Israeli sociologist explores the Haredi community

[rug]

patrick martin
Jerusalem— Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Friday, October 7, 2011 6:19AM EDT

The story this week about two Israeli teenage girls being sent by their parents to an extreme Hasidic sect north of Montreal, only to be returned to Israel while a court determines their fate, brought to mind a famous case of another child being abducted by an ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) relative half a century ago.

Yosalle Shuchmacher was six years old in the late 1950s when his secular parents left him in the care of his Haredi grandfather. When the parents went to collect him, the grandfather refused to return him and hid him, first in Israel, then in New York, so that he would receive a proper religious upbringing (among Haredim).

It took four years, but eventually, with the help of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad, the boy, then 10, was located and returned to his parents.

It is only incidents such as these, or cases of Haredim rioting when traffic comes near their communities on the Sabbath, or when construction unearths an ancient cemetery, that we delve into this community and its ways that seem strange to most of us.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/israeli-sociologist-explores-the-haredi-community/article2194090/