Bnei Brak ( ) or Bene Beraq, is a city located on the central

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

coastal plain A coastal plain (also coastal plains, coastal lowland, coastal lowlands) is an area of flat, low-lying land adjacent to a sea coast. A fall line commonly marks the border between a coastal plain and an upland area. Formation Coastal plains can f ...

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

, just east of

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( or , ; ), sometimes rendered as Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and usually referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a popula ...

. A center of

Haredi Judaism Haredi Judaism (, ) is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that is characterized by its strict interpretation of religious sources and its accepted (Jewish law) and traditions, in opposition to more accommodating values and practices. Its members are ...

, Bnei Brak covers an area of 709 hectares (1,752 acres, or 2.74 square miles), and had a population of in . It is one of the most densely populated cities in Israel and the fourth-most densely populated city in the world.

History

Bnei Brak takes its name from the ancient Biblical city of

Beneberak Benebarak ('Sons of Barak') (, ''Bnei Brak'') was a biblical city mentioned in the Book of Joshua. According to the biblical account it was allocated to the Tribe of Dan. Its archaeological site is Tel Bnei Brak. History The town of Beneberak ('' ...

, mentioned in the

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. ''

tribe of Dan The Tribe of Dan (, "Judge") was one of the twelve tribes of Israel, according to the Torah. According to the Hebrew Bible, the tribe initially settled in the hill lands bordering Tribe of Ephraim, Ephraim and Tribe of Benjamin, Benjamin on the ...

. Bnei Brak was founded as an agricultural village by eight Polish

Hasidic Hasidism () or Hasidic Judaism is a religious movement within Judaism that arose in the 18th century as a spiritual revival movement in contemporary Western Ukraine before spreading rapidly throughout Eastern Europe. Today, most of those aff ...

families who had come to Palestine as part of the Fourth Aliyah. Yitzchok Gerstenkorn led them. It was founded about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the site of Biblical Beneberak. Bnei Brak was originally a

moshava A moshava (, plural: ''moshavot'' , ''colony'' or ''village'') was a form of agricultural Jewish settlement in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine (now Israel), established by the members of the Old Yishuv beginning in the late 1870s ...

, and the primary economic activity was the cultivation of citrus fruits. Due to a lack of land, many of the founders turned to other occupations, and the village began to develop an urban character. Arye Mordechai Rabinowicz, formerly rabbi of Kurów in Poland, was the first rabbi. He was succeeded by 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

beth midrash A ''beth midrash'' (, "house of learning"; : ''batei midrash''), also ''beis medrash'' or ''beit midrash'', is a hall dedicated for Torah study, often translated as a "study hall". It is distinct from a synagogue (''beth knesseth''), althoug ...

(Jewish study hall) situated in a special shack that 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'' (Torah lesson) and a

Gemara The Gemara (also transliterated Gemarah, or in Yiddish Gemore) is an essential component of the Talmud, comprising a collection of rabbinical analyses and commentaries on the Mishnah and presented in 63 books. The term is derived from the Aram ...

''shiur'' and an additional one in Mishnayos and the

Shulchan Aruch The ''Shulhan Arukh'' ( ),, often called "the Code of Jewish Law", is the most widely consulted of the various legal codes in Rabbinic Judaism. It was authored in the city of Safed in what is now Israel by Joseph Karo in 1563 and published in ...

." In 1928, the Great Synagogue was completed, and the village committee celebrated its inauguration by presenting statistics noting its development over the past four years. Bnei Brak, with a population of about 800 residents, covered about 2,000

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; ; ; ), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area analogous in role (but not equal) to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amo ...

s, including about 800 dunams which were citrus groves. It had 116 houses, 31 huts, six public buildings, and 48 cowsheds. In the summer of 1929, Bnei Brak was connected to the electricity grid. In the

1931 census of Palestine The 1931 census of Palestine was the second census carried out by the authorities of Mandatory Palestine. It was carried out on 18 November 1931 under the direction of Major E. Mills after the 1922 census of Palestine. * Census of Palestine 1931, ...

, the population of ''Benei Beraq'' was 956, all Jewish, in 255 houses.Mills, 1932, p
13
/ref> In 1940, it had 4,500 residents and 25 factories. In 1948, the population was 9,300. Bnei Brak achieved city status in 1950. In April 2020, the entire city of Bnei Brak was placed under quarantine due to the

coronavirus Coronaviruses are a group of related RNA viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans and birds, they cause respiratory tract infections that can range from mild to lethal. Mild illnesses in humans include some cases of the comm ...

outbreak. On 29 March 2022, a

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

man killed five people in a mass shooting.

