JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Worrying about the Jewish state

By Uriel Heilman · May 27, 2009

There is something of the absurd in the recent flurry of activity in Israel to ensure that it is recognized as a Jewish state. 

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The Bobovers’ pub

By Uriel Heilman · September 15, 2008

Regular drinkers in London’s East End have their knickers all in a bunch over the possible sale of a historic local watering hole, the 250-year-old Swan, to a group of Bobover Chasidim who plan to turn it into a shul, the U.K. Evening Standard reports.

The pub’s landlady said the prospect of the pub’s closure would hit the elderly (!) especially hard.

Ellen McLean, the landlady for seven years, said: “People are aggravated. It’s hard for some, especially the elderly customers who have been coming here for years. It’s all very sad.”

The pub’s owners, Punch Taverns, who run more than 8,000 other establishments, confirmed they had received an offer to buy The Swan.

“No deal has been completed, and we are listening to the concerns regarding the closure of the pub,” a spokesman said.

Solomon Goldman, from the Bobov community, said: “We are willing to negotiate.”

Maybe Goldman can invite the pub crawlers for a little l’chaim?

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The writing on the wall

By Uriel Heilman · September 9, 2008

Is Israel headed toward a religiously extremist future?

The latest report about growing religious extremism (having nothing to do with nationalism or politics) in Israel comes from, of all places, Abu Dhabi’s The National newspaper:

Faced with what they see as the threat of modern culture, sections of the Haredim are demanding a more rigorous enforcement of Jewish religious laws, or halakha. Under the label of “modesty patrols”, groups of ultra-Orthodox men are turning into vigilantes, targeting in particular Haredi women whose behaviour they disapprove of.

Reports of women being attacked on the street or in their homes have been steadily rising in the local media.

In one widely publicised incident over the summer, a 14-year-old girl from Upper Beitar, a large ultra-Orthodox settlement in the West Bank south of Jerusalem, had acid poured on her face and body in what is believed to have been the work of a modesty patrol.

The girl told a paramedic treating her that she had been repeatedly threatened before the attack. According to local media, the girl was wearing loose-fitting trousers at the time of the attack.

Several rabbis have denounced women as immodest for wearing trousers. One of the most prominent, Rabbi Shlomi Aviner, ruled last month: “In general, a woman must always wear modest clothes even when she is alone and in the dark.”

Last week an ultra-Orthodox man, Elhanan Buzaglo, was indicted on suspicion of breaking into the home of a woman in an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Jerusalem along with six accomplices, armed with a bat and tear gas. The woman, divorced from a Haredi man, was beaten and told that she would be killed if she did not leave the area.

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