That opinion of Rabbi Feinstein does not support KFJ’s proposition. Rabbi Feinstein does not state what subway seating policies ought to be, but what a person is permitted to do when they have no choice but to make physical contact with members of the opposite sex.
The opinion/letter responded to someone asking about using the crowded, non-Jewish New York City transit system. In New York City, it is inevitable that you will rub up against other people on the train. It is impossible to segregate trains in New York City and impractical to avoid contact. The letter says that when one has no other choice and must use public transportation to get to work, they need not be concerned about touching because the touching is not erotic. The caption reads: “on whether going in subways and buses at times when it is impossible to avoid contact with and rubbing women as a result of pushing.” It speaks about bidi’avad circumstances.
The letter does not speak to the l’chatchila. It does not say that you can purposely rub up against women in a non-erotic way. It does not say that you should not endeavor to avoid contact wherever possible. It does not say that it is preferable or even permissible to set up a bus system with mixed seating, if given the choice. It does not say that the New York City rules should apply in Israel where enough of the consumer population can demand separate seating on popular bus routes.
The author’s suggestion are beyond the scope of the opinion/letter. The context actually indicates the opposite – that if possible, one should avoid physical contact altogether (granted it does not make a preference for separate seating).

Also, it’s nice that they vote whether or not she gets in. Sort of like the country club board voting on whether or not to accept Jews or Blacks.

Egged is a nationalized bus system, despite many false proclamations by haredim that the mehadrin bus lines are “capitalism” at work.
The U.S. gives a lot of money to Israel. A lot.
If the Israeli government feels they need to consistently cave to the haredim because of their formidable numbers, this is their choice. But there will be a cost in terms of loss of good will even from those of us who are not usually interested in telling Israel what to do.
If segregation is determined by which ultra-Orthodox rabbi paskens which way, which in the end invariably means the stricter opinion, we are going to have a fight.
And Jacob, what do you think is going to be the reaction to haredim occasionally beating up American Modern Orthodox women who resist the back of the us and then protecting the culprits? We are going to have the “spiritual war” that the haredim continuously reference.
Just keep it up. The haredi lifestyle needs to be starved out, not enabled by Uncle Sam and Jewish organizations. That may be the only way. U.S. money to Israel needs to be conditional on an abolishment of the welfare/kolel system.

It’s not bad for America or bad for Israel. It’s good for America and good for Israel, otherwise it wouldn’t be the 40 year policy of successive US and Israeli governments.
Interestingly, Netanyahu has been the biggest proponent of ending the subsidies, and helped lay the financial deregulatory groundwork in Israel which allowed the Israeli economy to flourish, and thus to rely less and less on US aid.
Of course, that was before America decided to sell the Arabs $20Bil of its most advanced weapon systems to counter Iran, and then offered Israel $30Bil in credits over ten years to maintain its military edge against the Arabs. I’m not usually one to rail against the military-industrial complex, but this is absurd.
Are there drawbacks? Of course, for both sides. The US likes to leverage and bargain the Israeli operational potential with the Arabs, but doesn’t want to use it. In my own view, the fact that the US has not allowed Israel to finish a single war in 40 years may have something to do with Israel becoming a drag on US foreign policy. It is when Israel acted boldly and defiantly, without American consent – the attack on Osirak, destruction of Arab armies in ’67 – that American policy was actually advanced.

DK, the aid the US gives to Israel is not charity. It is given out of strategic necessity, and the US gets exactly what it paid for – a pliant Israel that does not interfere in American plans for the region by destroying various Arab armies and bringing down Islamist governments.
Without American support, Israel would have far less incentive to be as civil in the region as it has been. The Assad regime in Syria, for example, would not be standing today without American support for Israel.

Jonathan1, you may be an idealist, and that can be quite impractical. But the fact is, Israel cannot afford to exist on her own. She is a client state, she has always been a client state, and she may very well always be a client state if Israel is to survive.
The amount of cash that Israel spends on her military is much more than most countries her size. I don’t see how Israel can do it alone. Your suggestion is most speculative.

@DK: If we simply accept the status quo, without at least discussing better ways forward, how will things change?

Ok.

You are not the first person to use this source wrongly.
I take my cue from Zahava Fisher in the NIF profile who says:

“I am not aware of a single eminent rabbi who has ever ruled that there must be gender segregation in public places. Even the separation of men and women in Orthodox synagogues is a matter of custom rather than halacha.”

Debate that as you may, but without further information, your interpretation is no more solid than hers is.
Furthermore, “the law of the land is the law” and Israeli law has the Basic Laws which include the freedom of movement and religion. The relationship of halakha to civil rights law is the same as living under the United States’ Bill of Rights. (Odd to think that Israeli civil law is cannonized in a distant fashion.)
But putting halakha and civil law aside entirely, the secular government of Israel shouldn’t subsidize gender segregation. If there are enough haredim to demand segregated buses, then surely there are enough haredim to fund it themselves.

