Israeli women are fighting their own version of the Rosa Parks campaign for the right to sit at the front of the country’s buses in the face of ultra-Orthodox Jewish opposition.

Five women, including Naomi Ragen, an ultra-Orthodox novelist, have petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to end the “voluntary” segregation practised by leading bus companies on their urban and inter-city routes.

The protest is a sign of resistance from within at a time when the Haredi — ultra-Orthodox — community of Jerusalem and other populous towns is becoming more aggressively conservative in enforcing its moral standards.

In recent weeks “modesty police” have stepped up patrols of ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods, chastising women whose clothing is deemed to be provocative and even attacking clothes shops. At a demonstration last week the “immodest” clothes were burnt publicly. “We will get rid of the tight clothes and the Holy One, Blessed be He, will place his mercy on us,” one placard said.

Ms Ragen told The Times of the moment she decided that enough was enough. “I got on bus No 40 from Jerusalem’s Strauss Street, which goes to my neighbourhood, Ramot, and which is a very mixed area of the city. The bus was totally empty and I took a single seat near the front. All of a sudden it started filling up with men. I was engrossed in a copy of Vanity Fair and suddenly I realised that I was surrounded.

“I was being told very aggressively to go and sit at the back, and I told them to leave me alone. I explained that there were no signs on the bus regulating where passengers sit and that, as a religiously observant woman, I knew of no religious reason why there had to be segregation.

“For the entire ride I was subjected to this insulting and physically imposing presence. There was one man who was sweating over me, shouting, threatening me. I felt like Rosa Parks. When I got off I was shaking and I rang the bus company to ask how they could allow their bus drivers to let this happen.”

Ms Ragen said she was told that there was a voluntary arrangement allowing passengers to decide among themselves where they sit. In practice, this means that Haredi men insist that all women sit at the back, regardless of their religious belief and even if there are free seats at the front.

Ms Ragen was not satisfied with the response and joined forces with the Israel Religious Action Centre, which represents the Reform movement of Judaism, to take legal action. Orly Erez-Likhovski, a lawyer for the organisation, said that she had been fighting the segregation rule for five years. “We are demanding that the Transport Ministry starts regulating because until now it has argued that it is none of their business.

“It definitely brings to mind Rosa Parks, there’s no doubt about it. It’s like the Wild West at the moment, an American woman was beaten and spat upon only a few weeks ago.”

Ms Ragen added: “I know that ultra-Orthodox women complain about this all the time, they get on laden down with bags and buggies with babies and they have to go and sit in cramped conditions at the back, leaving seats empty at the front for the occasional Yeshiva student [of Jewish texts] who hops on.

“This is the religion of the Taleban, it has nothing to do with the teachings of Jewish law. It is absolute nonsense, the fanaticism of a few. We need to take a stand by getting on these buses in numbers and refusing to move from the front.”

The Supreme Court has given the ministry 45 days to respond to the petition.

Historic act of defiance

For most historians the US civil rights movement began in 1955 when Rosa Parks, a black seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger.

The arrest of Parks, right, triggered a boycott by black passengers of the buses in Montgomery. The economic pressure led to a change in the law and started the movement that would end legalised segregation in the US.

Martin Luther King explained her action saying: “Eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, ‘I can take it no longer’.”

Parks died in 2005, aged 92, and became the first woman in US history given the honour of lying in state in the Capitol Source: New York Times, Academy of Achievement

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