JIM OREV:

For years, Israeli women have been pressured into moving to the rear of public buses serving strictly religious Jews. Now, in confrontations reminiscent of the era of Rosa Parks, women are pushing back. [...]

Haredi political parties wield outsized clout because they often function as kingmakers of Israeli coalitions by moving between right and left, though their outlook is more in keeping with right-wing coalitions.

For decades, Israel's Haredi sects kept at a distance from the mainstream, congregating in self-contained ghettos. Their religious ideology rejected the foundations of the secular Jewish state even as they participated in its politics.

Because they made up a relatively small percentage of the population, they were allowed to avoid army service and oversee schools that shed elements of state curriculum, and lobbied for public subsidies that enabled graduates to continue religious study rather than pursue jobs.

In the 14 years since the first public buses went into operation in Jerusalem, exclusion and segregation efforts have expanded to include men-only sidewalks in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, separated waiting rooms at some health clinics, and the gradual disappearance of women from billboard advertisements in Jerusalem.

With Haredi birthrates double the average Israeli family, ultra-Orthodox Jews are poised to surge from around 10% of the country's population. Economists say the status quo, where most Haredi men don't work, will eventually drag down the economy because the government won't be able to afford the rising cost of so many men staying out of the workplace.

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