An elderly woman (who is also a retired lawyer) decided to sue the Israeli airline El Al for alleged gender discrimination after she was asked to switch seats onboard when an ultra-Orthodox Jew refused to be seated next to her.  Renee Rabinowitz (age 81) gained the support of the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), which has been campaigning against the ultra-Orthodox efforts to create gender segregation between men and women. Reportedly, as many as 7,500 letters have been sent by the public to El Al protesting their practice of forcing female passengers to switch seats when an ultra-Orthodox Jewish passenger objects to being seated next to a woman.

Rabinowitz –who is a practicing Jew herself, goes to synagogue and maintains a kosher home– said, “The man had no other reason to complain than my gender – and that’s unlawful discrimination. It’s no different than if a person of another religion had said: ‘I don’t want to sit next to a Jew.’ And I don’t believe El Al would move a person in those circumstance.”

On December 2 last year, Rabinowitz barely settled into her business class seat on an El Al flight to Tel Aviv from New York when a passenger –who was allocated the window seat next to her– boarded the flight. Rabinowitz was returning to Israel from the United States after visiting family, and her seat was one of a pair divided by a screen. Shortly before the plane doors shut, the middle-aged man wearing ultra-Orthodox clothes called for a flight attendant and spoke to him in Hebrew. Immediately after, the flight attendant offered Rabinowitz what he referred to as ‘a better seat’ – one in the central row of the three rows located nearer the first class cabin.

“I didn’t understand. It wasn’t a better seat,” she said.

After refusing to move initially, Rabinowitz said that she was left with no other alternative in the end since the flight attendant continued to press her about the flight having to take off. With the help of her walker, Rabinowitz followed the flight attendant to the front of the business class section.

“I asked the flight attendant point blank if the man sitting next to me had asked me to be moved, and unabashedly he said yes. I then went back to the man and said: ‘I’m an 81-year-old woman, what’s your problem?’ He started to tell me it was forbidden by the Torah. I interrupted him to say the Torah says nothing about a man sitting next to a woman. He conceded I was right, but said there was a general principle that a person should not put himself in a dangerous situation. I had to do some quick thinking. He was wrong, but we had an 11-hour flight ahead of us. It’s not so pleasant to be sitting with a person who would rather you weren’t there. So I decided to move.”

Once the plane landed at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Rabinowitz waited for her wheelchair assistant to arrive. When the pilot emerged from the cockpit, she shared with him what had happened, saying that she felt insulted for being asked to switch seats simply because of her gender.

“He said it was not up to the staff, but was company policy,” said Rabinowitz.

Back home in Jerusalem, Rabinowitz happened to attend a public meeting where Anat Hoffman, executive director of IRAC, discussed her organization’s successful campaign to end gender discrimination in Israel’s public buses at the insistence of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Since IRAC’s legal victory, buses across Israel now display notices informing passengers that they may sit wherever they wish to. Apparently Hoffman wanted to launch a similar campaign in the air, and that is when Rabinowitz decided to share her story with her.

When Atheist Republic spoke to Hoffman, she said, “We kept hearing from women, both Israelis and tourists, that they had been asked to move seats on planes. We were looking for a good case to take up, and then Renee walked in. She’s 81, and a Holocaust survivor – and she was humiliated by Israel’s national airline… El Al’s acquiescence to demands to move women passengers as one more way that ultra-Orthodox extremists get away with demands that have nothing to do with Judaism. Humiliating women can in no way qualify as a religious act. It is simply not acceptable.”

Along with IRAC, Rabinowitz is now seeking 50,000 shekels in damages and demanding El Al to publish clear staff guidelines regarding their responsibility to act in an egalitarian manner; including training the company’s flight attendants to defend women’s rights to remain seated in their allocated seat and not feel obligated to requests made by passengers who wish to switch seats for no other reason but gender.

At the moment, IRAC is waiting for El Al to file an official statement of defense; which must be submitted within 30 days of the lawsuit being filed. But so far, the company has sent only one letter to Rabinowitz’s lawyer, stressing that there is no gender discrimination on El Al flights. The letter stated the company had already investigated the incident and found that the flight attendant dealt with Rabinowitz in a polite and sensitive manner, making it clear she was not obligated to switch seats. As a kind gesture for her cooperation, the airline also gifted Rabinowitz a $200 voucher for her next flight.

“The money is not the important issue here, it’s the principle,” said Rabinowitz.

Since Rabinowitz and her late husband moved back to Israel from the United States in 2000, she has frequently taken El Al flights to visit family in America. Born in Belgium, she was forced to flee the Nazis in 1941. After first moving to Cuba, Rabinowitz finally settled in the United States where she got married and bore children before resuming her education and completing a PhD in educational psychology. Afterwards, she studied law and practiced as a lawyer before retiring 16 years ago.

“I’m not generally a crusader. This just happened, and it was very disturbing and very demeaning,” she said.

In a statement, El Al said that it strives to maintain the highest levels of respect and equal treatment for all passengers.

“Our employees in the air, on the ground, in Israel and around the globe do all possible to listen to and provide solutions to the concerns or requests from our customers whatever they might be, including seating requests on the airplane,” read the statement.

Photo Credits: San Antonio Express News