The cabin crew on the Delta flight out of John F. Kennedy Airport tried to find seats for the men, but were met with refusal by other passengers, some of whom who took a dim view of the reasoning behind the request.

The same thing happened in October as well, and again on the same route, delaying the flight for an hour.

This is unacceptable. No passenger should be able to request not being seated next to a woman, even on religious grounds, and no passenger should be forced to move to comply with such a request. Any Jewish person causing such a disruption should be immediately booted off the plane. The scene of frenetic ultra-Orthodox men offering other people money to get a seat next to a man is simply repugnant.

Finally, lest you think this is a simple religious stricture that has nothing to do with regarding women as inferior (and you’d think this only if you knew nothing about Orthodox Jews), have a gander at what else the Independent says:

Many Haredi Jewish communities practice strict gender segregation and refrain from touching people of the opposite gender who are not close family members. Haredi publications in Israel generally do not print pictures of women and girls. In 2009, the Israeli newspaper Yated Ne’eman famously doctored a photograph of the Israeli cabinet in order to replace two female ministers with images of men. In the UK, the ultra-Orthadox [sic] Jewish community in Stamford Hill, north London, was recently criticised after signs requesting women to walk on a certain side of the street were erected, promoting segregation for a Torah parade.

Here’s one of those signs, and note that there’s no explanation:

This gender segregation is one way that extremist “ultra-Orthodox” Jews resemble Muslims. In their synagogues men pray on the main floor while women are restricted to the back of the temple, often upstairs behind a screen.

Further, many Orthodox Jewish women, like Hasids, are the equivalent of breeder cattle, whose duty is simply to tend the home and pump out more young Jews. They usually are forbidden to have real jobs, and must cut their hair short and wear wigs or other hair coverings because natural uncovered hair is considered “immodest.” In this way Jews also converge with Muslims. Finally, menstruation is considered unclean among the ultra-Orthodox, and women are obliged to take ritual purification baths after their periods. (Two good books on the repression of Orthodox Jewish women are Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, and Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation after my Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood.)

Finally, there’s that infamous prayer. MyJewishLearning gives the history and context of the phrase that begins the morning prayers of many Orthodox Jews: