"Since we represent temptation, we're being asked to hide,”
thankyougrandma
Posts: 1,182
Oh i love religionSSSSSS... this is a light story, but it still show the gap between radical (not violent, but radical) religious populations and secular populations.
Gym, Jews don't see eye to eye
Montreal Y's workout warriors protest frosted glass installed at behest of synagogue members
INGRID PERITZ
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
MONTREAL — It has turned into a clash between skin and Scripture — and it's pitting a group of spandex-wearing fitness buffs in Montreal against an Orthodox sect of observant Jews.
Last spring, a local YMCA in Montreal installed four frosted windows in one of its exercise rooms to accommodate a neighbouring Hasidic synagogue and religious school. Its devout members complained that their teenaged boys were being distracted by the exposed flesh of women doing their Pilates, aerobics and other activities.
But now the windows have opened up a rift over whether the institution went too far to accommodate a minority. Some Y members have circulated a petition demanding the opaque windows be removed because they not only deprive the room of light, but allow a religious group to impose its ways on the majority.
“It's like getting us to wear a veil. Since we represent temptation, we're being asked to hide,” Renée Lavaillante, who started the petition, said yesterday. “We shouldn't have to hide in order to exercise in Quebec. We're a secular state, and shouldn't hide ourselves for religious reasons.”
The exercise room, located on the first storey of the Y on Park Avenue at the edge of Outremont, faces the back of the Yetev Lev synagogue and school, from which it is separated by an alley. The Jewish institutions also installed tinted windows on their buildings but members say they haven't been able to stop people from opening them or heading outside during breaks.
The Hasidic community says it is not out to stop women from exercising the way they like. Members just want to find a way to maintain their strict traditions in a secular world, and felt the windows — for which the congregation footed the $3,500 bill — were a reasonable solution.
“We don't want our kids to be tempted by today's society,” community spokesman Mayer Feig said as he stood outside the synagogue, wearing the long black coat and sidelocks that are typical of his sect. As he spoke, a Hasidic woman pushing a baby stroller walked by in a below-the-knee skirt, thick stockings and wig.
“We have a belief in being dressed modestly, and we want our kids to see women dressed modestly,” Mr. Weig said. In summertime, Hasidic children head off to a camp in the Laurentians to avoid seeing scantily dressed females on the street, he said. And televisions are banned from Hasidic households. “There's too much violence and sexuality today, and our religious beliefs don't want us to see those things. We believe in protecting our culture and religion.”
The Yetev Lev synagogue serves about 300 families from the Satmar sect. The religious school, or yeshiva, educates about 120 boys 16 to 19 years old. About half of them, nearly all from New York, board at the school.
Serge St-André, director of the YMCA branch, said the Hasidim's request had been submitted to an advisory committee, which judged it to be reasonable. The Y had rejected a separate request by the Hasidic community to rent the Y pool but use only lifeguards of the same sex as the bathers.
“We are geographically at the junction of several communities, and the YMCA has to take on the colours of those communities,” he said as he walked through the Y branch, located at the boundary between the affluent residents of Outremont on one side and the widely diverse neighbourhood of bagel bakeries, souvlaki shops and Italian cafés of the Mile End district on the other. “We try to be responsive to the requests of the community. It's a challenge to satisfy everyone.”
As Mr. St-André discussed the issue inside the weight room, a Y member walked up to say he objected to the windows.
“We can't let ourselves be imposed upon by extremist religious groups. What's next? Separate gyms for women and for men? Wearing long pants and long sleeves to exercise?” Outremont resident Robert Dolbec asked. “They [the Hasidim] should cover their own windows. I respect their right to practise their religion, but not their right to impose their religion on us.”
The congregation Yetev Lev, or Good Heart, has been at its current location since 1985. The Park Avenue YMCA has been at its location for a century, but it was only during extensive renovations ending in 1994 that the exercise room was built.
The frosted-window kerfuffle is just the latest flare-up between the fast-growing Hasidic community in Outremont and the larger secular community that surrounds it. In the 1980s, Outremont passed a bylaw banning the wearing of bathing suits in its public parks; the law was struck down as unconstitutional by Quebec Superior Court in 1985.
