The War Within
Israel's Ultra-Orthodox
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- US$9.99
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- US$9.99
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For many Israelis, it is the internecine conflict with the ultra-orthodox Haredim that impacts their lives the most. The majority of Haredim -- raised with an intense focus on religion at the expense of all else -- are unemployable in a modern economy. Many choose to pursue religious studies, which the government subsidizes up to the age of 40. The first book on a conflict that is fast crystallizing into a national debate, The War Within is a lively and trenchant exploration of a battle between church and state as it plays out before our eyes in Israel today. As acclaimed journalists Yuval Elizur and Lawrence Malkin expose, the situation today has reached a critical point that threatens the state of Israel from within and must certainly affect its future.
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A mysterious late night phone call to Israeli journalist Elizur sets the stage for this investigative piece, co-authored with fellow journalist Malkin and originally published in Hebrew in 2009, in which the pair examine the growing internal divide Israel faces from their own Ultra-Orthodox (haredi) population. Several key issues lurk beneath this rift between the haredim and other Jews: a lack of military support by the haredim, who are generally exempt from conscription; single track education that focuses exclusively on Talmudic studies and does not prepare men to work outside the yeshiva; financial subsidies from right-wing parties to support their large families because the men do not work; and unequal rights of women. The authors do present some quotidian challenges facing "the haredim, who isolate themselves from the wider world while trying to impose their values on it": smartphones and the Internet are at once considered both tools of commerce and dangerous elements of modern times, offering access to a world outside narrow rabbinical authority and censorship. Though one criticism of the book is that several exposed moments of internal haredi criticism occur under a veil of secrecy, the greater social and political issues remain salient and troubling.
