Jewish-Jewish-Jewish

I was reading a book the other day about the Hasidim, or the ultra-orthodox Jews. Yeah, these guys. The Fiddler On the Roof clones with the twirly locks of temple-hair, the Gimli beards, and the 18th century overcoats, doing their best to ignore the intrusion of the 21st century.

"There's Jewish." An interviewed Hasidic woman declared. "Then there's Jewish-Jewish. We're Jewish-Jewish-Jewish."

The Hasids are beyond satire; already the brunt of a million cover stories and jokes- especially by the secular Israelis, who despise them with a passion usually reserved for Hezbollah and Hamas.

And they're everywhere in Jerusalem. The "segregated" buses, where women and men sit on opposite sides. Girls with a plain, unobtrusive prettiness, in shapeless skirts and shawls, who'll grow old before their time bearing children and making matzo. Men in bearskin hats and silk bathrobes hauling ass for the Western Wall on Shabbat- spindly legs pumping, faces pale and pinched from generations of breeding within a stagnant gene pool- with their plain, wig-wearing wives and cartoonish flocks of offspring in tow.

Most travelers I've met are ambivalent to the Hasids. If anything, they're an entertaining sideshow to the Jerusalemite carnival. The Hasids are the product of a way of life that evolved in the dirt-poor, Yiddish-speaking Jewish ghettos of eastern Europe in the 17th-19th centuries. In the absence of upward and outward mobility in their host nations, the ghetto Jews prized religious learning above all else.

Their lives have become so built around the Jewish Torah that they've seen no reason to update themselves for the modern world. If anything, they've recreated the 18th century Yiddish ghetto in Israel, so that they can go on studying Torah in exactly the same way they did back in the good ol' days, when they were being persecuted by Poles and massacred by Cossacks.

I couldn't even begin to tell you the bizarre tales I've heard of- and experiences I've had with- the Hasids. Travelers swap these stories with relish.

It's whispered that because truly observant Jews aren't allowed to do any work on the Sabbath, some Hasids get a non-Jew to follow them around the house just to open their doors.

And that some Hasidic couples, due to some bizarre biblical ruling, will not touch each other physically during sex- and fuck with the man's penis going through a hole in a sheet.

Hasidic women crop their hair short and wear wigs... although one of Judaism's great living sages recently declared wigs impure according to religious law.

My buddy Jeremy once had his loins blessed by a rabbi, who soaked his groin with water and called upon the Lord to strengthen his seed.

I've been chased down on the street by Hasidic men who hand me little cards printed with the Seven Laws of Noah, which as a gentile I am supposedly ordered by God to follow... even though, they add piously, and without an ounce of self-congratulation or reproach, I do not have the privilege of following the 613 Laws of Judaism.

More recently, I made the mistake of taking pictures in Mea Shearim, the Hasidic enclave in Jerusalem, during the Sabbath (No "work" on the Sabbath!). Worse, I was snapping photos of the synagogue. I was promptly chased out of the neighborhood by a crowd of snowball-throwing youngsters. And I hear that when it isn't snowing in Jerusalem, they use stones.

For secular Israelis, it goes beyond swapping tales about the Hasids' comically retrogressive lifestyle. Kibbutzniks, the Israelis who live and work in Israel's communal, quasi-socialist farms, particularly despise them. Why?

The ultra-orthodox don't serve in the Israeli army. Since those who attend yeshiva (religious schools) are exempt from the army, most Hasids hole themselves in yeshivas until 45, the age at which men become ineligible for the draft.

The Hasids say (tongue-not-in-cheek) that their prayers help persuade God to watch over Israel, and that if God turns His face and allows the Arabs to wipe the state off the map, the study of Torah is the only thing that will keep Jewish culture alive for another 2000 years.

There are exceptions. There's a battalion in the West Bank made completely out of Hasidic Jews. They get time off to pray and study the Torah, their food is koshered to some extreme degree, they have the side-curls hanging down under their combat helmets, and they have an excellent record of shit-kicking Palestinians. It's part of an attempt by the government to ease the ultra-orthodox into the armed forces, though the Hasid rabbis overwhelmingly oppose it.

More absurdly, most of the men don't work. They just study the Jewish scriptures, and commentaries on the scriptures, and commentaries on the commentaries. Every day, all day long (except for the Sabbath), until the age of 45. Until then, it falls to the Missus to cook, clean, raise the brood of Jewlings, and bring the bread home.

I've been begged countless times for donations to ultra-Orthodox charities, serving whole neighborhoods below the poverty line.

"There are many poor children in Israel, families living in poverty, and the government won't provide for them," said one beardo, with his jangling coin box.

You mean Hasidic children?

"Yes, our children. They need..."

Isn't that your job? And if it's not, it certainly ain't mine. Get a job, or have less children.

Weird politics too. Most of the Hasids are- as you might expect- Far Right wing. Like, "Death to the Arabs" right wing. "G-D gave Israel to Abraham" right wing. They pray for all the Arabs to die; they just want other Jews to do the fighting.

There's a bizarre minority, however, called the Naturei Karta, that wants the State of Israel to be destroyed. Apparently, by creating Israel before the return of the Messiah, the Zionists have made some kind of unholy fuck-up that true Jews should not be party to. And so Jews from the Naturei Karta and other sects participated in Ahmedinejad's recent Holocaust denial conference, and burn Israeli flags on Independence Day. One even served as Yasser Arafat's "Minister for Jewish Affairs".

To top it all off, the Hasids are increasing relative to the secular Israelis. "Be fruitful and multiply," says the Bible... and Hasids are very fruitful. Ten-kids-per-family-fruitful. Most secular Israelis have two or three.

So what do you do with a society-within-a-society that (1) leeches on social security nets, (2) without contributing to the economy, (3) has jingoistic foreign policy views based on a literal reading of the Bible, but (4) won't defend the country, and (5) are increasingly gaining the demographic power to dictate government policy?

It's easy for me to laugh at them, and at the secular Israeli's predicament, from my high gentile horse. But the State of Israel's raison d'etre is the protection of Jews. Israel exists so that- unlike the years before 1948- the Hasids can worship God their way without threats from Cossacks, Nazis and all those other peoples who got a little too antsy about "the Jew among you".

But what happens when those the state must protect are the ones endangering the state?