A step too far? Recent years have seen some haredi rabbis competing over who can levy the most stringencies on their followers.

But the rabbi of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Nahlaot has raised eyebrows among much of the haredi public after issuing a ban on girls aged 5 and up riding bicycles – because it’s “immodest.”

The rabbi stated, according to Ynet, that young girls riding bikes “cause serious damage to their modesty.”

In his ruling, which was distributed in synagogues throughout the neighborhood, he claimed that bicycle seats caused young girls to sit in a way which could be “provocative” to men.

“We inform parents that they are obligated to forbid their daughters from age five and up from acting in this illegitimate way,” it read.

Talkbackers on the Kikar Shabbat haredi news site were less than impressed with the “ruling,” with one retorting that men should “guard their own eyes” instead of issuing bizarre edicts, and others accusing those behind the ruling of being perverse. “People see what they want to see,” one remarked.