Israel - What About The Haredim?

Since my last report from Israel, I had a wonderful day and two nights at the Weizmann Institute, and another in Tel Aviv including meeting a distant relative.   All the while, I've enjoyed amazing food, great scenery, and intense heat.

Everyone I have talked to in Israel mentions the Haredim (ultra-orthodox religious Jews), and the problem they pose in terms of lack of assimilation, lack of military service, massive state subsidies they recieve, and failure to shoulder the tax burden.

My first real encounter with them has been in Jerusalem.  Unfortunately, they ruined my first visit to the Kotel, and confirmed any negative impressions I might have had of them.   This is simply a report of my experiences around that.

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Yesterday I arrived in Jerusalem and made for the Old City.  Photographs of lost relatives in hand, I purchased knitted kipa - one in the style of Religious Zionists - at the very last minute before the Judaica stores closed for Shabbat.

I made it to the wall at about 3 pm.  It wasn't very crowded at that point, and I made my way towards the men's area.  Almost everyone there was haredi.  No sooner did I approach then a haredi man came up to me and said something in Hebrew.  In my naivite I thought he might be offering to say a prayer.  So I said "ata medaber anglit?" and he said "charity, charity" and stuck out his hand.  I didn't know what to do.  I just shook my head. 

I tried to have a moment and figure out where to stand and what to say with my pictures of my father and grandparents, but just a few seconds later another man came up to me and said the same thing.  I said "I'll give you something if you say a prayer for my relatives" so he muttered something in Hebrew.  Then I returned to face the wall and try to concentrate on what I was doing, and he just started asking me questions about my nationality and ethnicity.  "You are American?  Italian?  Ashkenazi?"  It was exceedingly inappropriate given the situation.  He was like a fly that would not go away.

I was really open to having a spiritual-ish moment at the Kotel with my pictures but it was clear it wasn't happening.  So I found a spot to leave them and started to walk around.  Only a few seconds later another Haredi man came up to me with his hand out and said "Charity, please, I have 11 children and they are starving."  I couldn't believe it.  In any other situation I would have said "Why the fuck did you have 11 kids if you couldn't feed them?" but I couldn't there, so I just tried to walk away, but he just followed.  And then another man came up to me, shoved his hand at me, same thing.

I couldn't get a moment's peace there, so I left.

I explored the rest of the Old City, and walked up to the Mount of Olives to an overlook.

Later after sundown I returned to the Kotel.  Now it was much more crowded, and there were a ton of Religious Zionists in the mix too.  They were dancing around and chanting loudly, in full military uniforms with giant rifles at their side, some with the clips in.  As excessively nationalistic as it seemed, at least it was a joyous moment for them, and they were doing their own thing and not bothering others.

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I was quite jarred by my experience at the Kotel yesterday.  My Air BNB host, a lovely Yemeni man who lives in West Jerusalem, voiced his concern that the Haredim are taking over the country, and that he is considering leaving Jerusalem for Tel Aviv because he is afraid they will try to institute restrictions in Jerusalem.

As with anything involving Israel, the situation with the Haredi is quite complicated and nuanced.  Some are more assimilated than others, some are more Zionist than others, and so on.

Today I set out to see for myself the most notorious of their areas, the Mea Shaarim neighborhood of Jerusalem.  At the entrance there are signs demanding that tour groups not come through and that women dress modestly.  All well and good.

But inside, it is one of, actually probably the, most disgusting, decrepit, disgraceful place I have ever seen.  In my entire life.  Mounds of trash are piled everywhere.  The streets are barely paved.  It smells terrible.  It looks, no exaggeration, like the kind of places they film when celebrities ask you for money for starving children.  And people are walking around in the hot sun in outfits that were developed for the winter in 17th century Northern Europe, stockings, collared shirts, and black wool coats and hats.  According to my Air BNB host, they actually have a huge problem with skin infections because of this.

One of the only English signs was on a building, proclaiming it was "Saving Jewish children from foreign education"  What Jewish tradition saves children from education?  There was also a big anti-Zionist poster, saying "Zionism - Holocaust of the Jewish Nation."

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One could dismiss these Mea Shaarin residents as kooks in ridiculous outfits.  But they are having a ridiculous number of children.  People throw around stats like 50% of all births in Israel are now to Arabs or Haredi.  With these numbers, it won't be long until Haredi are a majority of the Jewish population.

What will this mean for the Jewish state, a state founded on secular principles of Jewish peoplehood?  What will it mean for a state which has thrived, survived wars, and built a modern economy on the basis of science, capitalism, and modernity?  Who will pay the taxes?  Who will serve in the army?  Will a majority of its own citizens think it is "a Holocaust"?

Once out of Mea Shaarin, even elsewhere in Jerusalem, one can be lulled into a sense that everything is ok, that Israel is a beautiful, modern, prosperous nation, full of sun bronzed warrior scientists and incredibly hot women in incredibly short shorts. 

But Edward Teller said that humanity's undoing will be its inability to emotionally comprehend the exponential function.  How will Israel survive the Haredi demographic challenge?

Will the Haredim assimilate and change?  Zionism has, against all odds at times, built an incredibly successful society and nation state, which I have been seeing this entire week.  Will it survive this?