Walk north from Jaffa Rd along Strauss St and you’ll soon enter a neighbourhood with squat, stone-fronted buildings, balconies adorned with drying laundry, bearded figures in black, and long-skirted mums trailed by a gaggle of formally dressed children. If you have the sense that you’ve stumbled upon an Eastern European shtetl (ghetto) of the 1880s then you are probably standing somewhere near Kikar Shabbat, the main intersection of Mea She’arim, Jerusalem’s oldest ultra-Orthodox Jewish (Haredi) neighbourhood.
A throwback to older times, Mea She’arim was developed by ultra-Orthodox Eastern European immigrants who modelled their Jerusalem home on the ones they remembered back in Poland, Germany and Hungary. Despite their transition to the Holy Land, residents have maintained the customs, habits and dress of 19th-century Eastern Europe. Fashions are conservative, including black suits and hats for men and floor-scraping dresses for women; even in the height of the Middle Eastern summer it’s still customary among many Hassidic men to wear shtreimels (fur hats) on Shabbat and holidays.
Families are typically large and this fact has made Mea She’arim one of the fastest-growing neighbourhoods in Jerusalem, as well as contributing to the increasingly religious nature of the city. Yiddish is the preferred language on the street as the ultra-Orthodox believe Hebrew to be a holy language only fit for religious purposes. Days are often spent in prayer and business is a secondary pursuit – religious study is frequently financed by a combination of Israeli government subsidies and ultra-Orthodox communities abroad.
In the most conservative families, married women shave their heads and cover their bald scalp with a scarf, in the name of modesty. For some, though, this is not enough, and in 2011 extremist groups tried to segregate some of Mea She’arim’s sidewalks – men on one side, women on the other. The campaign, opposed by many mainstream ultra-Orthodox Jews, was declared unconstitutional by Israel’s Supreme Court.
As this is a religious neighbourhood, visitors are expected to dress and act in a conservative manner. Don't take pictures of the residents (they resent being treated as a touristic curiosity) or speak to children or members of the opposite sex. Do not walk arm in arm or even hand in hand with anyone; kissing is definitely taboo. Disobeying local customs will lead to verbal objections or even stone throwing. If a confrontation with the police seems to be brewing, steer clear.
Friday is perhaps the liveliest day to visit as you’ll see families heading to and from market in their preparations for Shabbat. Neighbourhood bakeries are open all night on Thursday, baking challah (traditional braided soft bread eaten on Shabbat). On Friday nights the streets are awash with people taking a break from their Shabbat dinners.
Mea She’arim is a few minutes’ walk from both Damascus Gate and the Jaffa Rd/King George V St junction.
