It hasn’t been an easy few weeks being frum in Israel.  “Do you know I was stuck in the Central Bus Station for two hours last night and couldn’t get home, after being out of town all day, because of those boys of yours blocking all the roads?”   Those boys of mine?

“I hope your boys weren’t involved – it was a real chilul Hashem.”    No, my boys weren’t involved – they were either learning in kollel or working. But when the headlines get rough, the ultra-Orthodox are all clumped together

It would be convenient to think it was only the teenage hooligans who were involved in the demonstrations that brought towns to a standstill for several hours during peak travel time and caused such terrible anti-chareidi feelings. However, photographs and videos show some of their rebbes and roshei yeshiva as well. For them it was worth being arrested and incarcerated in prison rather than have anything to do with the army, which they feel is determined to destroy all Yiddishkeit in Israel and turn yeshiva bachurim and kolleleit away from a life of Torah.

As Benjy finished unpacking the suitcase at their honeymoon hotel, he let out a groan.

“Oh no, I can’t believe it. I left my tefillin back home.”

Having only recently married, Benjy and his kallah had packed a joint suitcase for the first time, which might have explained the omission, but he still couldn’t believe he’d forgotten them.

Since his bar mitzva, 15 years previously, he’d never gone a day without putting on his tefillin, and he certainly didn’t want to start married life on the wrong foot.