Tuesday, July 01, 2008

making buses de facto mehadrin

A Guest Post by Rafi G.
(cross posted from LII)


Ynet (Hebrew) is reporting in the name of the Yated Ne'eman (which I have not yet seen) that the "Rabbinic Committee for Transportation" has found a new way to advance its desire to increase the mehadrin bus lines.

That is, they are instructing Bais Yaakov girls that need to travel on non-mehadrin lines, that they should still be careful to only sit in the back of the bus. By doing this, they say, they will turn non-kosher bus lines into kosher ones.

the idea is by creating facts on the ground, by making it de facto mehadrin, Egged will find it easier to speed up the process and declare those lines mehadrin.

In the letter to the Bais Yaakovs, the committee writes, "Those girls that are careful in tznius will find this a great merit, and will urge their friends as well to sit in the back of the bus. By guarding the rules of holiness and tznius, we will merit the Divine Presence with health, satisfaction, sustenance and fortune."

Furthermore, with the Jerusalem Light Rail project finishing soon, the Haredi community has set it eyes on the next project - working to make the light rail mehadrin.

They say that many bus lines to and from frum neighborhoods will be cancelled because of the light rail. Many of the cancelled bus lines will be mehadrin lines. Another problem is that because of the light rail, many bus lines will be altered, causing many bus lines to be diverted to new routes going through Geula and Mea Shearim neighborhoods. That means all these non-mehadrin lines will go through Geula, and bring many secular people through the neighborhood. This will be a "spiritual destruction of the neighborhood", they say.

On the other hand, instead of looking at it as destruction of their ways, they could look at it as an opportunity to make a Kiddush Hashem on people they would otherwise never have come in contact with.

I found a copy of the pashkevil:


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