The following is from the NY Daily News:
A gang of overbearing religious scolds is targeting Jewish store owners who open shops in Williamsburg’s Satmar Hasidic enclave, ordering them to comply with a shadowy but strict set of standards or face sinful consequences.
Residents said the Va’ad Hatznius — known as the modesty patrol — struck again Thursday, blanketing lightposts and car windshields with flyers calling for the boycott of a new women’s clothing shop at 100 Lee Ave. and trumpeting an afternoon protest.
The store’s offense? Having big windows, through which the sight of women holding up dresses and picking through clothes are too easily observed from the street.
“It is not right,” said Moshe Spira, the manager of Grill on Lee, a sandwich shop down the block from the dress shop, explaining that the “man and his wife, trying to make a living for them and their family” opened just days ago.
“When we opened the store, they put up flyers,” Spira added. “They made a protest saying, ‘Don’t eat here.’ We were the first fast-food restaurant in the neighborhood. They were saying men and women can sit together and are on the line together. We just ignored them and they moved on.”
The manager of the dress shop declined to comment about being the modesty patrol’s newest magnet for wrath. Community affairs cops checked out the store Thursday, scouting for protestors who never showed up.
Members of the Va’ad Hatznius don’t advertise, and its leadership is unknown.
But its influence is unquestionable.
“They came to me and said they don’t like this and that,” said another merchant, Victor Klein, owner of Ice Cream House on Bedford Ave.
Bearded men paid Klein a visit one month after he opened his two-story parlor, demanding that he put up signs telling customers how to dress.
Klein spoke to his lawyer, asking how to follow their orders without being sued for discrimination should he ban clothes favored by the non-religious.
“You have to respect the community,” Klein said, describing the dilemma. “I want people to send their children here. If people don’t send their children here, I am out of business.”
The Williamsburg merchants’ dress codes are being probed by New York City’s Commission on Human Rights, which filed suit against seven Lee Ave. shops last August.
“It’s a new kind of discrimination case,” said Cliff Mulqueen, the commission’s general counsel. “There is a clash between anti-discrimination laws and freedom of religion.
“If you have a business in New York, you have to treat everyone who walks in your door the same way, regardless.”
(Source: NY Daily News)
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15 Responses
This is a perfect example of how important education is. These bums are uneducated and are doctored to think one way and it’s disgusting.
One of my employees (Non Jewish) told me this morning, and I quote: “These people make the Taliban look good”
This non-sense action has to stop and someone with real authority has to speak up, it is out of hand.
Are you telling me that there is not ONE Rabbi with a little brain that can stop this? Can start educating these people that we live in the USA and there is something called “The Law”?
These action only bring more and more anti-Semitism and it never ends well
Oy…………..wait till the first successful law suit and every chassid will yell “Anti-Semites” in the streets while the rest of us cringe and try to explain whats going on to our non jewish coworkers…
Time for the kehilla to move in masse to Kiryat Yoel, there it is a gated, closed, insular community.
The Vaad Hatzinus will not be battling stores, bicycle riding, NY tourists and wedding participants who use the neighborhood halls and are not into Satmar DRESS CODES.
To #3 there is no gate in kj
go and open a pub in a Moslem neighborhood. They don’t want you there. When in Rome do as the Romans due. If you want to be not tznius don’t open in Willamsburg. End of story. I won’t open a car repair shop in an area the forbids cars to enter.
The debauched, corrupt Americans won’t understand tznius.
#6 The frum, bnei Torah of Litvisha brand won’t understand the new standards of Toras Hashem as decided upon in Williamsburg.
Should “Vaad Hatzinus” be capitalized? That implies a formal committee appointed by someone (presumably someone in charge, such as the “Rebbe”, as if there was only one). I believe a better translation would be “modesty activists” or perhaps “tznius activists”. While in modern Hebrew the word “vaad” indicates a commitee, it traditionally implied only a group of persons acting in concert.
First of all a very choshever Satmar Yid and head of a school testified under oath that there is no such thing as a Vaad Hatzniyus so YWN why are you making it sound like he perjured himself?
Second of all how is a large window a lack of tzniyus?
Third of all, where does it say how large your window is allowed to be? They must print up a rule book that everyone should follow, otherwise nobody will know what to do! You cant do this to someone after they open their store!
with all due respect to the “refined ” people of the world; while i will npot attempt to discuss proper reactions to lack of tznius – to all all who dont like the reactions i have a question to ask of you. do you ever react to lack of tznius, how is your shmiras haeinaim? etc….. . when you choose to do everything al pi daas torah then feel free to comment on what you consider to be improper reactions by “scolds”
They have every right under the Constitution to boycott and encourage others to boycott and to protest in front of stores that they find to be immodest.
I’m not sure what a Moslem neighborhood is, but according to the Yellow Pages there are 35 bars in Dearborn, Michigan.
Instead of protesting against the vaad, why not just keep tznius?
M’darf zey shisin mit ah gitta shisser grud in kup arayn!
It is better to have an official police force with the power to arrest and a Beis Din with enforcement powers. Both of course must be accountable to the community and reviewed formally and regularly.