A moderate haredi family from Beit Shemesh has been forced to leave the city after haredi extremists reportedly harassed and assauted them.
File photo: A haredi man being arrested early last year in Beit Shemesh for throwing stones at buses.
Family Reportedly Flees Beit Shemesh After Haredi Harassment
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
A moderate haredi family from Beit Shemesh has been forced to leave the city after haredi extremists harassed and assauted them, Yeshiva World reports.
The family has lived in Beit Shemesh for 14 years. But it recently ran into trouble when two of its sons joined a haredi unit of the Israel Defense Forces.
The extremists, who insist that the family is not haredi enough to live in the community, allegedly began harassing the family. The soldiers’ 15-year-old sister says she has been repeatedly spat on by these haredi extremists who also screamed at her. She says that friends visiting her have been similarly harassed.
The family reportedly believes this an organized effort meant to drive them out of the neighborhood and not the acts of a few troublemakers.
Haredi rabbis have also reportedly sent several letters to the family condemning what they claim is the immodest dress of some of the family’s daughters.
Quoting Yediot Achranot, the Israeli secular daily newspaper that broke this story, Yeshiva World reports that one of those letters was signed by the Vaad HaTznius, the local haredi modesty police. It concludes with a threat:
“It is our hope that we will not be compelled to defend our homes like a bereaved bear because the result will fall solely on the stubborn ones,” the letter says.
Another letter sent to the family reportedly says that “we have come to the realization that your home is an entertainment center for males and females who are off the derech [no longer haredi], and that they use the impure internet, the mother of sin, which of course has no place in our holy community, which is made up predominately of haredim.”
The family’s patriarch says that due to the mounting harassment and his fear of physical retaliation from the extremists, he has been forced to back away from reports he made to police about the harassment and has decided to move his family elsewhere.