of the haredim do not recognize the state of Israel--which they believe cannot be founded until the Messiah comes--or its institutions, such as the police. So-called modesty squads patrol neighborhoods like Mea Shearim and enforce the dress code and other rules of decorum.

Summer, when the hot weather brings out sundresses and tank tops, is the high season for confrontation.

Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, a haredi leader and Mea Shearim resident, defended the actions of his people, saying they are merely trying to preserve a cherished and time-honored way of life. He said that he deplores violence but that the battle for the soul sometimes requires extreme measures.

“With all due respect to democracy,” Meshi-Zahav said, “it is inconceivable that people who visit our neighborhood should not honor our wishes and lifestyle. Secularists, tourists, everybody is welcome, so long as they are aware of the fact that Mea Shearim is a religious neighborhood and so long as they respect our way of life.”

At the very least, he said, the women who work at the Education Ministry should be willing to cover themselves when they walk from their cars to the office building. And when they do not, modesty squads made up of haredi women will continue to be present to offer scarves, said Meshi-Zahav, whose brother was among those arrested after the attack on Fahima.

Barak campaigned to end what he called “blackmail” by the ultra-Orthodox--many of whom don’t work but instead study the Torah full time and live off state subsidies. Nevertheless, once elected, Barak brought the ultra-Orthodox political parties into his government. They scored impressive victories in the recent election, winning a total of 22 seats in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament--more than twice the number of seats won by Sarid’s leftist Meretz Party.

To the surprise of secular voters who sided overwhelmingly with Barak, the new prime minister has made a number of concessions to the ultra-Orthodox. He backed off a plan to end the exemption from military service enjoyed by thousands of yeshiva students, and last week he appointed an ultra-Orthodox politician as deputy education minister.

And so, as the government focuses more intently on peace and security issues with Israel’s Arab neighbors, the war between the secular and the religious simmers.

Standing on opposite sides of Jerusalem’s Ethiopia Street on a recent Saturday afternoon, ultra-Orthodox and secular activists squared off over the street-closing issue with taunts and the occasional hurled tomato.

Three women in tight tank tops, multiple earrings and henna tattoos argued with two bearded, black-hatted men sweating in the heat.

“What are your morals?” demanded one of the men.

“You are Nazis!” exclaimed one of the women.

The haredim want to close Ethiopia Street, which leads into Mea Shearim, while the secular residents went to court to keep the street open. Allowing the street to close, they argue, would be ceding another inch of territory to the ultra-Orthodox.