Ultra-Orthodox youth groups seek to form haredi-Israeli identity

On May 29, a rather unusual headline broke across the news wires: “Ground-breaking haredi youth movement awarded Ben-Gurion Prize.” The confluence of the two – an ultra-Orthodox youth movement receiving a prize named for David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, may have raised eyebrows in some quarters. 

While Ben-Gurion is revered as one of Israel’s greatest leaders, who guided the newly born state through its formative years and formulated many of its operative principles, he was not religiously observant. Moreover, he was known as a proponent of mamlachtiut, a term not easily translated into English, but explained by some as “civic responsibility, statism,” or “subordinating political and sectoral interests for the public good.”

Today, much of the ultra-Orthodox world is largely closed off from mainstream Israeli society, and while numerous haredi organizations assist other sectors of ultra-Orthodox society, many do not sense a feeling of mamlachtiut in haredi society today.

However, in this case, the headline is not fake news. The Ben-Gurion Award is granted annually by Beit Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv, the Nadav Foundation, and Keren Lautman to encourage educational initiatives reflecting Ben-Gurion’s vision of statehood: “a common civic consciousness that binds the various communities together in a civil society... founded on democratic and Jewish values that promote social solidarity.” 

The award – a NIS 50,000 prize, which will be used for further development of the youth movement – was presented to the Darkei-Sara seminary for starting the youth group B’Derachecha, co-founded by Hadas Neiman, principal of Darkei-Sara, and Adi Bilevsky of the Education Ministry, in recognition of the movement’s social volunteer work, community involvement, and leadership development. 

How did it come about?

B’Deracheha is a new youth movement for 11– to 13-year-old ultra-Orthodox school girls in Jerusalem, led by counselors from Darkei-Sara, a girls’ high school in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul neighborhood, part of the Netzach educational network, which is affiliated with the Education Ministry’s Mamach stream of state-run haredi elementary schools; the Jerusalem Municipality’s haredi youth and social activities department; and HaMerchav HaShalem, a Jerusalem municipality project bringing together diverse schools.

While many readers are familiar with the Mamlachti (state) public educational system, which provides a general studies education with a minimal amount of Bible study and some Jewish enrichment programs, or with the Mamlachti Dati (state religious) public educational system, which offers a dual curriculum of Judaic and general studies in a Religious Zionist environment, fewer are aware of the Mamach system, which is also a state educational system.

The Mamach system was established at the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year and provides an ultra-Orthodox Jewish education alongside the regulated study of the Israeli core curriculum, which includes history, Jewish studies, Hebrew language, social sciences, English, natural sciences, mathematics, and physical education. Today, the Mamach system has 17,500 students in its program. 

One of the Mamach system members is the Netzach Educational Network, founded by Rabbi Menachem Bombach. Netzach currently operates elementary schools in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh, three high schools, and a post-high school program. The Darkei-Sara High School is part of the Netzach network.

Neiman, the Darkei-Sara principal who developed the idea of creating a youth group for haredi girls in the Netzach Educational Network, explains how creating a youth group filled a need. 

“When the Mamach schools opened,” she says, “the original schools in its system were elementary schools, and it was supposed to grow in numbers from elementary to high school. But in the first 10 years of the Mamach system, it hasn’t grown as significantly as was expected.”

Neiman explains that while many parents choose to send their children to Mamach elementary schools, they transfer them to traditional ultra-Orthodox institutions for high school. 

“They want to be considered mainstream haredi. Even if they weren’t accepted for elementary school in the mainstream haredi high school in their neighborhood, they will strive for their children to be accepted to a haredi high school. They won’t continue on to a Mamach high school, which is probably because the Mamach system has been lacking in identity.”

Finding their place

“Identity,” says Neiman, is a key term for the Mamach school system. 

Darkei-Sara, which has 69 students in grades 9-12, has to grapple with this concept. 

“I’m dealing with many identity questions,” she says. “What’s our connection to the State of Israel? What’s our relationship to Yom Ha’atzmaut? Do we celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut? Do we not celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut? What do we do on Yom Hazikaron? Do we join the IDF? What is our relationship with the IDF? There are all sorts of identity questions.”

In order to create a greater and more well-defined sense of identity among the population of the Mamach system, Neiman conceived the idea of creating a youth movement. 

“I came to the conclusion that a youth movement is a marvelous identity creator because instead of explaining things with thousands of words, you take one girl who is a role model, who knows exactly what it means to be haredi and mamlachti, and you say to the younger kids, ‘Here’s your answer. This is what should be.’ 

“She should be modest; she should be God-fearing; she should be observant. But in parallel to this, she can be very leumit [national]. She’s connected to the State of Israel. She feels involved and responsible for what’s going on in the State of Israel. She cares about it, she volunteers, she contributes to it, and she wants to go on contributing to it once she grows up. She’s a good example of a Mamach girl, which is why we opened the B’Deracheha youth movement.”

Neiman named the girls’ youth movement B’Deracheha, which means “in the ways of the Torah.”

“It means in ways of pleasantness, kindness, love, happiness – whichever you choose,” she clarifies, adding, “It also means that it’s not that there is only one clear way of the Torah, one and only way in which the Torah relates to a person, but there are many ways that the Torah dictates and shows us.”

