More signs of creeping halacha in New York City. From the New York World:
On the morning of October 12, Melissa Franchy boarded the B110 bus in Brooklyn and sat down near the front. For a few minutes she was left in silence, although the other passengers gave her a noticeably wide berth. But as the bus began to fill up, the men told her that she had to get up. Move to the back, they insisted.
They were Orthodox Jews with full beards, sidecurls and long black coats, who told her that she was riding a “private bus” and a “Jewish bus.” When she asked why she had to move, a man scolded her.
“If God makes a rule, you don’t ask ‘Why make the rule?’” he told Franchy, who rode the bus at the invitation of a New York World reporter. She then moved to the back where the other women were sitting. The driver did not intervene in the incident.
The B110 bus travels between Williamsburg and Borough Park in Brooklyn. It is open to the public, and has a route number and tall blue bus stop signs like any other city bus. But the B110 operates according to its own distinct rules. The bus line is run by a private company and serves the Hasidic communities of the two neighborhoods. To avoid physical contact between members of opposite sexes that is prohibited by Hasidic tradition, men sit in the front of the bus and women sit in the back.
The article continues:
The arrangement that the B110 operates under can only be described as unorthodox. It operates as a franchise, in which a private company, Private Transportation Corporation, pays the city for the right to provide a public service. Passengers pay their $2.50 fare not by MetroCard, but in dollar bills and coins. The city’s Franchise and Concession Review Committee defines a franchise on its website as “the right to occupy or to use the City’s inalienable property, such as streets or parks, for a public service, e.g., transportation.”
The agreement goes back to at least 1973, and last year the franchise paid the city $22,814 to operate the route, according to the New York City Department of Transportation. According to the news site Vos Iz Neias?, which serves the Orthodox Jewish community in New York City and elsewhere, the bus company has a board of consulting rabbis, which decreed that male passengers should ride in the front of the bus and female passengers in the back.
City, state and federal law all proscribe discrimination based on gender in public accommodations. “Discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations in New York City is against the law,” said Betsy Herzog, a spokeswoman for the New York City Commission on Human Rights, which investigates and prosecutes alleged violations of anti-discrimination law.
The Department of Transportation, which issues the franchise, confirms that it understands the B110 to be subject to anti-discrimination laws. “This is a private company, but it is a public service,” said Seth Solomonow, a spokesman for the DOT. “The company has to comply with all applicable laws.”
Any chance this will be taken up in Albany similarly to how Oklahoma and Wyoming tried to outlaw sharia law? It’s doubtful, but that doesn’t mean some in the Jewish community aren’t concerned.
Well, I guess it could be worse. They could be settlers.
Didn’t white Southerners think their peculiar mores were dictated by God too?
Hey Adam,
Why are you complaining about these things happening in Israel when they are happening under your noses in NY? What are you going to do to stop it? Nothing of course. But you are good at preaching to Israelis while doing nothing in your own backyard.
hmm…I’m thinking there are more of these Hasidic only buses besides this one. There one I’ve seen dropping and picking up people by the diamond district in Midtown.
I used to think they were private buses that city looked the other way about…but maybe not. Maybe they are city funded buses from Bklyn to Manhattan that are meant for residents of one connected community and no one else. How messed up would that be?
I once delayed a plane from London to Krakow.
We boarded, and sitting was on first come first serve basis. Then a large group of bearded Orthodox dressed Jews came in. I was totally engrossed in a book I was reading and when a little Jewish boy asked me to move, I told him I am fine. Several minutes later he asked me to move again – annoyed by what I thought was a spoiled brat that wanted my window seat, I again refused.
At the end the stewardess explained that I was holding up the flight up as no Jewish man was willing to seat next to me, and I had to move to a middle seat in another row, so that all male Jewish passengers could seat in their exclusive company.
It was a very uncomfortable experience.