To the back of the bus

Editorial

A report making its way to Canadian media last weekend depicts an Israel where a woman can be physically assaulted for 20 minutes for the offence of sitting at the front of a bus with ultra-religious men.

To North American audiences, or those familiar with recent American history, the "back of the bus" scenario has deeply fraught associations. But, while this story reaches us, probably, because it has a Canadian angle, anyone familiar with Israeli society knows the spiel of religious extremism targeting those they deem immodest or otherwise sacrilegious.

The victim in this case, Miriam Shear, is a Canadian woman from Toronto. Having refused to give up her seat and move to the back of a bus when a religious man took exception to her presence, Shear, herself a religious woman on her way to the Old City to daven, was set upon by five men for 20 minutes and, according to the Globe and Mail, "she was slapped, pushed out of her seat and onto the floor, beaten and kicked; her hair covering fell off, a great shame for a married religious woman, and she suffered bruising to her cheek."

Shear condemned, in the weekend Globe article, the silence of rabbinical leaders on this abomination.

It should not require stating that this is not an issue of religious freedom. This is an issue of criminal assault, with appalling social implications. It is also, from a Jewish ethical standpoint, simply and unbelievably wrong.

The irony of a frum Jew spitting on, assaulting and degrading another Jew while purporting to be holier than the victim should not require pointing out. There is a long history of rock-throwing, spitting and verbal abuse being hurled on people who happen into certain Israeli neighborhoods in what the locals consider immodest apparel.

Now, a petition to Israel's Supreme Court will challenge the segregated bus issue.

We can argue that communities may legitimately expect the provision of public services that respect their cultural norms, but we cannot tolerate physical violence against those who opt not to participate in a segregated system. We would not tolerate, for example, private school kids spitting and assaulting public school kids. In the case of religious bus passengers in Israel, there are, according to the report, about 30 routes with designated gender-separated (mehadrin) buses. But the recent incident occurred, apparently, on a bus that was "informally" segregated; that is, one in which the gender segregation is informally enforced by, it would appear, hitting and spitting.

The bus issue comes to international light concurrently with "bleach patrols," which are apparently groups of religious thugs – the Jewish activist-author Naomi Ragen calls them local Taliban – splashing with bleach individuals they determine to be dressed immodestly. (Those of us with fashion sense may have this same impulse while walking down Robson Street or anywhere that 16-year-old North Americans congregate, but we resist.)

The nature of secularism in a Jewish context is worthy of further discussion, but for the purposes of this discussion, secularism and Jewishness are really not the issues. Never mind all the theological concerns – where were the police? Why were the perpetrators of such abominable and clearly illegal assaults not arrested and charged? At the moment when one person's freedom of religion expresses itself in physical violence, it passes from the realm of religious freedom and becomes criminal assault, superseding any lofty claims of higher authority. At least, that's how it's supposed to work in secular, democratic states.

For Canadian Jews, all of this should be a concern, not because it was a Canadian who was victimized in this most recent case, but because this suggests the sort of essential identity politics that was typified by the "who is a Jew" debate that was raging before 2000, when the intifada eclipsed such esoteric matters. Again, Diaspora Jews play a dubious role in Israel's body politic – some say they should play no role at all – but when any member of klal Yisrael is assaulted or vilified, in Israel or Azerbaijan or anywhere, it should be a concern to all Jews.

While it is up to Israelis to make their own policies and to find the point of compromise and co-existence on these deeply impassioned and elemental issues of identity, Canadian Zionists are naturally moved by such issues. We who have advocated for and defended Israel over these difficult years often make the case that Israel is not, like its neighbors, a theocracy. While it is a complicated concept, in practice it is really remarkably simple: Israel is a democratic, secular, Jewish state. While it makes provisions – and very significant ones, at that – for religious and other minorities, its transcendent core principles are egalitarianism and fair application of the rule of law. That is the Israel we love and defend.

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