Link Roundup: A Spotlight on Gender Segregation

Israel’s Reform Movement has also taken a stand against gender segregation by calling for the removal of the separation barrier at the entrance to the Kotel. [Jerusalem Post]

It appears Israel isn’t the only country to have gender segregation problems on public transportation. A few weeks ago, journalist Sasha Chavkin of The New York World, a Columbia University newspaper, revealed that women were being forced to sit in the back of Brooklyn’s B110 bus. The Department of Transportation immediately intervened and although the bus company denied the allegations, it promised to take action against future discriminatory practices. [City Room]

At the beginning of September, the modern Orthodox girls’ elementary school Orot Banot opened in Beit Shemesh despite attempts to shut it down by the town’s Ultra-Orthodox residents due to the girls’ “immodest presence.” The residents have continued to hold violent protests outside the school and harass the girls on their way to school. Last week, the students returned from the holiday break to the smell of a stink bomb, which had been thrown at the school. [Jerusalem Post]

A few weeks ago, we reported that the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra made the decision to remove a concert which featured a female singer just weeks after four cadets were dismissed after refusing to listen to female soldiers singing at an IDF event. Last week, Hila Bunyovich-Hoffman announced plans for a musical protest against the Orthodox prohibition of female singers. [+972 Magazine]

Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported that two girls who were sent to the province of Quebec to become part of an ultra-Orthodox group known as “the Jewish Taliban” were sent back to Israel by the Canadian authorities. [JTA]