A bill working its way through the Knesset promises to bring more ultra-Orthodox Israelis into higher education. Its sponsors present it as a breakthrough for equal opportunity. But the version now being prepared for its final readings would do something far broader than open a door: it would reshape the nature of the space behind it.

The bill passed its first Knesset reading last May and is now being shaped in the Education Committee ahead of its second and third readings. In January, the bill’s sponsor submitted a version that would have extended gender segregation beyond classrooms to cafeterias, libraries, and laboratories. A revised February draft pulled back to classrooms only, but expanded in other directions: from undergraduate degrees to doctoral programs, and from the ultra-Orthodox sector to any group requesting segregation “for religious reasons.” That last phrase marks a significant departure from the Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling, which permitted limited segregation specifically for the Haredi community and only at the undergraduate level.

Throughout the committee debates, one argument has been heard again and again: separating men and women in academic programs is not discrimination but an expression of equal opportunity. The committee chair called opposition “secular coercion” and “condescension,” while the bill’s sponsor, Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har-Melech, presented it as a tool for dismantling exclusion, one that would allow an entire community to enter institutions from which it had been effectively excluded.

Yet one can oppose this bill without any connection to religious affiliation or a feminist agenda. The central question is not only who enters academia, but what happens to academia itself when it is subjected to structural segregation, and what happens to its graduates when their studies do not prepare them for the world that awaits them beyond campus.

Supporters of the bill frame opposition as paternalism, an outside attempt to “liberate” those who never asked to be liberated. There is a kernel of truth in this claim: it would be wrong to assume that ultra-Orthodox students lack agency. But choice is never made in a vacuum; the social environment defines in advance what counts as a legitimate option, and those who deviate may pay a steep social price. The decisive question, then, is not about individual agency but about the state: when it institutionalizes segregation, it does not merely respect a choice but reinforces the very structure that determines which choices are considered legitimate.

Some argue that uniform rules for everyone amount to equality only on paper, and that real equality requires adapting the framework to different groups. This is a familiar and legitimate argument, but there is a crucial difference between types of adaptation. A wheelchair ramp, a pre-academic preparatory program, or accessible facilities change the conditions of entry so that an additional person can participate in the same class, the same seminar, the same encounter. The adaptation changes the way in, not what happens inside.

Gender segregation works in reverse: it changes the space so that certain encounters never take place at all. When academia becomes an extension of a community’s own space rather than a meeting ground, it loses part of its civic function. Accessibility says: come in on your terms. Integration says: come into a shared space that includes you. In this sense, segregation offers accessibility without integration.

A practical question is almost never asked: preparation for what, exactly? An academic degree is not merely an accumulation of knowledge but preparation for participation in a diverse professional and civic sphere. Ultra-Orthodox graduates are of course free to choose to work within their community, just as other groups sometimes operate within homogeneous settings. But a public institution should not be built on the prior assumption that encounter is to be avoided. A segregated study track does not merely enable choice; it assumes in advance a world in which encounter is unnecessary, and in doing so, it alters the very meaning of academic training.

If gender segregation is a legitimate tool in the name of equal opportunity, why in academia but not in a government office? Why in a classroom but not in a tech company?

There is yet another distinction from every other form of adaptation: typically, the goal of accommodation is to become unnecessary over time, as gaps narrow. This bill moves in the opposite direction. Each successive draft concedes in one dimension while pushing further in another. The trajectory is not toward integration but toward the normalization of separation.

A liberal society is tested not only by its ability to accommodate difference, but also by its ability to preserve a public space where citizens meet beyond their communal affiliations. Integrating the ultra-Orthodox into academia is an important national goal, but the question is not whether to expand participation, but how: are we seeking an academia that brings citizens into a common space, or one that practices the parallel existence of communities that never meet and never prepare for life beyond their own?

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)