Renee Rabinowitz is a sharp-witted
retired lawyer with a doctorate in educational psychology, who escaped the
Nazis in Europe as a child. Now she is about to become a test case in the
battle over religion and gender in Israel's public spaces - and the skies above
- as the plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing El Al, the national airline, of
discrimination.
Rabinowitz was comfortably settled into her aisle seat in the business-class section on El Al Flight 028 from Newark, New Jersey, to Tel Aviv in December when, as she put it, "this rather distinguished-looking man in Hasidic or Haredi garb, I'd guess around 50 or so, shows up."
The man was assigned the window seat in her row. But, like many ultra-Orthodox male passengers, he did not want to sit next to a woman, seeing even inadvertent contact with the opposite sex as verboten under the strictest interpretation of Jewish law. Soon, Rabinowitz said, a flight attendant offered her a "better" seat, up front, closer to first class.
Rabinowitz was comfortably settled into her aisle seat in the business-class section on El Al Flight 028 from Newark, New Jersey, to Tel Aviv in December when, as she put it, "this rather distinguished-looking man in Hasidic or Haredi garb, I'd guess around 50 or so, shows up."
The man was assigned the window seat in her row. But, like many ultra-Orthodox male passengers, he did not want to sit next to a woman, seeing even inadvertent contact with the opposite sex as verboten under the strictest interpretation of Jewish law. Soon, Rabinowitz said, a flight attendant offered her a "better" seat, up front, closer to first class.
Reluctantly, Rabinowitz, an
impeccably groomed 81-year-old grandmother who walks with a cane because of bad
knees, agreed.
"Despite all my accomplishments - and my age is also an accomplishment - I felt minimized," she recalled in a recent interview in her elegantly appointed apartment in a fashionable neighbourhood of Jerusalem.
"Despite all my accomplishments - and my age is also an accomplishment - I felt minimized," she recalled in a recent interview in her elegantly appointed apartment in a fashionable neighbourhood of Jerusalem.