the real goal of mehadrin buses

In this week's Mishpacha newspaper (Hebrew edition - only the Hebrew edition has the newspaper section) there were a couple of interesting articles.

One of them was an interview with Rav Menachem Kenig - the Director of the Committee for Mehadrin in Eretz Yisrael. They deal with working out mehadrin bus lines and the like.

R' Kenig claims that when they started their work petitioning Egged to put in mehadrin bus lines, they had the support of the general Haredi public. He says over time they have lost much of that support. For that he blames the "kannoim" - the fanatics, extremists, zealots.

Sounds funny, doesn't it? You would think he is one of those, as his work is to separate the sexes on buses and we think of his goal as one of a kannai.

Yet, he says, his goal was to offer mehadrin buses to the religious/Haredi public. This would sort of shelter the average religious person from the general Israeli public. When the average haredi fellow rides a bus that is not mehadrin and goes through non-religious neighborhoods, his sensitivities are assaulted by decadence, immodesty and things this person would never see. The affect on such a person can be very detrimental to his spiritual growth.

Kenig says that his intentions in establishing mehadrin buses was to include family seating. The buses were never meant to be completely separate.

What then would make the buses "mehadrin" if there would not be separate seating? I would guess, as he does not say anything specifically addressing this point, that the general atmosphere would be more chareidi friendly with people dressed modestly, as the overwhelming majority of riders would be chareidim... Also, maybe there would be means seating in front and womens in back, for those traveling sans family.

The problem is when the kannaim get involved and say that is not good enough. Then they began forcing full separation of the sexes. That is when people stopped supporting the push for mehadrin buses. People do not want to sit separate like that. They want to sit with their families.
The most interesting part of it is that he says refraining from "family seating" is only a minhag chassidut (custom of extreme piety) and among many groups who are careful in every aspect of halacha that minhag is not kept and they are fine with family seating.

As an aside, I guess you can add "minhag chassidut" to my growing list of halachic terms that are ambiguous... I do not know what his source is that completely separate seating would be minhag chassidut.

Anyways, he also adds that, "We have no right to stand up and tell people what chumros (stringencies) to keep and which minhagei chassidut to keep. We simply want to fix a problematic situation for the chareidi public...."

Needless to say I was shocked when I read that. The perception is completely different. The perception, at least the one I have, is that they are trying to tell us what to keep. But it seems that that is not their goal, but the concept was hijacked by extremists who are ruining it for everyone, as they feel the moral validity to tell people what to do.

Maybe they need to change their methods to win back supprot of the chareidi public. If their goal is just to make it available and offer the "kosher" alternative to the public without being too imposing on people, that is something that could be successful and beneficial. But they need to find a way to keep the kannaim out of it. People get upset and reject things when they feel they are being told what to do. If R' Kenig realizes that and says he has no right to tell people what to do, he is already on the right path.

(BTW, as I am concluding the writing of this piece, I have decided to keep the other interesting article for a separate post - maybe tomorrow if I have time, as this one got longer than originally intended)