NY haredi schools ban bikes

These days, educational authorities across America are encouraging kids to bike to school, whether to promote health or environmentalism. But not so the Hasidim who run the United Talmudical Academy “Torah V’Yirah” schools in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They are forbidding children from any free wheeling activity.

The New York Post reports that the United Talmudical Academy sent a letter to parents saying that any student caught riding their bike to school would be expelled. Parents were told that they should consider this “a final warning.”

It seems the transgression is not only riding a bike that a student actually owns, but also riding one that he doesn’t. “Even borrowed bicycles” are verboten, as well. Vos Iz Neias, the Haredi news website posted a photo of the Yiddish-language form letter sent to parents whose sons were guilty of the infraction. The school had no comment on its abhorrence for pedal power.

Apparently, the Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, instituted the ban on bikes years ago, but families’ recent ignoring of it prompted school authorities to issue the letter. “If you have something that gives kids the feeling that they can go wherever they want… farther from their parents and the community, it brings a lot of bad things,” said Moshe Smilowitz, a father of six from the community.

So, it seems it would be a mistake to assume that all Jewish parents want their children to go far in life — at least on two wheels.