No Men Allowed: Women-only hours at Williamsburg pool draw complaints
A Brooklyn municipal pool that maintains female-only hours so that Hasidic Jewish women can swim with no men present has raised alarms among critics who say the accommodation to a particular religious group violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
But defenders say the women-only swim sessions at the Metropolitan Recreation Center in Williamsburg give women whose community separates the sexes a rare chance to exercise.
“Why deprive them?” said New York state Assemblymember Dov Hikind, a Democrat who represents a heavily Orthodox Jewish district in Brooklyn. “Really, you’re not taking away from anyone else.”