Word: orthodox
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Your report "Hooliganism in the Holy City" [June 27], describing the animosity and battles between Jerusalem's extreme Orthodox Jewish groups and secular Israelis, bespeaks an inherent antireligious bias. You use the term ultra (meaning extreme or fanatical), to refer to Orthodox Jews only. Yet certainly those officials who arranged for the production of Handel's Messiah in the heart of a Jerusalem Orthodox community may rightfully be termed ultrasecular. So, too, are those who intentionally defy both "God's law" and local ordinances, by driving their cars through Hasidic communities when they are closed to vehicular...
...condone the acts of violence noted in your story. As an Orthodox Jew, I am repulsed by them. Yet, as difficult as it may be for some people to understand, the state of Israel is a Jewish state. The movement to return Israelis to their religious roots and practices should not be condemned because of the violent acts...
These events in the Holy City are only samples of a troubling increase in sectarian violence involving ultra-Orthodox Jews, many of them members of Israel's numerous Hasidic groups.* Ever since the founding of Israel in 1948, traditionalist Jews who cluster in the Mea Shearim or Geula neighborhoods of northern Jerusalem have often stoned passing automobiles on the Sabbath and otherwise vented their wrath on those who violate God's law. But the recent outbursts reflect a new militancy on the part of extremists and a fundamental change in the relations of the city's religious...
...ultra-Orthodox Jews have a birth rate that is three times the national average, and they also constitute the largest group moving into Jerusalem. As a result, they have been trying to take over areas near the overcrowded Mea Shearim and Geula sections, offering twice the market value to entice secular Israelis to sell their homes and threatening those who refuse to move. At least one family has been burned...
Other acts of violence have involved disputes over observance of Jewish law. The youths are more zealous in their beliefs and more pugnacious than their elders, who are often eager to urge them on. The new militants regard other Orthodox Jews as compromisers and secular Israelis as grievous sinners and abhor proselytizing by the small group of Christian missionaries in the country...