Haredi Judaism

• 1. Introduction

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  In May 2012, some 40,000 people packed Citi Field, a baseball park in New York City. They had not come to watch a game. They came to discuss the dangers of unfiltered Internet access, at an event organized by a group called Ichud HaKehillos LeTohar HaMachane.

  The crowd belonged to Haredi Judaism, a sector of Orthodox Judaism defined by a strict reading of religious sources and Jewish law. Its members hold that this tradition is binding and cannot be changed. They resist the more accommodating habits of other Jews.

  The questions begin with a name. This documentary asks where that name comes from and which events in Europe split Orthodox Jews into rival camps. It asks how many Haredim there are, and why the number keeps climbing. It looks at how they study, marry and dress, and how they keep modern media at arm's length. And it asks why, in Israel, army service, work and taxes have turned this community into a national argument.

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• 2. A Name From Isaiah

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  The Book of Isaiah contains a Hebrew verb, hared, translated as one who trembles at the word of God. Haredi is a Modern Hebrew adjective built on that verb. It carries a sense of awe-inspired fear of failing to do God's will. The plural, haredim, also appears in Isaiah. The name sets these Jews apart from other Orthodox Jews, much as Quakers and Shakers among Christians took names describing how they stood before God.

  Outsiders use a different word. Most American news organizations say ultra-Orthodox. Hillel Halkin suggests the term may date to the 1950s, when Haredi survivors of the Holocaust first began arriving in America. Yet Isaac Leeser, who lived from 1806 to 1868, was already described that way in 1916.

  Many Haredim dislike the label because it hints at extremism. Proposed alternatives include fervently Orthodox, strictly Orthodox and traditional Orthodox. Ari L. Goldman, a professor at Columbia University, replies that the term simply marks off one part of the Orthodox community and is not meant as an insult. Samuel Heilman objects from the opposite direction. He argues that ultra-Orthodox and traditional Orthodox wrongly imply that Haredim are more authentically Orthodox than others. In his view, their customs reflect a wish to separate from the outside world.

  Among themselves, Haredi Jews use Yiddish words. Yidn means Jews, erlekhe Yidn means virtuous Jews, and ben Torah means son of the Torah. Frum means pious. Heimish means home-like, which in practice means our crowd. In Israel, a derogatory slang word, dos, imitates the traditional Ashkenazi pronunciation of datiyim, the Hebrew word for religious. A rarer insult, sh'chorim, refers to the black clothes they typically wear. English speakers sometimes say black hat.

  Behind the vocabulary sits a blunt self-image. Haredim regard themselves as the most authentic custodians of Jewish religious law. Many consider every other contemporary form of Judaism, Modern Orthodoxy included, a deviation from God's laws. Other movements of Judaism disagree.

  One more name needs separating out. The Union for Traditional Judaism is not the same thing as traditional Orthodoxy, because that movement originated in Conservative Judaism.

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• 3. Europe's Great Split

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  Before emancipation, European Jews were forced to live in ghettos, and those walls helped preserve Jewish culture and religious observance. The Age of Enlightenment began to loosen them. Some European liberals wanted to bring Jews into the emerging empires and nation states. Supporters of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, argued that Judaism must change along with the society around it. Others insisted on strict adherence to halakha, meaning Jewish law and custom.

  Some scholars read Haredi Judaism as a reaction to that whole upheaval, including emancipation, secularization, religious reform and the rise of Jewish national movements. Haredim see it differently. They call their way a continuation of Rabbinic Judaism, an unbroken line reaching back to the revelation at Sinai. Most historians of Orthodoxy, though, trace Haredi Judaism in its most modern form to the beginning of the 20th century.

  In Germany, Samson Raphael Hirsch led a secession from the communal organizations of German Jews. His followers built a strictly Orthodox movement with its own synagogues and religious schools. Hirsch accepted the tools of modern scholarship and turned them toward defending Orthodoxy. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, traditional Jews gathered under a banner called Agudas Shlumei Emunei Yisroel.

