Moishe Alexander pleased with the work of Rav Mishraki in Bnei Brak

On the road to Bnei Brak

Bnei-Brak

In a short period of time most of Bnei Brak’s secular and Religious Zionist residents migrated elsewhere, and the city has become almost homogeneously Haredi. The city has one secular neighbourhood, Pardes Kats. Names of streets that had had a Zionist connotation were changed and named after prominent Haredi figures, the most recent and final change being the renaming of Herzl St. to HaRav Shach St. The Israeli flag is barely seen in Bnei Brak, since the State of Israel is seen as a secular entity; however, it is certain to be seen flying atop the Ponevezh yeshiva, as the practice was originally instituted by Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman. Bnei Brak is one of the two poorest cities in Israel.

Bnei Brak has multiple chief rabbis, catering to different groups in the city. The most important are Rabbi Moshe Yehuda Leib Landau, and Rabbi Nissim Karelitz.

On the road to Bnei Brak

Working in Bnei Brak

Bnei Brak Mayor Interview

Bnei Brak takes its name from the ancient Beneberak, which was not in the same location.

Bnei Brak was founded as an agricultural settlement in 1924 by Rabbi Yitzchok Gerstenkorn and a group of Polish chasidim. Due to a lack of land many of its founders turned to other occupations, and the village began to develop an urban character. Its first rabbi was Rabbi Arye Mordechai Rabinowicz, a descendant of the Yaakov Yitzchok Rabinowicz, known as Yid HaKodosh, and formerly the rabbi of Kurów in Poland. He was succeeded as rabbi of Bnei Brak by Rabbi Yosef Kalisz, a scion of the Vurker dynasty.

The town was set up as a religious settlement from the outset, as is evident from this description of the pioneers:
Their souls were revived by the fact that they merited what their predecessors had not. What particularly revived their weary souls in the mornings and toward evening, when they would gather in the beis medrash situated in a special shack which was built immediately upon the arrival of the very first settlers, for tefilla betzibbur (communal prayer) three times a day, for the Daf Yomi shiur, and a Gemara shiur and an additional one in Mishnayos and the Shulchan Oruch.

Bnei Brak is the only large city in Israel whose inhabitants are mainly ultra-Orthodox Jews. The city is located in the Dan metropolitan region east of Tel Aviv. Its small physical size and large number of inhabitants (some 150,000) make it Israel’s most densely-populated city. Moreover, its birth rate is one of the highest in the country.

Bnei Brak started out in 1924 as an agricultural settlement established by a group of Polish Hassidim (members of a Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century in Eastern Europe). However, due to a lack of land, many of its founders were forced to turn to other occupations, such as commerce and handicrafts, and soon Bnei Brak assumed an urban character.

It was officially declared a city with the establishment of the State of Israel, and in the early 1950s, many Admors (Hassidic “Grand Rabbis”) began moving their courts from Tel Aviv to Bnei Brak. Within several years, Bnei Brak had turned into the largest ultra-Orthodox Jewish center in the world, and assumed a marked ultra-Orthodox Jewish character. The city’s religious character gives it a special charm. It has no modish fashion shops, yuppie coffee houses, or posh restaurants, but it has an extraordinary simplicity, modesty and uniqueness which culminate in the hustle and bustle as the Jewish Sabbath day approaches, when crowds of Hassidic Jews throng to the synagogues to pray.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews are divided into different Hassidic courts and into different communities, and the city is divided along the same principle. There are neighborhoods specific to particular courts (for example, the Vizhnitser neighborhood) and to particular communities (such as the Ponevezh district, whose residents belong to the Lithuanian stream of non-Hassidic ultra-orthodox Jews). Interspersed among them are a large number of Yeshivas (institutes of learning sacred Jewish texts), Admor courts, Kollels (institutes for advanced students of religious texts), and other religious institutions.