In January 2021, at the height of Israel’s third coronavirus lockdown, vast crowds of ultra-Orthodox worshippers gathered in secret to mourn an esteemed rabbi, brazenly flouting a state ban on communal activity. Scrappy mobile footage of the scene was later leaked to major media outlets, outraging secular Israelis who watched the scene from their lockdown homes.
The story of the pandemic in Israel has in many ways been the story of a clash between the secular state and its semi-autonomous ultra-Orthodox minority, which forms roughly 13% of the national population, but at that point accounted for 28% of infections. Known in Hebrew as Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox have long led a life at odds with the Israeli mainstream, sometimes rejecting the very notion of the state itself.
The pandemic brought this slow-burning tension suddenly into the open. Communal life is central to Haredi identity: Adults study on mass in cramped seminaries, their huge families live in tiny homes, and they frequently attend mass weddings and funerals — and many were both unwilling and unable to respect the ban on gatherings and stringent isolation requirements for infected people that the pandemic necessitated.
Through extraordinary perseverance, Balilty gained deep and sustained access to the Haredi world for several weeks. Since other journalists and photographers had only fleeting access to Haredi life, Balilty alone was able to take us deep inside ultra-Orthodox society — showing their world with u
