Your article on the segregated (by gender) bus line in Brooklyn (“Segregated Bus Line Tacitly Sanctioned For Decades,” Oct. 28) contained this quote from Queens College sociology professor Samuel Heilman, author of two books about haredi life in America: “This is about owning the public square. These folks feel so at home in America, particularly in this city and state that they are willing to take places that you may think are public and say ‘we are going to set the rules about how this public space is used.’ It’s an expression of ethnic pride and multiculturalism.”
Feel so at home in America? Is this why New York is willing to set aside separate rooms for Muslim students to pray in, while Jews have taken care of their religious obligations before and after school or work for decades? Do Jews have religious freedom here, or we as at home in America as we were in Czarist Russia?
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