Haredi
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Fast Forward Israel Lawmakers Raise Electoral Threshhold for Knesset Seats
Israel approved a change to electoral law on Tuesday that raises the percentage of votes needed for seats in parliament, an amendment that critics said targets Arab and ultra-Orthodox Jewish minorities. The opposition in the Knesset, or parliament, boycotted the 67-0 vote which supporters said will bring greater stability to government. Many of Israel’s governing…
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Fast Forward Mother and 5-Month-Old Infant Belonging to Lev Tahor Sect Taken Into Custody
Canadian authorities have taken into custody two more members of the fringe haredi Orthodox sect Lev Tahor. On Sunday, officials at Calgary’s airport seized a 17-year-old and her 5-month-old daughter. They are scheduled to fly back to Toronto. The mother and baby were part of a group of 14 Lev Tahor children who fled just…
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Israel News IN PHOTOS: Ultra-Orthodox Jews Protest Israeli Draft Bill in New York
It must have been a confusing sight for tourists. Some 50,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews crammed onto Water Street in lower Manhattan on Sunday afternoon, showing their support for their Haredi brethren in Israel. This week, the Knesset will vote on a bill to make conscription into the Israel Defense Forces mandatory for Haredi men. Sunday’s “Great…
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Opinion Leaving the Ultra-Orthodox World — With No Other Choice
A young ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman once contacted me with a serious question: ”Should I leave the ultra-Orthodox community?” My reply to her was, “Since you have asked, ‘Should I?’ — then the answer is, ‘No!’” Leaving the ultra-Orthodox Jewish fold is called in Hebrew yetzia bishe’elah — literally, “leaving with a question.” It is a…
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Fast Forward Ultra-Orthodox Jews Protest Israeli Draft Bill in New York
(Haaretz) — The scene was completely surreal: A crying cantor beseeching the Lord in Yiddish-accented Hebrew to hear his prayers; high-octane loudspeakers amplifying the cry throughout lower Manhattan; tens of thousands of black-coated ultra-Orthodox Jews earnestly repeating the Psalms in the freezing cold; some of New York’s finest, duly exasperated; and the looks of astonishment on…
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Fast Forward Members of Lev Tahor Sect Forcibly Returned to Canada After Fleeing Country
Nine members of the haredi Orthodox Lev Tahor sect who fled Canada earlier this week were returned to the country. A plane carrying three Lev Tahor adults and six children from Trinidad and Tobago was greeted Saturday night by Toronto-area police and children’s aid officials. The children were taken into the custody of Chatham-Kent Children’s…
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Culture The Haredi Sect Run By Women
Chaya and Mushke Bath-Sheleg, the daughters of a highly respected rabbi and rebbetzin in the Memeti sect have been leading a growing community of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn since their parents’ death in the late 1990s. On the eve of their community’s historic move to Kiryas Shalom in upstate New York they broke their silence…
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Israel News Ultra-Orthodox Anger Bubbles Over at Draft
(JTA) — Beneath banners invoking historic calamities from the Egyptian enslavement to the Holocaust, hundreds of thousand of haredi Orthodox men gathered on the streets of Jerusalem to recite psalms and penitential prayers as they inveighed against an enemy they consider on par with Hitler and the ancient pharaohs. “We endured Pharaoh. We endured the…
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