In New Square, Arson Attack Highlights Religious Rift
Jews terrorizing other Jews in a town founded by Holocaust survivors is just kind of gut wrenching and beyond my understanding.
Residents of this Hasidic enclave a mere hour north of Times Square do not live like people in most of the state or, indeed, like most of the country.
Among other things, New Square residents must walk streets strictly divided by gender, with women on one side and men on the other, as Yiddish signs posted on telephone poles lining those streets dictate. Women are not allowed to drive. And students at New Square yeshivas who wish to travel outside the town must obtain permission from the yeshiva — not just from their parents — before doing so.
“The whole community was built for one purpose,” said Ezra Friedlander, a public relations consultant to numerous ultra-Orthodox communities. “It’s perceived as a place to live within the very strict confines of tradition, attitudes and customs. And part of that is you’re part and parcel of a very strict communal structure.”
It is a way of life dictated by the New Square sect’s 70-year-old Grand Rabbi, David Twersky, who has headed the Skver Hasidim since 1968. He inherited the community from his father, Yaakov Yosef Twersky, who led a small group of Holocaust survivors to found the village in 1954 as a refuge from the modern world.
New Square, which lies within the Rockland County town of Ramapo, grew from 4,000 to 7,000 residents between 2000 and 2010, according to U.S. Census data. And in recent years a faction of residents has emerged that harbors modest ambitions of loosening the grip exercised by Twersky.