Running into trouble

Female joggers in Beit Shemesh find themselves the victims of stonings and verbal attacks.

By NICOLE BRODER
When a cobblestone whizzed past her during her morning run, it took Atara Kramer a few seconds to register that she had been attacked by a bearded man in his 20s, dressed in traditional hassidic garb.
The mother of four was 35 minutes into her run on September 21, and enjoying the view of the rolling hills in her home city of Beit Shemesh, when she was stoned.
“Instinctively, I leaned over, picked up the stone and threw it back,” the mother of four recalls.
Far from being deterred, the man threw two more stones in her direction.
Scared, Kramer ran away, fell and grazed her back. The man fled down the alleyways of the haredi Nahala Umenuha neighborhood.
Bruised but otherwise unharmed, Kramer (not her real name) called her husband and the police. When the police arrived 10 minutes later, she described the incident and showed them the rocks before jogging back home.
Later that day, she sent an e-mail to members of the Beit Shemesh Running Club, warning other female runners and advising them to bring cell phones with them, which could be used as cameras should they too be victimized.
Kramer has used the same running route for 12 years. This was the third time she had been abused by haredim, whether stoning, spitting or verbal slurs, in exactly the same location.
“What I was wearing at the time of the attack is utterly irrelevant,” comments Kramer. “Even if I had been wearing a bikini, I still didn’t deserve to have stones thrown at me. Nobody does.”
Last month’s attack was the first time she notified the police.
A police spokesperson said that very few attacks of this kind have been reported over the past year.
“Women should continue to run wherever they please; it’s a free country. However, we stress that citizens must report the use of violence to the police immediately. Only then are we able to respond quickly and efficiently.”
But a number of Beit Shemesh runners said they had not always reported such incidents to the police because it seemed futile to do so.
Katherine Aron-Beller, 44, who runs five times a week between 6 and 7 a.m., says she has been attacked three times in the past five years, in the same area as Kramer.
In the first incident, in 2005, she was running with another woman, when they were spat at by “a young haredi male adult wearing long white socks.” They went to the police station to report the incident and were handed a photo album of 200 suspects, but were not able to identify the attacker.
Aron-Beller says she was so discouraged that she didn’t report the next two attacks.
“I didn’t contact the police following either of the other attacks, when I had stones thrown at me in 2008 and then earlier this year, when I was called a shikse [a non-Jewish woman] by haredi youths, because I didn’t see what they could do to help. By the time the police would turn up, the attackers would surely have fled.”
It took her a couple of weeks to get over the shock of each incident, says Aron-Beller, but it did not stop her from using that route.
“Stones don’t hit me, spit doesn’t do any lasting damage and I sense there is a boundary they won’t go beyond.”
Rachel Falkin, 48, has been the victim of five verbal and spitting attacks over seven years, also in the same location, at a time when the roads were pretty empty. She has been called a shikse on a number of occasions. The last time she was spat at, she turned and chased the man while shouting, “Come here, motek [sweetie], I want to be with you!” before he disappeared into a maze of residential buildings.
But the attacks have not swayed any of the three women to change their route, which offers stunning scenery as opposed to the rather dreary inner-city streets.
Rabbi Kovshi, the spiritual leader of the Nahala Umenuha community, refused to comment.Shmuel Greenberg, a haredi representative on the city council, was astonished that someone had acted this way and did not understand why they would do so.
But Yehonasan Easton, a hassid living in the neighboring area of Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, says, “Unfortunately, there is a small percentage of residents of haredim who believe that violence, intimidation and anger will preserve their understanding of the Torah.
“However, many of us living here believe that it is against the will of Hakodesh Baruch Hu [God] to intimidate, scream and act violently toward another Jew. If we want to be closer to Hashem and bring Moshiah [the Messiah], we must act with hessed [kindness] and achdus [unity].”
Local activist Dov Lipman says it is important for the women not to bow to the violent demands of a few extremists.
“The group of extremists who will say or do anything to female runners is relatively small – no more than 50 men. But that is all it takes to terrorize our women,” he says.
“The best thing the women can do is continue to do whatever they have always done – before these extremists moved in – and continue to demonstrate that this is not their neighborhood but ours!”