The municipality of Ramat Hasharon near Tel Aviv said on Tuesday that it will ban sex-separated prayer in public spaces.
The announcement by the affluent and predominantly secular suburb follows a similar decision by the Tel Aviv municipality in August. Tel Aviv has refused to allow this year the Yom Kippur prayer services at Dizengoff Square after organizers insisted on the separation, citing Orthodox Jewish principles.
The Tel Aviv District Court last month dismissed a petition by the organizers from the Rosh Yehudi nonprofit group asked the court to order the municipality to allow the event to go forward.
The municipality claims that sex-separated prayers on public terrain constitute discrimination. The organizers and others contest this claim and say that the ban violates their religious freedoms and is faith-based discrimination. They cited the fact that Tel Aviv has multiple sex-separated religious events attended by Muslims on public grounds.
“There will be no gender separation in the public domain,” the Ramat Hasharon municipality wrote in a statement, urging residents to refrain from holding such events.
Rabbi Aviad Gadot, director of the Hotam nonprofit, condemned the ban. “The Ramat Hasharon municipality joins an extremist minority that seeks to suppress Jewish characteristics in the public space,” he said in a statement.
The fight about sex-separated prayer, which descended to violence on Dizengoff Square last Yom Kippur, polarized Israeli society last year, before it was sidelined by the outbreak of war on Oct. 7.
This year, Yom Kippur begins on Friday evening.
Ahead of the High Holidays, the issue has resurfaced, reflecting broader disagreements in Israeli society about the role of religion in everyday life.