1. I’m sorry, but I don’t give Zahava any more credence in explaining Rabbi Feinstein than I give you. I would suggest further that you and Zahava and Naomi Ragen and whomever else brandishes this opinion have the burden of proving that it allows mixed seating l’chatchila. If you’re going to chastise people for not following a directive, you better make damn sure you know what that directive is.
As far as I can tell from critically reading this piece, it isn’t ambiguous enough to be read as a suggestion that mixed-seating buses are appropriate. Firstly, the caption makes explicit that it’s talking about bidi’avad scenarios. Secondly, it never endorses mixed seating where it is possible to have segregated seating.
What is even more telling than the substance of the opinion is its contexts. On the very same page as the opinion, there is another opinion which says that:
1) mixed dancing is prohibited because it could lead to sexual desire (he doesn’t mention whether this mixed dancing involves physical contact);
2) it is prohibited to be in a place where women walk around exposed (he mentions where their thighs are exposed — nothing to private) because it is prohibited to glare at a woman’s flesh (“even the small finger”), even without intent to get aroused.
The way you’re reading the opinion, on the same page that Rabbi Feinstein says that you must avoid mixers and that you cannot put yourself in a situation where you’re going to unintentionally look at exposed flesh, he says that it is ok to set up a dominantly Haredi bus service with mixed seating?
If that’s not enough to tell you that my interpretation is more solid than hers, here’s Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu requesting that busses be segregated: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/138396
2. As far as your civil rights contention, before I deal with, do you have any basis in Israeli law (a statute, case, etc.) to say that freedom of religion and freedom of movement amount to being able to sit wherever you are on the bus?
3. What happened to democracy? If the Haredim are citizens and taxpayers, they have a right to choose for the government to fund segregated bus lines.
Who is really hurt by sitting separately? Women having to sit with other women? Or people who consider this an offense to their religion?

Where do you think you are? Who do you think you are speaking to? Are you oblivious to what bus segregation represents to Americans?
Israel is not America.
Religious sensibilities are not the same as racism.

They taught me there is a “spiritual war” with the friyah.
And they would have no reason to say such a thing, right? Ever read Haaretz? Your solution for dealing with a million Israeli Jews is what, then? Affirm their worst suspicions and by attacking them and what then… kill them? What is your big plan here to calm people down and let sanity prevail?
I didn’t learn that from the Liberal and secular Jews
Well, I DID learn that from liberal and secular Jews. Here’s what one of them said to me a short while back…
See, you don’t understand what it means for a Jew to be a ‘Jew’, because you don’t understand what it is that makes Jews special. To the extent Jews are culturally special, it’s because we uphold cultural traits — outspokenness, iconoclasm, internationalism, cosmopolitanism, a confrontational devotion to truth, a defiance of social mores we deem ill-founded, a desire to better the world — that are ultimately beneficial to society and to ourselves. The culture of ‘true’ Judaism produces better people, and a better world.
Orthodox Judaism, and a belief in god more generally, is absolutely bankrupt in the above respect. Theism has been conclusively discredited, and the particular cultural mores of the orthodox are regressive and counterproductive both to those who practice it and to the larger world.
Look at Israel if you don’t believe me — you have the Orthodox breeding like cockroaches (the term fits well), contributing nothing to Israel, and doing their best to destroy it from within. They are parasites, plain and simple, holding back both Israel and Judaism from their proper greatness.
My Judaism is superior to your form of Judaism.
My godlessness is superior to your god.
My values are superior to your values.
The numbers and assets of my side are superior to yours.
God does not exist, and if he did, a true and just god would conclude that we were the superior heirs of the Jewish tradition.
We will fight you, in the larger battle for the soul of Judaism and if necessary in the streets. And we will win.
Be a Jew.
Give up your pathetic belief in god.
That, my friend, I DID learn from a liberal Reform Jew.
when Haredi Jews are beaten in the streets of Jerusalem by the cops for protesting peacefully, no one gives a shit. When they are hosed with water like animals for peacefully marching, Haaretz doesn’t report is an atrocity and B’tselem doesn’t rush to take pictures. The Haredim don’t run Israel. Secular socialist liberals run Israel, and they have been more than happy to take an iron fist to the Haredim on occasion.
Dialogue? The haredim don’t need no stinking dialogue. They want concession after concession.
That’s funny. They say the same thing about the seculars.
And making nationally owned buses like the south in the 50s is a power play, Avigdor. So is ripping up the the bike paths in Brooklyn.
I don’t understand the bike path reference. Comparing separate seating arrangements between observant Jewish men and women, provided as a courtesy by a private firm, to Jim Crow laws is absurd. Forcing Egged to eliminate the tiny minority of busses which have separate seating is no less a power play than asking for them, as I said before.
Tell me Avigdor, does the dialogue work best before the haredim riot, bleach and beat women (and protect the culprits, of course), or does it happen afterwards?
You can set up whatever straw men arguments you want. No one in the haredi leadership has defended such actions. These are problems that I talk to haredim about. These are problems that I encourage you to talk to haredim about. While you’re at it, maybe you’ll learn something about the discrimination they suffer in everything from employment to army service.
You can get whatever you want off your chest. That’s fine, get it out. It won’t change that we have to deal with reality, which is that a large, growing and disenfranchised portion of Israeli society can no longer be stuffed into ghettos away from the beach and the tourists. These are human beings, with needs, desires and aspirations. They don’t see things the way that you do, but they are not beyond engagement and reconciliation.
Many of you on Jewschool would eagerly agree to the previous paragraph if it were written of Arabs, but your fellow Jews… it’s beyond the pale. That’s something the Haredim see also – how the liberals are bending over backwards to make concessions to the Arabs, meanwhile hosing down and beating haredim like animals.
Think.

