A female rabbi has spent years fighting the ultra-Orthodox-led discrimination against women in Israel. Now the rest of the country is joining her.

Last week, synagogues around the world began reading the Book of Exodus. The story of the Israelite people enslaved in Egypt begins with their suffering under the hands of Pharaoh, who slowly increases the heavy and senseless nature of their work, demoralizing them until they finally cry out to God for help.

Mainstream Israeli society has reached a similar point of demoralization in recent months following one after another attempt by the ultra-Orthodox sector to "put women in their place.” To this I say, “What took you so long?” As a female rabbi living in Israel, I have spent years trying to shed light on the gender inequities, promoted by the ultra-Orthodox, that have seeped into mainstream society through laws and cultural practice. 

Take the public buses in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. Women who refuse to sit in the back, cordoned off from men, have found themselves harassed, even beaten. Now there are even separate women's supermarket shopping hours, amusement park days, and streets on which women walk on one side of the road and men on the other, more like Saudi Arabia than the democratic countries with which Israel tends to ally itself.

I have long refused to get used to the rigid gender requirements the ultra-Orthodox have chosen for themselves—and that affect me in numerous ways. When I called my state socialized-medicine provider a few weeks ago to make a doctor’s appointment, I was told to come in modest dress, because the clinic is located in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. Uncomfortable with the mandate, I made the appointment to see the same doctor somewhere else, although I will have to travel farther to get there. It is winter here, so wearing a big, long coat would not have been a major inconvenience. But on principle, I will not be party to this blatant—and rapidly spreading—violation of my civil rights.

The imposition of ultra-Orthodox ideology on the rest of Israeli society has been going on for years. Signs have been posted in ultra-Orthodox (haredi) neighborhoods for decades telling women to dress modestly, by which they mean sleeves covering the elbows, skirts below the knees, a high neck line, closed shoes with socks or stockings, and a hair covering. People seemed willing to go along with this when visiting these neighborhoods, I gather, because they felt that as long as they were visiting haredi turf, they should respect the community. No matter that the idea behind the dress code is that women should cover themselves up so as to prevent male sexual arousal, rather than teaching men to control themselves and relate to women as intellectual and spiritual equals.

Moreover, there is a sense in Israel that the ultra-Orthodox are somehow the most authentic of Jews and therefore the proper keepers of religious traditions. When I first moved to Israel 15 years ago, I immediately became active in Women of the Wall, a group of women who have been praying aloud at the Western Wall, where there are separate sections for men and women. On the men's side, there is loud singing, group prayer, and reading from the Torah scroll, while on the women's side there is only silent individual prayer. For raising our voices in prayer, we have been harassed and even physically attacked by ultra-Orthodox men and women alike. The fact that I, a tax-paying Israeli citizen, could not pray as I wished at a public religious space, seemed to me an unthinkable violation. But most of Israeli society, including both the modern religious and the secular, was not nearly so outraged.