Conflicts erupt periodically between the two communities, although tensions are rarely far below the surface. Outremont residents quietly speak about the insular customs and swelling presence of their Hasidic neighbours, who embrace values rooted in 18th-century Poland. In an attempt to preserve their culture and strict religious rules, the Hasidim avoid contact with their non-Hasidic neighbours and send their children to separate schools. The Hasidim, who have large families, have grown to encompass 20 per cent of Outremont's 23,000 residents. Another 2,000 Hasidic Jews live in the adjacent Mile End district.
“Outremont is starting to become a ghetto,” said one woman interviewed at the Y, declining to be named.
Various Quebec institutions have been struggling to reach reasonable accommodation with religious minorities in the province. Controversies have erupted over Muslim prayer rooms at universities, the wearing of the hijab, as well as the right to carry a kirpan, or Sikh dagger, to school.
Asher Wieder, a rabbi at the Yetev Lev synagogue, said he hoped the window row would be resolved peacefully. “We felt the way we worked it out was very fair. They still have light in the room and we help our children keep their traditions and religion,” he said. “I think it's a good compromise.”
Mr. St-André said he will discuss the controversy with the opposing sides to consider whether the Y's decision should be reviewed.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061108.wgym08/BNStory/National/home
Gym, Jews don't see eye to eye
Montreal Y's workout warriors protest frosted glass installed at behest of synagogue members
INGRID PERITZ
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
MONTREAL — It has turned into a clash between skin and Scripture — and it's pitting a group of spandex-wearing fitness buffs in Montreal against an Orthodox sect of observant Jews.
Last spring, a local YMCA in Montreal installed four frosted windows in one of its exercise rooms to accommodate a neighbouring Hasidic synagogue and religious school. Its devout members complained that their teenaged boys were being distracted by the exposed flesh of women doing their Pilates, aerobics and other activities.
But now the windows have opened up a rift over whether the institution went too far to accommodate a minority. Some Y members have circulated a petition demanding the opaque windows be removed because they not only deprive the room of light, but allow a religious group to impose its ways on the majority.
“It's like getting us to wear a veil. Since we represent temptation, we're being asked to hide,” Renée Lavaillante, who started the petition, said yesterday. “We shouldn't have to hide in order to exercise in Quebec. We're a secular state, and shouldn't hide ourselves for religious reasons.”
The exercise room, located on the first storey of the Y on Park Avenue at the edge of Outremont, faces the back of the Yetev Lev synagogue and school, from which it is separated by an alley. The Jewish institutions also installed tinted windows on their buildings but members say they haven't been able to stop people from opening them or heading outside during breaks.
The Hasidic community says it is not out to stop women from exercising the way they like. Members just want to find a way to maintain their strict traditions in a secular world, and felt the windows — for which the congregation footed the $3,500 bill — were a reasonable solution.
“We don't want our kids to be tempted by today's society,” community spokesman Mayer Feig said as he stood outside the synagogue, wearing the long black coat and sidelocks that are typical of his sect. As he spoke, a Hasidic woman pushing a baby stroller walked by in a below-the-knee skirt, thick stockings and wig.
“We have a belief in being dressed modestly, and we want our kids to see women dressed modestly,” Mr. Weig said. In summertime, Hasidic children head off to a camp in the Laurentians to avoid seeing scantily dressed females on the street, he said. And televisions are banned from Hasidic households. “There's too much violence and sexuality today, and our religious beliefs don't want us to see those things. We believe in protecting our culture and religion.”
The Yetev Lev synagogue serves about 300 families from the Satmar sect. The religious school, or yeshiva, educates about 120 boys 16 to 19 years old. About half of them, nearly all from New York, board at the school.
Serge St-André, director of the YMCA branch, said the Hasidim's request had been submitted to an advisory committee, which judged it to be reasonable. The Y had rejected a separate request by the Hasidic community to rent the Y pool but use only lifeguards of the same sex as the bathers.
“We are geographically at the junction of several communities, and the YMCA has to take on the colours of those communities,” he said as he walked through the Y branch, located at the boundary between the affluent residents of Outremont on one side and the widely diverse neighbourhood of bagel bakeries, souvlaki shops and Italian cafés of the Mile End district on the other. “We try to be responsive to the requests of the community. It's a challenge to satisfy everyone.”
