Close to midnight on a randomly chosen weekday, about half of the 50 booths in the bustling Internet Cafe on downtown Jerusalem's Jaffa Road are occupied by young ultra-Orthodox men, easily identified by their black hats, kippot and sidelocks (peyot). Use of the Internet has been declared taboo by most of the community's leading rabbis - except for purposes related to business activity - but none of these men is trying to disguise their affiliation.
Admittedly, says a source close to the community, the booths were built to meet customer demand for greater privacy. But anyone sauntering past can see what's on the monitors. Some are watching downloaded Hollywood action and comedy films in groups of two or three. One youth is flipping through the channels of the YES satellite station, and dwells on the "Jamie Kennedy Experiment," a rather risque show that perpetrates hoaxes on innocent bystanders and friends, which aired on the American WB Channel. Others are deep in chat-room exchanges or posting on forums.
The degree of guilt over this illicit activity varies. One youngster, who quickly closes his browser when a stranger approaches, reluctantly reveals only that his parents have "no idea" that he surfs the web; he himself believes it "is wrong"; and "when I have kids, I won't allow them to access the Internet." Another admits that he surfs to "satisfy my curiosity about the world around me," dwelling particularly on encyclopedia sites to learn about things - science, history, politics - ignored in his yeshivah education. Yet he, too, feels that the Internet poses a great threat to children and says that when he becomes a parent, he will not bring it into his home.
The ultra-Orthodox, of course, are not alone in their concern over the Internet's menace to kids, or in feeling guilty for looking at what they think they shouldn't see on the screen. But the words of the young men in the cyber cafe warrant particular notice, because they point to an attitude far more complex than most outsiders expect of a society perceived as living apart from modernity. The late-night surfers are looking at everything from trash TV to science, even though they think they shouldn't - and are inevitably affected by the experience. They are communicating, anonymously and unsupervised - but often choosing to do so in chat rooms aimed at the ultra-Orthodox, staying within the community even as they violate its rules. In contrast to the stereotypes, they are neither accepting rabbinic diktat nor leaving the ultra-Orthodox world. Inevitably, that world will change as a result. And their ambivalent response to the Internet is but one example of the ambiguous interaction of ultra-Orthodox society with modern Israel. It's joined by an upsurge in demand for contemporary leisure and cultural activities that parallel the range available to the rest of Israeli society but are tailored to ultra-Orthodox sensibilities.
The tensions created by these shifts can turn explosive, as the scandal within the family of Israel's Sephardi chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, has amply illustrated. Amar's 18-year-old daughter, Ayalah, met a 17-year-old ultra-Orthodox boy through a chat room - and then in person, as a romance blossomed between them. The very fact of befriending a boy outside the supervised framework of matchmaking was a daring rebellion - though, by all accounts, the pair did not violate any other taboos. So the rabbi's 31-year-old son, Meir, allegedly decided to take drastic punitive action - though he had long before left the ultra-Orthodox fold. With his sister as bait, he abducted her suitor and took him to the house of two friends in the Arab village of Kalansua, northeast of Tel Aviv; there, the three thoroughly beat the boy. Assuming the youth would remain mum, lest he bring shame upon his family, Meir then took the two teens to his parents' home in Jerusalem - where he further abused the boy.
A complaint was lodged with the police, however, and interrogation of the Amars yielded indictments against both Meir (for kidnapping and assault) and his mother, Mazal Amar (for false imprisonment and extortion). Although Rabbi Amar was at home, the prosecution accepted his claim that he was asleep and unaware of the drama transpiring in his living room, and closed the investigation against him.
Beyond expressing deep sorrow and regret over the behavior of his son, Rabbi Amar has announced that his chief conclusion is the need to be more vigorous in publicly decrying the evils of the Internet. But the admonition is almost besides the point. His daughter's behavior demonstrates that the younger generation of his community is using the Net not to leave the ultra-Orthodox world but to change what it means to belong to it.
