The 'Kosher Sidewalk' in Tiberias: The Municipality's Solution to Prevent 'Immodest Sights'

In an attempt to prevent the continued escalation of the religious-social storm stirring Tiberias and the entire country, the Tiberias Municipality has begun in recent days to pave a dedicated 'kosher sidewalk' on the side of the road, on the side furthest from the beach strip. The new path is intended to ensure a practical solution for those who fear being exposed to 'immodest' sights on the Sea of Galilee beach, and to allow passage nearby without being exposed to the mixed beach where men and women spend time together in immodest clothing.

The unusual municipal step comes following an escalation in the struggle over the 'Trapezoid Beach', the new mixed bathing beach recently inaugurated at the southern entrance to the city. The topographical structure in the area, where the sidewalk and the road dominate and overlook the waterline from above, has become, according to Haredi sources, a severe modesty obstacle for tens of thousands of believers and yeshiva students arriving at the holy sites in Tiberias, including the gravesites of Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes, the Rambam, Yochanan ben Zakkai, and Rabbi Akiva.

The short and familiar road, leading from within the city south to the grave of Rabbi Meir Baal HaNes, only about four and a half kilometers long, has become the focus of the struggle. The local tension recently crossed the city's borders and became a national debate after a pamphlet published in Haredi concentrations under the title 'A Severe Warning for the Sake of the Sanctity of the Camp', the rabbinical leadership ordered a sweeping ban on passing along the coastal axis adjacent to the 'Trapezoid'.

The rabbis called on the public to travel by an alternative and bypass route through the Poriya ridge — an instruction that means converting a simple trip of a few minutes into a prolonged route of about 30 kilometers. 'And he who guards his soul and the souls of his household will not pass by the opening of a sin, G-d forbid, until the matter is corrected and approved by the rabbis,' was written in the pamphlet, while citing the Talmudic source 'i da ika darka achraina' — if there is another way — alongside a call to educational institutions and summer camps to completely refrain from bringing groups along this axis.

The beginning of the struggle was actually in calls for compromise from within the city council. Shimon Cohen, a member of the municipal coalition from the 'Ma'aminim be-Tveria' ('Believers in Tiberias') faction, initially proposed a solution of visual concealment: 'We came with a demand, a modest request, no more: we did not ask to close the beach on Shabbat or holidays. We asked for there to be a nice partition, a type of flowers or bushes that would separate the sidewalk from the beach. Do not force us to see things we do not want to see. The city belongs to everyone.'

However, tempers flared quickly, and local rabbis, including Rabbi Yekutiel Ohev Zion, from the associates of Rabbi Dov Kook, arrived at the scene and issued sharp warnings, claiming that in a place where there is immodesty there is no protection, and that these sights are directly related to the security and safety situation.

The new modesty sidewalk is not the first time that the construction of transport infrastructure in Tiberias has required complex Halachic solutions and special engineering projects. About 15 years ago, when a road was widened on a main street in the city, large eucalyptus and ficus trees, decades old, were uprooted to pave a 'Kohanim road' instead.

In the municipality's documents from that period, it was written that 'Tiberias is an ancient city over 2,000 years old... In Tiberias, there are cemeteries covering most of the area around the Old City. As a result, Kohanim are not willing to use the traffic axes in Tiberias in the city center area. The Government of Israel decided to budget projects for paving Halachic roads to allow the passage of Kohanim.'

Even before that, two similar roads were paved in Tiberias, based on the same Halachic solution: on Highway 90, under the old cemetery, and on Yochanan ben Zakkai Street, which intersects with HaYarden Street. The engineering technique of establishing 'Kohanim spaces' allows Kohanim to travel over an area under which ancient graves were discovered, by placing two layers of concrete beams in the shape of an elongated letter 'Het' on a concrete surface poured over the graves. From the space created between the hollow concrete layers, a pipe is stretched outward to prevent the sealing of the space, and above the beams, the road is paved and becomes kosher for the passage of Kohanim.