Israeli secularists, furious that Orthodox Jews had erected a makeshift barrier so men and women could pray separately in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, tore down Israeli flags strung together for the barrier and seized chairs organizers had set up, thus preventing the prayers from continuing. The barrier separating men from women in Orthodox Jewish prayer is called a mechitzah.
Rosh Yehudi, an organization supporting Orthodox Judaism in Israel, has hosted the Yom Kippur service in the plaza in previous years without a problem. But last week, the avowedly leftist Israeli Supreme Court upheld a lower court order permitting the Tel Aviv Municipality to block the separation of sexes for prayer in the public place.
Leftist protesters prevented a Yom Kippur prayer service with separate seating for men and women Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv.
Protesters confronted the worshipers, destroyed the partition, and removed the chairs that the organizers had placed.
📸 Tomer Neuberg/Flash 90 pic.twitter.com/Mz0aompDo1— Israel National News – Arutz Sheva (@ArutzSheva_En) September 25, 2023
“I heard with great sadness about the events that happened around the prayer on the holiest day for the people of Israel,” Israel’s Chief Rabbi, Rabbi David Lau, stated. “The most special day of the year turned into a sad day due to wild incitement by elements who hate religion. There are those who forgot the essence of the day and continued the waves of seething hatred. The residents of Tel Aviv came to the prayer service and only wanted to pray according to Jewish law without imposing anything on anyone, but only for those who are interested and interested in it. Then we saw that under the guise of freedom, a very broad public is prevented from praying according to their customs.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated, “To my astonishment, precisely in the Jewish state, on the holiest day for the Jewish people, left-wing protesters rioted against Jews during their prayers. It seems that there are no boundaries, no norms, and no reservation for hatred on the part of the extremists on the left.”
Mayor of Tel Aviv Ron Huldai contended, “I want to clarify clearly – I will not let the nature of our city be changed. In Tel Aviv, there is no place for gender segregation in the public sphere. Those who don’t respect the municipality’s instructions and the law won’t be given approvals for activities in the city’s public spaces.”
The famed Lubavitcher Rebbe explained of the mechitzah:
One of the inner and essential reasons for the Mechitzah … is that the synagogue, and the time of prayer in general (even when recited at home), are not merely the place and time when a formal petition is offered to Him Who is able to fulfill the petition; it is much more profound than that. It is the time and place when the person offering the prayer unites himself with Him to Whom the prayer is offered, by means of the prayer. … The union of two things can be complete only when there is not a third element involved, be it even a matter of holiness and the like. From the above it follows that there certainly must be nothing to distract the attention and the attunement of the heart and mind towards the attainment of the highest degree of unity with God.
