NEW YORK TIMES – The independent, nonprofit groups tend to see themselves as 21st-century security outfits charged with protecting an insular population whose culture is rooted in preindustrial Europe (…) Given the communities they serve, the shomrim also act as intermediaries for the secular authorities, negotiating language barriers and complex social mores for a segment of the citizenry given to speaking Yiddish. And yet in their desire to be, as they like to say, the “eyes and ears” of the police, they have occasionally found themselves on the wrong side of the law. CONTINUE READING
