Dear Matzav Inbox,
A new Skver shtiebel opened this past Shabbos in the Nanuet–New City area.
According to Rockland Daily, the shtiebel was established after several Skver families moved into the neighborhood and was opened with the encouragement and bracha of the Skverer Rebbe. It is reportedly the ninth Skver shtiebel serving families throughout the greater Monsey area.
Under normal circumstances, there would be nothing objectionable about that. Yidden should be free to purchase homes legally, establish shuls, educate their children and build communities wherever the law allows.
But New Square’s leadership has demanded that the same freedom not be extended to everyone else.
Remember the Letter
Years ago, New Square’s leadership issued a letter asking Orthodox Jewish families not to purchase homes within approximately one mile of the village.
The explanation was explicit.
New Square needed to remain an “isolated corner” and a “secluded shtetl.” The letter warned that if other frum families moved too close, Skver children could be exposed to different standards of business, shopping and tznius, threatening the community’s supposed “high level of purity.”
The message was unmistakable:
Stay away from us.
Do not move near us.
Do not allow your families, institutions and children to come too close to ours.
We must remain isolated. We must remain separate. We must remain pure.
Yet today, Skver families are being encouraged to move directly into the established neighborhoods of other frum Jews.
There is a growing Skver presence on McNamara Road. The Francis Place shtiebel continues to expand. There is a Skver girls’ school on College Road. And now another shtiebel has opened near New City with the reported encouragement of the Rebbe himself.
So where did the concern for isolation go?
If living among Jews with different customs, shopping habits and standards is so dangerous, why is New Square leadership encouraging its own followers to establish outposts throughout greater Monsey?
Why are Skver families permitted to live among us, while we are told that living near them threatens their purity?
Isolation in One Direction
No one is demanding that Skver families leave Nanuet, New City, Wesley Hills or any other neighborhood.
No one is calling for their shtieblach to be closed.
No one is claiming that their children threaten the character or purity of our communities.
The surrounding Monsey community generally accepts a basic principle: Jews have the right to live, daven and build institutions wherever they may legally do so.
But that principle must work both ways.
New Square cannot insist that its followers may expand throughout the surrounding region while demanding that the surrounding region remain frozen a mile away from its borders.
It cannot celebrate new Skver communities inside other neighborhoods while describing other Jews moving near New Square as a spiritual danger.
It cannot say, “Stay away from us,” while steadily moving closer to everyone else.
That is not isolation. It is a one-way policy of control.
Choose One Standard
New Square’s leadership must choose.
Either living among the broader frum community is acceptable, in which case the entire justification for the mile policy collapses.
Or living among other frum communities is genuinely dangerous, in which case New Square leadership should explain why it is encouraging families, shuls and schools to expand throughout greater Monsey.
They cannot reasonably claim both.
Skver families are welcome to live among us. They are welcome to establish shuls among us. They are welcome to educate their children among us.
But the same right must be extended to everyone else.
The original letter should be withdrawn. The mile policy should end. And the families harmed by it deserve acknowledgment and an apology.
Until then, each new Skver outpost will expose the same glaring contradiction:
The mile only runs one way.
Binyomin Ribiat