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Better Living Through Cycling

Orthodox man tries to get Satmars to bike

by
Sara Ivry
August 27, 2009

Baruch Herzfeld is a modern Orthodox bike repairman on a mission: to convince Satmars in Brooklyn that biking is kosher. For about a year now, members of the Orthodox sect in Williamsburg have been fighting to stop the city from establishing bike lanes in their neighborhoods on the grounds that the activity is immodest (also, bike lanes would eliminate some parking spaces). That’s bunk, says Herzfeld, whose own brothers are rabbis who allow him to pop wheelies; he’s trying to entice passing Satmars to likewise become peddlers by offering to lend them vehicles through a program he’s established called Bike Gemach—the Yiddish term for free loan society. “I’m not doing it because I want to change the world,” Herzfeld says, “I just think it would be a healthy thing for the whole city if some of these guys got on bicycles.”

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Sara Ivry is the host of Vox Tablet, Tablet Magazine’s weekly podcast. Follow her on Twitter@saraivry.