This Ultra-Orthodox City in Israel Will Shock You!

This Ultra-Orthodox City in Israel Will Shock You!

Hello everyone and welcome to Bnei Brak the huge Ultra  Orthodox city that is 10 minutes drive from   the secular Heartland of Israel Tel Aviv and  it is a completely different world over here   you have these amazing synagogues all over the  city because everyone here goes to pray and I  

Have with me Alma hello Alma hello everyone  and we’re both strangers here right yeah   I never been here in this kind of tour yeah  only with my car but never really inside of   the city right and you were debating what to  wear to come to it it was very clear  

To me that I must come with my religious   outfit which is a long dress everything is   closed otherwise it can be very embarrassing to  walk here and even not safe but today it’s very   cold in Israel so it’s nice to wear actually so  it’s a good excuse but definitely we  

Want to kind of respect the place and what do you know about Bnei Brak as someone who lives in Tel   Aviv which again it’s really really close to  here what um so I know it’s a very religious  

Place and one of the things that you told me  which I didn’t know this is one of the most   crowded cities in the world right yeah it’s the  fifth most crowded in the world according to   Wikipedia which is where everyone gets their  information nowadays but that makes sense  

Because the ultra-Orthodox they have really  big families and we see tons and tons of families and little kids walking around  here so let’s go for a walk and see what we find one thing I learned about the ultra-Orthodox  from my visit to Mea She’arim in Jerusalem which is  

Another Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood is  that you have these signs all over the city   they’re called pashkevils and it’s a place where  you pass on information this is the post it’s   like post on Facebook yeah talking about  Gathering Together against the evils of  

Technology yeah that’s what it says over there  because there is a thing in the ultra Orthodox   community that is against smartphones social  media and other sort of bad things that can   come from that and uh they know what they’re  talking about because they want to keep people  

In the community and once you’re exposed to  the wider world that can be a temptation to   leave the faith yeah and also there is some  something makes sense in it because there   there are things in the internet that  are against what their belief so I can  

Understand it you know and that’s how they can  control more their Consciousness right and get   off Instagram which is really addictive  and bad you don’t want to be there too much Take a look at some of the  shops here what they sell in Bnei Brak  

The mezuza the hanukiah that’s for hanukka clothes  that are suited for the communities here   black pants dresses, Alma you want to  get a dress well actually it’s not my   style but I can tell you things here are  extremely cheap yeah really cheap oh my God

So there’s a lot of donating here to the community  for various causes and that’s kind of nice because   people here don’t have a lot of money they have  a lot of kids some of them don’t work that much  

And there’s still a lot of donations that are  running around over here and you can see these   donation boxes everywhere look there there so  this is very interesting about the founding of   this synagogue because this used to be quite a  small community and there was a mandatory law  

Back then that any street that has a synagogue on  it you cannot drive by that street on the Sabbath   so they decided to found the synagogue here on one  of the central streets in order to preserve the  

Atmosphere of the Sabbath and that is the Itzkovic  synagogue wow there’s a line to get in Alma you can’t go inside but if I want to go and pray you want to wait for me outside and I’ll go  check out this go check out the synagogue okay  

Sorry about that enjoy oh wait don’t touch you’re  not allowed to touch over here that’s forbidden   all right let’s see what what the synagogue looks  like we won’t go too long so we can wow this is  

Crazy I’ve been to synagogues in my life but never  to place like this that’s just packed with so many   people and there’s so many different prayer  Halls that you can go into secular people as well it’s also an upstairs there’s so many halls  and so many people here praying all times of  

The day wow how was it it was uh nice there was  a lot of uh a lot of prayer Halls inside oh wow   yes um very crowded I don’t know we said you  need a new mezuza for your house yeah yes so  

I just bought the card that you you  read you write it’s written on the card the   prayer but they don’t have the house to put  it how do you say like it’s called a mezuza it’s   this box that you have at the entrance  to every house and to every uh room or  

Business like this one here they have a nice  big one it’s usually not that large as this   one but it can be small as well so I that’s  what you’re looking for right yes yeah beautiful look at the style on that and we have  

Actually the wall in the same color  in the house really blue wall yeah so look at that this is what  you have inside the mezuzah yeah because it’s all handmade  someone actually wrote it a letter by letter  

