Weiss, Shayna. “A Beach of Their Own: The Creation of the Gender-Segregated Beach in Tel Aviv.” Journal of Israeli History (early view; online first).
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2016.1140882 [PDF]
Abstract
This article examines the struggle for gender-segregated sea bathing in Tel Aviv from the first calls for gender segregation in the 1920s until 1966, when the city of Tel Aviv established a beach for men and women to swim separately. The most effective demands for gender segregation were framed in a civic and not religious discourse. Rather than claiming that gender-segregated swimming was against Jewish values, the ultra-Orthodox party Agudat Yisrael effectively argued that a lack of separate swimming violated their rights as taxpayers who had the right to bathe in the sea just as any other Israeli citizen.