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And we thought Muslims were the only ones wearing the Burqa!
Ultra-orthodox jewish dress code
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Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Women
Naomi Mahfud (R) and Revital (last name was not given) Ultra Orthodox Jewish women, belonging to a small group of women who cover their entire bodies with a long cape-like garment from head to toe that conceals their figures, as an extreme act of modesty ,known as the “Jewish Taliban women” or the “veil cult”.
Photo by: Einat Keinan & Juliane von Mittelstaedt
Published 08 05 2012 at 850 × 566 in Striking Similarities
Ultra Orthodox Jews riot in Beit Shemesh
MONDAY, 16 JANUARY 2012 13:45
  
Religious “Haredi” Jews clashed on Sunday with Israeli Policemen in Beit Shemesh, a city in central Israel that has become a flashpoint for tensions between secular and moderately religious Jewish Israelis versus conservative, ultra Orthodox Jewish Israelis.
Beit Shemesh is home to different streams of Orthodox Judaism, including this sect that forces women to wear burqa-like veils. While these veils arescandalous to some members of the Orthodox community, members of the Orthodox community have also persecuted young girls they feel are dressed immodestly. Yesterday's riots in Beit Shemesh remind of that internal tensions in Israel are on the rise (photo: Tel Chai Nation blog)
Sunday’s protests began after several prominent members of the Haredi community, an ultra Orthodox group, were arrested by Israeli police for tax fraud and money laundering. Protesters say that the arrestees were deliberately targeted as a provocation against the Orthodox community in Beit Shemesh.
Among the detained was Amram Shapira, the personal assistant of Haredi leader Rabbi Tuvia Weiss. Shapira and other Haredi leaders who were arrested on Sunday were accused of misusing millions of shekels worth of donations to the community.
Protesters tried to set up barricades on several main roads in Beit Shemesh, and threw rocks at police officers when they attempted to intervene. Clashes were also reported in Jerusalem, with Orthodox Jewish youth throwing rocks at police. Four protesters were arrested in Beit Shemesh.
The tension between Israel’s Orthodox community and both the secular and moderately religious Jewish communities has escalated in recent weeks, following reports that ultra Orthodox Jews harass girls, some as young as 8 years old, by using physical intimidation, threats and violence when they deemed the girls clothes immodest. This was despite the fact that the children wear religious school uniforms, which include a blouse with long sleeves and a long skirt.
Hundreds of residents of Beit Shemesh protested last week against what they see as an invasion of their community by ultra-Orthodox elements, who the residents say are attempting to change the character of their city.
Firstly, standards of modesty are becoming increasingly stringent and require increasing effort to follow. A CD recording by a top rabbi from Lakewood, New Jersey, for example, reportedly asks women not to swing their arms while they walk and not to allow their daughters to wear colourful banana-clips in their hair. Women know that if they wear skin-coloured stockings, they must include a seam so it is clear they are not bare-legged. Schoolgirls do not wear shiny shoes that could "reflect their underwear" .
Paradoxically, the Orthodox world's attempt to create a generation in which physicality is minimized has resulted in a generation obsessed with looks, clothes and sex.
Secondly, tznius, or modesty, has long moved from being about modest clothing to being about keeping women, and images of women, away from men.
Open a Charedi newspaper, and there are either no images of women, or they are blacked out. In the past few years, several women have been beaten up in Jerusalem because they would not move to the back of the bus in Charedi neighbourhoods; a top rabbi in Bnai Brak asked women to leave before the end of shul so they did not mingle with men following davening; that same town has a street with separate sides for men and women; separate shopping hours are not unknown.
Just last week, a sheitel shop in New York was boycotted for refusing to remove headshots of women wearing wigs from its window.
Why The Jewish Burka?
 Miraim Shaviv, who for a time blogged on the iconic Protocols blog, and then at Bloghead, has been for quite some time the comments editor at the Diaspora's iconic Jewish newspaper, the venerable London Jewish Chronicle.