There is a specific type of writer it’s called  a sofer Stam in Hebrew he’s the one who actually   writes the on the Torah Scrolls you don’t  just print them out you have to write them   in a specific Way by a person who’s trained to  do so and that also includes these blessings  

That’s why they also it cost some money because  you actually have hand work to get that done so it’s crazy how many kids you see walking  around here right amazing yeah so many and they walk around by themselves  like with no no supervision so it’s also  

Kind of nice that people here feel safe  they there’s no threat to the kids that   they can walk around by themselves warning of the Torah that the people of this shop   called the reality Bazaar and they even name  exactly the address of where this place is  

Are selling forbidden electronic devices  that were forbidden by the great rabbis   and that they weren’t punished so this is a  shaming sign here in Bnei Brak against people who   are doing things that are not according to the  Jewish tradtion but that’s kind of also  

Contradicting one of the laws of Judaism which  is “Lashon Hara” which is not the badmouth people so you   know you always have these contradictions  in what is correct and what is not correct wow look at these cameras

Super nice guys super nice shop what the hell why  are they it’s very nice but this is how I really   it’s important to me to show how much to speak  bad about someone even if it’s really it was like  

Something bad happened between two of you it has  a lot of power so I think we should really manage   our speak when we speak about other people because  it can really um just influence and he was saying for  

Selling like a video player and me and Alma were  like what’s a video player like everyone has a   a smart screen yeah with a Netflix and everything  what a VCR but who who even has a video to put in  

The VCR I don’t know something selling something  you’re not supposed to sell here guys the your old   Nokia phone it’s still alive it lives on in these  communities where they don’t use the smartphones wow

This is called cholent it’s a traditional Jewish  food I guess Ashkanazi food it’s all the it’s   it’s Ashkenazi, its Mizrahi its everyone but every every  um different group makes it differently yeah   so like Jews from different places around the  world they might put emphasis on this or that  

Yeah but it’s basically you  have here meat and beans and uh potatoes   and it’s all mixed in just kind of you can make  also a vegan version of it also authentic cholent from Bnei Brak this is our friend from the  restaurant telling us about the life in Bnei Brak

so this very interesting it’s a digital  donation box you can donate for this water   stand here which is the entrance to the synagogue  or um something else here so like you press this  

Is cold water press on it ah and then it like  asked how much you want to donate and you put   in your credit card details and it you made your  donation for this stand over here as opposed to  

The boxes that we have everywhere the donation  boxes all throughout the city where you put in   the coins I guess they’ve updated the system  because so many people now do everything with   credit cards so you have that option to do that  here as well so we’re on our way now to a famous  

Bakery here in Bnei Brak and the challenging drive on  the streets of Bnei Brak Alma how difficult is it it just   I need to be very slow and very careful because  people doesn’t look when they cross the streets  

They just walk like this and it’s scary just  pray to God and it’ll be okay the car won’t hit you did you see all those kids doing shopping for  the Sabbath that’s coming tomorrow so amazing the   little kids are there doing shopping at  the supermarket we got the cash so we can  

Get the challah because I didn’t accept credit  cards don’t get credit card no credit card   only cash but we have cash now man talk about a  bad place for Bakery look it’s in the middle of nothing now these are the challahs and challah  it’s what you eat on the Sabbath you  

Know breaking bread on the Sabbath so you have the bakeries this one for me here this one oh  wait it’s stuck together ah here all right very nice all right well that was a day  in Bnei brak what do you think? I enjoyed I think  

I will come often to visit here yeah no it  was super interesting completely different   world to Tel Aviv that’s right next door so  it was really uh interesting and cool to   see what Bnei Brak is like to see the ultra  Orthodox life that we as secular Jews  

Have some connection to but it’s still uh  very different for us and very fascinating   it was so yeah really happy we made this trip  and I’ll see you in the next video bye-bye bye

Two secular Israeli Jews from Tel Aviv visit the neighboring Ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, the 5th most crowded city in the world. How different is it?

0:00 Intro
1:35 Walking the streets of Bnei Brak
3:24 The most active synagogue in the world?
6:21 Buying a mezuzah
8:31 Why was this shop banned?
11:53 Traditional Jewish food: Chulent
15:44 Buying challah at the best bakery in Israel
17:27 Outro

I should note that most synagogues in Israel have a women’s section for prayer and allow women to pray. This was the first time I had seen a place where there was no such option.

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