davidfcooper

Israel Religious Action Center launches ‘Freedom Rider’ campaign
to ensure gender segregation not imposed on ‘kosher’ lines.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Michele Chabin

Israel Correspondent

Jerusalem — Gratified though they are by last week’s High Court decision to ban “mehadrin” buses that separate passengers by gender, Israeli activists fear that the companies that run these lines will not always enforce it.

So they are taking it upon themselves to personally test compliance and are inviting adventurous tourists to join them.

The Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) is about to launch a year-long Rosa Parks-inspired Freedom Rider program whose foreign and local female volunteers will attempt to sit in the front section of so-called “kosher” buses, which until now have been reserved for men.

To read the interview click here

In Monday's article I introduced the The Jewish-American Marriage Oral History Project. In honor of Brooklyn Pride's 14th Annual Pride Celebration this week the first Jewish-American couple whose interview will appear in this column is a Brooklyn lesbian couple, Mindi Wernick and Malkie Grozalsky, whom I interviewed in their Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn apartment two years and ten months ago. To make the interview read like a dialogue I have edited out my questions; for clarity the interview subjects sometimes rephrase a question as a statement, and where this occurs it indicates a change of subject. I began the interview by asking how they met.