"Don't Be Mistaken - You Are Not a Pluralist": Ayah Kramerman's Intense Letter to Ron Huldai

A post recently published by Ayah Kramerman managed to shake the foundations of social media, and not without reason. Kramerman referred to the storm that recently erupted surrounding the issue of gender-segregated performances in Rabin Square, and the statements made by the mayor Ron Huldai against such performances.

As is known, Huldai refused gender-segregated events in public spaces, even after the court directed him not to cancel the event planned by Chabad in Rabin Square. "We respect the court's decision regarding the event taking place tomorrow, given that it was made shortly after our precedent-setting decision on the prohibition of gender segregation," Huldai wrote, but clarified that "the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality will ensure that no future events in public spaces in the city will involve gender segregation. I see this as a worthy expression of equality values in a democratic state," he concluded.

In response to his words, Kramerman wrote a post that touched many: "Dear Ron Huldai," she began. "I was born in Tel Aviv, 10 minutes' walk from Rabin Square - even before it was Rabin, before you thought it was privately yours. I spent all my childhood there, not a firework was missed that didn’t seem to fall directly on me. Not a performance whose lyrics I didn’t shout, no artificial snow at Purim that I didn’t slide on. All I had to do was go downstairs, turn right and left, and I was in the thick of things. I grew up in an art school - where they taught me to believe in equality. Equality that ended when girls from the neighboring 'Beit Yaakov' school used the two swings allocated for them as their yard. They were invisible to us, apart from their school 'interfering' with ours taking over the entire area.

"Tel Aviv has changed since my childhood, and deliberately I say changed and not developed. And it saddens me, but what seems to have remained the same is the attitude towards the religious. They remained invisible, disturbing the Tel Avivian freedom spirit."

At this point, Kramerman addresses more personally and corrects the record. "Make no mistake, Mr. Huldai. A pluralist you are not. Pluralism is defined as recognizing the equal rights of minorities, granting freedom of expression to different groups in society - and today, I am the different one. I am the one who believes differently from you, I raise my children differently from you. Yet you claim that as a pluralist, you should include me. So good morning - you've managed to silence the religious. You have excluded us from the point of view from your office."

According to her, Huldai discriminates in the name of equality, but "if you asked me, I would tell you no. As a woman, I do not want to stand next to men who are not my husband, I don’t want them to look at me and so that I cannot sing freely - the same freedom I felt in the square as a child. Because liberation is being beside women, dancing with them, rejoicing with them freely. Despite the head covering, despite the skirt and the desire to keep Hashem’s laws - I am not invisible, so stop hiding behind the guise of equality and simply give me the equality I want," she concludes.