Bw Reads: Israeli youth turn to religion

Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring one great magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek. Today, Ethan Bronner writes about a cultural shift in Israel, as Jewish teens and young adults, faced with war after war, adopt the idea that "Only God" can protect them. You can find the whole story online (free!) here.

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In February last year, Orel Malik marched into the principal's office at his high school just east of Tel Aviv. His issue wasn't lousy grades, skipping class or drugs. It was tefillin—the biblical scrolls attached to leather straps that religious men wrap around their head and one of their arms during morning prayer. Malik had set up a table in a hallway with tefillin and was urging fellow students to pray between classes. When principal Israel Vilozny confiscated the tefillin and removed the table, Malik confronted him.

"What are you, God?" Malik protested—while surreptitiously recording the encounter on his phone.

"I'm the principal of this school," Vilozny replied from behind his desk, his voice rising, "and you are a heartbeat away from being suspended."

Malik stormed out of the office and, recording in hand, went to the news media. Soon, hundreds of students from near and far were demonstrating outside the school. Articles appeared in the national press. Malik was invited to testify in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, as it debated a bill to bar administrators from interfering with kids using tefillin at school.

Raised mainly by a secular mother, Malik was hardly an obvious candidate for proselytizing. His deepening interest in Judaism started a few years ago, but what supercharged his zeal was Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants broke through the country's defenses and killed or abducted more than 1,400 Israelis. "When the army and state failed us so entirely, I saw it as a message from God," Malik says before an evening Torah class at a synagogue in Ramat Gan, an industrial city of 177,000 that's home to the national diamond exchange. "I decided to dedicate myself to spreading that message."

Photographer: Amit Elkayam for Bloomberg Businessweek

His fervor has only increased since the war against Iran began in February and the Israeli military stepped up its attacks on the Hezbollah militia in neighboring Lebanon. Malik calls the conflict "a continuation of the battle," as Hezbollah threatens northern Israel and Hamas has done Tehran's bidding for decades from its tunnels under Gaza's sandy soil. "Hamas is an Iranian tentacle," he says. "It was time to go after the head of the octopus."

The 2023 Hamas attack triggered a brutal war in which Israel killed more than 70,000 Palestinians and left large parts of Gaza in rubble—alienating much of the international community and setting off a global wave of sympathy for the Palestinian people. But Oct. 7 propelled many Israelis to more strongly embrace Jewish ritual; one poll found that a third of those younger than 25 had boosted their observance in the past two years, and that they increasingly espouse right-leaning political views. "Many in Israel—especially the young—feel the war has connected them more deeply to tradition and to Jewish identity," says Shuki Friedman, head of the Jewish People Policy Institute, which conducted the poll.

The shift is playing out across the country, even in secular hubs such as Tel Aviv. It mirrors in some ways the rightward shift that's happening among many youths—particularly boys and men—in the US and Europe, but it's even more pronounced in Israel. Young people around the nation are confounding their parents and teachers with new piety. Adults have taken to WhatsApp groups to warn that soccer matches their kids claim to be attending may in fact be group prayers or Torah lessons that might not align with the parents' worldview. "I treat teenagers," says Dorit Gatt, a clinical psychologist in north Tel Aviv. "What I hear from them is: At any moment the missiles can return. Only God can provide me with real protection."

The increased embrace of ritual by Israel's youth is accelerating trends already buffeting the country's politics and economics. Their rightward political leanings have boosted support for religious institutions and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and the innovative tech startups that are Israel's economic engine risk losing staffers who increasingly choose to emigrate rather than remain in a country they believe is headed in the wrong direction.

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