The Internet fight is the latest round in an ongoing process of grappling with modernity. The ultra-Orthodox aren't Amish - they don't boycott technology as such. They drive cars and get CAT scans. PCs themselves are not a rare commodity in ultra-Orthodox households (they can be found in 37 percent of the homes in the mostly haredi city of Bnei Brak, for example), and are commonly used by yeshivot, charities and other institutions for management purposes. High- tech, in fact, is one of the careers sanctioned for young men who are inclined to abandon full-time Torah study and enter the working world.
Communications technology, though, has posed a particular challenge: It can be used to transmit traditional culture but also offers easy access to ideas and values that the ultra-Orthodox reject. The problem has cropped up repeatedly with everything from radio and cassette players to cell phones, and the responses have ranged from trying to block the technology as a dangerous intruder to seeking to exploit it for "kosher" aims. But try as they may, rabbis don't really control the community's use of media - or the ways that ultra-Orthodox culture morphs in response.
One result is an entire entertainment industry that uses instruments of modern technology to appeal to ultra-Orthodox tastes - from audio tapes to digital disks of music and films that can be viewed on home computers. Pirate radio stations offering sermons, lessons and music pepper the FM band. The weekly sermons of former Sephardi chief rabbi and Shas party mentor Ovadiah Yosef are broadcast on a satellite TV channel.
The Internet, too, is being harnessed. "There's an official and unofficial policy regarding the web," says Carmi Wisemon, director of development at the community center in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo in Jerusalem. "Officially it's a no- no. But the haredi [ultra-Orthodox] paper Yated Ne'eman, which toes this line in print, publishes many of its articles on a site with a different name, De'ah Vedibur." Chabad and Aish HaTorah have Hebrew websites, and one blogger on the general Nana portal (which also hosts one of the dozen or so ultra-Orthodox chat rooms) posts his ruminations in Yiddish.
The ultra-orthodox struggle with media bearing outside culture did not begin with the creation of cyberspace. It dates back to the 19th-century emergence of Jewish newspapers. "The argument ran that once people grow accustomed to reading a newspaper, they won't confine themselves to your 'customized' product and will start reading other papers too," explains Bar-Ilan University historian Dr. Kimmy Caplan. Out of similar concern, adds Prof. Menachem Friedman (also of Bar-Ilan), a leading expert on ultra-Orthodox life in Israel, in the 1950s a prohibition was declared by rabbinic authorities on transistor radios. But the ban provided proof that ultra-Orthodox Jews do not necessarily do exactly what rabbis say. Today, instead of trying to fight radio, much of the ultra-Orthodox world has adopted it, with pirate stations providing a mix of Torah lectures and haredi pop - mostly passages from Psalms and traditional prayers set to a rock and roll beat.
A few months back, a ban was brewing in circles surrounding the influential Ashkenazi Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, spiritual leader of the Degel Hatorah party, on young people using cell phones because they provide Internet access. It didn't scare entrepreneurs off. In an effort to capture the young ultra-Orthodox market, the MIRS network produced a "kosher" phone that blocks such access and SMS text messages - and it has received the approval of a committee Eliashiv established. Friedman argues that this doesn't really address the older generation's greatest fear, "because it doesn't prevent youngsters from talking to each other beyond parental supervision," he says. And as the Amar affair has shown, he stresses, this absence of control can lead to clandestine relationships, "in a society whose cohesion and immense growth are based on arranged marriages."
The effort to ban television, especially among the Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox, has been more successful as a result of social pressure, as reception requires an antenna, cable connection or satellite dish - all of which are visible to neighbors. But all an Internet connection requires is a phone line, Friedman points out, "and everyone has a phone."
