Haredi Judaism and Orthodox Jews in Israel

First in an ongo­ing series

JERUSALEM — On my first visit to Israel two years agol, I was pray­ing at the West­ern Wall, the holi­est site in Judaism, when three male, Ortho­dox Jews approached me and asked for money.

“Can you spare money so our chil­dren can have food for a Shab­bat din­ner?” they asked. I gave them a few shekels. Then, as I was walk­ing away from the wall a few min­utes later, an older man walked towards me and asked for a dona­tion. I gave him a few shekels even though I was increas­ingly annoyed.

Finally, after I had left the Wall and started to head out of the Old City, an old man poked my arm from behind. “Money?” he demanded. By this point, I was extremely agi­tated. In my basic Hebrew, I told him: “You want money? You work.”

Of course, that prob­a­bly sounds heart­less — espe­cially from some­one whose most recent job in the United States was work­ing as the edi­tor of Spare Change News, a Boston news­pa­per that aims to help the home­less. But these peo­ple were not extremely poor — at least not in the man­ner to which most Amer­i­cans are used. These men were haredim, oth­er­wise known as ultra-Orthodox Jews, and I dis­agree with the man­ner in which they live their lives.

—

Let me explain. Most reli­gious Jews in Jerusalem are haredim in Jew­ish reli­gion. They devote their entire lives to two things: study­ing Torah and rais­ing a fam­ily, and they have doing so for cen­turies in Jew­ish his­tory. From the time they are young teenagers through most of their adult lives, ultra-Orthodox men pray and study Torah — all day, every day. In fact, they stop study­ing sub­jects like math and sci­ence in the eighth grade. And they choose not to work.

The haredim sur­vive mainly on dona­tions and gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies because they have a high level of polit­i­cal clout. (Although the ultra-Orthodox com­prise ten per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, Israel’s sys­tem of pro­por­tional rep­re­sen­ta­tion gives their small polit­i­cal par­ties dis­pro­por­tion­ate power in the gov­ern­ment.) Essen­tially, they receive unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits for their entire lives. Most charedi Jews live in poverty, but they con­sider it a small price to pay for their reli­gious devo­tion. Most ultra-Orthodox men also receive exemp­tions from Israel’s manda­tory mil­i­tary ser­vice (three years right after high school for men, and two for women).

In the eyes of other Israelis, the haredim act hyp­o­crit­i­cally because they accept money from the gov­ern­ment but do not rec­og­nize that the State of Israel exists. The ultra-Orthodox believe that only God (or the Mes­siah, depend­ing on who you ask) him­self can re-establish Israel fol­low­ing the Jew­ish exile that resulted from the Roman Empire’s destruc­tion of Judea in 70 C.E. Israel was founded by men in 1948, so the cur­rent state is ille­git­i­mate to them. Yet the ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem live here sim­ply because they view the city as the holi­est place on earth, and they can ful­fill more of the Torah’s com­mand­ments in Israel.

The ultra-Orthodox take the reli­gious obser­vance to a level that even other Ortho­dox Jews some­times call extreme. The charedim choose to live in a bub­ble that tries to block out the mod­ern world com­pletely:

Haredim live in insu­lar com­mu­ni­ties with lim­ited con­tact to the out­side world. Their lives revolve around Torah study, prayer and fam­ily. Tele­vi­sion, films, sec­u­lar pub­li­ca­tions and the Inter­net are not a part of their world. They tend to have their own economies, edu­ca­tional sys­tems, med­ical ser­vices, and wel­fare insti­tu­tions and gemachs (free loan soci­eties for every­thing from money to house­hold items). In Israel Haredi Jews are exempt from army service.

The dis­tinc­tive dress of Haredi Jews helps them to define, and then insu­late, their com­mu­ni­ties, as well as main­tain a tra­di­tional and spir­i­tual focus. They dress as their ances­tors dressed in 18th and 19th cen­tury Europe. The men tend to wear dark suits with white shirts, and to cover their heads with black, wide-brimmed hats. The men also gen­er­ally have beards and side­locks (peyot). Women, in line with strict stan­dards of mod­esty, tend to wear long skirts and shirts with long sleeves and high neck­lines. After the women get mar­ried, they cover their heads with either scarves, hats or wigs.

The haredim also marry early, and they have extremely large fam­i­lies because they view hav­ing chil­dren as a reli­gious com­mand­ment. Most Jew­ish sin­gles in the com­mu­nity marry between the ages of 16 and 20, and some­times their hus­bands can be sig­nif­i­cantly older. Most mar­riages are arranged by par­ents, but the daugh­ters, in the end, do have to con­sent. The aver­age haredi woman has at least eight chil­dren in her life­time, com­pared to three among other Israelis and two among Amer­i­cans. Haredi women — not the men — are the ones who have jobs. They work part-time, or they work full-time after they are mar­ried and before they begin to have children.

Many other Israelis are under­stand­ably upset that their taxes are pay­ing for the large fam­i­lies of peo­ple who, in their eyes, choose not to work and do not serve in the army like every­one else. The free­dom that the haredim have to live in their man­ner comes as a result of the sac­ri­fices of oth­ers. If busi­nesses in Tel Aviv did not gen­er­ate tax rev­enue for the gov­ern­ment, then there would be lit­tle money to sub­si­dize large haredi fam­i­lies. Ultra-orthodox Jews can live in rel­a­tive safety in Jerusalem because of the sac­ri­fices that other Israelis make when they serve in the army. Yet the haredim do not seem to be thank­ful. In fact, some of them can be con­de­scend­ing when they view other Jews and Judaisms as less authen­tic even though haredi Judaism is itself a sub­set of Ashke­nazi Judaism and a devi­a­tion from the his­tor­i­cal norm.

For their part, the haredim say that their lives are extremely dif­fi­cult — liv­ing in poverty is never easy, after all. More­over, they sin­cerely believe that their efforts to live as devoutly as pos­si­ble are help­ing Israel and the Jew­ish peo­ple by ensur­ing that God is on their side.

Although I dis­agree with the haredim polit­i­cally and reli­giously, they are pleas­ant to be around. I do like most of the haredi Jews that I have met. To be hon­est, the aver­age ultra-Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem seems to be nicer per­son­ally than the aver­age sec­u­lar Israeli in cos­mopoli­tan Tel Aviv. But when I visit the West­ern Wall, I just want to pray in peace.

—

How­ever, Israel will be fac­ing a demo­graphic night­mare as a result of the high birthrate of the haredim. As the num­ber of ultra-Orthodox Jews increases, a greater pro­por­tion of Israelis will refuse to work or per­form mil­i­tary ser­vice, and the gov­ern­ment will need to pay even more ben­e­fits to them. This would not bode well for the country’s econ­omy or secu­rity. Still, demo­graphic trends can change. The future remains to be seen.

The haredim are just one of the dozens of var­i­ous eth­nic and reli­gious groups in Israel: var­i­ous kinds of Jews, Chris­tians from Rus­sia, and Israeli Arabs (just to name a few). How­ever, this diver­sity comes at a price: Israel has existed for sixty years, but a civil soci­ety as yet to develop here. This affects every­thing from cul­tural cohe­sion to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

But that’s a topic for my next letter.

Next let­ter: What is Israel, Any­way?