Visit a Rockland County kosher supermarket on any day except Saturday, and you’ll be sure to see it: a steady stream of taxis or car services dropping passengers off and picking them up. You see them at Rockland Kosher in Kaser, Evergreen in Monsey, and Target or Bingo in Spring Valley. The drivers are mostly Latino men. The passengers are by and large Hasidic women, sometimes accompanied by children.

This has been a fact of life for many years in Rockland’s Haredi community, where thousands of Hasidic women are discouraged, and in many cases prohibited from driving a vehicle. Instead, they rely on taxis to transport them to and from their jobs, shopping malls, wedding halls, and ritual baths. Haredi women aren’t supposed to be alone with men outside of their families, but when driving oneself home from the grocery isn’t an option, and when most paid drivers are men, a strict adherence to this rule is not practical.

But in recent years, some began to whisper of inappropriate encounters in taxis. They haven’t shared much evidence, possibly because any discussion of sex, including sexual assault, is taboo in this insular community. The rumors suggested that drivers were making sexual advances to female passengers.

In recent weeks, these concerns have entered public view, as various Haredi media outlets have run stories about the vaguely expressed concerns. The Monsey Scoop, for example, decried “a series of harrowing incidents involving women being assaulted by taxi drivers from various local companies.” Last week, at least two Haredi magazines serving the Rockland County Haredi community published ads – placed by the community activist group Mareches – that made similar allegations, with one of them naming several local non-Haredi-owned car services as the culprits. 

But the most elaborate account of the concerns, and of possible solutions, were shared in an interview on Kol Mevaser, a popular news, analysis, interviews, and entertainment hotline serving the Yiddish-speaking Hasidic community. The guest, Yossi Margareten, is the coordinator for Chaverim, a local emergency response service, as well as an employee for the Town of Ramapo.

In the segment, Margareten and the interviewer alleged “many” incidents, but did not name specific ones. Margareten claimed to have helped facilitate the arrests of a few offenders.

In a video that has circulated on WhatsApp, and the only concrete incident Margareten referenced, a Hasidic man berates a male driver whose car has a sign for the local car service International Taxi Service Corp. The man alleges that the driver picked up a male client while he was already driving a Haredi female client, running afoul of the community’s norms on gender segregation.

Sebastian Unacho, one of the co-owners at International, which was also named on the Mareches ad, contextualized the WhatsApp video. He said that since that driver used to work for the company, he still had its logo on his vehicle, which allowed him to pick up clients outside of a kosher supermarket.

“We ran the plates, and that individual, at the time, he wasn’t even working for us. He just had our logo on the car. At the end of the day, that type of action is definitely not acceptable within our company.” Unacho said he is working on making it so that customers can know whether a driver is currently employed by his company.

The Ramapo Police Department said that it has not heard of any incidents against women that would be considered assault by a more global standard. "We have not received any calls about taxi cabs involving women,” a police dispatcher told Shtetl. The Rockland District Attorney’s office said the same. “We have not been notified of any arrests stemming from these kinds of incidents,” DA spokesperson Peter Walker said.

On Kol Mevaser, Margareten insisted that there are many more incidents, but that people don’t want to come forward because it’s an embarrassment. In a community where marriages are arranged and hinge on a good reputation, victims may be unwilling to share if they’ve been involved in a sexual encounter before marriage or outside their marriage – even if they did not consent to the encounter. Maragreten, in his interview, begs people to come forward. He promises to try to facilitate filing a complaint in a quiet manner, and to have a female officer take the report if necessary.

Margareten claimed that there have been a series of incidents involving bochurim, or teenage boys, and called on parents to pay an “extra $2-$3” to hire a Hasidic-run car service instead. According to an ad in a Haredi-owned magazine, one non-Haredi-owned car service charges just $7 for trips within Monsey or New Square – a rate no Haredi car service can beat. After all, they reminded their listeners, the Haredi driver needs the extra money to afford tuition which the non-Jewish driver saves by sending them to public schools. And besides, if one uses a non-Haredi-owned car service, they risk “paying thousands of dollars in therapy,” Margareten warned.

Margareten went on to outline a new law he and other community leaders have been lobbying the police and the town to pass which would ban tinted windows in taxis, require background checks for all drivers, and implement a new registration and inspection regime. 

Ramapo police dispatcher Michael Monroe confirmed the fact that the town is looking into this issue. “The town is working on a new local law section for taxicabs and vehicles for hire,” he told Shtetl. “The town is also looking to create a taxi and limousine commission.”

Unacho, of International, said that he has received complaints about drivers wearing attire or watching content that passengers found offensive. The latter involved situations “where drivers are looking at stuff on their phone that could be deemed inappropriate, not specifically pornography but music videos and stuff of that sort,” he said. Unacho said company policy bars such behavior, and encourages customers to report it.

Unacho said that after meeting with local Haredi leaders, including Mareches leader Meyer Tauber, he is now working to implement some of the preventative measures Margareten named on Kol Mevaser, with the goal of having them in place by mid-October. He also hopes to recruit more female drivers.

“Right now, we have about 50 or 60 lady drivers working within our company” out of a total of 350 drivers, Unacho said. He added that if a customer requests a female driver, “we will strictly send out a female driver to that call.”

Amid all of this discussion, one possible solution – allowing Hasidic women to drive and reduce their reliance on taxis – has not been entertained. “In the Hasidic world, the women don’t drive cars, so it’s very hard to get around without it,” Margareten said, without recommending a change to that policy.

‍Have you experienced unwanted advances in taxis in Rockland? Email reporter Lauren Hakimi at lhakimi@shtetl.org, or call or WhatsApp her at (347) 474-8385, to share your experience for a possible story.