The result, according to a recent study by Professor Gad Barzilai of Tel Aviv University and Professor Karine Barzilai-Nahon of the University of Washington, is that although only 6.4 percent of the ultra-Orthodox community is connected to the Internet from home, all told about a third of the community (vs. about 40 percent of the total population) surfs the web, mostly through public facilities such as cyber cafes and libraries. "The Internet is another case in which there's little or no correlation between what haredi leaders demand and what their followers do and don't do," says historian Caplan, observing that far more effective than blanket bans is co- option - when the community adopts technology to promote its own values. "The amount of media-based products put out by haredi society is huge," he declares. The thrust began with audio cassettes of everything from sermons, lessons and recorded dialogues to cantorial and pop-style music. Up to 7,000 tapes are now in circulation, many of which are available from lending libraries. Over time they've been supplemented by CDs of music and specially produced films that can be viewed on computers, thereby reaching people who observe the TV ban. And for more conservative or technologically deficient families, there is a burgeoning corpus of children's books written specially for the ultra-Orthodox market.
All of these come with a double control mechanism. Unofficially, says Rabbi Gavriel Stauber, head of the Torah Culture Department at Jerusalem City Hall, ultra-Orthodox educators draw up lists of recommended and disapproved films as a guide for concerned parents. But even before they reach the market, many of these products are vetted by rabbis. And naturally the producers themselves use common sense in judging how far a film's style or message can go - to keep kids engaged and sales high - without getting themselves blacklisted.
A cavernous shop whose walls are lined with tapes and discs in the heart of Jerusalem's Me'ah She'arim quarter gives some indication of just how large the business has grown. After consultation with a salesman, I acquire (for 60 shekels, or $14) a for-computer film called "Restoring a Father's Heart," subtitled "A Moving Human Drama." Shot professionally, with an all-male, all- ultra-Orthodox cast, it tells the story of Eli, a 12-year-old boy from the haredi city of Bnei Brak, just east of Tel Aviv, who is beaten by his stressed-out father (after the family descends into debt and he cannot raise the $30,000 required for an older daughter's dowry). In a nutshell, Eli grows more withdrawn, begins failing at his studies - which brings more disapprobation both at home and at school - and finally runs away and hides in a nearby park. He's saved by his teacher, who finally figures out that the boy is probably being abused and reports his suspicions to the school's principal. It all ends well, with the principal confronting the father, who swiftly breaks down into remorseful weeping; the teacher finding Eli (with the aid of his caring classmates); and father and son reconciling in a show of sensitivity and love.
The speed and ease with which the happy ending is achieved does spark skepticism. Yet the very production and popularity of the film (according to the salesman) bespeaks a degree of daring - on the part of both producers and consumers - in a society that tends to deny distress and deviance within its bounds. Wisemon attests that the exploration of family conflicts and legitimization of children's feelings extends to the literature being written for haredi kids - particularly the popular series called "Kids Speak" by the Bnei Brak writer Haim Walder - and is one indication of the shifts within contemporary ultra-Orthodox culture.
Another is signs of what Caplan calls the growing acculturation of Israel's ultra-Orthodox community. "This trend is far more advanced in the United States," he says, "where yeshivah boys can quote you the names of NBA team players going back 20 years" (see box). In Israel the influence of the surrounding culture is reflected in changing patterns of ultra-Orthodox consumption, shopping in malls and sitting in cafes; the opening of gyms for a haredi clientele; families visiting military bases opened to the public on Independence Day; and the popularity of nature outings in remote places like the Golan Heights, which signifies haredi absorption of secular Zionism's return-to-nature ethic. "Some of these activities are not just typically 'Israeli' but prime expressions of the long-denigrated Zionist ethos," says Caplan, while Friedman observes that some films go so far as to feature ultra-Orthodox actors as Shin Bet and Mossad agents.
How all this will affect the insularity of the ultra-Orthodox community is difficult to project. "We don't yet know where this acculturation is leading," say Caplan. "But we do know that the ultra-Orthodox in America are far more advanced in this process and still succeed, overall, in maintaining their haredi way of life."
