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Israel’s other demographic challenge
Last Updated: Monday, 3 September 2007, 06:14 GMT 07:14 UK

Jerusalem’s busy Mea Shearim neighbourhood is witness to a looming demographic dilemma for Israel.

Haredi life is devoted to studying Jewish law and thought

It is an almost exclusively ultra-orthodox Jewish enclave, its narrow streets and crowded apartments teeming with thousands of black-hatted, white-shirted Haredi men and their families.

The Haredim live in a world apart from modern, westernised West Jerusalem, devoting their lives to the study of Jewish law and thought, practising what they see as the purest form of Judaism.

It is widely accepted that Palestinian population growth in Israel and the occupied territories is a major strategic issue for Israel.

But the proportion of ultra-orthodox Haredi Jews is also growing, approximately three times as fast as the rest of the population.

In a country where every 18-year-old Jew is supposed to join the army – and which has faced six major conflicts with its neighbours and battled two Palestinian uprisings – that Haredi population growth poses some urgent questions.

Spiritual needs

The ultra-orthodox do not face compulsory conscription; they are exempted from national service in order to continue their religious studies.

Secular Israelis see the army as the state’s most important institution

Once it was a tiny minority which took that route; now they account for more than 10% of draft-age Israeli Jews. By 2019, the government forecasts they will constitute almost one in four.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Yosef Lapid represents a constituency in Israel that asks whether Haredi behaviour is not in fact undermining the Jewish state.

“I have nothing against them because they are religious,” says Mr Lapid. “I very much oppose the fact that they don’t serve in the army. They represent God in God’s country, but don’t defend God’s country”.

From the yeshivas, or theological colleges, around Jerusalem, where the young men sway back and forth as they read and debate centuries of law and commentary, there is a different view.

They believe that the country has spiritual as well as physical needs, and there is no greater service than that of religious study.

“The difficulty a secular Israeli is going to have is just not understanding the whole world-view that the religious world is coming from,” says Haredi rabbi Moshe Zeldman.

“If you look at the whole history of the Jewish people, it can’t be explained in physical terms. What made us survive this long? We really believe God has a hand in history,” he says.

Welfare

Rabbi Zeldman says he is not living in a dreamland, where only God takes care of the Jews and Israel does not need an army.

The Haredi issue will become more central as the population grows

“You also need a balance. And the balance has to be that as much as you’re worried about your physical survival, you’re also focussed on your spiritual survival,” he says.

But there is a further source of tension – the economy.

At a food distribution scheme in Mea Shearim, dozens of families come to collect cardboard boxes full of all types of kosher food.

This is not an unusual sight, because most Haredim are poor and many rely heavily on welfare. Government figures suggest that two out of three Haredi men do not have a paid job.

More and more, Israelis are asking if this too can carry on.

Demographer Mencahem Friedman says that either the Haredim will have to change their ways or “the government will force them” to contribute more to the economy and defence.

“To keep the status quo as it is now probably will not be possible,” he says.

“Everyone has to make a very crucial decision to change the situation. How they will make it, I don’t know.”

It is one of the most difficult questions of all for Israel – what a Jewish state should demand of its own Jewish citizens.

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Set apart for God and Torah

The BBC’s Erica Chernofsky in Jerusalem gets a rare insight into the lives of members of Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

Mrs Greenwald says being Haredi means being someone who fears God

Sitting on a park bench in the late afternoon, Michal Greenwald watches her children run around the playground with dozens of other kids as she takes a few minutes rest from her hectic day.

A full-time property lawyer, Mrs Greenwald is the sole breadwinner and also takes care of her four young children and tends to the housework. Her husband, Shmuel, spends his days studying in a religious seminary for men. She says she cannot imagine life any other way.

”Girls are raised this way from a young age, and such are the lives of Haredim in Israel,” she says of the Ultra-Orthodox Jews who choose to live separately from mainstream Israeli society.

It is difficult to walk the streets of Jerusalem without running into Haredim, but their community can seem isolated and closed.