As Mr. St-André discussed the issue inside the weight room, a Y member walked up to say he objected to the windows.
“We can't let ourselves be imposed upon by extremist religious groups. What's next? Separate gyms for women and for men? Wearing long pants and long sleeves to exercise?” Outremont resident Robert Dolbec asked. “They [the Hasidim] should cover their own windows. I respect their right to practise their religion, but not their right to impose their religion on us.”
The congregation Yetev Lev, or Good Heart, has been at its current location since 1985. The Park Avenue YMCA has been at its location for a century, but it was only during extensive renovations ending in 1994 that the exercise room was built.
The frosted-window kerfuffle is just the latest flare-up between the fast-growing Hasidic community in Outremont and the larger secular community that surrounds it. In the 1980s, Outremont passed a bylaw banning the wearing of bathing suits in its public parks; the law was struck down as unconstitutional by Quebec Superior Court in 1985.
Conflicts erupt periodically between the two communities, although tensions are rarely far below the surface. Outremont residents quietly speak about the insular customs and swelling presence of their Hasidic neighbours, who embrace values rooted in 18th-century Poland. In an attempt to preserve their culture and strict religious rules, the Hasidim avoid contact with their non-Hasidic neighbours and send their children to separate schools. The Hasidim, who have large families, have grown to encompass 20 per cent of Outremont's 23,000 residents. Another 2,000 Hasidic Jews live in the adjacent Mile End district.
“Outremont is starting to become a ghetto,” said one woman interviewed at the Y, declining to be named.
Various Quebec institutions have been struggling to reach reasonable accommodation with religious minorities in the province. Controversies have erupted over Muslim prayer rooms at universities, the wearing of the hijab, as well as the right to carry a kirpan, or Sikh dagger, to school.
Asher Wieder, a rabbi at the Yetev Lev synagogue, said he hoped the window row would be resolved peacefully. “We felt the way we worked it out was very fair. They still have light in the room and we help our children keep their traditions and religion,” he said. “I think it's a good compromise.”
Mr. St-André said he will discuss the controversy with the opposing sides to consider whether the Y's decision should be reviewed.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20061108.wgym08/BNStory/National/home
"L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers"
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Comments
YMCA stands for Young Men's Christian Association, but don't misinterpret this to mean that YMCAs are only for "young, Christian men." From its start more than 150 years ago, when George Williams founded the YMCA as a substitute Bible study and prayer for life on the streets, the YMCA was unusual because it crossed the rigid lines that separated all the different churches and social classes in England in those days. This openness was a trait that would lead YMCAs to recognize their strength is in the people they bring together -- Ys are for all people of all faiths, races, ages, abilities and incomes.
They have a religious background and they want to respect the religious people of the community. Why is this even an issue...the community is even paying for it.
I love this one! Let them bring knives to school because it is part of their religion! Rock on! How about AK-47s and explosives for those who swing that way?
Well, that is another story altogether....weapons are a lot different than a prayer room or some windows to separate a gym from a temple.
2) i do kinda wonder why they couldnt have just frosted their own windows... though i guess if it's the Y's storefront windows that's impossible.
3) if they paid for it and the Y didn't mind adopting it... what's the big deal? if it's such a huge problem for the gym members... they can switch gyms.
Actually people are allowed to bring the Sikh daggers to school and I've even seen them in the bars and never, not once ever have I ever heard anything about it becoming a problem and being violent. The knifes act as a symbol of a their religion more than an actual knife. This isn't some Cuban ex-pat heading into Havana to take out Fidel, quit being so xenophobic.
Chris Cornell
http://www.myspace.com/mrwalkerb
Well, those who made the petitions are the members of the YMCA, they don't like the decision that was made without consulting them (or anyone), and they let it know, what's wrong about it? It might even work, the Y is considering putting back the old windows, and the Hasidic center will have to cover their own window, which is what should have been done in the first place. Really it's not that big of a deal, but it still a funny story to follow, it brings up a lot of emotional debate around here... hehe poor hassidic kids, they won't be able to see spandex woman doing pilate anymore... haha.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
They respect them. But they don't have to apply the rule of their religion on their own members (of many different religions).