1. Whatever you think about separate seating being “mehadrin” I doubt any respectable human being thinks it is “mehadrin” to beat women when they sit in front of the bus, to force pregnant woman to sit in the nausea inducing back of the bus, or to make elderly women stand in the back when there are no seats in the front. I oppose segregation and unequal treatment, but perhaps worse is the vigilante violence employed to enforce this false piety.
2. Yes, it is the capitalist system responding. But not in the way listed above. Haredim have long been free to run their own busses, but refuse to pay the licensing tariffs required by the ministry of transportation for any transit service. By insisting that it is now an ultimate transgression to sit on a normal bus, they help create the demand for their own businesses. And the fact that they can charge cheaper rates because they don’t pay the tariffs doesnt hurt business either.

I don’t follow this issue regularly, so I only intended to chime in on the misreading of R’ Feinstein. Nonetheless, this has taken a twist and there is much to say about your analysis of the situation. You will forgive me if I’m not familiar with the latest Ministry of Transportation policies or the day to day goings on in Bet Shemesh and Jerusalem.
From what I can tell, there is nothing legal about a trial plan for bus arrangements. It does not have the force of law. Even assuming for arguments sake that Halacha mandated compliance with every law of the country, this isn’t a law. In other words, this policy doesn’t set out rights and doesn’t establish what the High Court would decide in the situation.
You, therefore, cannot say what is legal and what is illegal. You also cannot define what rights like freedom of religion (didn’t see anything in Basic Law about it, but whatever) and freedom of movement mean in the context of the bus segregation dispute. You’re simply reading into the law all sorts of things which aren’t there. You are taking all sorts of vague rights and giving them meaning that you can’t prove they have. An all of this for what? So that you can discriminate against Haredim legitimately asserting their democratic rights.
Don’t you find your reading of dina d’malchuta dina unreasonable? Are you saying that a group cannot assert its democratic right to protest against laws and to seek to change laws? I’ll bet these rights have been construed to exist under the Basic Law. Should you lose your rights to change the law the same way every citizen can because you abide by the Torah? Do you have a Torah source to prove this subjugation requirement?
Next, the Basic Law emphatically states as its premise that Israel is a Jewish state and upholds Jewish values. True, it doesn’t express a preference for Halacha. It does, however, prove that there is no separation of church and state in Israel. This means that there is nothing wrong with the government funding something which expresses someone’s halachik preference.
I am no scholar in the Basic Law, but I can tell you that in the hierarchy of American constitutional law (you were the one that brought the Bill of Rights into this), religion gets greater protection than gender. In other words, if America didn’t have a separation of church and state, religious needs would trump gender needs. If the law in Israel is somewhat analogous, religious needs on public buses – where they can easily be accommodated – would trump any notion of gender discrimination.
Which raises a fundamental question: who is being discriminated against by not being accommodated? If there is a compelling halachik preference for separate seating (will address this later), and the state tells you that even though your group makes up the majority of riders, we refuse to accommodate your needs – that is religious discrimination. The state has no compelling interest not to let you have your way and it is not overly burdensome on the state.
How about a young, healthy, non-pregnant woman*? Is she being discriminated against by having to sit among other women in the back of the bus? She does not lose anything but the fifteen feet it took to walk there. Furthermore, she is not forced to practice Haredi Judaism by sitting amongst other women because that is not something that she would otherwise find offensive. This isn’t gender discrimination any more than having separate bathrooms.
When balancing religious needs and a woman’s seating preference, religious needs must win.
Unless you can show otherwise, these vague Basic Law rights that you keep citing have no meaning. Even where they establish some sort of firm right – like a right to sit in the front row of the bus – they will likely not overcome a religious discrimination challenge.
Halakha also says you can sell your daughter into slavery. Which by all rights, is illegal in Israel, whether or not a Jewish authority said it’s possible.
This is laughable. Halacha allowing you to do or not to do something (reshut) is not the same thing as Halacha prohibiting something (issur).
You still have not addressed my argument about the scope of Rabbi Feinstein’s opinion. If the general attitude of halacha is to prohibit intermingling, you have the burden of proving – before deigning to tell rabbis what halacha is – to show an exception to the rule and to show its applicability in the particular circumstances. Flashing this opinion does no more than show that their may be some situations where it is permitted. You haven’t proved it to be applicable given the questions I raised.
* I admit that some sort of concession has to be made for women who are old, ill, pregnant, or otherwise infirm.