Haredi
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Life On Tweenage Girls Joining Facebook, Wearing Makeup
When I saw this blog post, about attempts by some ultra-Orthodox authorities in Israel to ban Facebook from Haredi homes because the ubiquitous social media site “greatly damages families,” I thought it just another example of the community’s ongoing effort to build the shtetl walls high enough to control people’s behavior. Then I read this…
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The Schmooze Couple Branded Troublemakers for Sitting Together on Israeli Bus
Couple Rides Bus. Hardly the subject for a news article in a national newspaper, but welcome to the bizarre world of Israel’s Haredi media. You may recall that there’s controversy in Israel about gender-segregated bus lines in Israel – or in Hebrew mehadrin lines. Earlier this month, the High Court ruled that they are legal,…
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The Schmooze Peeling Back The Forbidden Strawberry
It’s the forbidden fruit… unless peeled. The strawberry has been the cause of much rabbinical consternation in recent years. The reason is that many rabbis believe strawberries to be a favorite hangout for insects, and eating an insect is actually more problematic in Jewish law than eating pork. Now one of Israel’s most prolific Haredi…
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The Schmooze Prayer at the Western Wall: A Weekday-Only Activity?
The Western Wall was abnormally busy this afternoon. More people than on a usual Friday left their Sabbath preparations and braved the cool Jerusalem weather to head for the Wall. Why? One reason is that today is a fast day, the Fast of Tevet, and people wanted to pray at the special afternoon service. But…
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Life Nip/Tuck — With Your Rebbe’s Blessing
Spiritual beauty is increasingly not enough for ultra-Orthodox women. More and more, plastic surgery is becoming acceptable in a community where it was once unheard of, and rabbis are relaxing their opposition to it, a recent article in Ynet reports. Religious Jews are notorious for shunning cosmetic alterations to the body — tattoos are a…
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Opinion Uproar as Haredi Lawmaker Urges Yeshiva Boys to Join Army, Get Jobs
We’ve been talking a lot lately about the rising proportion of ultra-Orthodox or Haredi Jews in the Israeli population, and the various challenges it poses to Israeli society. Most dramatic are the declining proportion of 18-year-olds who will be available for military service, since the great majority of Haredi men claim an exemption as full-time…
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Life Haredi Rabbi Talks ‘Kosher Feminism’
Sunday was the enormous Lubavitch Kinnus HaShluchim, replete with 3,500 of the rebbe’s emissaries in Crown Heights for Shabbos and coverage in The New York Times, of the banquet meal at Brooklyn’s cruise terminal, the only space large enough to accommodate the crowd. I write this while watching a live feed of the speakers. The…
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Life Orthodox Women, Stunted Ambitions
Does Orthodoxy make women girly? That is the essence, I believe, of Israeli religious feminist Chana Pinchasi’s argument in an opinion piece in Ynet. In lamenting the absence of religious women in positions of public leadership in Israel, Pinchasi asked, “Why don’t we have a Keren Neubach, Shelly Yachimovitch, or Ilana Dayan? Why isn’t there…
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