WUNRN
USA-NYC - BROOKLYN - JEWISH ULTRA
ORTHODOX "COMMITTEES" ENFORCE MODESTY
The
Brooklyn shopkeeper was already home for the night when her phone rang: a man
who said he was from a neighborhood “modesty committee” was concerned that the
mannequins in her store’s window, used to display women’s clothing, might
inadvertently arouse passing men and boys.
“The man said, ‘Do the neighborhood a favor and take it
out of the window,’ ” the store’s manager recalled. “ ‘We’re trying
to safeguard our community.’ ”
In many neighborhoods, a store owner might shrug off
such a call. But on Lee Avenue, the commercial spine of Hasidic Williamsburg,
the warning carried an implied threat — comply with community standards or be
shunned. It is a potent threat in a neighborhood where shadowy, sometimes
self-appointed modesty squads use social and economic leverage to enforce
conformity.
The owner wrestled with the request for a day or two,
but decided to follow it. “We can sell it without mannequins, so we might as
well do what the public wants,” the owner told the manager, who asked not to be
identified because of fear of reprisals for talking.
In the close-knit world of ultra-Orthodox Judaism,
community members know the modesty rules as well as Wall Street bankers who
show up for work in a Brooks Brothers suit. Women wear long skirts and
long-sleeved, high-necked blouses on the street; men do not wear Bermuda shorts
in summer. Schools prescribe the color and thickness of girls’ stockings.
The rules are spoken and unspoken, enforced by social
pressure but also, in ways that some find increasingly disturbing, by the
modesty committees. Their power is evident in the fact that of the half dozen
women’s clothing stores along Lee Avenue, only one features mannequins, and
those are relatively shapeless, fully clothed torsos.
The groups have long been a part of daily life in the
ultra-Orthodox communities that dot Brooklyn and other corners of the Jewish
world. But they sprang into public view with the trial of Nechemya Weberman, a prominent member of the
Satmar Hasidim in Brooklyn, who last week was sentenced to 103 years in prison
after being convicted of sexually abusing a young girl sent to him for
counseling.
Mr. Weberman, an unlicensed therapist, testified during
his trial that boys and girls — though not his accuser — were regularly
referred to him by a Hasidic modesty committee concerned about what it viewed
as inappropriate attire and behavior.
The details were startling: a witness for Mr.
Weberman’s defense, Baila Gluck, testified that
masked men representing a modesty committee in the Hasidic village of Kiryas
Joel, N.Y., 50 miles northwest of New York City, broke into her bedroom about
seven years ago and confiscated her cellphone.
The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, who prosecuted the Weberman
case, has now received allegations that members of a modesty committee forced
their way into a home in the borough, confiscating an iPad and computer
equipment deemed inappropriate for Orthodox children, officials say.
Allegations have also surfaced that a modesty committee threatened to publicly
shame a married man who was having an affair unless he paid the members money
for what they described as therapy.
“They operate like the Mafia,” said Rabbi Allan Nadler,
director of the Jewish studies program at Drew University in Madison, N.J.
Rabbi Nadler, who testified at Mr. Weberman’s trial,
said that modesty committees did not have addresses, stationery or business
cards, and that few people seemed to know where their authority originated,
though it was doubtful, he said, that they could continue operating without the
tacit blessings of rabbinical leaders.
“They walk into a store and say it would be a shame if
your window was broken or you lost your clientele,” he said. “They might tell
the father of a girl who wears a skirt that’s too short and he’s, say, a store
owner: ‘If you ever want to sell a pair of shoes, speak to your
daughter.’ ”
In Israel, there have been similar concerns. Though no
modesty committee was overtly involved, there has been anger over
ultra-Orthodox zealots who spit on and insulted an 8-year-old girl for walking
to school through their neighborhood in a dress they considered immodest.
In Brooklyn, Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who has
represented the heavily Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park for 30 years, said
that he had never met a modesty committee member, but that “there are a lot of
independent operators that believe they are protecting God and have to do this
kind of stuff, and that’s sickening and gives us all a black eye.”
“If you want to advocate modesty,” he added, “do your
thing, but when you stuff it down my throat physically, that undermines us and
hurts us.”
Hasidic leaders contend that the modesty committees are
nothing more than self-appointed individuals who, indignant at some perceived
infraction, take matters into their own hands.
“These are individual people who decide to take on this
crusade,” said Rabbi David Niederman, who as president of the United Jewish
Organization of Williamsburg is a sometime spokesman for the Satmar Hasidim.
“You see posters telling people do this and do that. It does not represent an
authorized body.”
But many Hasidim say they have seen or heard how a
shadowy group of men seeks to pressure parents to rein in children who wear
dresses too short or stockings too thin, or who chat on cellphones with friends
of the opposite sex. One family reported being harassed because the wife had
stepped outdoors with a robelike housecoat rather than a long dress.
While many of the rules of conduct are announced on
Yiddish broadsides posted on trees, lampposts and walls, residents of Hasidic
neighborhoods say some store owners have received rough verbal warnings from a
modesty committee to stop selling magazines that carry photographs considered
too revealing, or articles that dispute the Satmar Hasidim’s belief that Israel
should not have existed until the Messiah’s arrival.
The Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States
and Canada, in addition to certifying foods as kosher and adjudicating
matrimonial and commercial disputes, does at times remind the Satmar community
of the community’s modesty rules. It is made up of scores of rabbis, but it has
an address — it is housed on the second floor of a Williamsburg row house — and
it signs every decree it issues.
“We give out proclamations,” said Rabbi Yitzchok Glick,
its executive director. “We don’t enforce. It’s like people can decide to keep
Shabbos or not. If someone wants to turn on the light on Shabbos, we cannot put
him in jail for that.”
But Hasidim interviewed said squads of enforcers did
exist in wildcat form.
“There are quite a few men, especially in Williamsburg,
who consider themselves Gut’s polizei,” said Yosef Rapaport, a Hasidic
journalist, using the words for “God’s police.”
“It’s somebody who is a busybody, and they’re quite a few of them — zealots who take it upon themselves and they just enforce. They’re considered crazy, but people don’t want to confront them.”