By creating role models for the youth group, who represent the Mamach ideal by being ultra-Orthodox yet still connected to the modern world, Neiman hopes that the elementary school graduates of Mamach schools will continue to Mamach high schools and retain a sense of identity as a haredi while living in awareness of, and engaging with, Israeli society.

For example, she considers that many modern haredi families mark Independence Day with recreational activities. “If you ask them, ‘Do you celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut?’ they won’t have a clear answer. They won’t say clearly, ‘Yes, I do. I am happy that the State of Israel was established. I thank God that it was established.’ What do they do? They barbecue with friends. If you ask their kids, ‘Do you celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut?’ they’ll say ‘Yes.’ 

“But if you ask them what they do on Yom Ha’atzmaut, they don’t know. Their way of celebrating the day is closer to secular observance than that of the Orthodox world. If Yom Ha’atzmaut is a day to celebrate, then it should be celebrated in a Jewish way, I think.”

Likewise, Neiman asks: “How do haredi Jews who identify with the State of Israel mark memorial days, such as Yom Hazikaron [Remembrance Day for the Fallen]?” 

She explains that “Memorials are very important in Judaism. They are part of Judaism. My graduates will work in a laboratory or a municipality or in a computer laboratory. Yom Hazikaron will arrive, the siren will sound, and they will stand because their boss expects them to. But if you ask them, ‘What is your attitude toward Yom Hazikaron?’ I want them to have a clear answer. I want them to know how they relate to Yom Hazikaron as a haredi.”

Neiman selected six girls from her school and sent them to the Bnot Yerushalayim elementary school for girls, the first Mamach school for girls in Jerusalem, and began the youth movement for girls in grades 6, 7, and 8. She chose an additional two girls and appointed them as counselors for the ninth-grade students in Darkei-Sara. While these are relatively small steps, Neiman wants to expand next year to another school in Jerusalem, a school in Beit Shemesh, and possibly another in Petah Tikva.

The activities of the youth group leaders have shown an attempt to engage with Israeli society at large. In October, they ran a flower market to help farmers from the Gaza border communities salvage income from their damaged greenhouses. They have been baking challot for delivery to IDF soldiers serving on the front lines and preparing gift packages for children evacuated from their homes in northern Israel. The counselors, drawn from grades 10-12, meet regularly with their advisory team to plan activities and discuss the challenges of mentoring younger students, particularly during this very stressful period.

Neiman mentions an activity in which the girls discussed a statement from the Mishna in Tractate Avot (1:6), which states that one should judge every person favorably. In that context, she reports that older students in the B’Deracheha youth group discussed current controversies in Israeli society and how that Mishnaic statement could be applied to the current situation.

Unlike other youth groups, such as Bnei Akiva or Ezra, who meet in their own buildings, B’Derachecha meets in the school building itself. Other youth movements have been established for many years and have a library of activities from which to draw, but B’Derachecha is creating everything from scratch, tailored for its specific audience of ultra-Orthodox girls. 

Those who have been selected as the movement’s first counselors must be socially outgoing, modest, and inspiring, says Neiman. “They must have the character of a leader, and they have to be able to lead a group.” She adds that since this is the first year of the youth group’s existence, the counselors see themselves as pioneers in a historic mission. 

IN A Zoom video call, three B’Deracheha counselors – Yaeli Sorotzkin, 16, from Rehavia; Noa Shalit, 15, from Givat Ze’ev; and Michal Gergel, 17, from Beit Shemesh – detail the goals of the movement and what they are trying to accomplish. 

Sorotzkin says the counselors choose a different theme for each month’s slate of four meetings with the girls. One has been designated Good Deeds Month, and the events during that period centered on positive things they could do. Other months’ activities are also associated with holidays occurring during the school year, such as Purim and Shavuot.

Shalit points out that one of the primary goals of B’Deracheha is to instill the spirit of cooperation and the ability to work together as a group. She outlines some of their recent group activities, such as preparing cheesecakes for Shavuot for families in which the husbands/fathers were recently called away to army duty. 

Gergel explains how she told her charges the story of IDF hero Roi Klein, who sacrificed his life in the 2006 Lebanon War by jumping on a live grenade – thereby saving the members of his unit – while reciting the first verse of the Shema prayer; as well as other stories from the current war. Responding to a question about her definition of the Mamach school system, Shalit says that it is a combination of the ultra-Orthodox world, with exposure to “Israeliness,” and their place in the life of the country. 

Gergel, who is currently studying for a degree in mathematics at the Open University and would like to teach math in elementary and high school, says, “We are aware of the world around us, and we see ourselves as part of the Jewish people. We don’t avoid what is happening. Our identity is haredi, but we look at the national side, and we feel part of it.”

On May 29, when the Ben-Gurion prize was presented to Darkei-Sara and the B’Deracheha youth movement, the girls, together with their principal, couldn’t avoid feeling that they were an integral part of Israeli society. 

“It was nice to be there as a religious haredi person,” says Gergel. “There was a great feeling of representation, to show the haredi ideology.”■