Rabbinic presence

Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz (the ''Chazon Ish'') emigrated from

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

to Bnei Brak in its early days, and attracted a large following there. Leading rabbis who have lived in Bnei Brak include Yaakov Landau, Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky ("the Steipler"), Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman ( Ponevezher Rov), Elazar Menachem Mann Shach, Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz, Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, Nissim Karelitz, Shmuel Wosner and Chaim Kanievsky. In the early 1950s, the Vizhnitzer Rebbe, Chaim Meir Hager, founded a large neighborhood in Bnei Brak which continued to serve as a dynastic center under his son, Moshe Yehoshua Hager, and under his grandsons, Yisrael Hager and Menachem Mendel Hager. Beginning in the 1960s, the rebbes of the Ukrainian Ruzhin dynasty ( Sadigura, Husiatyn and Bohush) who had formerly lived in Tel Aviv, moved to Bnei Brak. In the 1990s, they were followed by the rebbe of Modzhitz. Unlike the former four Gerrer rebbes, who lived in Jerusalem, the current rebbe was a Bnei Brak resident until 2012. The rebbes of

Alexander Alexander () is a male name of Greek origin. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here ar ...

, Biala-Bnei-Brak, Koidenov, Machnovke, Nadvorne, Premishlan, Radzin, Shomer Emunim, Slonim-Schwarze, Strykov, Tchernobil, Trisk-Bnei-Brak and Zutshke also reside in Bnei Brak. Moshe Yehuda Leib Landau was the Rabbi of Bnei Brak until his death on March 30, 2019. He was a respected authority on ''

halakha ''Halakha'' ( ; , ), also Romanization of Hebrew, transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Judaism, Jewish religious laws that are derived from the Torah, Written and Oral Torah. ''Halakha'' is ...

'' (Jewish law) and ''

kashrut (also or , ) is a set of Food and drink prohibitions, dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to halakha, Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed ko ...

'' (kosher supervision). The "Rav Landau" '' hechsher'' (kosher certification) is widely accepted. Nissim Karelitz, chief rabbi (''av beis din'') of the Lithuanian

Haredi Haredi Judaism (, ) is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that is characterized by its strict interpretation of religious sources and its accepted (Jewish law) and traditions, in opposition to more accommodating values and practices. Its members are ...

community, heads a beth din (rabbinical court) of Lithuanian and

dayanim, called ''She'eris Yisroel''.

Demographics

According to figures by the municipality of Bnei Brak, the city has a population of over 181,000 residents, the majority of whom are Haredi Jews. In the

2021 Israeli legislative election Legislative elections were held in Israel on 23 March 2021 to elect the 120 List of members of the twenty-fourth Knesset, members of the 24th Knesset. It was the fourth Knesset election in two years, amidst the continued 2018–2022 Israeli poli ...

, 89% of the voters chose Haredi parties. Pardes Katz, a neighborhood of about 30,000 inhabitants in northern Bnei Brak, is the sole neighborhood of the city where the majority of residents are not Haredi. In 2022, Bnei Brak was ranked Israel's most densely populated city, with 28,000 people per square kilometer.

Mayors

*Yitzchok Gerstenkorn: 1939–1954 *Moshe Begno: 1954 *Reuven Aharonovich: 1954–1957, 1959–1966 *Shimon Soroka: 1968–1969 *Yitzchok Meir: 1974–1976 *Shmuel Weinberg: 1966–1968, 1978–1983 *Moshe Irenstein: 1983–1990, 1993–1995 *Yerachmiel Boyer: 1991–1993 *Mordechai Karelitz: 1998–2003 *Yissochor Frankenthal: 2003–2008 * Ya'akov Asher: 2008–2013 * Hanoch Zeibert: 2013–2018 * Avraham Rubinstein: 2018–2024 *Hanoch Zeibert: 2024–present

Economy

One of the landmarks of Bnei Brak is the

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a cola soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, Coke products were sold in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, with consumers drinking more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings ...

bottling plant in Kahaneman St. It is owned by the Central Bottling Company (CBC), which has held the Israeli franchise for Coca-Cola products since 1968. It is among Coca-Cola's ten largest single-plant bottling facilities worldwide. Two major factories which dominated the centre of Bnei Brak for many years were the Dubek cigarette factory and the Osem food factory. As the town grew they found themselves in the middle of a residential area, and both companies subsequently left the area. Osem's main factory is now located on Jabotinsky Road in

Petah Tikva Petah Tikva (, ), also spelt Petah Tiqwa and known informally as Em HaMoshavot (), is a city in the Central District (Israel), Central District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv. It was founded in 1878, mainly by Haredi Judaism, Haredi Jews of the Old Y ...

, just next to Bnei Brak. In 2011 construction started on a business district, which will include 15 office towers. Several of the towers of the Bnei Brak Business Center are already built , and other buildings won't be completed until after 2021.

Transportation

Railways

Bnei Brak–Ramat HaHayal railway station opened in 1949 as "Tel Aviv North station". It was renamed to Bnei Braq station in 1954. After a decline in importance of rail transport culminating in the closure of the station in the 1990s, the station was refurbished and reopened in 2000. The tracks through the station were electrified with the Israeli standard 25 kV 50 Hz AC in late 2021. In 2019 over a million passengers used the station.

Healthcare

Bnei Brak is home to

Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center (MHMC) is a Haredi Judaism, Haredi hospital in Bnei Brak, Israel. Initially focusing on Maternity hospital, maternity, it is now a Hospital#General and acute care, general hospital. MHMC's affairs are managed in st ...

(MHMC), a Haredi hospital. It is located on the east side of the city, on the outskirts of the Ramat Aharon and Or Haim neighborhoods. It serves the residents of Bnei Brak, along with nearby

Giv'at Shmuel Giv'at Shmuel () is a city in the Central District (Israel), Center District of Israel. It is located in the eastern part of the Gush Dan, Gush Dan metropolitan area and bordered by Ramat Gan and Bnei Brak to the West, Kiryat Ono to the South and P ...

, Petah Tikva and

Ramat Gan Ramat Gan (, ) is a city in the Tel Aviv District of Israel, located east of the municipality of Tel Aviv, and is part of the Gush Dan, Gush Dan metropolitan area. It is home to a Diamond Exchange District (one of the world's major diamond exch ...

. Founded in 1990, MHMC's initially focus was maternity, and now it is a general care facility. It consists of 18 medical departments and 32 outpatient clinics, including 12 dialysis units, a high-risk pregnancy ward and a

neonatal intensive care unit A neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), also known as an intensive care nursery (ICN), is an intensive care unit (ICU) specializing in the care of ill or premature newborn infants. The NICU is divided into several areas, including a critical c ...

. With a 320-bed capacity, MHMC handles 13,000 births, and carries out more than 6,000 surgical procedures per annum. It features a six-story Mental Health Center, which sponsors an eating disorder clinic. MHMC's affairs are managed in strict accordance with ''halakha''. It has been managed by three distinct groups: A board of directors, an association of rabbis and public servants, and most influential of all, the "Halakhic Supervision Committee", a rabbinical committee consisting of Shmuel Wosner, Nissim Karelitz and Yitzchok Zilberstein, with Yisrael Rand, a confidant of Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, serving as its secretary. Chaim Kanievsky was on its board of directors, as was

Moshe Lion Moshe Lion, or Moshe Leon (, born 6 October 1961), is an Israeli politician who is currently the Mayor of Jerusalem. He previously served as a member of the Jerusalem City Council, director-general of the Prime Minister's Office, Chairman of t ...

. If during any medical procedure there might arise some ''halakhic'' doubt, the medical staff will activate the ''halakhic'' team, which is headed by the hospital's

rabbi A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...

. Only after the ''halakhic'' ruling is issued can the medical activity be carried out. MHMC has its own beth midrash on the premises.

Culture and lifestyle

PikiWiki Israel 29686 Great Synagogue in Bnei Brak

After Mayor Gottlieb of the National Religious Party was defeated, Haredi parties grew in status and influence; since then they have governed the city. As the Haredi population grew, the demand for public religious observance increased and more residents requested the closure of their neighbourhoods to vehicular traffic on

Shabbat Shabbat (, , or ; , , ) or the Sabbath (), also called Shabbos (, ) by Ashkenazi Hebrew, Ashkenazim, is Judaism's day of rest on the seventh day of the seven-day week, week—i.e., Friday prayer, Friday–Saturday. On this day, religious Jews ...