  Moses Sofer took a harder line. He opposed any philosophical, social or practical change to Orthodox custom, and he refused to add secular studies to the curriculum of his Pressburg Yeshiva. His student Moshe Schick, with Sofer's sons Shimon and Samuel Benjamin, argued actively against the Reform movement. Hillel Lichtenstein pressed for an even stricter position. He opposed Azriel Hildesheimer and his son Hirsh Hildesheimer, who used German in pulpit sermons and seemed to lean toward Zionism. Shimon Sofer was a little more flexible. He allowed German sermons to keep relations cordial with governments, and he allowed gymnasium studies for students whose rabbinical posts the state would recognize, judged one case at a time.

  The rivalries sometimes tangled. In 1877, Schick backed the separatist policies of Hirsch in Germany. Yet Schick's own son was enrolled at the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary, which taught secular studies. Hirsch did not return the support, and he expressed astonishment at Schick's halakhic contortions in condemning even Status Quo communities that clearly kept halakha.

  The Universal Israelite Congress of 1868-1869 in Pest, Hungary, brought the break into the open. Organizers hoped to unify every stream of Judaism under one constitution. The Orthodox proposed the Shulchan Aruch as the ruling code of law and observance, and the reformists dismissed the idea. Many Orthodox rabbis resigned from the Congress and formed their own social and political groups. Hungarian Jewry divided into two institutional camps, Orthodox and Neolog, while some communities refused both and called themselves Status Quo.

  In 1912, World Agudath Israel was founded, partly to set itself apart from the Torah-nationalist Mizrachi and from secular Zionist organizations. Hasidic rebbes and Lithuanian rabbis and roshei yeshiva dominated it. Its nominees were elected to the Polish legislature, the Sejm, among them Meir Shapiro and Yitzhak-Meir Levin. Not every Hasidic faction joined, and Machzikei Hadat of Galicia stayed independent.

  In 1919, Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld and Yitzchok Yerucham Diskin founded the Edah HaChareidis in Mandate Palestine, as part of Agudath Israel. In 1924, Agudath Israel won 75 percent of the votes in the Kehilla elections. By 1929, the Orthodox polled some 16,000 of a total 90,000 at the Knesseth Israel. Sonnenfeld then lobbied the High Commissioner, Sir John Chancellor, for separate representation under the Palestine Communities Ordinance. He promised cooperation with the Vaad Leumi and the National Jewish Council on municipal matters, but he wanted to protect his community's religious convictions on its own terms. The community also petitioned the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. The one-community principle won out over their opposition. Even so, the episode is seen as the creation of a Haredi community in Israel, separate from the other Orthodox and Zionist movements.

  In 1932, Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky succeeded Sonnenfeld. He was a disciple of the Shevet Sofer, a grandchild of Moses Sofer, and he promised a strong Orthodoxy at peace with other Jewish communities and with non-Jews.

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• 4. After the Holocaust

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  The Holocaust destroyed the vast majority of Hasidic and Litvak communities. Hasidic customs were largely preserved. The customs of Lithuanian Jewry fared worse, and its unique Hebrew pronunciation was almost lost. Litvish ways survive mainly through the few older Jews who were born in Lithuania before the war. Present-day Haredi society grew from two post-Holocaust waves, and the first was a deliberate rebuilding.

  In the decade or so after 1945, notable Haredi leaders drove hard to revive these lifestyles. The Chazon Ish was especially prominent in the early days of the State of Israel. Aharon Kotler established many Haredi schools and yeshivas in both the United States and Israel. Joel Teitelbaum helped revitalize Hasidic Jewry. Many Jews who fled Hungary during the 1956 revolution became followers of his Satmar dynasty, which grew into the largest Hasidic group in the world. These families typically kept ties only with religious relatives, so children raised in them had little or no contact with non-Haredi Jews.

  The second wave began in the 1970s with the baal teshuva revival, in which secular Jews turned toward religion. Most of the newly religious became Orthodox but not necessarily fully Haredi. Still, their numbers have boosted the Haredi population since then, though people leaving have somewhat offset the gain.

  In the 1980s, Ovadia Yosef started a Sephardic Haredi lifestyle movement. In 1984, the Shas party was established alongside it. Many Sephardi Jews adopted the clothing and culture of Lithuanian Haredi Judaism, even though it had no historical basis in their own tradition. Many yeshivas were created specifically for newcomers to the Haredi way of life.

