The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission came down hard on Mavis Tire Co. for religious discrimination.

“We commend Mavis for their commitment to complying with Title VII’s requirement to accommodate job applicants’ and employees’ sincerely held religious beliefs and practices,” said Arlean Nieto, acting director of the EEOC’s New York District Office. “Employers cannot refuse to hire a job applicant to avoid granting a request for a religious accommodation. Employers need to take reasonable efforts to accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious belief, unless such an accommodation would pose an undue hardship.”

Today, in honor of the first day of school, many politicians spent time visiting schools around the country.

MK YomTov Calfon (Yamina) has proposed a law that would [attempt to] put an end to discrimination in seminaries based on ethnicity.

According to INN, MK Moshe Arbel (Shas) has filed a complaint against the Labor party for its recent round of appointments in which MK Emilie Moatti was passed over, possibly in a discriminatory fashion, as she is of Sephardic descent.

According to Kipa, the Ministry of Culture, headed by Minister Chili Tropper, is "looking into" the possibility of opening running a program called "Israeli Shabbat" (שבת ישראלית) . This Israeli Shabbbat program would include, possibly, the opening of museums on Shabbos for free, sponsored by the ministry.

There is clear discrimination against the Haredi sector. For example, they today approved the reopening of restaurants, but if you would try to make a wedding with 50 people you would get fined. Why? What is different about that from restaurants?

  -- MK Yisrael Eichler

sure, because every time I go to dinner in a restaurant we suddenly break out in 45 minutes of dancing. And people pick each other up on their shoulders for more excitement. And at weddings people sit shoulder to shoulder with people from other families rather than with their own spouse.

But besides for that, even if there were no differences, why is continuing to ban weddings discriminatory against haredim? Do non-Haredim not get married? Are only Haredim banned form holding weddings of 50 people, while non-Haredim could have large weddings? Are only non-Haredi restaurants allowed to open while Haredi restaurants are not allowed to? I need more clarity on how Haredim are being discriminated against.

I am not saying that wedding halls should not be opened. I just don't think there is any discrimination involved in the decision making on this issue.

The newly elected mayor of Tiberias, Ron Kobi, said some nasty things the other day. He said he is going to do whatever he can to stop building projects designated for the Haredi community. Kobi said the Haredi community should continue to grow but only outside of Tiberias - in Tiberias they are already 22% of the city and they should not be allowed to reach the 30% mark.

Obviously Kobi has brought the wrath of the Haredi politicians dowqn on his head with these statements. Anytime a mayor talks about not building for Haredim or not being willing to bring a HHaredi community to his or her city, the Haredi politicians make a big deal out of it. Kobi was particularly nasty, but his point was not new or unique.

As I have said before, Israel is a democracy with a mostly free society. People can, and should be able to, buy a house and live, wherever in the countrey they wish to. Haredi people should be able to live in Bet Shemesh, Eilat, Ranana, Beer Sheva, Tiberias, Tzfat, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa or any other town, just like anyone should be able to buy his dream home in whatever town he or she might prefer.

However, I do not get excited by the outrage against mayors trying to prevent the Haredi community from buying in any given town, as wrong as I think it is, as long as those very same Haredi asknaim and politcians do the very same thing attempting to prevent secular or dati people from living in Haredi areas. As long as the Haredi asknaim are working to psuh secular resident sout of Bet Shemesh and ensure all future construction is for Haredim and not for secular, as long as secular wannabe residents are not welcome in Modiin Ilit, Beitar, Har Nof, among other places, I don't get excited by the outrage. I think both are equally wrong, but I do not think it is right to demand one side open its doors to the other with no reciprocation and to continue allowing the other side to build itself enclaves that keep everyone else out. Either we live in a free and open society welcoming to all or we do not. You cannot have it both ways.

History has been made with the first "country club" being built and opened in the Bedouin city of Rahat in southern Israel. "Country Club" in Israel usually means swimming pool and perhaps a gym. The Rahat Country Club definitely has a pool, built to the tune of 32 million shekels and form the video below, it looks beautiful and I am sure the residents will enjoy it.

