A hypothetical: A women is seated on a plane, minding her own business, when a man sits down in the seat next to her. The man turns to the fellow on the other side of him and starts telling jokes. One is tinged with sexual content in flagrant terms, that endorses assault, as in a sexual touching without affirmative consent. The next refers to race in a derogatory manner, dredging up offensive stereotypes as the source of humor.

The woman is offended. No, outraged. She calls for the flight attendant and informs her that this man’s jokes make her feel unsafe, threatened.  She demands that his seat be moved or, even better, that he shouldn’t be allowed to fly on the plane.  They have a lengthy flight ahead of them, during which she reasonably anticipates that she will try to sleep, and fears that this man will do something, touch her perhaps, while she is unconscious. Even if he doesn’t, she cannot bear to listen to his offensive speech for the duration of the flight.

Is she entitled to a safe space?  Should the flight attendant compel the man to move to another seat, to leave the plane if he can’t control himself?

What if the person on the plane was Renee Rabinowitz?

RENEE RABINOWITZ is a sharp-witted retired lawyer with a Ph.D. in educational psychology, who escaped the Nazis in Europe as a child. Now she is about to become a test case in the battle over religion and gender in Israel’s public spaces — and the skies above — as the plaintiff in a lawsuit accusing El Al, the national airline, of discrimination.

Except Rabinowitz isn’t the woman offended by the man.

Ms. Rabinowitz was comfortably settled into her aisle seat in the business-class section on El Al Flight 028 from Newark to Tel Aviv in December when, as she put it, “this rather distinguished-looking man in Hasidic or Haredi garb, I’d guess around 50 or so, shows up.”

The man was assigned the window seat in her row. But, like many ultra-Orthodox male passengers, he did not want to sit next to a woman, seeing even inadvertent contact with the opposite sex as verboten under the strictest interpretation of Jewish law.

And so Rabinowitz was asked to move.  Because of his religious beliefs, and her gender, his space was rendered unsafe, and she was forced to accommodate his demands.

In the hypothetical, the basis for the claim of entitlement was the woman’s personal feelings of propriety, that the words uttered by the man were offensive to her sensibilities.  She speculated, based upon his language, that perhaps he would engage in some action consistent with her perception of his words, but there was no basis for her fear. Still, fear requires no rational basis, so she felt it nonetheless.

In Rabinowitz’s case, the ultra-orthodox man’s entitlement came from a well-known facet of his religious beliefs. There was no question raised as to the bona fides of his belief that his religion precluded contact, even incidental, with a female not his wife. This was neither a new problem for the airline, nor an unanticipated issue. It was understood by all involved why the man demanded that Rabinowitz be moved, and that it was grounded in his entitlement to the exercise of his sincere religious beliefs.

And yet, the wrongfulness of the demand, as made manifest in Rabinowitz’s suit for discrimination against the airline, is obvious.  If the man didn’t want to sit next to a woman, that was his issue. There was no reason why Rabinowitz should be forced to suffer the accommodation of his needs.

If someone had to move, it should have been him.  If he refuses to sit next to a woman, he should have anticipated the issue when making his travel plans and surrounded himself with men.  Whatever, it was not Rabinowitz’s problem to fix.  Renee Rabinowitz bought a ticket to fly, picked her seat, and exercised her contractual right to enjoy her flight.  If he didn’t like it, that was his problem, not hers.

Renee Rabinowitz is suing the airline, El Al, for gender discrimination.

“For me this is not personal,” Ms. Rabinowitz added. “It is intellectual, ideological and legal. I think to myself, here I am, an older woman, educated, I’ve been around the world, and some guy can decide that I shouldn’t sit next to him. Why?”

Why, indeed? Why should his religious beliefs dictate what she is permitted to do? And this has become a significant problem for the airline.

That is just what many feminists and advocates of religious pluralism inIsrael and abroad have been asking in what by all accounts is a growing phenomenon of religious Jewish men refusing to sit next to women on airplanes. Several flights from New York to Israel, on El Al and other airlines, have been delayed or disrupted as women refused to move, and there have been social media campaigns including a protest petition.

At the same time, the parallels between a women being compelled to accommodate the ultra-orthodox religious beliefs of a man and college students’ expectations that other college students’ exercise of expression that offend them be suppressed are obvious. If it’s wrong to force Rabinowitz to change seats to provide the man with his safe space, it’s every bit as wrong for college students to demand that their fellow students be silenced, disciplined or removed from their sphere because they find their expressions offensive.

But it’s different. Their speech, their thoughts, are offensive. Because that’s your feelings? Because they offend your sensibilities? Because they’re, well, wrong? No doubt the ultra-orthodox man believed with complete sincerity that his religious beliefs come from God, and certainly his sincere beliefs that God commands him to act as he does are at least the equivalent, if not superior, to your belief that people should not be entitled to express things that offend your sensibilities about sex or race. Is a strongly-held religious belief not at least as important as your strongly held belief as to social justice?

No one prevents a college student from having their safe space, any more than anyone prevents the ultra-orthodox man from sitting in a row without a woman next to him. But the burden is on him to make whatever arrangements, or changes, are needed to meet his demands.  That goes for college students as well. Be as safe as you want, but you have no right to force others to change to satisfy your sensibilities.