Terrorized by Modesty Patrols September 16, 2008

I had to post this woman’s story, this woman known only as “M” from Ma’alot Dafna, who was terrorized by her neighborhood va’ad ha’tznius/modesty patrol:

Shaking as she recalled her brutal beating at the hands of Jewish ultra-Orthodox vigilantes, a 28-year-old Jerusalem woman who would only identify herself as M. said she feared for her life.

Two weeks ago police arrested two alleged members of a modesty patrol accused of brutally beating M.

The gang allegedly gagged her, hit her, kicked her and said she would be killed if she did not move out of the ultra-Orthodox Maalot Dafna neighbourhood.

“They beat me up, tied me up and threatened to kill me,” M. said, holding back her tears. “Who will prevent them from killing me?”

Neighbours had complained of what they called the divorcee’s “indecent” lifestyle, which in such neighbourhoods can mean anything from wearing trousers to meeting men in private.

(If this is the same story as the one reported by Ha’aretz two weeks ago, this was a case done “for family honor” out of suspicion of inappropriate relations with married men — not specifically under the auspices of the modesty committee — and involved being beaten by seven men, one of whom “sat on her head to prevent her from seeing what was going on and also to prevent her from fighting back.” Two cell phones were also removed from her apartments, presumably to check callers’ identities.)

Ma’alot Dafna is the neighborhood in Jerusalem which houses my alma mater, Yeshivat Ohr Somayach. It is a mixed Ashenazi/Sephardi neighborhood, almost exclusively Orthodox, and is bordered by Ramat Eshkol, a changing neighborhood becoming increasingly charedi. A far cry from a secluded enclave like Me’ah Shearim — where an electronics store was torched for selling MP4 players capable of “indecent movie” viewing — Ma’alot Dafna is traversed by everything from IDF soldiers to Israeli public high school students to rabbis.

And now you have this.

Is there anywhere in Jewish Law that we find an accommodation for beating a woman and threatening her life to the point of hysteria? What was the purpose of this? Rarely does someone emerge from assault thinking “I have to repent for my sins”, by far a more common reaction would be “get these people the hell away from me”. Must religious standards be spread by terror?

Modesty patrols, according to Kol Charedi radio, have become increasingly violent as of late — to “excess” according to its head. Ignoring the blatant understatement, what justification could there possibly be for this? And, now that their actions, joined by so many co-conspirators, have been picked up and publicized by media outlets from Agence France-Presse to Islam Online, can we consider their actions to be anything other than a chillul Hashem, a desecration of G-d’s Name?

Terrorism is not Judaism! (Man, that sounds familiar.)