The men are distinct in their long black wool coats and trousers, stark white button-down shirts and black hats, even in the heat of the Middle Eastern summer.

Living ‘with a purpose’

Mrs Greenwald, 34, lives in Har Nof, an ultra-orthodox neighbourhood of Jerusalem where absolutely everything is closed on Saturday – the Sabbath – and only kosher food is sold in shops.

We look different, in fact we look very weird – we dress how people used to dress 100 years ago Moshe Eliahu Haredi student and father

Like all Haredi women, she dresses very modestly, covers her hair with a wig or scarf and will not allow physical contact of any kind with any man other than her husband.

“Being Haredi means being someone who fears God,” Mrs Greenwald says. “It means that first and foremost in life are the Torah (Bible) and keeping the mitzvoth (commandments).”

She is referring to the 613 commandments in the Bible that Jews believe were given to them by God. “Everything in my life is built around the Torah,” she says.

“If I go on a trip with my family, I can’t eat just anything, I can’t go mixed swimming, and I’m constantly thinking ‘what is the proper thing to do now?’ As Haredim we don’t just live, but we live with a purpose.”

That purpose, as she defines it, is to fulfil the Torah and mitzvoth by bettering herself as well as the world around her, and in so doing striving to become closer to God.

It is for this reason that she proudly supports her family while her husband pursues his religious studies.

‘Positive energy’

Currently Haredim make up about 10% of Israeli society, and have a less than positive reputation among secular Israelis, many of whom view their customs as primitive and disapprove of their choice to study at seminaries and thus avoid the mandatory army draft.

“It’s an ancient concept in Judaism that the spiritual and the physical are united, that to win a war you need both spirit and strength,” says Moshe Eliahu, a Haredi father of two and full-time student at a Jerusalem seminary.

Haredi men in black suits and hats are a common sight in Jerusalem

“You need people fighting, but you also need people learning and praying.”According to government figures, the majority of Haredi men do not have paid jobs.

Mr Eliahu, who also earns a meagre wage working at a support centre for Haredi youth in the evenings, explains that Haredim believe that there must always be a certain amount of men learning the Jewish books in order for life, as we know it, to go on.

He is a direct descendant of the Hatam Sopher, a leading 19th Century rabbi of European Jewry and one of several key figures who were the early leaders of the various Haredi sects.

Mr Eliahu says Israel and the world need the “positive energy” that comes from learning Torah.

“This sounds funny to the western ear – what can a man learning in a yeshiva all day possibly give back to the world?” he says. “Torah learning that we do is the hidden code of the physical existence of all mankind, and if for one single second there is no Torah learning in the air, all the world would go back to chaos.”

Mr Eliahu’s wife, Miriam, teaches English at two Jerusalem schools and takes care of their children. “There’s no point to our physical existence without a spiritual purpose, and I, as the husband who is learning all day, am primarily responsible for that,” he explains.

‘Defence mechanism’

He also rejects the view that Haredi gender roles are primitive. In Judaism, he says, women are actually considered to be closer to God than men. ”They are the ones who create life, they are the queens.”

Dressed in classic Haredi garb, he acknowledges he stands out on the street.

”We look different, in fact we look very weird. We dress how people used to dress 100 years ago, we have long peyot (side locks), and all these things set us apart.”

He explains that Haredi men dress this way as a “defence mechanism” to “protect ourselves from assimilation”.

Mrs Greenwald too defines herself by her religious ideals, setting herself apart from the values of wider society.

“I don’t live life for myself,” she says. “My priority is my family, my home, and then my career. I can’t say I desire to become a famous lawyer, or to be a millionaire.

“For us, there is a bigger picture here. We know this world is just a hallway to the real life, to the Garden of Eden.”

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Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem have clashed with police in protest at what they see as interference by the Israeli authorities in their community.

Police said at least 28 people were arrested after protesters threw stones at officers and burned rubbish bins.

Hundreds of police have been deployed – 10 were reported to have been injured.

