I thought to respond to this thread, but I see that a lot of the issues I wanted to mention have already been discussed. I did want to bring up a point about having a personal car if we don’t like taking the buses. Please keep in mind that, per a recent article in YWN, the price of gasoline here costs $7.95 per gallon. It’s no joke. Even if you can afford to buy a car, which the purchase has a tax rate of more than 100% on top of the value of the car, so you figure out how a regular chareidi family, EVEN IF the father (and mother) works, could afford to drive the car??? It’s not an option, I promise.
The issue of studying history is so ridiculous. Don’t we have enough history of our own to study, like just Jewish history for the last 5000 or so years can be studied by Jews more importantly than American history and civil rights. I don’t think many people here associate sitting in the back of the bus with Rosa Parks, but it has come from the outside – media and other people who have no connection to the issues.
Sam2 – I have heard that in times when the pull by the YH is very strong then we have a right (and maybe a chiyuv) to put more gedarim in place. Eizeh hu chochom, haroeh es hanolad – it wouldn’t take such a stupid person to figure out that a man sitting next to a woman decked out in her skin tight, skin-revealing clothes, with loads of make-up and perfume on top of that, would feel some form of attraction to her, and by then it’s too late. Most of the buses that come from the chareidi areas do obvious go to more mixed parts of town, but the chiloni has no big need to get on these buses but for a few stops, since he doesn’t need to go to the end of where those buses go.
And as far as buses going into Meah Shearim, I’m not sure that it’s not bad to put a stop to that. The street is so narrow that you could feel like you’re going to be run over by a bus at any minute, so let the buses go around that stretch of town. They go by the start and end of those neighborhoods and you can walk in on your own from there.
Toi and PBA – you really said it the best.