Chassidishe grocery store implements gender segregation at check-out

 A grocery store in Williamsburg serving the Hasidic community is telling customers to segregate by sex at the checkout line. The store, W Fresh, posted Yiddish-language signs near its cash registers that say female cashiers cannot serve male customers.

The goal is “not to have goytes by the registers by the stores where teenage boys and young men shop in order not to entrap the Jewish youth,” the sign says, referring to non-Jewish women. “We’ve directed female cashiers that they should not provide services for the men, and the female cashiers are exclusively for women and girls.”

On a visit to W Fresh on Thursday, some customers seemed to defy the new poster or to not see it, while others seemed to comply. Two male customers purchased items from a Hispanic female cashier. A man who appeared to be in his thirties walked toward her as well, then stopped for a moment in front of the sign, and then went to a male cashier instead. Three cash registers were open, and the store was not crowded enough for any lines to form. An employee who claimed to be the manager declined to comment on the posters but said it was not his decision to place them.

The poster said that the store arrived at its decision after consulting with the Hisachdus Harabanim, known in English as the Central Rabbinical Congress, a Satmar-affiliated group of rabbis better known for its kosher certification program for food. The organization’s beth din, or rabbinical court, did not immediately respond to an inquiry from Shtetl.

Earlier this year, Shtetl reported that a poster carrying the signatures of 26 principals of Hasidic boys’ schools warned shopkeepers that if they continued to employ non-Jewish women, they would discourage their students from shopping at those stores. That poster also cited the Hisachdus Harabanim.

Williamsburg grocery stores have long been settings where Hasidic concerns about modesty have played out.

In 2012, the New York City Commission on Human Rights filed a complaint against seven Hasidic-owned stores on Lee Avenue after the stores put up signs in various languages urging non-Haredi customers to “dress in modest clothing” in order to be allowed entrance, according to the book A Fortress in Brooklyn: Race, Real Estate, and the Making of Hasidic Williamsburg. The city later reached an agreement with the stores that while they could encourage “modest” dress, they could not prevent customers who dressed differently from entering the store.