In a column this week for the Chronicle, Miriam explains why she thinks haredi women, albeit in yet small numbers, arewearing the burka:
So how did we reach a situation where a group of women believes that this sick behaviour is actually a Jewish ideal? … No rabbis publicly condone it. Several [burka-wearing haredi] women quoted by Ha’aretz complained they were harassed and rejected by their peers.
And yet, the “frumka” is the logical extension of two clear trends in the frum world.
Firstly, standards of modesty are becoming increasingly stringent and require increasing effort to follow. A CD recording by a top rabbi from Lakewood, New Jersey, for example, reportedly asks women not to swing their arms while they walk and not to allow their daughters to wear colourful banana-clips in their hair. Women know that if they wear skin-coloured stockings, they must include a seam so it is clear they are not bare-legged. Schoolgirls do not wear shiny shoes that could “reflect their underwear”.…
Secondly, tznius, or modesty, has long moved from being about modest clothing to being about keeping women, and images of women, away from men.
Open a Charedi newspaper, and there are either no images of women, or they are blacked out.…a top rabbi in Bnai Brak asked women to leave before the end of shul so they did not mingle with men following davening; that same town has a street with separate sides for men and women…
Just last week, a sheitel shop in New York was boycotted for refusing to remove headshots of women wearing wigs from its window.
But since when is looking at women’s faces forbidden? It’s not.
The fact is that, in the Orthodox world today, women are already being pushed out of the public sphere. The rabbis may not understand the Pandora’s Box they have opened, but the jump from the Brooklyn sheitel store to the burka-wearers in Israel is not that great.
I think the answer is simpler than what Miriam proposes. What she writes is true, but I think the essence of the problem is really this – extremists run today's haredi society.
From its leading rabbis – Elyashiv, Shteinman and Alter (the Gerrer Rebbe) – to the curriculum in its yeshivot and seminaries, moderation is nowhere to be found.
The Chafetz Chaim ran a store and was a town rabbi.
Rabbi Shteinman is glorified as a man who has no idea how a credit card or modern banking works. He is not the rabbi of a town or city.
Rabbi Elyashiv has not yet met a moderate Orthodox rabbi he would not like to ban or a Modern Orthodox institution he would not like to take over or destroy. He, too, is not a town or city rabbi and has no practical knowledge of the day-to-day lives of non-haredi Jews.
50 years ago, following the majority halakhic opinion (unless your rabbi specifically held differently) was the gold standard of Orthodox observance.
Today, yeshivot compete with each other over the number and type of humrot, stringencies, they follow and teach, as much as over the quality of student they produce. And the gold standard for observance is not following the majority opinion – it is following the majority opinion along with as many minority opinions as possible, no matter the extra trouble or cost.
Yes, Jewish burkas are a direct outgrowth of haredi misogyny. In that, Miriam Shavivv is correct.
But that misogyny itself is a direct outgrowth of the rabid, regressive, self-indulgent fundamentalism that now rules haredism.
That fundamentalism is the haredi Volvo, the haredi $1500 custom tailored suit, the haredi status symbol par excellence.
It is this generation's curse. It may very well be its downfall, as well.
UPDATE: A Mother in Israel has posted three pictures of Jewish women in burkas at a haredi wedding in Israel. The women do not look as if they are being ostracized.
A small contingent of ultra-Orthodox women in the Israeli city of Ramat Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem, has taken the laws of modesty to new heights. The Haredi women have ditched their wigs and long black skirts in favor of burqas, apparently following the lead of a Ramat Beit Shemesh rebbetzin. The trend was reported by Ha’aretz several months ago, and it has recently received some attention on the blogosphere. The Jewish burqas — which, according to the blog the Muqata, have spread to other ultra-Orthodox communities — have not been well received by rabbis or by other religious authorities.
Modesty: Some ultra-Orthodox women in Israel are wearing burqas.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/12558/fashion-statement-jewish-burqas-/#ixzz23NjqM0xW
11/30/2011
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"Taliban" mom in court
After years of intentional disregard, the past few weeks have seen a change in the ultra-Orthodox community's treatment of "Taliban Women" – haredi women wearing cloaks for modesty reasons.
