Volunteer firefighters at the Monsey Fire Department are sounding alarm bells about the increasing influence of a hardline segment of the Hasidic community in determining how the secular fire department runs and who is allowed to join it. 

In an apparent attempt to appease supporters of a rival, religious fire department, Yanky Fliegman, one of five publicly elected commissioners of the government-funded fire department, has in the past year steered the Monsey Fire Department to be more in line with Jewish laws, such as gender segregation, according to sources.

Two members of the fire department who asked not to be named told Shtetl they have heard Fliegman state explicitly that he will never vote in favor of a female applicant joining the department. Three said they have either witnessed Fliegman acting unfairly toward women, or experienced it firsthand. Some of the targets of this allegedly sexist treatment come from Haredi backgrounds themselves.

Fliegman did not respond to Shtetl’s requests for comment on this article. Yossi Gestetner, who handles public relations for the Monsey Fire Department, did not respond to Shtetl’s outreach either.

Last year, a woman named Chaya Frydman, who had been a member of the Monsey Fire Department for years before moving away, applied to re-join the service.

By applying to re-join, she hoped to reconnect with what she remembered as “a real sense of community and family,” while giving back to her community.

“It’s really fulfilling helping out people who are in need,” Frydman told Shtetl. “It’s just a different kind of help that you would give somebody. It’s one thing to open a door for someone, it’s another thing to run out of your house at 3 a.m. because somebody has an alarm going off.”

Brewer Fire Engine Company No. 1, the private organization that recruits, vets, and provides firefighters to the public fire district, approved Frydman to become a member again.

In October, though, Frydman was rejected by the Monsey Fire District board of commissioners. after Fliegman voted against her. Two other commissioners, Eli Spitzer and Avigdor Mandel, voted to accept Frydman, but since only three out of five commissioners were present at the vote, Fliegman had effective veto power, according to meeting minutes obtained by Shtetl through the Freedom of Information Law.

In a recording of the fire commissioners’ November meeting that was obtained by Shtetl, Fliegman is heard using vulgar and objectifying language while questioning the motives of members who supported the two female applicants, Frydman and Devora Presser.

“This company has no motivation of helping this community,” Fliegman says in the audio, as part of a 20-minute diatribe. “They have one motivation: it’s called T&A.”

Fliegman was using a term that stands for “tits and ass,” according to two firefighters who have heard him use the acronym.

The commissioner was “clearly referencing females in a derogatory and condescending way, with the presumption that all guys in the firehouse only care about that and that’s why we want female firefighters,” one of the sources said.

Fliegman voted against both female applicants. He has claimed that he voted against Frydman because she did not live within the official boundaries of the fire district, even though she told Shtetl she is now back at the same address she lived at prior to her resignation in 2020. As for Presser, Fliegman did not appear in the recording to provide a reason for rejecting her. The meeting minutes also don’t provide a rationale for Presser’s rejection.

Sources who spoke to Shtetl suspect that the real reason Fliegman rejected the applicants is because they are female. Two sources said that on separate occasions, they both heard Fliegman state explicitly that he plans to never accept a female applicant, even if she meets all other qualifications.

Fliegman “said outright, ‘I will never, ever vote for a female firefighter, ever,’” one source said.

At the same time, the department changed the process by which candidates apply to become members. Previously, candidates applied through Brewer, a long process that included background checks and a physical exam. Then, they went before the commissioners, who usually rubber-stamped Brewer’s decision to approve them.

Now, the commissioners will interview candidates first, and candidates who pass the interview will go through the application process with Brewer. The change reduces transparency: commissioners appear to have conducted such interviews in “executive session,” which prevents them from being described in public meeting minutes.

According to a recent ad placed by the fire department in the weekly Yiddish-language circular the Monsey View, the purpose of this policy change was to prevent commissioners from being placed in “a difficult position of not being able to reject volunteers who are not suitable for Monsey.”

“The commissioners, who have the legal right to dismiss anyone without giving a reason, use their power to ensure that only those who will be truly committed to saving lives and to the values of the neighborhood are allowed” to join the department, the ad says.

