The Radicalization of Rockland, foreseeable

http://www.lohud.com/story/news/investigations/2015/11/05/new-square-rules/74471378/

 

Those Who Control New Square Will Eventually Control All Of Rockland

https://m.facebook.com/Clarkstown-What-They-Dont-Want-You-To-Know-146207698912716/?fref=nf

“You have more than 7,500 people who eat the same food, go to the same institutions, get the same kind of education and all look to the rebbe as paramount leader … and are really dependent economically on being in this community” – Samuel Heilman, sociology professor at Queens College

“They have created a mini-theocracy. It’s not unlike Iran.” – Shulem Deen.

It is said there should be dialog between communities to foster better understanding so that different cultures can live with mutual respect and harmony.

But how does one hold a dialog with a religious Luddite who lives in a multi-million dollar secluded mansion along the Hudson River while his followers live like sardines packed into New Square’s multifamily cans of ignorance?

How does one hold a dialog with a fundamentalist who gives thanks each morning that God did not make him a woman?

How does one hold a dialog with a fundamentalist who believes he can study his holy book from dawn to dusk because goyim were put on this earth by the author of his book solely for the purpose of supporting him to read His book?

Fundamentalism has demonic traits. It destroys the humble honesty of the search for truth, it splits the conscience of its thoughtful adherents, and it makes them fanatical because they are forced to suppress elements of truth of which they are dimly aware” – Paul Tillich

NEW SQUARE – Each year, when registering their children for private school, parents in the all-Hasidic village of New Square must agree in writing to follow a detailed list of very specific rules — or risk the expulsion of their children from the only school in town
For example, mothers are banned from driving, and they must shave their heads and wear only clothing that extends at least 5 or 6 inches below the knee. The far more abbreviated list of rules for fathers requires them to pray regularly with a quorum and refrain from cutting their beards.
Voices: Residents react to New Square’s new technology rules
Report: Some E. Ramapo yeshivas fail to prepare pupils in secular studies
This fall, however, New Square authorities introduced several new rules that reflect the community’s fears about the dangers of the Internet. The changes have renewed critics’ condemnation of the Skverer sect’s attempts to control its followers — particularly women.

The new rules include:
Mothers are prohibited from using smartphones — even for business purposes.
Mothers and fathers must cease using WhatsApp, a popular smartphone messaging application.
As announced last month on a large flier taped to the village’s synagogue wall — no one may use cellphones without web filters.
Authorities posted the notice after it was discovered that some adults were keeping second, unfiltered phones in addition to their approved “kosher” ones.
The rules are the ultra-Orthodox sect’s latest attempt to keep the Internet out of the hands and minds of its followers for fear that exposure to the secular world will lead to moral decay and community disintegration. Radios, televisions, Internet connections and newspapers are also banned in the small Rockland County village. Guided by the community’s spiritual leader, Rebbe David Twersky, followers, known as Skverers, strive toward the Hasidic ideal of living a hallowed life, in which even the most mundane action is sanctified.
“We are human beings. We also have families and we live the way life was given to us,” said Yenti Holczler, a New Square grandmother of more than 50. “Our way of doing things is trying to do it spiritually, the way the Torah brings it for us.”

The sect originated in 19th century Ukraine but the Rockland village was founded in 1954. Former Skverer Hasid Shulem Deen said the rebbe and his advisers “are really afraid that people are undermining the insular nature of this community that they have worked for decades and decades and decades to maintain. They only way they can maintain that is to clamp down hard on the rules.”
Read more: New Square FAQs
Document: New Square rules (Yiddish)
Document: Smartphone ban for women (Yiddish)
Document: Smartphone notice (Yiddish)
Map: New Square
As the home of the Skverer rebbe, New Square is the epicenter of the Skverer sect, which Deen estimates may number 15,000 followers worldwide. The Skverers of New Square — with 7,700 people occupying less than half a square mile — are extreme, even among highly observant Jews, said Rabbi Avi Shafran, spokesman for the ultra-Orthodox umbrella organization, Agudath Israel of America.
‘RECIPE’ FOR RULES
“You have more than 7,500 people who eat the same foods, go to same institutions, get the same kind of education and all look to the rebbe as paramount leader … and are really dependent economically on being in this community,” said Samuel Heilman, a sociology professor at Queens College CUNY and expert in contemporary orthodox Jewish communities. “That’s a recipe for a lot of rules.”
Though the community is small, it is growing very fast and contributes thousands of private-school students to the cash-strapped East Ramapo school district, which has struggled to balance the needs of public and private schools. And New Square’s extremism —- particularly when it comes to cutting off women’s access to information and transportation —- is troubling to defenders of civil liberties.
“If private citizens are asking people to voluntarily pledge to this kind of commitment, it would, in my opinion, be antithetical to principles and values of America,” said Norman Siegel, the former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “There should be an open, robust debate about whether this approach is consistent with what America and New York state are supposed to be about.”
Agudath’s Shafran said followers find deep meaning in the rules.
“One way the community’s religious leaders have of stating the standards they believe to be best for the community is to spell out requirements like those (cited) for enrollment in the community’s private schools,” he said.
The ban on women driving exists only in a few of the strictest Hasidic enclaves. And its requirement that men and women walk on opposite sides of the street to preserve modesty is also rare. The village’s lack of interaction with outside communities and its use of Yiddish for nearly all communication contributes to its insularity.
But some of the rules the Skverer community observes are common throughout the ultra-Orthodox world, including women’s extremely conservative dress and shorn, wig-covered heads. Fear of the Internet and the potential problems that can stem from access to pornography and other explicit content on the open Web is also common in the broader Orthodox community.