The incidents followed the arrest of an ultra-orthodox woman for allegedly starving her three-year-old son deliberately. The child is in hospital.

The protests are taking place in two ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods, Mea Shearim and Bar-Ilan.

There were later reports of unrest in Beit Shemesh, a few miles outside Jerusalem, where police broke up a group of about 100 protesters attempting to block a road into the town.

It is time someone woke up because the violence threatens to cause victims Police chief Aaron Franco

There were also reports of stone-throwing attacks on municipal workers.

“Thousands of ultra-orthodox from the Mea Shearim district tried to close a main road to traffic, obliging law enforcement to intervene with water cannons,” said police spokesman Shmuel Rubi.

“Some police officers were hurt when stones were thrown” and police questioned dozens of people, he told the AFP news agency.

On Thursday, police used horses and water cannon to disperse the black-garbed Haredim.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the violence was “something that was not expected”.

Meanwhile the city’s police chief, Aaron Franco, has said ultra-orthodox rabbis are not doing enough to denounce the violence.

“It is time someone woke up because the violence threatens to cause victims,” he said.

Car park row

The Haredim say the authorities are intruding on their way of life

Jerusalem is home to large Orthodox communities whose strict adherence to Jewish law sometimes puts them at odds with more the majority secular Jews.

Anger is high at what has been seen as the “unjust” arrest of the mother, who is said to be suffering from a mental disorder.

A hospital spokeswoman, Yael Bossem-Levy, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying the woman had Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a condition in which one person mimics or induces illness in another.

Another current Haredi grievance has been the Sabbath opening of a private car park near the religiously sensitive Old City area, when Orthodox Jews abstain from work.

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Some Haredi Jews have embraced modern technology, with limits

The BBC’s Erica Chernofsky looks at how Israel’s highly traditional ultra-Orthodox Jewish community is tackling the challenges and opportunities of new communications technologies.

When Israeli father Avi tried to register his six-year-old twin daughters for his local ultra-Orthodox school this year, he was happy to sign a form saying his children did not watch television or use the internet at home.

But he was surprised to discover he had to give a “kosher cellphone number”. He did not have one.

Avi lives in Har Nof, one of the main ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, neighbourhoods of Jerusalem.

I feel I can control myself not to use the bad features – but do I trust my children? Avi

The community separates itself from mainstream society through its traditional religious practices and distinctive attire of black hats, coats and sidelocks for the men and long skirts and sleeves for the women.

Like most other men in his community, Avi studies the Jewish scriptures daily, keeps the Sabbath and eats only kosher food.

But he has not yet opted for the new religious adaptation to modern technology that has swept the Haredi world in Israel.

‘Immodest’ behaviour

The kosher cellphone looks like an ordinary cellphone, can make and receive calls, and may have a calculator and alarm clock.

One of the defining features of kosher mobiles is a rabbinical stamp

But it cannot send or receive text messages, browse the internet or take photos – all activities that could potentially involve behaviour considered “immodest” among Haredis.

For example, SMS capability could lead to the unwitting receipt of mass text messages publicising secular events. It could also be used as a method of illicit communication between male and female teenagers.

And all photos of women are forbidden, as is accessing websites with content deemed inappropriate.

The phone’s other defining feature is a rabbinical stamp of approval, similar to those seen on kosher food items.

All the major Israeli cellphone companies have accommodated the powerful Haredi constituency by providing kosher phones, and cheaper-than-normal packages which connect only with other Haredi numbers.

As the companies have created distinct code prefixes to accompany the kosher phone plans, the phone numbers have quickly become a badge of religious observance.

Not only do some Haredi newspapers refuse to publish ads with non-kosher phone numbers, but parents are worried their children will be blacklisted by the shadchan, or matchmaker, if their numbers are not kosher.

Banana filtered

“What do you associate with the Haredi community? You wear black trousers, a white shirt and some sort of hat, but today the things that define you have changed,” says Avi.

Protected surfing is calibrated differently for different Haredi groups

He says he feels there is a sense that anyone who does not have a kosher phone “should be excluded from society”.

