HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Stepping off the El Al airplane on July 14, 2004, as a new immigrant to Israel, the idea of serving in the Knesset was not on my radar screen. I was an educator, and was looking forward to teaching in post-high school gap year programs for English-speaking students, with the hope of strengthening their connection to Israel and Judaism before they begin university. I moved to the city of Bet Shemesh with my wife and four children, and quickly learned that while we moved to a remarkable state – only 56 years old at the time – disagreements and tensions between different populations within Israel were very much alive and well. The population of Bet Shemesh - a city of 80,000 residents at the time - included residents who were ultra-Orthodox, secular, traditional and religious Zionists from a blend of native Israelis and immigrants from Russia, Ethiopia, France and English-speaking countries. It was truly a microcosm of Israeli society.

One night several months after our move, I heard a commotion near our apartment building. I went outside and saw three police cars on the corner. Fearing some kind of a terror threat, I asked one of the policemen what was going on. He told me to run away as fast as I could. Before I had a chance to ask why, a hailstorm of rocks rained down on us and I was hit in the leg by a rock, causing it to bleed. The entire incident revolved around a demonstration by ultra-Orthodox extremists against what they viewed as the desecration of old Jewish graves in the city of Yaffo. In protest, they blocked my street in Bet Shemesh. The police had arrived in order to clear the street and some of the protestors stoned the police. I was stunned to discover that there were no newspaper headlines reporting this incident about Jews stoning fellow Jews. Apparently, this was simply not considered an unusual, and thus newsworthy, occurrence in our state.

Over time, the incidents of religious extremism became more and more regular – usually targeting women. One morning we woke up to see bright yellow signs on walls throughout our neighborhood declaring: "It is forbidden for women to walk on these streets in clothing deemed immodest." I could not believe that anyone had the nerve to post signs which made these demands on residents of a city with such a mixed population. At the time, I had no political connections and did not know where to turn for help. I felt that I could not live with offensive signs of this sort posted in my neighborhood, so I went to a hardware store, bought spray paint, woke up in middle of the night and spray painted over the offensive messages. When replacement signs were posted, I recruited a team of spray painters to make sure that no sign lasted a day without being covered over. At a certain point, the cost of the spray paint became prohibitive so I started covering just the last two words on the signs. The signs then read: "It is forbidden for women to walk on these streets in clothing." Th