TECH TABOO
Reflecting their community’s deep concern, an ultra-Orthodox anti-Internet rally was held at the Provident Bank Park baseball stadium in Ramapo in 2013, a follow-up to a larger event held a year earlier at Citi Field in Queens. Roughly 50,000 ultra-Orthodox men attended the 2012 rally. (The New York Times reported that, in keeping with gender-segregation rules, women held at-home viewing parties live-streamed over the Internet.)
“They believe the modern world is seductive,” said CUNY’s Heilman. “They probably believe more in Freud than anyone else — it’s all about sex. It’s very difficult to keep people from being seduced so they believe you have to be vigilant every minute.”

In New Square, residents are allowed to buy voice-only cellphones from three companies that have the rebbe’s blessing and are therefore considered kosher — Meushar, Meshimer and Na’amon. The kosher phones are sold in a tiny strip-mall storefront called EZ Cell, sandwiched between a kosher bakery and a print shop.
Until recently, men would bring smartphones and any other Internet-enabled devices to get “filtered” in the lobby of the village’s massive temple, where a New Square-based outfit known as “To Cleanse” would set up shop periodically. Authorities put stickers on the phones once they are considered kosher.

In October, “To Cleanse” opened an office in New Square to keep up with demand. That computers and Internet access have become necessary for so many types of work has complicated matters for village leaders. They have granted special permits for work-related smartphones on a case-by-case basis to men and women for the last few years.
As of this fall, women’s permission has been rescinded. In addition to the ban printed on school registration forms, the rabbinical court posted a flier in the synagogue clarifying that, while men may need smartphones as a source of income and can apply for a permit, “….. but, for women, use of smartphones is forbidden under all circumstances in order to protect themselves and their households from this terrifying danger.”
However, in small print, a caveat at the bottom, says, “If you really, really need it, get in touch with a special rabbinical committee at this number,” said Deen, translating the Yiddish flier.
“They are almost hoping people are not going to read the fine print,” he said.
Because Skverer women receive a more robust secular education and generally speak English better than the men, one insider said authorities view smartphones in the hands of women to be of particular concern.

Skverer women in New Square sometimes work in the village or in family businesses but, compared with Skverer men, their freedoms are scant. Modesty is of paramount concern. Driving, for example, is considered immodest. Holczler said that she isn’t always content with the driving ban.
“You don’t think I’ve ever had that feeling, ‘Oh, if I’d only be able to drive and get to this place, I can’t get there?’ Sometimes I get that feeling but this is the way we do it.”
Holczler said she supported the ban because “women shouldn’t be exposed, or be out in public all the time. Women should be with their families.”
Heilman, co-author of the forthcoming book, A New History of Hasidism, expanded on that, saying: “The Torah does not say not to drive cars, but women are supposed to be modest. It’s really the same reason women don’t drive in Saudi Arabia. Since modesty is best enforced in the home, the idea that a woman could travel anywhere she wants on her own (is not acceptable). Many of these things are not uniquely Jewish.”

And using private religious schools to ban women from driving isn’t unique to New Square. This summer, leaders of the Belz Hasidic sect in London declared that women could not drive their children to its yeshivas or the children would be turned away, according to The Guardian, which is based in the United Kingdom. Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission quickly declared the ruling illegal and community authorities rescinded it.
WHAT’S UP, WHATSAPP
WhatsApp has become such a popular means for many ultra-Orthodox Jews to surreptitiously form social networks that, this summer, a forum of prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel issued a ruling against using the mobile application, which they characterized as “a great spiritual danger.” WhatsApp allows smartphone users to connect via the Internet to anyone else whose smartphone number is among their “contacts.” Group chats are common.
“No one can see who’s on WhatsApp unless they’re on there as well. So it makes for the perfect underground chat room,” said one New Square user. He said his group of approximately 150 residents secretly share gossip, videos clips and, occasionally, “immodest” images of women.
A flier posted on the synagogue wall warns parents that anyone keeping a secret, unfiltered smartphone will be investigated.
Community authorities are so intent on banning the application, they offered one user a “large sum” of money to identify the other members in his WhatApp group, according to a screen shot image sent to The Journal News.
Just as some Skverers defy the ban on WhatsApp, plenty skirt the rules forbidding smartphone use. Enough people in New Square buy two mobile devices — a kosher one for calls within the community, another to keep up with the outside world — that authorities believed it necessary to post a sign on the synagogue wall this fall warning parents that they will be investigated.
Parents aren’t the only ones required to steer clear of the Internet. Schools make tremendous efforts to train students to stay pure, last year encouraging them to wear pins that say, “I’m free of the enslavement of technology to our God in Heaven.”
These actions are taken in a school that accepted more than $3.3 million in federal funds earmarked for Internet and telecommunications technology — even though students there do not have access to computers, an investigation by the Manhattan-based Jewish Week newspaper found in 2012.
Students are also required to sign forms pledging to refrain from even touching a cellphone.
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