“If you say you are associating yourself with us, please act according to our codes, otherwise do not call yourself Haredi and do not send your kids to our schools.”

But while they have managed to adapt the cellphone to their lifestyles, Haredis have had a harder time with the internet.

Last year, an Orthodox rabbi and an Israeli technology executive established an internet service provider (ISP) called Rimon, which claims to be the only filtering service provider in Israel that offers customised surfing packages.

The company says it cuts out pornography, violence, and gambling, and then provides the user with five levels of further filtering, from the “protected” level that blocks images of women in intimate apparel to the “hermetic” level, which allows users to view only unchanging, vetted websites such as encyclopaedias.

There are many things on the internet that are not appropriate for me as a Haredi woman, things I would prefer that my family and I didn’t see or hear Miriam

“If your kid puts ‘banana’ into Google, some of the first sites he’ll get are porn,” explains chairman Moshe Weiss. “Put banana into Google on Rimon, and you get all the same sites without the porn.”

One Haredi sect, the Belz, which normally forbids online access, has partially endorsed the use of Rimon, but only for those who need the internet for business purposes.

The general rule for the local Haredi community still remains no radio, no TV, no internet and no movies – though Rimon is hoping that once it starts targeting the Haredi market that will change.

For now, its 15,000 subscribers are mostly secular and modern Orthodox.

Self control

Miriam, a teacher living in Jerusalem, is one of many Haredi Jews who do not have home web access.

An Orthodox Jewish life for men is one devoted to studying the scriptures

She expresses concern over the amount of time people devote to surfing the net, wasting time they could spend learning Torah or doing good deeds.

Her main worry, however, is over the lack of control over content.

“There are many things on the internet that are not appropriate for me as a Haredi woman, things I would prefer that my family and I didn’t see or hear, like violence, pornography and inappropriate sexual relations,” she says.

For Haredis, “inappropriate” means any physical contact between a man and a woman who are not married.

But Avi, who says he needs the internet for his work in the tourist industry, has unfiltered online access.

“I’m not afraid of the negative aspects because I grew up with internet and I feel I can control myself not to use the bad features,” he says.

“But do I trust my children?” he wonders aloud.

“When they are old enough to use it I will definitely have to re-evaluate. I think then I might put filters on or use Rimon, or maybe then I’ll even disconnect internet from the house altogether. It’s just not worth the risk.”

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The chief rabbi of a West Bank settlement has prohibited women from standing in a local community election.

Rabbi Elyakim Levanon of the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus, said women lacked the authority to stand for the post of local secretary.

He wrote in a community newspaper that women must only be heard through their husbands.

No women have registered for the election due to be held later on Wednesday, Israeli media reported.

The rabbi made his comments in the community’s newspaper after an unidentified young woman wrote to him asking if she could run for the position of community secretary, the Israeli news website Ynet News said.

‘Giving authority’”I am a young woman and I think I have desire and energy to do things,” Ynet News quoted the woman as writing to Rabbi Levanon.

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Within the family certain debates are held and when opinions are united the husband presents the family’s opinion

Rabbi Elyakim Levanon Elon Moreh

“It’s not right for men to be the only ones deciding how to run the community,” the letter reportedly said.

But in his weekly column, Rabbi Levanon wrote that, according to the teachings of influential rabbis, women were not allowed to apply for the position.

“The first problem is giving women authority, and being a secretary means having authority,” Rabbi Levanon wrote in the community’s newspaper.

“Within the family certain debates are held and when opinions are united the husband presents the family’s opinion.

“This is the proper way to prevent a situation in which the woman votes one way and her husband votes another,” he wrote.

He also said it was not appropriate for women to mix with men in late evening meetings of community leaders.

Women’s groups have condemned the comments.

“Such talk is scandalous enough to call the rabbi for a clarification. I expect leaders of the religious public in Israel to condemn the rabbi’s instruction,” Nurit Tzur of the Israel Women’s Lobby said .