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
They give a RIGHT to a kid (or adult) that others don't have, just because of a religious beliefs. Not EVERYONE have the RIGHT to bring a dagger to school or in public spaces, which is not right. Right?
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
very true, i'll give you that...but the members also have a choice and if they want a sunny pilates/yoga room they have a choice to go somewhere else where there aren't frosted windows.
you're also right, and i'm sure the Y decision to keep or change those frosted windows will take that into account...
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
but not everyone has a dagger that is a symbol of their religious belief, it's not like they are allowed to use the thing as a weapon whenever they want. If they start stabbing people they would be tried like anyone else, and the whole idea would probably be reviewed and most likely changed. The fact that it is a knife is completely arbitrary, the dagger could as well be a sponge, a plastic flamingo or whatever you want, and they would still have that right to carry them in public. it changes when something happens not because someone thinks something MIGHT happen.
Chris Cornell
http://www.myspace.com/mrwalkerb
hmmm, sorry but i disagree, sponge don't hurt anyone, we live in a Law state and there's a law that says no one can have a weapon in a public space, it should be enforce in all occasions, whatever your religion, and it's more about prevention, than repression... but i'm not against the religion at all, just against the fact that a kid has been allowed more rights than others just because of his religion, also not saying that the kid is automaticly a criminal or a violent kid just because he have a dagger in public spaces. I think it's a different topic than muslim hijab or prayer spaces, as there's no LAW preventing someone from wearing hats or pray in public.
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I guess the difference we have in this is that I still don't see it as a dagger in the literal sense while you do. I don't think anything either of us say will change the others mind. By the way since my French is rusty at best is this teh correct reading of your sig "man is born free, but everywhere he is in shakles'?
Chris Cornell
http://www.myspace.com/mrwalkerb
The difference is probably there, i see it as a weapon, even if there's no intention of hurting anyone by those wearing it.
My sig would probably translate more like: "man are born free, but everywhere they are in iron'?
edit: i tried to find an accurate translation, and haven't found anything, but wikipedia have this on the man and on the document that this sentence come from.
Jean Jacque Rousseau: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean%E2%80%93Jacques_Rousseau
Social Contract: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Contract_%28Rousseau%29
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
as cop out as it sounds I guess we've reached the agree to disagree point, I get the literal translation would be "iron" but does he mean that as like chains? because otherwise I don't get it, I know the word iron is used sometimes in that context.
Chris Cornell
http://www.myspace.com/mrwalkerb
well it is a 1762's sentence, so keep that in mind, in those times yes, Iron or Fer probably meant chains, or handcuffs, or something alike... and it's still very true today.
edit: i've read the link i've post, it's translated as : "Man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains."
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau
You don't have to. But the fact remains it is a dagger/knife/weapon for every other person. Are you suggesting we discriminate based on religion? Xenophobe my ass. How about realist?
there is a huge difference between a symbolic dagger which is contained in a sheath, and a fully automatic weapon or some guy randomly walking around with c-4.
Chris Cornell
http://www.myspace.com/mrwalkerb
But much less difference between a symbolic dagger in a sheath and a hunting knife in a sheath. I'd prefer neither around my kids at school, thanks.
From your first post, it would seem that due consultation, with appropriate people, took place. I don't see why members should have a say in how the gym is managed... a fee doesn't give you access to the board! They can protest if they wish but they have no reason to expect involvement in such decisions. After all, the windows are frosted, not tinted. Plenty of light coming in. And it's only a few of the windows.. not all. If they're not happy with management decisions, they can find another gym!
Also in your first post, you mention that the Hasidic Centre DID take steps to sort the 'problem' out themselves by installing tinted windows a their centre.
I think both parties here acted very reasonably and with community spirit. A bit of cooperation instead of hate and confrontation is always welcome!
I tell these ladies in spandex... go find another gym if you are angered that hot blooded young men can't see you showing off in your spandex anymore!
Exhibitionistic tendencies anyone? I'm sorry, but I wouldn't want an audience for my Pilates class. Especially not one consisting of hormonally unstable teenage boys
They love you so badly for sharing their sorrow, so pick up that guitar and go break a heart - Kris Kristofferson