وجه اسرائيل المخفي بداء بالظهور (بالانجليزي)

[align=center]Cloistered Jewish world faces change [/align]
[align=left]JERUSALEM - The haredim — "the God-fearing," as
Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jews refer to themselves — it broadly means anyone who takes the maximalist approach to Jewish law, and follows a lifestyle whose most visible characteristics are unlikely to change soon, another is the young hotheads who torch clothing stores in their neighborhood for selling "immodest" attire, and hurl bleach at women who wear it.
From cell phones to Stairmasters, from women's rights to Hebrew slang, the outside world is seeping into the cloistered haredi community and plunging it into a tug-of-war between a tentative embrace of modernity and fierce resistance.
They belong to a religious power structure, which at various times during Israel's existence has managed to ban public transport on the Sabbath, grounded El Al, the national airline on holy days. They receive Government money, because their men and women are exempt from work or serving in the military and from paying taxes, in addition they have absolute control of all Jewish marriage and divorce.
Yet reality is forcing change in many areas.
Election results have enabled coalition governments to be formed without the haredim. The sidelining of haredi parties in recent years has led to cutbacks in their subsidies, and haredim are beginning to trickle into the job market.
"There are many changes coming in the haredi world, because you can't offer only one lifestyle, you can't offer only one life opportunity for a whole range of abilities and spiritual levels. You'll lose too many that way," said Jonathan Rosenblum, a haredi columnist.
Haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem or the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak feel like 18th century European ghettos: men in long black coats and large fur hats called streimels; women wrapped in scarves or wigs because they shave their heads when they marry.
In Mea Shearim, Jerusalem's largest haredi neighborhood, cars are banned on the Sabbath.
Haredi households shun TV, and haredi rabbis have ruled that only cell phones without Internet access are permissible.
Israel's haredim number an estimated 600,000 — nearly 9 percent of the population.
The haredim view themselves as Judaism's lifeline, dedicated to preserving the religion in its purest form. The past, not the future, captivates the haredi heart, dating back to the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.
"Our purpose in this world is just to come closer to God, as close as we can," said Abraham Kalman Riter, a seminary student in Jerusalem. "We're going to keep our fur hats and our streimels and our long frocks, because we have one goal and nothing's going to deter us from that goal."
But modernity is creeping in.
A recent study showed that more than a third of the homes in Bnei Brak — the Tel Aviv area's main ultra-Orthodox enclave — have computers. New schools are training haredim to work.
Israel's haredim used to be mostly European and Yiddish (It’s a mix between German and Hebrew language)-speaking, but today one-third are from Middle Eastern countries, and the lingua franca increasingly is Hebrew.
A haredi comedian known as David the Impersonator slays young ultra-Orthodox audiences with such one-liners as, why does a miser pray quickly? Because heaven is a long-distance call.
The Kosher Gym has separate hours for men and women, and at David the Impersonator's shows, the men in the audience stand in front and the women in the back.
Women's rights weigh heavy on the debate about modernity. The most startling recent example is what some have called an Israeli Rosa Parks story — a group of Orthodox women who refused to sit at the back of a bus on gender-segregated routes catering to the religious community.
Miriam Shear, a 50-year-old Canadian woman visiting Israel for religious study, said she was kicked, slapped, pushed onto the floor, and spat upon by a group of haredi men for refusing to give up her seat. Her case is cited in a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court submitted by a group of women, including Israeli-American author Naomi Ragen, who said she, too, was verbally abused on one of the segregated lines.
In 2004, rabbis decreed that wigs imported from India were unacceptable because, they said, some of the hair may have been used in Hindu ceremonies involving idol worship.
Indian wigs supply 70 percent of Israel's harediyot — ultra-Orthodox women — and they had to make do with hats and scarves until the rabbis devised new criteria for "kosher wigs."
Because of the cutbacks in subsidies and a tight job market, about half the community is thought to be living in poverty. Few rabbinical rulings have caused as much dismay of late as a ban on post-secondary degrees for women — the main breadwinners in haredi society because so many of the men study Torah full time. The move is liable to push the haredim even deeper into poverty.
The ruling may have been driven by hard-liners who blame an apparent rise in the haredi divorce rate on women entering the workplace.
Austerity is now in vogue. A radio reality show features 13 religious families competing at cutting their expenditure on food, utilities, and clothes. Whoever pinches the most pennies wins a household appliance worth $4,500.
The better off, however, can be seen enjoying the fruits of modernity as they sip cappuccino at outdoor cafes or shop for sweaters (black only) at trendy secular stores.
Media and the Internet have rubbed some of the edges off the hostility secular Israelis feel toward haredim.
Still, the average Israeli tends to be skeptical of the haredi argument that a life of Bible study is as great a service to the state as joining the army.
William Glaberson, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who heads the physics department at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, says he's perplexed by the belittling of Bible study.
"Do you know how many colleagues I have who learn Ugaritic syntax and they spend their time writing esoteric papers on dead languages, and all kinds of things like that, and they're not considered parasites?" he said.
"It's kind of a joke. What do they contribute to society?"[/align]