Shortly before the October 7 massacre in 2023, unprecedented clashes between Jews took  place on the holiest day of the year due to the actions of the Tel Aviv municipality, which banned gender-segregated tefillos on the streets of the city (despite allowing Arabs to hold gender-segregated prayers on the street.)

Two years later, the Tel Aviv Municipality is carrying out a new clandestine operation targeting over 100 shuls in the city, demanding that they operate in violation of halacha or face eviction, a Ynet report revealed on Sunday. Some shuls signed the agreement, and others that refused to sign are in court fighting eviction orders.

There are hundreds of active shuls in Tel Aviv, with some built on land allocated for that purpose by the city and others on privately purchased land. However, 130 shuls are not officially registered, or their registration is incomplete, and their land is listed in Israel’s Land Registry (Tabu) as owned by the municipality.

These are the shuls being targeted in the operation—with the municipality demanding that they adhere to “equality” principles—”without distinctions of gender or faith”—and their “nusach tefillah be set by its management committee accordingly.” Municipality officials declared that “no activities deviating from these principles will be allowed, or the shuls will be evicted.”

In one case, the Beis Din declared the Tiferet Tzvi shul as a religious endowment and prevented the municipality from taking it over. In response, the municipality filed a petition with the Supreme Court against the Beis Din, which is still pending.

It should be noted that the municipality is not requiring mosques in Tel Aviv to sign the agreement.

Shul leaders warn of far-reaching consequences: “If this demand passes, it will mean one thing—the systematic silencing of Jewish mesorah in the name of ‘equality.’ Shuls will be forced to choose between faithfulness to halacha or basic survival.”

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)