Itamar Ben Gvir, a lawyer and right-wing activist, has petitioned the Attorney General with a threat to go to the Supreme Court. After the Supreme Court required the town of Kiryat Arba to open its municipal pool to reasonable hours of mixed swimming, despite the vast majority of the residents opposing it and only wanting separate swimming options, Ben Gvir says the same rule should be applied in Rahat and the pool should be required to be open for mixed swimming, despite the fact that the local residents are opposed.

The Attorney General has accepted the argument and informed the city of Rahat that based on the Supreme Court decision in Kiryat Arba, the local government is not allowed to separate between men and women, even at the behest of the residents. Being the first pool built in the Bedouin sector, this takes on extra urgency as it would be precedent setting.
source: Kan

Are we now going to see suits and counter-suits all over the country forcing pools with separate swimming to change to mixed swimming due to discrimination? Can the courts not find a way to allow residents to swim gender-separate should they consider this important? The courts recently allowed an academic leadership course in the Haredi community to continue on as planned as gender separate. I don't know what case can be used as a precedent for what, but if it can be allowed in that course, and if the recent Chabad event in Tel Aviv was allowed by the courts to function with a mechitza, there should be some way to allow separate swimming as well. If not, where does this end? Will the courts ban every religious behavior in public because it discriminates against something in some way?

The City of Rishon LeTzion has been running a pilot for a while to open libraries for the religious community. At the request of the community's representatives, the city agreed to run this pilot in which they open 4 libraries once a week after hours - meaning, after the library has already closed its regular operating hours for the public. As well, the library removes from the shelves books deemed inappropriate for the religious public for the duration of the opening hours for the religious community.

The pilot has come to an end, due to a lawsuit for discrimination.

Lee Weizman sued the city of Rishon claiming she was discriminated against when she noticed the branch of the library open and decided to return books she had borrowed. She was told she could not do so at that time, though after arguing they accepted the books from her. Another time as well she went to exchange books and was refused service, but after arguing the manager got involved and let her get new books in exchange for the books she was returning.

Weizman complained to the city but her complaint was ignored, so she decided to sue instead. She sued the city for 75,000nis. The counter claim by the city is that in both incidents in which she tried to avail herself of the library's services, she was provided the service, so she was not discriminated against.

The court decided in favor of Weizman, though for far less than what she claimed. The court awarded her 10,000nis. The judge explained that making separate hours for the religious "torani" community in the municipal library is discriminatory and against the law, as it discriminates against the secular community during those hours. Being that this is not a religious service, and nothing in the service provided by the library requires making a distinction between the religious and secular communities. The fact that a religious community might choose to not avail themselves of the service during regular hours for their ideological reasons does not make it discriminatory against them.

The City's response was that the city tried this pilot to allow the religious public to use the library. The library continued to function as normal for the secular and general public during the same hours as always and nothing was changed for them. The pilot has now been canceled.
source: Ynet

Personally I dont know why people feel they cannot go to a library when secular people are there. Nor do I know why some people might feel insulted or upset because of certain books on the shelves that they won't even borrow to read. However, I do think it is a shame that there seemingly cannot be a legal way to provide services to such communities in a way they find acceptable. Different strokes for different folks. The question is where it will lead to. At what point will the court say that this separation of groups is ok and we will not intervene - will shuls and yeshivas and seminaries eventually become a target as well?

Regarding this case, it is interesting that the Dati community in Rishon wanted to separate themselves for the general public in this way. The Dati community generally prides itself on being involved with the general community and not being isolationists.

Also, how is a librarian supposed to determine if someone is part of the Dati community and provide the service, or not? Even if a person comes in dressed not classicly religious, there is a wide range of people within every community, and people have kids who don't conform exactly to the way the parents want. I dont know how the librarian determined Weizman should not be provided the service, most likely by whatever way she was dressed, but it seems this entire exercise was flawed in that anybody not dressed overtly secular (whatever that might mean) should have been able to get away with getting into the library without too much effort, thus rendering the entire exercise pointless to begin with.

