The religious rage of the day triggers an interesting debate. A haredi fellow tried to enter the Ramat Aviv mall. The guard at the door stopped him from entering, saying he is not allowed in the mall. Shock. Awe. Disgust. Discrimination. Yehoram Gaon on his Friday radio show criticized the behavior of the mall management saying it is reminiscent of Germany in 1939 when in Berlin a popular coffee shop refused entry to Jews.

The initial claim by the guard was that he told told to prevent entry to the fellow because his presence caused shoppers to feel uncomfortable.

Haredi groups enraged over this behavior are threatening to bring lawsuits against the management and anybody involved in the making of this decision. As well, they are demanding the firing of any people involved. And furthermore, there is talk about possibly arranging to being  busloads of haredim to the mall to wander around.

Mall management further explained that the mall is open to one and all equally. There are plenty fo religious people and haredi people in the mall at any given time. They even have a bustling shul inside the mall open all hours of the day and very active. They calim that their problem is with the Chabadniks who walk around and try to put tefillin on people and engage them in other religious activity. Other shoppers have complained about being harassed by the Chabadniks and they, the management, have asked the Chabadniks numerous times to stop such activity inside the mall, and therefore it has come to the point where they are being denied entry.

When the banned Chabadnik, Shneur Shneurson (love the name!), responded (to Bechadrei), he basically confirmed that that is what he goes to the mall regularly to do. He said he has been going for a long time and will continue to do so. The rebbe said that when there is something preventing work and causing problems, it shows that the issue must be a very big mitzvah. He said many stores open their doors to him, many people want to put on tefillin, and "yad chassidim al ha'elyona" - the hassidim have the upper hand as always.

The debate I look at is whether the mall can prevent such "missionary" activity. We would expect them to not allow Christian missionaries to promote their religion in the mall. If the secular groups would send to religious malls and areas secular activists looking to promote secularism and attempt to sway young religious people off the path of religion, we would understand and even demand that they be thrown out and not allowed entry. of course, shopping is fine, but once you start peddling your religious wares, that's a different story. So just because he is peddling Orthodox Judaism and mitzvos, does that make it ok? Does the mall have the power to prevent him from doing so? If certain shopkeepers like him and want him to bring them tefillin, can the mall still stop him from entering and going to those shops? I don't know, but it is an interesting debate.

What is especially interesting to me is that according to one of the reports, when Shneurson was being prevented from entering, other people nearby who saw what was happening were all enraged over the incident and tried to do what they could to make the guard let him in. People called out from coffee shops saying he is a guest of theirs, people nearby said that such discrimination is wrong, and the like.

It reminds me a "What Would You Do" program that ran in Israel a while back in which someone dressed as the proprietor of a kiosk at a gas station refused to serve coffee to an Arab customer. Other customers for the most part expressed their outrage at such discrimination.  It seems like most people in general reject discrimination whether it is against Arabs, religious and even against Haredim.

(sources for these events began with a report on dossim.net, and then Bechadrei and Bechadrei again with more details)

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