The City of Rishon LeTzion has been running a pilot for a while to open libraries for the religious community. At the request of the community's representatives, the city agreed to run this pilot in which they open 4 libraries once a week after hours - meaning, after the library has already closed its regular operating hours for the public. As well, the library removes from the shelves books deemed inappropriate for the religious public for the duration of the opening hours for the religious community.
The pilot has come to an end, due to a lawsuit for discrimination.
Lee Weizman sued the city of Rishon claiming she was discriminated against when she noticed the branch of the library open and decided to return books she had borrowed. She was told she could not do so at that time, though after arguing they accepted the books from her. Another time as well she went to exchange books and was refused service, but after arguing the manager got involved and let her get new books in exchange for the books she was returning.
Weizman complained to the city but her complaint was ignored, so she decided to sue instead. She sued the city for 75,000nis. The counter claim by the city is that in both incidents in which she tried to avail herself of the library's services, she was provided the service, so she was not discriminated against.
The court decided in favor of Weizman, though for far less than what she claimed. The court awarded her 10,000nis. The judge explained that making separate hours for the religious "torani" community in the municipal library is discriminatory and against the law, as it discriminates against the secular community during those hours. Being that this is not a religious service, and nothing in the service provided by the library requires making a distinction between the religious and secular communities. The fact that a religious community might choose to not avail themselves of the service during regular hours for their ideological reasons does not make it discriminatory against them.
The City's response was that the city tried this pilot to allow the religious public to use the library. The library continued to function as normal for the secular and general public during the same hours as always and nothing was changed for them. The pilot has now been canceled.
source: Ynet
Personally I dont know why people feel they cannot go to a library when secular people are there. Nor do I know why some people might feel insulted or upset because of certain books on the shelves that they won't even borrow to read. However, I do think it is a shame that there seemingly cannot be a legal way to provide services to such communities in a way they find acceptable. Different strokes for different folks. The question is where it will lead to. At what point will the court say that this separation of groups is ok and we will not intervene - will shuls and yeshivas and seminaries eventually become a target as well?
Regarding this case, it is interesting that the Dati community in Rishon wanted to separate themselves for the general public in this way. The Dati community generally prides itself on being involved with the general community and not being isolationists.
Also, how is a librarian supposed to determine if someone is part of the Dati community and provide the service, or not? Even if a person comes in dressed not classicly religious, there is a wide range of people within every community, and people have kids who don't conform exactly to the way the parents want. I dont know how the librarian determined Weizman should not be provided the service, most likely by whatever way she was dressed, but it seems this entire exercise was flawed in that anybody not dressed overtly secular (whatever that might mean) should have been able to get away with getting into the library without too much effort, thus rendering the entire exercise pointless to begin with.
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