  The original Haredi population helped spread the lifestyle, yet critics say later adopters have faced discrimination. The complaints focus on shidduchim, the matchmaking system, and on the school system.

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• 5. Counting the Faithful

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  In 1992, about 550,000 of the 1,500,000 Orthodox Jews in the world were Haredi, and half of them lived in Israel. Counting them has always been hard. The definition is imprecise, data collection is thin, and the community changes quickly. Haredim are also reluctant to join surveys and censuses, so the true number may be significantly underestimated.

  The trend is clear even so. One estimate in 2011 gave about 1.3 million Haredi Jews worldwide. By 2020 the figure was about 2.1 million, or 14% of the world's Jewish population. The community is on pace to double every 20 years. Almost no intermarriage, a high birth rate and a high retention rate drive the growth. The vast majority are Ashkenazi, though some 20% are thought to belong to the Sephardic Haredi stream. Estimates of the share who leave range between 6% and 18%, and not all of them abandon Orthodoxy.

  Israel holds the largest Haredi population. In 1948, about 35,000 to 45,000 Haredi Jews lived there. By 1980 they made up 4% of Israelis. A study by the Israeli Democracy Institute in December 2017 found that they had passed one million that year, or 12% of the population. By the end of 2023 the figure was almost 1,335,000, and by the end of 2025 it was over 1,452,000, or 14.3% of all Israelis. The growth rate is about 4% per year, and the source gives 7.2 children per woman. Projections put Haredim at 16% of the population by 2030, and at a third by 2065, when one in two Israeli children would be Haredi.

  The largest Israeli concentrations are in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak, Modi'in Illit, Beitar Illit and Beit Shemesh. Two more Haredi cities, Kasif and Harish, are planned.

  The United States has the second largest Haredi population. In 2000 it counted 360,000 Haredi Jews, 7.2 percent of the roughly five million Jews in the country. By 2020 the estimate was approximately 700,000, or 12% of American Jews. In 2011-61% of Jewish children in the Eight-County New York City metropolitan area were Orthodox, and Haredim made up 49%.

  Most American Haredim live around New York. In 1988, between 40,000 and 57,000 Haredim, mostly Satmar Hasidim, lived in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. Borough Park had an estimated Jewish population of 70,000 in 1983, with the Bobov Hasidim as the largest single bloc. Crown Heights is home base for the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch movement and its network of shluchim, or emissaries, who run Chabad houses. Farther north, the Hudson Valley has the fastest growing Haredi communities, including Kiryas Joel of the Satmar and New Square of the Skver.

  In Lakewood, New Jersey, stands Beth Medrash Govoha, the largest non-Hasidic Lithuanian yeshiva in America. In Baltimore, Yeshivas Ner Yisroel, founded in 1933, is also a Maryland state-accredited college. It has agreements with Johns Hopkins University and several other local institutions, so students can take night courses and earn academic credit for their religious studies. In Florida, many Orthodox Jews from New York moved south during the COVID-19 pandemic, swelling a community already established around Aventura and Bal Harbour.

  In the United Kingdom, a 2007 study asserted that three out of four British Jewish births were Haredi. By 2020 the estimate was approximately 76,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews, or 25% of British Jews. Haredi families there average 5.9 children, against 2.4 nationally, and the largest community is in Stamford Hill in London.

  Elsewhere, about 25,000 Haredim live in France, mostly Sephardic people of Maghrebi descent, with important communities in Paris and Strasbourg. Canada has some 30,000, centered in Montreal and Toronto, and Melbourne anchors an estimated 7,500 in Australia. A Haredi city is under construction near Ixtapan de la Sal in Mexico. Decades after the Holocaust, Haredim are growing again in Budapest, where several new synagogues and two mikvehs have opened in the past couple of years.

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• 6. Life Inside the Community

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  Between the ages of 13 and 18, Haredi boys and girls move on to higher Torah study, in a yeshiva for boys or a seminary for girls. Before that come the chederim, which cover preschool through primary years. Girls' seminaries are often called Bais Yaakovs. Only religiously observant Jewish students are admitted, and parents must agree to follow school rules to keep their children enrolled. A significant proportion of young men stay in yeshiva until marriage, which is often arranged. Afterward, many continue their studies in a kollel.

  Secular teaching varies. Many Hasidic schools in Israel, Europe and North America teach few secular subjects or none. In the United States, most schools run a dual curriculum of secular subjects, generally called English, and Torah subjects. Yeshivas concentrate on Talmud and Rabbinic literature, while girls' schools teach Jewish Law, Midrash and Tanach, the Hebrew Bible. Between 2007 and 2017, the number of Haredim in higher education in Israel rose from 1,000 to 10,800. New York City mayor Eric Adams once held up the yeshiva model, asking: "What are we doing wrong in our schools?" He urged learning from what the yeshivas do to improve education.

  Marriage anchors it all. In Israel, 83% of Haredim are married, against 63% of the non-Haredi population. The Haredi and Orthodox view holds that marriage serves companionship and the raising of children, and that it is holy. Families average about seven children, and twelve or more is not unheard of. Many members rely on the shidduch system and hire a schadhan, a professional matchmaker. No firm data exists on usage, but the vast majority of Haredi couples are estimated to have been paired by one. Apps now bring matchmaking online, pairing couples by shared values and life goals through a digital resume. One was built through a partnership between its developers and the Orthodox Union.

  In 2016, the divorce rate in Israel was 5% among Haredim, compared with 14% in the general population. Leaving is costly, though. When a divorce is linked to one spouse leaving the community, that person is often shunned and forced to abandon their children, since most courts prefer to keep children in an established status quo.

  Dress signals belonging. Men of the Lithuanian stream typically wear a black or navy suit with a white shirt, and a black fedora or Homburg over a black skullcap. Before the 1990s, Americans of that stream commonly wore colored shirts during the week and saved white for Shabbos. Hasidic men have a stricter code, including the rekel, a full-length suit jacket, on weekdays, and the shtreimel, a fur hat, with a silk caftan called a bekishe on the Sabbath. Hasidic men almost never go clean-shaven.

  Women wear long skirts and sleeves and high necklines, and married women cover their hair. They never wear trousers, though most wear pajama trousers at home at night. Some women favor sheitels, or wigs, that look better than their own hair, which draws criticism from more conservative rabbis. Ovadia Yosef forbade wigs altogether.

  Outsiders have taken notice. Jewish Chicago has praised Haredim for low crime and drug use and a strong sense of family and community, though the claim of safer neighborhoods is a generalization that may fit only some communities. A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, a documentary by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky, aimed to show close family ties and rich traditions. Shtisel, an Israeli television drama about a Haredi family in Jerusalem, has led to more favorable feelings toward Haredi Jews.

  There is a harder side as well. Cases of sexual abuse against women and children occur at roughly the same rates as in the general population, but they are rarely discussed or reported to authorities and are often downplayed. A religious divorce requires a husband's consent, in the form of a get. Without one, a wife's future children would be branded mamzerim, meaning illegitimate or impure. A dayan, or rabbinic judge, may impose community shunning to coerce an unwilling husband, with physical force reserved for the rarest cases.

  The New York divorce coercion gang went far beyond that. It kidnapped, and in some cases tortured, Jewish men in the New York area to force them to grant gittin. The Federal Bureau of Investigation broke up the group with a sting operation in October 2013. Four men were prosecuted, and three were convicted in late 2015.

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• 7. Guarding the Gates

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  In 1930s Poland, the Agudath Israel movement published its own Yiddish paper, Dos Yiddishe Tagblatt. In 1950, the Agudah began printing Hamodia, a Hebrew daily in Israel. Haredi papers see themselves as a counterculture. A rabbinical board sets the editorial policy, and a rabbinical censor checks every edition. Pictures of women are usually not printed. In 2009, the Israeli daily Yated Ne'eman doctored a cabinet photograph, replacing two female ministers with images of men. In 2013, the magazine Bakehilah pixelated the faces of women in a photograph of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. ArtScroll is a publisher that does print pictures of women.

