WE KNOW that chickens have to cross the road to avoid unpleasant, dizzying encounters with ultra-Orthodox Jews, but now we learn that women, too, should take avoidance measures when the Men in Black come their way.
Signs telling Jewish females to steer clear of oncoming Orthodox Jewish men have, according to this report, created a bit of a kerfuffle in Williamsburg, New York.
The red, yellow and white plastic signs, first noted in the Jewish watchdog blog Failed Messiah, is roughly translated as:
Precious Jewish daughters, please move over to the side when you see a man come across.
Bike shop owner Baruch Herzfeld is quoted as saying:
There are some hard-core Hasidim in Williamsburg who think they still live in 19th-century Ukraine and they consider interaction between the sexes, in even the most casual, accidental manner to be licentious. They are enormous pains in the tuchis (arse) and most people try to avoid conflict, so they often get their way.
But Hasidic residents say that the signs are being misinterpreted. Said one Hasidic man who declined to give his name:
It is very respectful; it’s not ordering you to cross the street  - it means, ‘Let him pass head on’. There are a lot of people on the street during the holidays, and this is a reminder to let men pass so they don’t go barging into a group of women.
Parks maintenance workers removed 16 signs in the area last Wednesday because they were nailed to trees, a violation of city law subject to a $150 fine.
The signs do not indicate who created them, but they are thought to be part of a campaign by a rabbinical group which has posted other “modesty” decrees, including one in June telling women not wear tank tops.
Many Hasidic women ignored that fashion decree – but the pedestrian etiquette warning appears to have carried more weight.
During the week, women on Bedford and Lee Avenue could be seen allowing men to pass on several occasions.
Said one Hasidic woman, who also declined to give her name:
Sometimes a gentle reminder is needed to keep the neighborhood the way it should be and that Jewish values are supposed to be followed.
This report reminded me of an incident I witnessed in apartheid South Africa in the sixties. Black pedestrians in the town of Bethal, where I grew up, were expected to step off the sidewalk if they spotted any whites coming their way. A young African, who failed to get out of the way of a group of bearded, black clad men – in this case members of the Dutch Reformed Church – was struck on the head and knocked to the ground with a massive Bible for failing to step aside in time. The victim, who worked as a gardener for a neighbour, was rendered deaf in one ear for a month as a result of the assault.
Hat tip: Nick Best & Anonymous
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
October 8th, 2011 at 9:46 am
Just like some Muslims: we respect women tremendously, but they are the ones who have to behave modestly, amongst other things, and they have to get out of their way when a master of the universe approaches. I’m glad my remote ancestors dropped this nonsense, became christians and ended up with atheists. Sounds like evolution.
October 8th, 2011 at 10:24 am
Jewish values – oh, dear!
October 8th, 2011 at 10:34 am
Did anyone else notice that Pat Condell has now become the darling of the neocon right wing?
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011.....n-lie.html
October 8th, 2011 at 10:51 am
Please note that this article refers to certain Orthodox Jews only and does not reflect the beliefs or actions of all Jews in America. I think it may be the author’s ‘way’ of using a very isolated incident to inflict his personal bigotry against a religion he obviously knows little about.
October 8th, 2011 at 11:11 am
What is it with religions and sex? They're bloody obsessed with it!
Is it me, or is Pat Condell becoming a little … erm … over-obsessed? Okay, the Palestinians aren't perfect, but to claim Israel isn't at least as bad is ridiculous.
October 8th, 2011 at 12:27 pm
Pat Condell… My hero… (after Geert Wilders, of course)… Says what most people think and gets abuse for it. I have read in many places what he says about the Palestinians. It is SOOOOO fashionable to say that the Israelis are the new Nazis when the truth lies in the islamofascist governance of the Palestinians: Those who won’t have peace until Israel is wiped off the map regardless of concessions made to them.
October 8th, 2011 at 12:38 pm
Here,Here Pat Condell is also my hero. He speaks what I speak but no-one listens to me.
Come on women,get some backbone. I was born an atheist, told I was jewish but no I was a person with reason and logic and soon saw religion for what it was. and will die an atheist.
Orthodox jews or not religion is an excuse for religious men to stop women in their tracks. It comes to mind what position UK was in before womens right to vote.
Beware women all over the world do not let religion make us second class citizens, slaves to men.
Be a freethinker like me.
October 8th, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Agreed, Daz. I’ve noticed that Pat Condell seems to keep a special brand of bile on hand for dealing with Islam and Palestinians, and can’t help but feel it comes across as though he wants to be seen to be big and brave by saying something different. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not simply a bunch of Arabs and Jews constantly trying to blow one another up, and I find it difficult to make the Palestinians shoulder most of the blame when they have next to no power over the situation and the Israeli government continually breaches international law in their bloodthirst. Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs both were involved in demonstrations across Israel recently, protesting against the economic turmoil the country is going through. It’s not as if these people cannot live and work together.
Anyway, as to the original story, I wonder if the Men in Black will use their Flashy Thing on the women…
October 8th, 2011 at 3:27 pm
@ dz
What’s there to know? Judaism, the religion of the Jews, based on the Old Testament and the Talmud and having as its central point a belief in the one God as transcendent creator of all things and the source of all righteousness.
This “isolated incident” (along with whirling chickens, the suggestion that men marrying dogs, the removal of the image of women from photographs among other things) probably wouldn’t happen if the religion didn’t exist. It is the moderates of all religions that enable these stupid wingnuts to proliferate.
October 8th, 2011 at 3:30 pm
What a bunch of dicks… sigh… They should come to Stoke-on-Trent where the women wear very little, drink till late (or early, I forget which way round it is these days), then beat the shit out of asshole blokes, just for the hell of it! Not saying this is a great state of affairs, but it’s definitely put them in their place somewhat!!!
