The leaders of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem were taking no chances that men and women would intermingle immodestly during the Sukkot festival in mid-October.
They had already set up the iron barricades, covered with coarse white canvas, along Mea Shearim Street, the crowded main thoroughfare. Guards and ushers, hired by the community from private security firms, were on hand, to guarantee that the men would walk on the sidewalks on one side of the road, and women on the other, and that immodestly dressed women would not be allowed to walk anywhere.
Every year during Sukkot, especially in the evenings, tens of thousands of visitors come to Mea Shearim to watch the festivities, especially the traditional simchat beit hashoeva celebrations. The ultra-conservative community heads had set up the same barriers in 2010 and had kept them up in defiance of an order by the High Court of Justice to dismantle them.
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