Report: Chassidishe Bus Gets a ‘Gentile’ Push
The NY Post reports: Oy. A goy’s driving my bus.
The city is looking for a new operator for a private bus company that caters to ultra-Orthodox Jews traveling from the kosher enclaves of Borough Park to the Hasidic haven of Williamsburg.
Some Hasidim fear a gentile company could take over the line and might run routes on Saturdays, fail to separate men and women riders, and stop giving discounts to yeshiva students.
“If it operates on shabbos, then people will completely stop using it,” said Hasidic activist Isaac Abraham.
Of particular concern to religious riders is a phrase in the city’s request for proposals that calls on the winning operator to provide service “seven days per week.”
A Jewish-owned company, Private Transportation, has run the religious route for the last 37 years, but not during the sabbath.
Jacob Marmurstein, owner of Private Transportation, uses a board of consulting rabbis to toe the line. Men sit in the first four or five rows with women and strollers in the back.
Right now, the route begins outside Mendel’s Pizza on 18th Avenue and 50th Street in Borough Park. Buses run about every 20 minutes.
{NY Post/Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}
6 Responses to “Report: Chassidishe Bus Gets a ‘Gentile’ Push”
2. Comment from “toe” the line
Time March 21, 2010 at 11:08 AM
Do they sit toe to toe?
PS I think you meant “tow”.
What can you do if the English isn’t important when in school and then you actually need to use it?
3. Comment from English is important
Time March 21, 2010 at 12:39 PM
“Toe the Line,” NOT “Tow the Line”
by Tina Blue
August 14, 2003
I saw it again today, this time in a comment on an article on a political website. It referred to reporters who mindlessly “tow the administration’s line.”
Um, that should be “toe the line.”
A lot of people who don’t know the origin of the phrase picture someone pulling a rope, cord, or some other “line”–”tow the line”–as a way of working for whomever the “line” belongs to. Thus, if the administration has a “line”–i.e., a “party line”–then those who side with the administration help to pull it (”tow” it) along.
Wrong.
The phrase “toe the line” is equivalent to “toe the mark,” both of which mean to conform to a rule or a standard. The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002; ed. by Glynnis Chantrell) says, “The idiom toe the line from an athletics analogy originated in the early 19th century” (514).
The specific sport referred to is foot-racing, where the competitors must keep their feet behind a “line” or on a “mark” at the start of the race–as in “On your mark, get set,
go!”
So one who “toes the line” is one who does not allow his foot to stray over the line. In other words, one who does not stray beyond a rigidly defined boundary.
4. Comment from poshiter yid
Time March 21, 2010 at 12:47 PM
What’s the big deal? Just tell them the rules!
5. Comment from Frum Face
Time March 21, 2010 at 6:19 PM
To #2:
A: It is “toe the line, NOT “tow”, as previously mentioned.
B: Matzav did not write this article, credit is clearly given to the NY Post.
6. Comment from ju
Time March 22, 2010 at 9:47 PM
who cares if they drive on Shabbos
They aren’t Jewish and it’s not Yerushalayim where otherwise the street would be closed off.
1. Comment from Dovid
Time March 21, 2010 at 10:10 AM
They can run the bus on Motzei Shabbos, and thus fulfil the requirements to run “7 days.”