My Second Encounter

My second trip to Israel was for Passover in my senior year of high school. The purpose of this trip went beyond touring; our goal was to better understand and experience the culture in the country. The trip was part of a year-long program in which I participated in. The program had four pillars: Israel, Judaism, community service, and leadership.
We spent Shabbat in Jerusalem, attending synagogue on Friday night and walking through neighborhoods on Saturday. For the Friday night service I chose to go back to an Orthodox synagogue similar to the one I had attended on my previous trip. However, this specific synagogue was more liberal and progressive – the men and women were still separate, but instead of isolating the women in a shielded balcony, women stood on the same level but behind the men on the other side of a sheer curtain. It was still a different experience than what I am used to at home, but it felt more comfortable than what I had expected. This to me was a more logical way to interpret the idea that women distract men and therefore cannot pray in the same place. In some really progressive synagogues, women and men even stand next to each other with a simple curtain separating the two sexes.
The following day, we had the choice of what neighborhood to walk through and observe. I chose to walk through a religious neighborhood, but one that had a much younger, liberal population. However, four of my friends chose to expose themselves to the most extreme they could; the Neturei Karta neighborhood. Neturei Karta is a small sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews who reside primarily in Jerusalem. My friends spoke of their experience. They first noticed their extremely conservative attire – everyone was wearing only black and white and no one showed skin other than their faces. The men had beards and wore large black hats. The next thing they noticed were the posters on the walls. They were anti-Zionist posters written in Yiddish rather than Hebrew. This drew the attention the language these Neturei Karta Jews were speaking; they were speaking Yiddish, as well. In a future blog, I am going to explore the reasons for these practices.
Anyway, my friends expressed the reactions they got. While they all dressed respectfully and did not show their ankles or wrists, it was still clear that they were not native to the neighborhood. The members of the community did not even acknowledge their presence, which they said was hurtful.