Bnei Brak, Israel - Shopping Center Designed For Ultra-Orthodox Jews
Bnei Brak, Israel - Tucked inconspicuously on a busy street in the middle of one of Israel's poorest cities is a shopping mall like no other. Men are barred from the top floor. There's no cafe for socializing. The department store's lingerie section is hidden behind curtains.
Welcome to Shopping Bnei Brak, a first-of-its-kind shopping center that caters to Israel's ultra-Orthodox community. Members' adherence to strict Jewish law.
The mall is an experiment between influential rabbis and Israel's largest department store chain to see if strict Jewish religious rules can be balanced with capitalist consumerism. "The store talks to the people in another language," said Israel Goldberg, an expert in marketing to Israel's ultra-Orthodox citizens who's working on the project with the Hamashbir department store chain. "It looks so weird - the concept - to America."
Everything - from the shape of perfume bottles to the types of stores in the mall - goes through a strict screening process. The rabbis insisted that the mall have no cafe or restaurant where men and women might mingle. They dismissed talk of a movie theater. They even insisted that the word "mall" not be part of the name because "a mall reminds them of something too modern," Goldberg said.
The Hamashbir store, which anchors the mall, features a line of modest clothing designed for the ultra-Orthodox and a women-only section reached by the sole escalator in this city of 160,000, northeast of Tel Aviv. White curtains conceal the entrance to the lingerie section, and strategically placed white stickers cover the alluring models on pantyhose packages, there are no mannequins and most certainly no ads featuring scantily clad women.
But even among some of the ultra Orthodox, the mall may have gone too far. "Some ultra-Orthodox women don't like it," saleswoman Nellie Bar Oz, 21, said of the women-only section. "They want to consult with their husbands, so they go down and show them things and then come back up." The store is considering setting special hours when men would be allowed upstairs or creating a space where husbands could wait and consult with their wives.
On a recent morning, Rivka Lev drove a half-hour from her Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank for a shopping excursion at the new mall with her mother and twin daughters. "It's fun," Lev said. "If there were a mall like this in the West Bank, it would be great. Sometimes it's better to go shopping without the men - you feel more free."
Welcome to Shopping Bnei Brak, a first-of-its-kind shopping center that caters to Israel's ultra-Orthodox community. Members' adherence to strict Jewish law.
The mall is an experiment between influential rabbis and Israel's largest department store chain to see if strict Jewish religious rules can be balanced with capitalist consumerism. "The store talks to the people in another language," said Israel Goldberg, an expert in marketing to Israel's ultra-Orthodox citizens who's working on the project with the Hamashbir department store chain. "It looks so weird - the concept - to America."
Everything - from the shape of perfume bottles to the types of stores in the mall - goes through a strict screening process. The rabbis insisted that the mall have no cafe or restaurant where men and women might mingle. They dismissed talk of a movie theater. They even insisted that the word "mall" not be part of the name because "a mall reminds them of something too modern," Goldberg said.
The Hamashbir store, which anchors the mall, features a line of modest clothing designed for the ultra-Orthodox and a women-only section reached by the sole escalator in this city of 160,000, northeast of Tel Aviv. White curtains conceal the entrance to the lingerie section, and strategically placed white stickers cover the alluring models on pantyhose packages, there are no mannequins and most certainly no ads featuring scantily clad women.
But even among some of the ultra Orthodox, the mall may have gone too far. "Some ultra-Orthodox women don't like it," saleswoman Nellie Bar Oz, 21, said of the women-only section. "They want to consult with their husbands, so they go down and show them things and then come back up." The store is considering setting special hours when men would be allowed upstairs or creating a space where husbands could wait and consult with their wives.
On a recent morning, Rivka Lev drove a half-hour from her Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank for a shopping excursion at the new mall with her mother and twin daughters. "It's fun," Lev said. "If there were a mall like this in the West Bank, it would be great. Sometimes it's better to go shopping without the men - you feel more free."
posted by VOS IZ NEIAS @ 6/06/2006 09:57:00 AM
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