  Haredi papers give no coverage to serious crime, violence, sex or drugs, and little to non-Orthodox streams of Judaism. When an immoral story must be told, it is often written ambiguously. In Israel, only around half the Haredi population reads newspapers, and about 40% read none. In 2006, the weekly Mishpacha was the most-read Haredi magazine in Israel, selling 110,000 copies.

  Every new medium has forced a decision. Books, newspapers and magazines, and later tapes, CDs and television, were handled either by transforming the material or by rabbinic censorship. The Internet resisted both. The result has been a decades-long struggle among rabbinical leaders and community activists to understand, adapt to and regulate it. Some leaders have proposed banning the Internet and every device that can reach it. Their reasoning is that the flood of information can corrupt, and that private use with no community oversight can lead to individuation.

  Business needs complicate the picture. Some Haredi businessmen use the Internet all week under strict filters and guidelines, yet they accept or process no orders from Friday evening to Saturday evening. The kosher cell phone was introduced to the Jewish public with a single ability, making calls. It had no Internet, no texting and no camera. A kosher phone plan even offered lower rates for kosher-to-kosher calls, to encourage community.

  News hotlines fill the gap for people with no radio or Internet. Many started as a way to report breaking news and later added rabbinic lectures, entertainment and business advice. Many Hasidic sects keep their own hotlines to report internal news and argue the group's perspective. Dozens operate in the Israeli Haredi community, in Yiddish and in Hebrew.

  The same instinct shapes public space. In Israel, the entrances of some of the most extreme Haredi neighborhoods carry signs asking for modest clothing. Some areas have modesty patrols, and advertisements with scantily dressed models may be vandalized. During the week-long Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, many of the city's 7,000 Orthodox Jews feel compelled to leave town. In 2001, Haredi campaigners in Jerusalem persuaded the Egged bus company to have all its advertisements approved by a special committee. By 2011, Egged had gradually removed every advert featuring women, after continuous defacement. A court order called that discriminatory, so Egged chose to show no people at all. Even space aliens were banned, to avoid offending Haredi sensibilities.

  Some rulings reach into recreation. In 2013, the Rabbinical Court of the Ashkenazi Community in Beitar Illit ruled against Zumba classes, even those with a female instructor and all-female participants. The court said the activity was "entirely at odds with both the ways of the Torah and the holiness of Israel, as are the songs associated to it."

  Sex separation has spread into public life. A sign at the entrance of Kiryas Joel asks visitors to "maintain sex separation in all public areas," and its bus stops have separate waiting areas. In New Square, men and women are expected to walk on opposite sides of the road. In Mea Shearim, residents were banned from putting up a street barrier dividing men and women during nightly Sukkot parties. Since 1973, buses serving Haredim from Rockland County and Brooklyn into Manhattan have had separate areas for men and women, with room for on-board prayer. In 2011, the arrangement was challenged as discrimination and deemed illegal.

  In Israel, debate over Mehadrin bus lines raged during 2010-2012, after an altercation when a woman refused to move to the rear. A court ruled that voluntary segregation could be allowed, but forced separation was unlawful. Most state-run buses in Israel do not run on Saturdays. Haredim have also demanded closed roads on Saturdays in their neighborhoods, calling vehicular traffic an "intolerable provocation." Authorities often agreed after petitions and demonstrations, though some turned into fierce clashes with secular counter-demonstrators and violence against police and motorists. El Al has even agreed to provide gender-separated flights.

  These choices can bring clashes with the state. In 2018, the Office for Standards in Education rated a Haredi school in the United Kingdom as inadequate, after repeated complaints about censored textbooks and exam papers. The censored material included mentions of homosexuality, pictures of women's shoulders and legs, and information contradicting a creationist worldview. An investigation by The Independent in 2014 reported that more than 1,000 children in Haredi communities attended illegal schools that banned secular knowledge. Some scholars, including some secular and Reform Jews, go further and describe Haredim as radical fundamentalists. Nowhere do these tensions run higher than in Israel.

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• 8. Israel's Hardest Questions

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  From the founding of Zionism in the 1890s, Haredi leaders objected to its secular orientation. After the State of Israel was established, some Haredim marked Independence Day as a day of mourning. They called Israeli state holidays byimey edeyhem, meaning idolatrous holidays. Only a minority of Haredim consider themselves Zionists. Most are non-Zionist. They accept Israel as an independent Jewish state, and many see it as positive, but they give it no religious significance. A smaller group of anti-Zionists, more publicly visible, believes that any Jewish independence before the coming of the Messiah is a sin.

