Jerusalem life: 'Are you aware? Women should not be strolling outdoors'

Flyers cast off a balcony during a large funeral gathering in Jerusalem give this reporter a crash course in modesty, at least by one fringe group's standards.

By Christa Case Bryant, Staff writer / October 11, 2013 

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/Olive-Press/2013/1011/Jerusalem-life-Are-you-aware-Women-should-not-be-strolling-outdoors 

 Jerusalem

People often ask me what it’s like to be a female reporter in the Middle East, expressing concern about the rise of sexual harassment on Cairo’s street or extremist attitudes toward women.

Overall it’s fine, I tell them.

But this week I had an interesting experience in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Geula, where 850,000 people – 1 in 8 Israelis – gathered for the funeral procession of the ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, widely seen as one of the greatest Torah scholars of his generation.

As I was interviewing a secular Jewish man off to the side of a street, a flurry of flyers rained down from a balcony above us.

“ARE YOU AWARE?” the flyer asked, one side printed in English and the other in Hebrew.

“Separating oneself and maintaining distance between men and women is the basis for tznius [modesty],” it said, referencing a passage from Shulchan Aruch, a 16th century compilation that Rabbi Yosef and others have held up as the basis of all Jewish rabbinical law.

But few today would endorse the conclusions that followed this statement on the flyer:

“Thus:

•       When men are in the street, a woman should go off to the side.
•       A woman should not raise her voice whe[n] men are around....READ MORE

Dozens of flyers like this one were thrown over a busy street during the funeral procession for Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in Jerusalem's Geula neighborhood this week. Christa Case Bryant/TCSM