For now, though, the department still has several female members. One female firefighter, who asked not to be named in this article, said Fliegman won’t even talk to her.

“He will never, ever talk to me, no matter how much I try,” the woman said. “I purposely try to talk to him, and he’ll just ignore me as if I didn’t speak.” 

A fellow volunteer at the fire department said he has witnessed the same dynamic the female firefighter described. “It’s kind of the same whenever he interacts with any sort of woman, where he just completely ignores them,” the source said.

Beth Cefalu, a spokesperson for Rockland County, said the county hasn’t received any official complaints about gender discrimination at the Monsey Fire Department, but that she opposes discrimination.

“The County of Rockland as a whole does not believe discrimination should have any place in any organization,” Cefalu said in an email to Shtetl. “Additionally, in this day and age – especially when volunteer emergency responders are hard to find and retain – we strongly believe everyone should be accepted as each person can fill a role and have a purpose within organizations.”

Several recent changes at the fire department have come as the government entity has faced backlash from a segment of the Hasidic community that believes the department is not religiously strict enough.

In 2022, local rabbi Yechezkel Weiss founded an all-male rival firefighting organization called Matzilei Aish after the secular fire department failed to address his opposition to gender integration and what he viewed as desecration of Shabbat. Weiss claimed to have the backing of 52 fellow rabbis.

Last year, Monsey firefighter Adam Gordon told Shtetl that some Haredi community members threw rocks at fire trucks and blocked streets to prevent fire department vehicles from passing – a possible reaction to the long-running Haredi media campaign in which rabbis criticized the secular fire department.

By Weiss’s own admission, Matzilei Aish members are poorly trained compared to members of the secular fire department, and they can only fight fires from the outside, since people with beards are forbidden from wearing masks that allow them to enter buildings that are on fire. The fire department rivalry has led to widespread safety concerns.

According to the Journal News, Chris Kear, the Rockland County Fire and Emergency Coordinator, said that he had communicated with the office of Attorney General Letitia James about Matzilei Aish, which he described as a “rogue and dysfunctional group” whose actions may result in a “very dangerous situation.” He said James’s office is investigating the group.

Volunteers who spoke to Shtetl said they believed that recent changes Fliegman has implemented stem from a desire to appease Weiss. At the same meeting where Fliegman rejected Presser, he also described pressure he is under from Hasidic neighbors who think the secular fire department should be more religious, according to the audio recording.

“Why do I have to be afraid to walk on the street and people are going to yell at me why I’m backing the shkutzim?” Fliegman is heard saying, using a Yiddish term that often refers to Jews who are not strictly observant.

In apparent attempts to undercut Matzilei Aish’s appeal, the department has also hired “Shabbos goyim” or non-Jews to complete tasks that Jews are viewed as being forbidden from doing, and created a new committee composed of local rabbis and Haredi activists who advise the fire commissioners. 

The committee has a hotline that allows community members to call and complain about the fire department. The committee also instructs volunteers about how rules for observing Shabbat apply to their work as firefighters, according to the Monsey View ad.

In the recording, Fliegman is heard taking credit for convincing the other commissioners to submit to the religious guidance. “I had to fight with others to get it approved,” Fliegman said. Later, according to him, 25 firefighters came to receive rabbinical guidance at a committee event.

The fire department also has a new number that community members can call in case of emergencies, in addition to 911, which has a separate set of dispatchers — a change they claim will shorten response times.

Although Frydman was hoping to benefit again from the fire service’s sense of “community and family,” she said she was “happy” to learn that she had been rejected — partly because she was alarmed by recent changes at the department.

“I’m actually kind of happy about it, because when I came to visit the firehouse when I was reapplying, I realized it was a very different place from the place I left,” Frydman said, adding that some of her old colleagues no longer worked there and she didn’t recognize all the new faces.

“They were also telling me about the whole CMA and all the politics that are going on, and that also worried me a little bit,” she said, using an acronym that refers to Matzilei Aish. “So when they told me I wasn’t accepted, I kind of just took it as a sign.”