London council removes Haredi sign segregating women from men

Posters, reading in Yiddish and English 'Women should please walk along this side of the road only,' popped up in the streets of Stamford Hill.

Haaretz/September 21, 2014

Controversial posters put up by ultra-Orthodox Jews, which called for women to keep to one side of the road in a London neighborhood, were taken down late last week at the order of the local council, British media reported over the weekend.

The posters, reading in Yiddish and English "Women should please walk along this side of the road only," popped up in the streets of Stamford Hill in the middle of last week.

"Walked past around 10 of them on lamp posts, garden walls and green cable boxes," tweeted local resident Sean Clare on Wednesday.

A group of Haredi Jewish volunteers called the Shomrim took responsibility for the posters, according to the London Evening Standard, which noted that over 20,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews live in the area.

Residents complained to the Hackney Council, the Standard reported, which on Friday ordered the posters removed. Their defense was that members of the sect are not allowed to touch someone of the opposite sex save for their marriage partners and close relatives, but the council did not buy the argument.

"It's quite unacceptable to try to restrict women's movements in a public place," Rosemary Sales, a Stamford Hill West council member, told the Standard.

"If I saw one of those, I'd walk on the other side out of sheer cussedness," one interviewee told the Standard.

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