Posts Tagged ‘Haredi’
Israeli police break up Yeshiva scam
The Haredi Vuvuzela
Israeli police broke up a scam carried out by ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups who faked ID cards for fictitious students in order to receive millions of extra dollars from the state.
Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police arrested six people after they found more than 1,000 fake ID cards during a raid on three ultra-Orthodox educational institutions in Jerusalem.
The fraud lasted more than a year, Rosenfeld said, and cost the government “tens of millions of shekels.”
Israel provides stipends for students who study at full-time Jewish seminaries, or Yeshivas, a policy in place for years, but one that has been facing increased opposition from the country’s secular majority.
Consecutive government coalitions receive support of ultra-religious parties just like old-fashioned ward-heelers who in turn get a payoff from the government treasury.
Certainly looks like it works well. For votes, I mean. Not honesty or education.
Haredi sect in Israel “defends” morals with abuse, violence
Women abused for breaking the law – by praying out loud!
According to Menachem Friedman, a sociology professor at Bar-Ilan University, the orthodox are imposing their rules more forcefully than before and the lives of the city’s women are becoming more circumscribed, and sometimes more dangerous, as a result. Friedman grew up in an ultra-orthodox family and has been studying the Haredi for 49 years. He said the extreme atmosphere is tangible.
Self-appointed moral guardians, dubbed the ‘modesty police’ by Israel’s modern secular media, roam Jerusalem’s ultra-religious neighbourhoods enforcing the voluminous and ever growing list of rabbinical laws such as the recent decree banning the sale of MP4 players. About 100 Haredi women have taken to wearing scarves and veils to cover themselves much like Muslim women.
Yoel Kreus is known locally in the Mea Shearim area of the city as the ‘manager of operations’. He describes himself as a ‘shmira’, a Hebrew word that translates as ‘watcher of Israel’. ‘I make sure the rabbis’ decisions happen … I help you to be a moral person,’ he said.
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