The lifestyle changes are not happening only by osmosis, or via adventurous youth. Demand has led Rabbi Stauber, at Jerusalem City Hall, to actively promote exposure to facets of the surrounding culture, albeit in a controlled manner. Stauber fairly bristles at the stereotype of the ultra-Orthodox as indifferent or even hostile to the arts. "I've heard it said that the haredim have recently discovered culture," he says, his voice betraying a hint of insult. "But I maintain that until the last decade, the community was not offered cultural and leisure activities because it was assumed they were unwanted, that they were considered frivolous. Now it turns out that when you make such activities available" - meaning everything from tours and weekends at hotels and spas to plays, shows and art and photography exhibits, in a form that fits the community's values - "the public takes full advantage of them."
This is not to suggest that Broadway is coming to Me'ah She'arim. Stauber is quick to qualify that "the concept of culture in the haredi world differs from that of general society, both in its content and presentation." High among those differences is preserving the separation of the sexes both in the audience and on the stage. "A play catering to women, for example, will feature only female actors," he continues.
Stauber also cites the opening of six lending libraries in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, plus a book bus to reach others, which together loan out 25,000 books a month. "When I first proposed the idea of [municipal] lending libraries for haredim, it was taken for granted that I meant collections of religious books," he relates. "I had to patiently explain that I meant fiction, for both adults and children, that reflects the spirit of haredi values."
Stauber indicates that the vast majority of the children's books in these libraries are of the genre written especially for ultra- Orthodox kids. Indeed, Freidi Kahan, a librarian in the Bayit Vegan branch, says that 2,400 of the 2,500 children's titles on her shelves fall into this category, the others being selected works of standard Israeli children's literature. A series teaching about peoples of the world has also entered the collection, but Western classics like "The Little Prince" have not. "It might have been read at a time when there was a paucity of books for haredi children," says Kahan. "But with the vast growth of titles in that genre, there's no need to look beyond it."
And who decides which of these 100 non-haredi titles are suitable? "Essentially, parents decide what their children read. We don't see ourselves as censors, determining what will be loaned out and what not," Stauber insists. "But if we offer a book that parents deem inappropriate for their children, they'll write to us and say so - and we'll honor their judgment."
The city-sponsored foray into teaching the visual and plastic arts is perhaps the most intriguing of all. To get a feel for the interest in this field - and the limitations imposed on it - Stauber sends me to a modern community center in the northern Jerusalem area of Romemah. The center houses, besides classes for hobbyists, three professional courses for ultra-Orthodox women: one training them to teach art, another in commercial photography, and a third in the design and production of jewelry (which also has a separate class for men).
Both the photography and art course - which covers art history, painting, drawing, sculpting and silk printing - are taught by college graduates who have embraced a religious lifestyle. Asked about managing the clash with traditional taboos, in the classes on art history, for example, Rahel Vardi, the 29-year-old mother of five who runs the program, explains that the syllabus and guided tours of museums bypass "incompatible material," such as patently Christian art and works showing nudity.
Enrollment in the professional courses runs at about 300 women. All in all, says Vardi, 11,000 people are served by the center's arts activities, which include sending teachers in an "art-mobile" - a small truck filled with paper, paints, crayons, glue and the like - to ultra-Orthodox schools, after-school programs, and summer camps around the city. Stauber is so enthused by the response to these courses that he looks forward to the establishment of what he calls an "academy for religious culture studies," that will include creative-writing seminars, a school for theatrical arts and, perhaps, musical instruction.
I wonder aloud whether this menu of opportunities will satisfy the needs of the young, arts-minded ultra-Orthodox or merely whet their desire to investigate the riches of the culture - classic and popular - beyond the pale.
"Our aim in enriching the cultural life of the community is not to combat the trickle of young people out of the haredi world, though we'd welcome that result," Stauber explains patiently. "It's a worthy endeavor in its own right. And if we do it well, there'll be no reason for people to look elsewhere."
That remains to be seen. But for the meanwhile, the overall trend is clear: to reduce the unwanted influences of contemporary secular culture by competing with them, often on their own technological terms, while allowing welcome aspects of that culture to "filter through" in a controlled fashion - and to hope that this will suffice.
With reporting by Jonathan Liss
