Julian Barnett
Hidden Jewish Sects of Jerusalem, Part 2
Summary
Julian Barnett continues a series of lectures on the people that populate the skin and bones of Jerusalem, this time specifically focusing on one of the most extreme and closed religious groups in Mea She'arim, the Hasidim of Toldos Aron. Part 2 of 2.
Julian Barnett
Julian Barnett is a teacher, collector, tour guide, and writer with a specialist interest in ultra-orthodoxy within the various faiths. For the last 35 years, he has been investigating and documenting the most extreme sects of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim worlds. His experiences and travels were serialized in the Jerusalem Report and also broadcast on BBC Radio Four Religion. Outside of his full-time history teaching post at Southbank International School, Portland Place, London, Julian lectures at numerous venues around the UK and beyond. In 2013 Julian was a joint winner of the National Teacher of the Year Award.
Yes, the girls in Toldos Aron are kept very, very tightly uneducated from the point of view of religious learning. They will not learn Halakha. They will not learn Talmud. In other groups, it is changing. In Toldos Aron, it is not. They will learn a very, very, very quick diet of what they need to know, in the opinion of those that run the group, to run a home, to run a family, to have a relationship with their husband, so it’s extreme limited.
They are not elected. It’s, in the time-honored version, what used to be the old Conservative party in Britain, that a rebbe emerges. Now, normally, the rebbe is the oldest son, but that’s not always the case now. Sometimes it might be the most suitable son, the son that is seen as being the most rebbish material, rebbe, not rubbish, rebbish material. In the old days, it was the oldest son. Now it’s different, and now, by the way, there are also fights as to who will be the rebbe, because now Hasidic groups are much wealthier and much more powerful than they used to be so there is now a tussle for control. So often, these lead to very, very bitter tussles.
Ah, because it’s control. It is social control. They want them to look exact the same, number one, so they will stand out if they leave; number two, to bring everyone closer together; number three, to keep outsiders out. So it serves all those three things, and they’re all equally as important.