Jewish, Litvish (Yeshivish) (Israel)

The Litvish or yeshivish Haredim are the non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox, heirs of the Torah-study culture of the great yeshivot of Lithuania and Belarus (Volozhin, Slobodka, Mir, Telz, Ponevezh) and of the Vilna Gaon, the 18th-century scholar who led the opposition (the Mitnagdim) to Hasidism. After the Holocaust their yeshivot were refounded in Bnei Brak, Jerusalem, Lakewood and London. The name no longer means Lithuanian descent: it now takes in non-Hasidic Haredim of Hungarian, German, Anglo and other backgrounds who live by the yeshiva model. Authority rests with the great yeshiva heads (gedolim), whose word on education, politics and technology is binding. In Israel the mainstream is represented by the Degel HaTorah party within United Torah Judaism; a hard-line Jerusalem Faction, founded in 2012, refuses all cooperation with the army.

Life revolves around the yeshiva and the kollel. Boys enter yeshiva at about 14 and young men study Talmud full-time, continuing in kollel after marrying in their early twenties, while their wives earn the household income. Men wear black suits, white shirts and black fedoras, without the fur hats of the Hasidim; married women cover their hair, usually with wigs. Families average six to seven children. Matches are arranged with weight on Torah scholarship and family lineage. Filtered 'kosher' phones, Haredi newspapers and neighbourhood synagogues shape daily life, and funerals of great rabbis draw hundreds of thousands of mourners.

Intellectual Talmud study is the highest religious act, valued above emotional or mystical devotion. The Mussar movement, a discipline of ethical self-scrutiny, shapes yeshiva life. Strict observance of the Sabbath, kashrut and family purity, separation of the sexes in public life and obedience to the rulings of the gedolim. The mainstream rejects Zionism as a theology but cooperates with the State; the Jerusalem Faction rejects any enlistment.

The Hebrew Bible, a Modern Hebrew New Testament and the JESUS film in Hebrew exist, but the community reads only rabbinically approved texts, uses filtered media and opposes all missionary activity. No believers are known inside the community. A believer from this background would lose family, marriage prospects and livelihood; ex-Haredi support networks and relationships are the main contacts.