Brooklyn isn't Jerusalem. Signs ask Jewish women to step aside for men

[no_hypocrisy]

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Yiddish signs briefly sprouted on Brooklyn trees asking Jewish women to step aside when a man walks down the sidewalk.

The plastic signs bolted to trees in the Brooklyn neighborhood of South Williamsburg read, in Yiddish, “Precious Jewish Daughters: Please move over to the side when you see a man cross,” the Brooklyn Paper reported last week.

Parks maintenance workers removed 16 of the signs last week because they were nailed to public-owned trees, a violation subject to a $150 fine.

Sources told the Brooklyn Paper that the signs were part of a campaign by a rabbinical group, the Central Rabbinical Congress, that has published other decrees, including one in June forbidding women to wear tank tops.



http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/10/10/3089783/brooklyn-signs-ask-jewish-women-to-step-aside-for-men

[customerserviceguy]

1. There's a town not far from me

called New Square, and it's a 100% Hassidic place that actually has a law on the books that men should walk on one side of the street, women on the other. I have no idea if it's ever enforced, but I have as much contempt for rabbinic law as I do for sharia law.

[Dawson Leery]

2. Unconstitutional.

[MilesColtrane]

3. What the hell?

Is there something in Leviticus about cooties?

[leveymg]

4. A Fundamentalist, is a Fundamentalist, is not a . . .

Feminist, or a modern person, in any language. Williamsburg might as well be Jeddah or Shiraz or Lynchburg. G-d bless them all.

[Rabblevox]

5. I hope they charge the Rabbinical Congress for every one of those violations...

If the signs were in Arabic and posted in Dearborn, there would be a media firestorm.

I am sick and fucking tired of Orthodox Jews and the state of Israel getting a free pass in our media of being fascist thugs.

[darkstar3]

6. Not that I really disagree, but

how do you reconcile this post and...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x308034

[Rabblevox]

7. I don't feel they need reconciliation. But too expand...

Not once, not ever, have I argued in favor of ANY organized religion. And I hate fundamentalist religion with a passion that I have made clear many times.

What I said (and I think I said it articulately) is that I don't entirely reject the possibility of god, and that I have deep respect for believers whose faith inspires them.

Nothing more, nothing less.

[darkstar3]

8. So you "don't disparage religion" except when it really pisses you off.

Got it.

[idiotgardener]

9. Where's the disparagement?

Taxpayers had to pay to have the sexist signs removed. A way to get that money back is by charging them the fine that is already specified for the infraction.

Wanting someone to pay a fine for the infraction they committed is disparagement?


Personally I think the group that put up the offensive signs should have been forced to take them down, but whatever gets the job done...

[darkstar3]

10. Seriously? Did you read the last sentence of #5?

[idiotgardener]

11. OK, I guess I misread...

I thought you meant that fining the group would be disparagement of religion. Oops!

[Meshuga]

13. Don't you get it?

He can disparage religion. You cannot. Learn your place.

[cleanhippie]

18. I think you have it!

[trotsky]

17. Hrm.

"It does, however, mean that I need to at least consider the possibility that they are right."

Doesn't appear that you did this time.

[cleanhippie]

19. Hey, quoting back a persons exact words is not fair play!

How can one get away with hypocrisy when you do that?


You meanie.

[LeftishBrit]

12. Actually it shouldn't be happening in Jerusalem either. Most Israelis are secular and opposed to

such attitudes; but the ultra-Orthodox have excessive power due to the Israeli electoral system giving excessive influence to small religious parties.

Since this is not the case in Brooklyn, I hope the secular majority ignore this idiocy and don't pander to it.

Unfortunately, the equivalent Christian ultras have undue power in the American electoral system!

[Meshuga]

14. Exactly

Well said.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

15. the women cut their hair off and wear ugly wigs.

No way in hell I would join a religion where either the women can't cut their hair, or cut it off and wear wigs. These damn men that make those rules are stupid and or mean.

I have thick wavy hair, enough for three people, and if I had to either let it grow wild, or cut it off, that would NOT WORK.

[NMMNG]

16. But we should respect their Deeply Held Religious Beliefs

Lest we be deemed intolerant religion-haters. :sarcasm: