Ziona Greenwald writes:
A story in the Times Herald-Record, a Hudson Valley newspaper, features a handful of Hasidic women speaking out against the portrayal of their lifestyle in the much-talked about recent New York Magazine article.
The latter, for anyone who’s been away in Siberia or absent from this blog, focused on a young woman who fled the Satmar enclave of Kiryas Joel along with her young daughter, and is now fighting for custody. The woman, Gitty Grunwald, is now completely irreligious, and she had some pretty negative things to say about the Satmar, especially about the treatment of women.
So now, a Times Herald-Record reporter has found five Hasidic women willing to go on the record (pardon the pun) to condemn the New York Magazine article and defend their way of life. The talkback was apparently organized by Rachel Freier, a Hasidic female attorney from Boro Park—and the subject of a previous Herald-Record article—who has an office near the KJ community. (I wonder what sect Freier belongs to—she certainly can’t be Satmar if she is a practicing J.D.)
Unfortunately, the sample here is hardly large enough to represent a critical mass, and the article too short to provide much insight into the status of Hasidic women. Comments like “[e]verything written was a total distortion”—which may well be a fair statement—are too general to be able to set the public straight on specific misrepresentations.
It would have been fascinating to hear more from these women and from others inside KJ itself. Of course, even if KJ women would speak to the media, one would have to take their comments with a dose of salt. To revisit a comparison I made in an earlier piece, to the FLDS sect in Texas, could these women really speak freely (that is, without repercussion) and independently (that is, without coaching)?