October 8th, 2011 at 3:32 pm
@ David Anderson – I think dz was being sarcastic based on an argument in a previous thread about an article’s author jumping to conclusions about Muslims and then dodging any real admission of making a simple and understandable mistake.
October 8th, 2011 at 3:53 pm
Jewish women…. be confrontational. Don’t let those 18th century men put you down, stand up to them and make them move over. If they don’t like it..just call them ”Schtick Drecks”….. (pieces of sh*t) and stay your path. We have enough small minded people trying to rule the roost. From a Jewish Atheist, who, by the way, is celebrating his birthday today by going out to lunch with a bunch of friends…. on Yom Kipper!!! Oy, Vey……………
October 8th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Condell has been travelling down that road for a while now.
October 8th, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Sometimes I think these big name atheists are in it for the coin, yes they do do good work, but the hand is always open for a donation. Well some of them that is.
October 8th, 2011 at 8:12 pm
Sorry, elainek123, but as far as I know, women in the UK, pre-emancipation, were never expected to step aside for some bloke. It was and still is, expected that the man gives way to the woman. It didn’t stop women being classed as second class citizens but that sort of knavery wasn’t included in it.
This just the usual mind control being used again and I’m glad the local authorities were quick to take down the boards. It’s worth noting that these boards anomynous, were not traceable, so we can include cowardice in their actions as well.
October 8th, 2011 at 11:41 pm
frankly mens dominance over women wasnt started by religion. like alot of things in the holy books they adopted the ways of the current times so they could slot into people lives without disrupting too many people. men were the hunters, women the gatherers – pure strength makes man the physical head. its biological and evloutionary, theres not too much wrong with it on a primal level.
but its only religion in the current era that keeps this divide alive, and its wrong. women have many qualities us men do not. we arent equal, no one is equal, but we both have superior and inferior aspects of our gender. but religion forces women to degrade themselves much further, for no good reason. shame on anyone who forces this kind of medieval practice.
October 9th, 2011 at 12:48 am
It is very respectful; it’s not ordering you to cross the street – it means, ‘Let him pass head on’. There are a lot of people on the street during the holidays, and this is a reminder to let men pass so they don’t go barging into a group of women.
Respectful. That’s funny. I was taught to (properly) respect women. So in the circumstance he describes/claims, where there might be a collision, I’d get out of the way of the ladies and let them pass.
Trying to pass this shit off as “respect” for women, when we all know it is just the opposite, is pathetic. They must think people are stupid enough to believe that they don’t hate women.
October 9th, 2011 at 4:27 am
Love it. Let them keep on making such claims night and day. They are doing more to advance the causes of equality and antitheism than Germaine Greer and Richard Dawkins on crack could manage in a month of Sundays.
Anyone with a scrap of sense will feel patronised. Sweet as a nut.
October 9th, 2011 at 7:20 am
barriejohn,
“Did anyone else notice that Pat Condell has now become the darling of the neocon right wing?”
Yes, I have, a very nasty anti-Arab rant,from another person who can’t distinguish people from ideology. As far as I’m concerned, Condell belongs on those Zionist hate sites, and he can stay there. Very sad decline indeed.
October 9th, 2011 at 8:46 am
I can’t understand what has happened to Pat Condell. First we had him telling us all to vote for a xenophobic, right-wing party like UKIP, and trying to wriggle off the hook by saying that he didn’t actually support their policies, or want us to, but just wanted people to VOTE for them – whatever that means! Then he climbed aboard the “Ground Zero Mosque” bandwagon, which was a bogus campaign if ever there was one – whatever one thinks of the desirability of having yet another mosque in Manhattan. Now we have this diatribe against the Palestinian people. As others have said, these are a largely powerless and dispossessed people who have been used as political pawns for generations, and have been ill-served by their leaders – some of whom have become very rich in the process (Arafat is alleged to have been a billionaire). And the Israelis and their American sponsors are not entirely covered in glory, are they, even though to the likes of Spencer and Geller they can do no wrong!
October 9th, 2011 at 9:49 am
barriejohn,
I’ve just read the transcript of Pat Condell’s video (I’m deaf), and I see no evidence of a “diatribe against the Palestinian People.” His attack is aimed at the Palestinian leadership. Your prejudice is showing,sir.
October 9th, 2011 at 1:14 pm
Condell seems to have drifted from anti-religion to anti-Islam to anti-muslim. Along the way he has made common cause with the Gates of Vienna crew, worldnetdaily etc. He has become their pet atheist, perhaps he finds the attention flattering.
October 9th, 2011 at 2:11 pm
Did you miss the first two paragraphs then, Virginian?
Is it racist to criticize the Palestinians as the world’s most tiresome cry-babies with a bogus cause and a plight that’s entirely self-inflicted? I bet it is. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was against the law in certain European countries but I’m going to do it anyway because somebody has to. And I realize I’ll probably lose a few friends with this video but that’s okay. Friends like that, I can do without.
All any of us can do is tell the truth as we see it. I mean as we actually see it and not as we think we’re supposed to see it. The worst thing you can do is to see the truth and tell a lie and I see the Palestinian cause as a lie. A lie designed to exploit Western liberal guilt; like the lie of Islamophobia and the lie of the mythical religion of peace that nobody has ever seen in action.
Untruths and non-sequiturs.
October 9th, 2011 at 11:12 pm
Such a weasely trick. He’s basically saying we all agree with him but are too scared of looking ‘non-PC’ to say so. Or, more bluntly, everyone who says they disagree with him is a liar.