A victory for women

Finally, after many years of demeaning mistreatment by ultra-Orthodox haredi men who ignore some of their teachers who tell them it is ok to sit next to a woman, people who were also created by God, people who deserve the same respect given to men, the Israeli court has ruled that El Al acted improperly and illegally by forcing a woman to give up her seat on a plane only because a haredi man did not want to sit next to a woman.

The 82-year-old woman is Renee Rabinowitz, a psychologist and Holocaust survivor, the widow of my former writing partner Rabbi Dr. Stanley Wagner. She is a woman known to her many friends as a kind and sympathetic person. The court ruling applies to all women and all airlines. The court ordered El Al to cease this behavior and awarded Dr. Rabinowitz 6,500 Israel Shekels. Dr. Rabinowitz filed the suit in the Israeli court to help other women.

It is ironic and very telling about the mind-set of certain people, that they think they are doing God’s will by abandoning society and closeting themselves to read the Talmud, exit at times to belittle God’s people, and in this case a widow whose husband had a synagogue with over 1,000 members and who wrote commentaries on the Bible to explain the Bible to others.