HaGaon HaRav Mordechai Ashkenazi Shlita, Av Beis Din of Kfar Chabad is unwilling to tolerate and breach in tznius in the community, and towards maintaining acceptable standards, he met with heads of the girl’s schools in the community earlier in the week.
The rav explained that it is evident that some of the women in the Kfar have decided to ignore community standards for tznius, and this cannot and will not be tolerated. Towards achieving total compliance the rav announced he will be appointing Paparazzi photographers, females who will roam the community and take photos of women who are dressed inappropriately, Chadrei Chareidim reports. After receiving the photos, the rav plans to summon the husband and offending wife to discuss the situation.
The report adds that daycare workers were also in attendance at the meeting with the rav, since they explain at times, women come to drop off their small children without proper head covering.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
20 Responses
Wow, Judaism gets scarier and scarier every day…
This sounds too much like the taliban to me…
Tznius isn’t taught effectively like this… Oy vey.
Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! Finally real men, talmidei chachomim and gedolei hador, standing up for what is right without fear of being called taliban and whatever other names the semi-frum hurl at rabbonim shlit”a.
We should emulate this in the States, in Crown Heights, BP, Flatbush, and all the out of town communities.
I will ask my sisters to volunteer as photographers.
and people wonder why our children go off the derech. what is wrong wih people ? if you dont like it go live in a cave
This is exactly like the taliban….and looked how they turned out. This Rav is wrong. There are many other ways to deal with this issue.
But it IS ok for this self appointed, g-d’s policeman, to oogle over these photos, and interact and conspire with the female paparazzi photographers. Im waiting for the big story
Interesting. I am sure he has his reasons, but it sounds really strange. There are much easier ways to accomplish the same goal.
“be good” #2…
This is not the Taliban.
The article doesn’t say they will be beheaded, or whipped or even arrested. Hardly Taliban-like.
All it says is that the Rav will “summon the husband and offending wife to discuss the situation.”
I would call this ‘tochacha’ – a mitzvah min haTorah.
Also keep in mind that this is not being done in Tel Aviv or Haifa. This is in Kfar Chabad, a frum community in which some people have been apparently been lax in a mitzvah. Don’t you think it’s apprpriate for the Rav to try to get them back on track?
This doesn’t seem like something the Rebbe zt”l would approve of.
Invasion of Privacy. Not the way to go about doing it, you have to educate, and encourage people to comply with halachic standards.
AND after the meeting with the Rav and Rebbetzin…then what??
come to flatbush not enough memory on all digital chips in the world for such a program. who will look at the pictures though?
Considering the dilapidated state of tznius today, and I mean in frum communities, this can only be described as “a good start”.
No it isn’t; if you live in a community and it has certain standards you must abide by them. If you want your children to go to that school you must abide by their set standards. Nobody is forcing you to live in Kfar Chabad or send their children to their schools; if you don’t like it move. Schools have rules like no TVs etc. I have seen what total do what you want leads too. I know off many Malachti Dati children end up in America marrying goyim; why; they want secularism with a taam of Yiddishkeit. I choose where I want to live and who I associate with. I have work with secular people in a secular community and done what needs to be done to protect my children. If you live in Kfar Chabad you want more to let your children roam the streets and not want to worry which homes they go into; while I had to watch my children and keep my children 85% of the time in my home with their religious and secular friends
in other words HaGaon HaRav Mordechai Ashkenazi Shlita, Av Beis Din of Kfar Chabad is instructing them to take pics of not tsniusdige women? WOW
The original version makes it clear that the photos will be taken by women and his Rebbetzin will be the one who speaks to the women. No mention was made of husbands in the version that was apparently taken from an actual interview or kol kore. I’ll ask my friends from there if this is actually being enforced; it sounds like an OK idea as properly described but also very hard to carry off.
Kfar Chabad has rules; real estate there is underpriced but to live there you sign a code of conduct. It was founded by and for Chassidim of many generations’ standing who wanted to live as they did in Europe. Later, it welcomed Jews whom Chabad saved from the spiritual shmad of the maabarot and took to learn in a regular Chabad yeshiva, side-by-side with the children of the original Chassidim. (Yes, they even married into the original Chassidish families especially now in the third generation.) It was always a place from which Chassidim went forth to spread Yiddishkeit (I was shocked when I went there one year on Purim night and found it dead because so many people were out helping other communities), but it was clear that whatever standards you saw on the outside stayed on the outside.
It is not a Chabad House based kiruv community where people on different levels live together and hopefully work toward moving up.
#14 & 16:
So when the secular communities protest when Haredi families start moving in, you should be ok with this, yes? After all, it’s their community and their standards that you should be living up to, and if they don’t want people who live the Haredi lifestyle around, they should have that right, according to you.
But in all likelihood, you would cry about discrimination if that happened.
Kfar Chabad is a veteran settlement that was built by and for a specific community. The Chassidim there did not build it for kiruv purposes – they felt alone and out of place in EY and wanted to be together as they had been in Europe. It later became the nerve center for Chabad kiruv and it welcomes guests for Shabbos as well as tourists. Nevertheless, even though today’s EY-born residents are much different socially from the few remaining original founders (even if they are their children and grandchildren) it is a private community as far as living there is concerned.
It was built on land that no one else would have wanted anyway or can develop because of its proximity to the airport. While it is far more open than KJ or New Square, the idea is the same and it was built in 1950 if not earlier with government assistance. It was planned by the Rebbe Rayatz but I am not sure he was still alive when the first families moved in. It is a community settlement, and according to the law community settlements can impose restrictions on residents and limit sales. There are many such settlements where only Shomrei Shabbat can buy – and a few where only seculars can buy.
The haredi population is growing as the secular population shrinks. More and more desirable parts of EY will become haredi. When haredim move en masse into areas that were often crime-ridden before, they have every right to change the character of the neighborhood and make it easier for more haredim to move in. They also end up raising housing prices.
Foolish seculars should take the money and run, just as many Jews had to do in NY when the trend went the other way and criminals overran Jewish neighborhoods. The difference is the seculars can sell at a profit in EY whereas in the 60s and 70s people lost their entire investments in NY.
As MBD once sang..the arrows are pointing our way!
HaGaon HaRav Mordechai Ashkenazi Shlita,is the Av Beis Din of Kfar Chabad and as much as I or anybody else for that matter does not like his way of running things then we do not have to live there.
but on a side note Why the Paparazzi Photographers (I wonder if he used the word Paparazzi…) if all he wants is only to discuss it with the perpetrator and her husband then all he needs is the so Called SHOMER to jot down their name and hand it over, does he really need the accompanying evidence in front of him?
(Imagine him whipping out the photo and pointing angrily “Look here It is less then 3/4 of an inch under the knee!!!”)
or maybe they have plans of posting the offending photos in shul for everyone to see… wont that keep our eyes pure…
An IDT Grad
To quote Rav Soloveitchik z’tz’l: Moderation is not compromise.