  The political map follows that split. United Torah Judaism, an alliance of Agudat Yisrael and Degel HaTorah, takes a pragmatic line. It has joined numerous coalition governments, seeking to push state and society in a more religious direction and to protect welfare and religious funding. The Edah HaChareidis rejects politics and state funding for its institutions. Neturei Karta is a very small activist group whose controversial actions even other anti-Zionist Haredim have condemned. Shas speaks for Sephardi and Mizrahi Haredim and supports the state and the Israel Defense Forces more enthusiastically than Ashkenazi Haredim do. Haredi support is often needed to form coalition governments in the Knesset.

  Work and money form the second front. The Israeli Democracy Institute reports that 54% of Haredi men work, against 87% of non-Haredi Jewish men, while Haredi women, at about 80%, are close to the 83% of other Jewish women. The OECD said in a 2010 report that Haredi families are frequently jobless or reliant on one low-paid earner, with poverty rates around 60%. A 2025 study by the Israeli Democracy Institute found that Haredim made up 14% of Israel's working-age population in 2023 but generated only 4% of national tax revenue. Only 23% of Haredim pay income tax, against 62% of non-Haredi Jewish men. The Kohelet Policy Forum reported that 80% of Haredi households are net receivers of public funds, and the institute called the imbalance unsustainable.

  Some efforts aim to change this. The Kemach Foundation was established in 2007, with philanthropy from Leo Noé of London, later joined by the Wolfson family of New York and Elie Horn from Brazil. With a $22 million budget, including government funding, it offers career assessment, scholarships and job placement. By April 2014, more than 17,800 Haredim had used its services. The Trajtenberg Committee, charged in 2011 with drafting proposals for economic and social change, called for more Haredi employment and standardized testing in Haredi schools. In 2021, Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman ended daycare subsidies for families where the father studies full-time in yeshiva, and Haredi leaders denounced the move.

  Bridges exist as well. ZAKA, a Haredi organization, provides emergency medical attention at the scene of suicide bombings. Yad Sarah, the largest national volunteer organization in Israel, was established in 1977 by Uri Lupolianski, a former Haredi mayor of Jerusalem. It is estimated to save the country's economy $320 million a year in hospital fees and long-term care costs.

  Military service is the sharpest dispute. When Israel instituted universal conscription for able-bodied Jewish males in 1948, Haredi men were exempted under the principle of Torato Umanuto, which in practice let yeshiva students serve very little or not at all. At that time only 400 individuals were affected. The population has since grown rapidly, and secular Israelis resent the exemption. Haredim answer that Torah study protects the Jewish people spiritually, as soldiers do physically. They also say the army, which conscripts both men and women, is no place for a Haredi lifestyle and makes Sabbath observance difficult. As many as 1,000 Haredim have volunteered for the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, also called Nahal Haredi.

  The Tal Law enshrined the exemption in 2002, but the High Court of Justice ruled that it could not be extended in its current form beyond August 2012. In March 2014, parliament approved legislation ending exemptions for Haredi seminary students, by 65 votes to one. An amendment allowing civilian national service passed by 67 to one. In June 2024, the Supreme Court of Israel declared any continued exemption unlawful, and the army began drafting 3,000 Haredi men the following month. The Shahar program lets Haredi men aged 22 to 26 serve for about a year and a half, starting with lessons in mathematics and English.

  Reactions have been fierce. Some Haredi leaders threatened that their communities would leave the country if forced to enlist. Others incited public hostility against politicians Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett, who back Haredi enlistment, and some Haredim physically attacked fellow Haredim who agreed to enlist. Yet some see enlistment as a social and economic opportunity.

  In October 2025, hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men assembled in Jerusalem to protest conscription. Hebrew media noted that in recent years the draft has been the only issue uniting every sect and faction of the community. Israel's Channel 12 said the last protest to unify the Haredi community so fully came approximately a decade earlier, and it was also against conscription.

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