There is a new social networking site for religiously observant Jews that ensures rules of modesty are strictly enforced.

Known as FaceGlat, it sends users to a landing page where women and men are directed to different pages. Men click on the right side of the page and women click on the left side of the page. Photos of friends posted on a man's wall are of other men, and photos of friends posted on woman’s wall are of other women.

It also bans immodest pictures or advertisements, according to a report from AFP. In addition, those who sign in as men can’t visit the women’s section and vice versa. Ynet explains that the site also includes a “word filter” to prevent objectionable comments or statuses, and prevent accounts opened by men in the women's section and vice versa.

The divides found online are similar to the Orthodox Jewish practice of dividing genders in synagogues – through a mechitza – and dividing genders at some other public events. In cities like Jerusalem, in religiously observant neighborhoods, women are divided from men on buses or banned from walking near each other on the sidewalk.

The site gets its name from the Hebrew word “Glat” – which is a strict level of kosher food certification. The users of the site are concerned about tsnius, which translates from the Hebrew into “modesty.”

The site was founded by Yaakov Suissa, 25. He lives in Kfar Chabad in Israel.

“It's not an alternative for Facebook (News - Alert), but something intended for a particular public,” Suissa explained to the Israeli-based Ynet news service. “I believe that it would be much more convenient for a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) man or woman to publish pictures and all kinds of other things to people of the same sex only.”

He adds that observant Jews won’t “tolerate the ads and pictures one sees on the regular Facebook.”

Facebook has some 750 million users, says TechZone 360, while FaceGlat adds about a hundred users a day, according to Ynet.

“I personally know people who have deteriorated spiritually because of all kinds of things they were introduced to there [on Facebook],” Suissa told Ynet.

“We’re not making it kosher, but reducing the prohibition,” Suissa told Ynet. “We want to provide a different, cleaner option for those who are already there. If it encourages people to open accounts or waste their time instead of studying Torah – it’s a failure. It’s not worth a thing. I promised myself that if that happened I would close it down.”

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