Motka Bloi and others are, somewhat rightfully, complaining about racism and discrimination against Haredim, right now focusing on the city of Givat Shmuel that is trying to keep Haredim from nearby Bnei Braq out of its parks during the vacation period.

Fair enough. The residents of Givat Shmuel have a point, that the parks they pay tax to design and build are filled during vacations by residents of other cities who did not pay those taxes, making it difficult for the residents themselves to enjoy. Then the visitors also leave the park filthy, requiring more tax money from the residents to keep cleaning it up. They say the city of Bnei Braq should use the tax money they collect to build similar parks for its residents and provide these services on their own.

The problem is that it is a public park and everyone, even Bnei Braq, is part of the public. I think in the end the issue will end up in the courts, as it has before, and Givat Shmuel will not be allowed to block anyone from entering.

Until that point, we are getting a lot of screaming about racism and discrimination, with some even calling Givat Shmuel elders "Nazis" and other such epitaphs.

It might be an appropriate moment to point out that the Charedi community of Bnei Braq, and other places, have their own issues of discrimination. Such as, let's see a secular Jew try to buy an apartment and move into Betar or Modiin Ilit or Bnei Braq. Such as, this video report (below) on discrimination within the Haredi community when trying to register for yeshivas - with them discriminating against students of sefardi and russian descent with hurtful epitaphs of their own. Or the recent incident with the winery that was forced to move Ethiopian employees off the wine line by the Eida kashrut agency (until a public outcry pressured the owners to reverse the decision). And more and more.

Some might use the words of chazal of "כל הפוסל במומו פוסל" . I would simply say that we all have our problems and few are clean of acting with discrimination. Before calling anyone a Nazi, one might want to first look inward and evaluate of he or she is clean of such behavior.

the following is a shocking report in the news that was just exposed. Briefly, the Barkan Winery decided to change kashrut supervision organizations and take on the supervision of the Eida Hachareidis. Among the requirements of the Eida to grant the certification was to get the Ethiopian workers off the line producing the wine - they could be moved to other parts of the business. Barkan decided to comply, as business is business and that's what is required - they are desperate to break into the market of people who will only accept Eida hechsher..

People, including politicians, are comparing this to the Nazi selections. I don't like any comparisons to Nazis, unless it includes mass murder and concentration camps it seems uncalled for, as horrible as this behavior might be.

So, who is to blame - the Eida or Barkan management? The Eida demanded it as a requirement, but Barkan went along with it without even putting up a fight and just sacrificed them on the altar of entering a new market.

Most interestingly, Chief Rabbi Rav Yitzchak Yosef criticized the Eida harshly for this and claimed it is pure racism and there is no halachic reason for such a demand. More specifically, Rav Yosef suggested that it could be problematic relying on them for strict kashrut supervision when they are involved in being lenient regarding the character assassination of people who's only fault is the color of their skin. (source: Kikar)

I think a boycott of the Eida hechsher, as many are calling for right now, is nearly impossible. Especially if you live in a largely Haredi area where the Eida has the lions share of the market. However you can give preference to other hechshers that you rely on, when you have the choice. If you see two products one with the Eida and the other with Rubin or Mahfoud or Belz or whatever it might be, if you accept the second hechsher, prefer to take that one instead of the one with the Eida. The individual consumer cannot do much to these giant manufacturers and hechshers, but what little we can do we should. And Barkan as well - buy a different wine, when you can. A Barkan boycott is more feasible, and some are calling for it, though any winery using the Eida hechsher presumably has the same issue - though maybe they aren't employing Ethiopians to start with, so maybe it just never came up.

I feel it is important to include the full statement in response issued by the Eida. There are also a couple of interesting points in it.

Saudi Arabia recently gave permission to Air India to fly via Saudi Arabian airspace on its route to Israel.

