Jerusalem Municipality Changes its Mind: Allows Gender-Separated Events

All’s well that ends well: the Jerusalem municipality will allow events with total gender separation. This was agreed upon at an urgent meeting held with the Municipal Attorney General, Attorney Eli Malka held by request of the Chairman of the United Torah Judaism in the city council Eliezer Rauchenberger.

Background: At the beginning of the week, the Jerusalem Municipality Legal Bureau issued a ruling that cultural or other events could not be held with gender separation, except for religious events. He went so far as to cancel a large event due to be held in a week with such separation.

The decision caused an outcry among both religious and charedi members of the city council. Chairman of United Torah Judaism in the council, Eliezer Rauchenberger, called for an urgent meeting of the council, in which he and Attorney Malka as well as the Assistant Municipal Attorney General Chaim Nirgasi, Acting Deputy Mayor Yitzchak Pindrus, council members Michal Halberstam, Yochanan Weitzman, Aryeh Kenig, Dov Kalmanovitz and Deputy Mayor Hagit Moshe took place. The demand was made to annul this “illogical” opinion that consists of “secular coercion.”

Attorney Malka backtracked on his original opinion, deciding that, “In the end, logic reigned and the injustice done by my decision has been corrected, to the benefit of the needs of more than half the population of the Jewish city whose way of life demands complete separation of the genders at events.”

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!