The extreme Eda Haredit faction in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim neighborhood has launched a war on the "veiled women", as they are referred to on the haredi street, and is surprisingly slamming a radical-religious phenomenon from a more moderate position.
Until recently, the haredi society found no interest in launching a battle, but recent evidence on the actions of the "Taliban women" ignited a war. The Eda Haredit rabbis realized that those women had blown the modesty issue out of proportions.According to some of the testimonies, the women refuse to have sex with their husbands (except in very special cases), won't let them see their own daughters and force their children into marriage at an early age against their will.
The haredim claim that the "Taliban women" have turned into a dangerous, anarchistic sect, which damages families in the name of religion.
A special meeting of the Badatz – the Eda Haredit's supreme religious-spiritual authority – concluded with a proclamation titled, "Holy call for the sanctity of Israel's homes." The rabbis warned Jewish women to stay away from the customs and ways of the "Taliban women", who "are doomed".
The proclamation led to a series of acts of protest against the extreme women, and even against rabbis suspected of collaborating with them.
Demonstrations attended by dozens and sometimes hundreds of people were held in Mea Shearim, with the protestors including relatives of the "Taliban women" who oppose their ways.
Modesty above all
The "veiled women" phenomenon began developing in recent years mainly in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh. It involves dozens of women – either ultra-Orthodox affiliated with the Eda Haredit faction or former seculars.
These women have radicalized an old custom, which was accepted by parts of the haredi society for decades, to wrap the neck and chest with a thick scarf. Instead, they have chosen to dress in black and cover their faces completely, viewing Muslim women's modesty rules as a role model.
"Taliban" Mother and Daughter (Photo: Yitzhak Tessler)
Over the years, the phenomenon began spreading, and the "sect" now has some unofficial leaders influencing their friends not to obey rabbis' instructions.
Some of the group members are imposing the strict dress code on their minor daughters as well, and are refusing to send their children to educational institutes whose staff does not follow their ways. They believe they are sacrificing themselves and their dignity for the Jewish people's redemption, and are therefore willing to absorb every insult directed at them.
The final straw in the haredi battle against the "veiled women" was the revelation of two troubling testimonies about their society. In the first incident, one of the women gave birth at home rather than in a hospital for "modesty reasons". She wouldn't change her mind even when the baby's life was in danger following complications during the delivery.
Eventually, a paramedic called in to attend to the newborn rushed the baby to a hospital against her will – and the hospital got the welfare services and rabbis involved.
In another incident, two of the group leaders decided to pair their children – a 16-year-old boy and 23-year-old girl – without informing the couple or their fathers. The women held the wedding ceremony against the minor groom's will, and as a result he asked to divorce his wife shortly afterwards.
When the wife refused to accept a divorce, the husband decided to marry another young woman in an act of bigamy which is illegal and considered controversial by the Halacha.
Protests in Mea Shearim
One of the figures involved in the affair is Rabbi Aharon Rompler, who has been accused on the haredi street of providing spiritual support to the extreme women.
Rompler has been required several times to declare that he opposes the phenomenon, so as not to give the public a reason to suspect that the Badatz was referring to him in its condemnation of "anyone who had a part in this" – but failed to do so, even after incriminating evidence was exposed about his relations with some of the women.
The rabbi's associates explained that he would not deny that the rabbis' proclamation referred to him, as there is no such implication, and if he would do so people would say he was guilty.
According to the associates, the fact that his wife and daughters do not cover their bodies with cloaks proves that he is not affiliated or identifies with the "Taliban sect".
The explanations did not satisfy the struggle's activists, who staged a protest outside his home and house of study. According to report, Rompler has even received death threats.
In the meantime the issue continues to engage haredi media, which are reporting of every development and every statement made by a rabbi on the matter. The big question remains: Will it end with an all-out war or modestly?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhv2f81doQ&feature=player_embedded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRt0ZSdx4WE&feature=player_embedded
The Jewish equivalent of the burqa – the ‘Frumka’, photographed in Jerusalem, April 2012.(Photography by Eduardo Castaldo)
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