This is a  significant improvement to the India - Israel flight, as it shortens the flight time by about two hours.

El Al is complaining that granting India Air to fly over Saudi Arabia but not granting the same right to El Al is discriminatory and violates international agreements. This discriminatory policy gives India Air a significant advantage over other airlines. They have filed an official complaint with the United Nations and has been looking for help in getting Saudi Arabia 
source: Reuters

I hope the result of this will be Saudi Arabia opening up their airspace to other companies, including El Al, flying the Israel route, and not canceling the flyover rights of India Air.

The other thing is, El Al should get other airlines on board to protest the issue and file the complaint against this decision. It is not only El Al being discriminated against.

Haredi feminist activist Ruth Kolian had sued 2 haredi newspapers, Yated Neeman and Yom LYom, for not running the ads for her political party, BZchutan, in the 2015 elections. She claimed discrimination as BZchutan was a party of [Haredi] women.

Without getting into details of the case, the court recently decided against Kolian, in favor of the newspapers. The court decided that the newspapers did not reject her ads because they were women but because the ads were for a political party not identified with the outlook of the newspapers. It is acceptable for the newspapers to refuse to accept advertisements for political parties attempting to take away votes from the parties clearly identified with those newspapers. It is important to note that the court determined that the newspapers did not reject the ads because of Kolian, or the rest of the party, being female, but because the party was a competing party and not identified with the newspaper.

This is an interesting and unexpected decision on what constitutes discrimination, and if anyone can explain it better, especially the ramifications, I would appreciate it.

It seems to me that this gives newspapers a wide berth in making decisions like this. While most newspapers will take any ad thrown their way that brings in big money, like political ads from just about all parties, a newspaper with some sort of political identification could now easily decide to not accept ads from other parties. For example, Israel Hayom, identified clearly as being a supporter of Bibi Netanyahu and the Likud, could reject ads from Labor or Yesh Atid parties, along with Shas and Habayit Hayehudi. Haaretz, identified with perhaps Meretz and Labor, could choose to reject ads from Yesh Atid. Makor Rishon could reject ads from the Haredi parties and from the Likud and from the various small parties that seem to crop up in every election. etc etc etc

While newspapers cannot discriminate against women, they can discriminate against political parties that are not aligned with the political outlook of the newspaper.

On September 11 there is a night run scheduled in Jerusalem only for women under the name JW Run (maybe it stands for Jerusalem Women Run). The run will be routed through the streets of Jerusalem neighborhoods finishing at the First Station complex with both 5 and 10km distance routes and an entire "happening" around the race.

Dr. Michael Ben Ari, Bentzi Gupstein and Advocate Itamar Ben Gvir have petitioned a lawyer, Dina Zilber, to work against this event. They say that while they themselves all support gender-specific events and sports and they each work out in gender-separate gyms and fitness centers, the lawyer herself, Dina Zilber, ruled to cancel an all-male selichos event last year that had been planned and scheduled to take place in Kikar Rabin. They quoted Zilver who ruled that a Municipality is obligated to prevent any event that is discriminatory in the public sphere and that Iryat Tel Aviv was obligated to cancel the event in Kikar Rabin due to it being discriminatory against women as the prevention of women from singing at a public event is discriminatory and hurtful to women.

They claim in their petition that being discriminatory against men should be treated with the same severity as discrimination against women. Iryat Yerushalayim must cancel this event that discriminates against men in the public sphere.

The 3 say that if their request will be ignored, they will petition the courts on the matter.
source: Kipa

This always bothered me about the fight against discrimination. With no separation of Shul and State in Israel, there is no clear line of when something is discriminatory and when it is not. If you fight against discrimination and think public events should not, or need not, be gender specific or gender-separate, eventually that can easily lead to banning the mechitza in shul, to use an extreme example. If it is illegal for the State to fund events and organizations that make discriminatory events, how can they support shuls or yeshivas or girls schools or anything that is gender-specific that has to do with the religious community.

