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WE'RE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE
S
hlomo won't give his last
name or even say which
city he lives in. He doesn't
want to go public and hurt
his family, especially his father,
a revered rabbi in Meah
Shearim, the antiquarian, hare-
di (Orthodox) quarter of
Jerusalem.
Nine years ago, when he was
16, Shlomo, then living and
studying at a Meah Shearim
yeshiva, began asking questions
like, "If God created the universe,
who created God?" He couldn't
get an answer and was warned
not to ask the questions.
A year later, still attending
yeshiva classes by day, he se-
cretly rented a room for $50 a
month in a non-haredi neigh-
borhood of the capital. He made
secular friends, began studying
things he'd never studied before,
like mathematics, science and lit-
erature. In a gradual, wrenching
process, he broke away from the
black-robed, pious, closed world
of Meah Shearim.
"I thought I was the only per-
son in the world who had ever
done this," says Shlomo, who now
works in a defense-related job,
after having become an officer in
an elite army combat unit, then
attending college.
But Shlomo isn't the only hare-
di who has changed his life so
radically. No one involved with
ex-haredim can estimate how
many there are. But Hillel, a pri-
vate, volunteer organization that
tries to ease their process, has
guided about 100 young hared-
im into mainstream Israeli so-
ciety since it was founded four
years ago. Many more make the
transition on their own. Malcom
Acher (A Different Place), a Tel
Aviv shelter for runaway youths,
has temporarily housed about 15
haredim this year.
Hannah Cannon, a Jerusalem
psychologist who has counseled
about 25 haredim in transition,
says only about 10 percent of
them leave the community be-
cause of a spiritual crisis. "A large
proportion leave because they
have terrible problems with their
families — they're subjected to
violence, and harsh pressure on
them to study."
Many complain of having had
little contact with their families
— they return home from
yeshiva only for occasional Shab-
bat weekends, then have no con-
versation with their parents.
"A lot of them have had ho-
mosexual experiences at the
yeshiva, or been exposed to or
tempted by it, and they can't live
with themselves. About half of
them speak about this," Ms. Car-
mon added. Safi Shabi, director
of Makom Acher, says he found
the same phenomenon, in the
same proportion, at the shelter.
Boys outnumber girls 5-1, says
Sarit Barzilai, who is doing her
doctoral dissertation on the sub-
ject at Jerusalem's Hebrew Uni-
versity. "The girls are at home,
where their families can control
them more, while the boys are
away at yeshiva," she explained.
Also, haredi girls are deterred be-
cause they are taught to think of
secular girls as "cheap whores,"
Ms. Barzilai added.
A minority return to the hare-
di world, like Shai Horowitz of
Bnei Brak, who founded Hillel.
Some become modern Orthodox.
But most "go all the way" to sec-
ularism, said Ms. Barzilai.
The hardest part of their tran-
sition is dealing with their fami-
lies. "Some parents threaten to
send them to an insane asylum,
and use violence on them. They
employ emotional blackmail,
telling their children they're
shortening their lives, sending
them to their graves. They haul
them off to be lectured to by
teachers and rabbis. The ex-
haredim are seen in their com-
munity as aberrant, crazy," said
Hillel spokesman Itai Nevo.
After Shlomo went into the
secular world, his parents didn't
speak with him for a couple of
years.
Now about once a month and
on holidays, he puts on a black
yarmulke and visits his parents'
home in Meah Shearim. "Our re-
lations are good now, but there's
a certain tension. We don't talk
about what I did, and we don't
discuss religion," he says.
Hillel runs a telephone hotline,
and when it feels sure the caller
isn't having a temporary spat
with his parents, and seriously
wants to change his life, it brings
him together with haredim who
have made the break. They
spend holidays and Shabbat
weekends together to ease the
doubting haredi's loneliness. A
few of the more liberal haredi
rabbis are engaged to mediate be-
tween the youths and their fam-
ilies. Psychological counseling is
arranged, as are classes in basic
education.
Many are placed at various
kibbutzim, including modern
Orthodox kibbutzim, which pro-
vides a safe, ordered environ-
ment, and an "adoptive" kibbutz
family to look after them. Most
go from there into the anny.
7'
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