Israeli lawmakers approved an amendment that further postpones the mandatory military conscription of haredi Orthodox men and removes the penalties for not enlisting. The amendment to the Equal Service law originally passed in 2014 was approved on its second and third readings late Monday night by a vote of a 49 to 36. Lawmakers from…
Israel Police arrested about 40 haredi Orthodox protesters in the southern city of Ashdod during a demonstration on behalf of four yeshiva students arrested for missing their army induction. Hundreds of haredi men and boys protested Monday in Ashdod, Jerusalem and at major intersections in the area against the arrest of the yeshiva students, who…
About 500 haredi Orthodox men demonstrated in Jerusalem against the arrest of a yeshiva student who ignored a call-up notice for army service. The protesters, who also took to the streets in the predominately haredi city of Bnei Brak, blocked intersections, set fire to trash bins, and threw rocks and bottles at police on Thursday…
Israel’s parliament on Wednesday approved a contentious law that abolishes blanket military exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students, ending a tradition upheld since the state’s foundation. Finalised after months of political wrangling and likely to spark ultra-Orthodox rage, the legislation will be implemented fully in 2017 and limit the annual number of ultra-Orthodox men excused…
When 50,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews flooded the streets of lower Manhattan this past Sunday, clogging the alleyways that curl through the Financial District with black hats and single-minded devotion, they did more than recite psalms in protest at what is now a new law in Israel. They introduced a new challenge to the Israel conversation at…
A Brooklyn-based Jewish newspaper apologized for a column that was sharply critical of the haredi Orthodox community and fired its author. The Jewish Press dismissed Yori Yanover, its Israel-based online editor, after he published an article Monday with the headline “50 Thousand Haredim March So Only Other Jews Die in War.” Yanover was writing about…
(JTA) — Beneath banners invoking historic calamities from the Egyptian enslavement to the Holocaust, hundreds of thousand of haredi Orthodox men gathered on the streets of Jerusalem to recite psalms and penitential prayers as they inveighed against an enemy they consider on par with Hitler and the ancient pharaohs. “We endured Pharaoh. We endured the…
Israel’s Finance Ministry said on Wednesday it was cutting funds to seminary students exempt from compulsory military service, in the latest battle between the Jewish state’s secular majority and an ultra-Orthodox minority. Seminary students, many of whom rely on state stipends, have for decades been excused from army service under blanket exemptions that have long…
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