This petition by Ben-Gvir is a good example of that. I have no problem with a separate race for women, even if I don't see the need. Also, there are mens retreats and womens retreats that happen all the time, shiurim and events for men or for women only that are often sponsored by Municipal cultural offices, and the like. Those are all at risk. I am not sure where the line should be drawn, but I see nothing wrong with events for men only or for women only - and it is up to me and everyone else to decide whether or not to participate. When is it called discrimination and when is it not is very unclear.

And with Ben Gvir's petition - does he want them to allow men to run in the race or does he want the race canceled? I know he just wants to make a point and not actually get men  to run in it or get it cancelled. Meaning, if Dina Zilber picks up the baton and fights City Hall to get the event changed, will Ben Gvir run in the race?

interesting situation..

The Ministry of Religious Affairs appointed a news spokesperson. After the fact they discovered that this person is not religious, and posts things online publicly on Shabbos. There are calls for the appointment to be revoked, and the Minister has said that if he will not resign and remove himself from the office, he, the Minister, will have to fire him.
source: Kipa

While it seems to be logical that the Ministry of religious Affairs should have someone religious filling so public a role as spokesperson, I don't know that it is crucial for the job - he can probably perform the job of spokesperson perfectly fine even as a not-religious person.

So, if any other office in the country refused to hire someone, or fired that person, because he is religious, that would surely be illegal, and the religious parties would be up in arms over it, but firing someone because he is not religious is ok and legal? I wonder if this will go to court...

Kikar has a report about a conference to be held for [male] directors of Haredi organizations and says that the Reform leaders are protesting the conference and demanding that women be allowed to participate. According to their demands, the organization putting on the conference will have to change their plans and also advertise from scratch specifically that women are invited to attend.

The organizers say this is a private affair and they put on similar conferences for the general public to which all are invited, including women and anybody else.

This fighting won't end any time soon. The Reform lost, so far, at the Kotel with the arrangement being cancelled, so they have opened up new tactics and targets. Eventually they will even petition to stop discrimination in shuls and remove mechitzas, and try to force yeshivas to allow entry to women. Anything in Haredi society where men and women are kept separate will soon become a target, especially, but not only, if they receive State funding for that event or institution.

MK Meir Cohen (Yesh Atid) tried to get a law passed that would take away funding from educational institutions that are guilty of rejecting potential students based on their ethnic origin.

Cohen "expected" to at least get the support of Shas for the bill, if not also the support of UTJ. After all, the Haredi school system is among the worst offenders in this issue and many sefardi families in the Haredi community suffer from such discrimination and every year we hear the heartbreaking numbers of kids who have no school to go to simply because they are sefardi.

UTJ was not really expected to support the bill, as they do not fight for the little people. They tend to represent those who hold the power - the administrators of the institutions who are also usually the askanim of the community. UTJ has never fought against them, no matter how much they go against the instructions of the gedolim - any time the issue has come to the Knesset to possibly put an end to it, the UTJ MKs have not supported the victims.

Shas, on the other hand, does at least claim to fight for the weak, and at times they do. Their entire campaign for the last elections was predicated on that - their work on behalf of the "shkufim" - the transparent people, the little people - the people nobody else stands up for. Shas was expected to not oppose such a bill that was meant to protect the natural voters of Shas.

But they did.

Both UTJ and Shas opposed it, and not because it was a bad proposal, but because it was proposed by Yesh Atid. Shas was not going to oppose it but instead just leave the plenum and not be present for the voting. They were called back in when it seemed like the coalition might not have a majority without them, so they returned and voted against. MK Yigal Guetta even said afterwards that he voted against the bill but is embarrassed by it.

Not only that but UTJ is now threatening to "punish" Shas for considering not voting against the bill. UTJ is going to "reevaluate" its working relationship with Shas because of how Shas almost did not oppose the bill.

If only the people in charge would look out for, and work for, the people they are meant to be working for... that is, the people. not their honor, not their friends, but the people... if only..