Montreal, Canada - Synagogue Complaints about View Into Gym

Montreal, Canada - The view into a gym has driven a rift between YMCA clients and Hasidic Jews in Montreal's Mile End district.

Some members of the Avenue du Parc YMCA are upset with the centre's administrators, who allowed windows on the building's west side to be tinted in order to placate leaders of a Hasidic synagogue across the alley.
The Y members claim the tinted windows compromise the building's interior lighting and make it hard to practise tai chi and yoga.
They've started a petition defending their workout clothes and demanding the tinted windows be removed.

But bembers of the Yetev Lev synagogue paid for the tinted windows at the Y after they complained that their children were unwittingly watching too many women in various states of undress work out at the gym.
The congregation's rabbi said public nudity is not acceptable to his members, nor to any religious Jew.
The Yetev Lev synagogue serves about 300 families from the Satmar sect. The religious school, or yeshiva, educates about 120 boys 16 to 19 years old. About half of them, nearly all from New York, board at the school.

The Y members said the synagogue should tint its own windows if it wants to shield Hasidic children from activities at the gym.