God Fearers

The ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement, despite its best efforts to remain inconspicuous, is now a subject of deep curiosity to the outside world. Their scandals are splashed across headlines, their lives exhibited in Netflix shows and memoirs. But while there is much interest in Jewish ultra-Orthodoxy, there is little understanding of its history, depth, and power. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the scarred remnants of the Haredim - the 'God fearers' - rejected the secular world and rebuilt their community. With extraordinary access and investigative skill, Anshel Pfeffer leads us into Haredi communities the world over: from Jerusalem's grand courts of Hasidism to Orange County townships, where the Haredim are amassing civil power as a voting bloc. Pfeffer visits the dining rooms of Haredi diamond-dealers in Dubai and explores Canvey Island in the Thames Estuary as the unlikely location for modern-day shtetls. In Melbourne, a community faces allegations of sexual predation; in eastern Ukraine, brave rabbis are rescuing their flocks from the Russian invasion. In this, the first history of the Haredi in decades, Pfeffer's consummate expertise and superb prose offer an informative, immersive, and resonant panorama of an evolving fundamentalist world.