NEW YORK
The Daily Beast
Dec 8, 2012
Allison Yarrow
The ultra-Orthodox “modesty committee” has allegedly used intimidation, threats, and even “arrests” to uphold strict community standards—but some won’t even admit it exists. Allison Yarrow reports.
Wearing masks, the men broke into her bedroom after dark to confiscate the evidence. They are not the law or the mafia, and she is neither a criminal nor a rat. Baila Gluck was just a 15-year-old girl, and it was just a cell phone, but to the Vaad Hatznius—the self-appointed arbiters of right and wrong in the Satmar Orthodox Jewish community—Baila might as well have been holding a time bomb.
The Satmars, who live in two extremely insular enclaves in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and in upstate New York, know and fear Vaad Hatznius, which means “modesty committee,” but most people have never heard of the group and its practices, which can include intimidation, threats and even “arrests”—for example, of a girl who attends a party with boys, or a religious man who shaves his beard. While its members have no official permission from the state to engage in law enforcement, Jews who live under the Vaad’s law say beatings, harassment and stolen property are all too common.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.