JTA | October 10, 2011

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Yiddish signs briefly sprouted on Brooklyn trees asking Jewish women to step aside when a man walks down the sidewalk.

The plastic signs bolted to trees in the Brooklyn neighborhood of South Williamsburg read, in Yiddish, “Precious Jewish Daughters: Please move over to the side when you see a man cross,” the Brooklyn Paper reported last week.

Parks maintenance workers removed 16 of the signs last week because they were nailed to public-owned trees, a violation subject to a $150 fine.

Sources told the Brooklyn Paper that the signs were part of a campaign by a rabbinical group, the Central Rabbinical Congress, that has published other decrees, including one in June forbidding women to wear tank tops.