. In a short period, most of Bnei Brak's secular and

Religious Zionist Religious Zionism () is a religious denomination that views Zionism as a fundamental component of Orthodox Judaism. Its adherents are also referred to as ''Dati Leumi'' (), and in Israel, they are most commonly known by the plural form of the fi ...

residents migrated elsewhere, and the city has become almost homogeneously Haredi. The city had one non-Haredi neighborhood, Pardes Katz, but it too has had an influx of Haredim and is today predominantly Haredi. Some names of streets with a Zionist connotation were renamed for prominent Haredi figures, such as Herzl Street south of Jabotinsky Street, which was changed to HaRav Shach Street. Bnei Brak is one of the two poorest

cities in Israel This article lists the 73 localities in Israel that the Ministry of Interior (Israel), Israeli Ministry of Interior has designated as a City council (Israel), city council. It excludes the 4 List of Israeli settlements with city status in the W ...

. A street in Bnei Brak was named after one of the town's founders who was a great-grandfather of murdered journalist

Daniel Pearl Daniel Pearl (October 10, 1963 – February 1, 2002) was an American journalist who worked for ''The Wall Street Journal.'' On January 23, 2002, he was kidnapped by Jihadism, jihadist militants while he was on his way to what he had expected wou ...

.Pearl, Ruth & Judea, eds.
I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl
''. Jewish Lights Pub., January 2004. . Bnei Brak is home to Israel's first women-only

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store under one roof, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store mad ...

, only one example of gender segregation in what is viewed as an ultra-orthodox city. Bnei Brak was home to one of the original gender-segregated bus lines that Israel's courts ruled were illegal. Mehadrin bus lines are a type of bus line in Israel that mostly ran in and/or between major Haredi population centers and in which

gender segregation Sex segregation, sex separation, sex partition, gender segregation, gender separation, or gender partition is the physical, legal, or cultural separation of people according to their gender or biological sex at any age. Sex segregation can si ...

and other rigid religious rules observed by some ultra-Orthodox Jews were applied until 2011. In these sex-segregated buses, female passengers sat in the back of the bus and entered and exited the bus through the back door if possible, while the male passengers sat in the front part of the bus and entered and exited through the front door. Additionally, ''

tzniut ''Tzniut'' ( , , ; "modesty" or "privacy"; ) describes the character trait of modesty and discretion, as well as a group of Jewish laws pertaining to conduct. The concept is most important within Orthodox Judaism. Description ''Tzniut'' i ...

'' (modest dress) was often required for women, playing a radio or secular music on the bus was avoided, and advertisements were censored. The Bnei Brak municipality set up an alternative

water supply Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavors or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Public water supply systems are crucial to properly functioning societies. Th ...

, for use on Shabbat and

Jewish holidays Jewish holidays, also known as Jewish festivals or ''Yamim Tovim'' (, or singular , in transliterated Hebrew []), are holidays observed by Jews throughout the Hebrew calendar.This article focuses on practices of mainstream Rabbinic Judaism. ...

. This supply, which does not require intervention by Jews on days of rest, avoids the problems associated with Jews working on the day of rest at Mekorot, the national water company. Most of the streets are closed on Shabbat and Jewish holidays. Bnei Brak won national attention when it lost a battle to remove the photos of women candidates from

Likud Likud (, ), officially known as Likud – National Liberal Movement (), is a major Right-wing politics, right-wing, political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon in an alliance with several right-wing par ...

election ads. Orly Erez-Likhovski, legal advisor of the Israel Religious Action Center declared it a victory for gender equality: In 2023, the Bnei Brak municipality made a loan of 20 million shekels to deal with the city's rat issue. Earlier that year in June, a toddler was bitten throughout by rats in bed and found covered by blood. She was then rushed to the hospital

(MHMC). According to a city councilor, Yaakov Vidar of Likud, who ranked the city as one of the dirtiest in Israel, the mayor first denied there was a rat issue then had to admit the problem after the pressure from him and Idit Silman, the Minister of Environmental Protection, but the mayor claimed his words were merely a sarcastic joke. The causes of the rodents were attributed to mishandling of garbage and sewage, and the creepy feature of limestone and brittle concrete that were used to build the city. The municipality also blamed the construction of Tel Aviv Light Rail disturbed the underground rats and forced them to move to the city.

Notable people of Bnei Brak

* Baruch Rosenblum, maggid * Baruch Ashlag, kabbalist * Yisroel Hager, Vizhnitzer Rebbe in * Chaim Kanievsky, leader of the ultra-orthodox Lithuanian Jews * Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, worldwide ''

posek In Jewish law, a ''posek'' ( , pl. ''poskim'', ) is a legal scholar who determines the application of ''halakha'', the Jewish religious laws derived from the written and Oral Torah, in cases of Jewish law where previous authorities are incon ...

'' * Simon Leviev, conman * Sesto Pals, writer *

Judea Pearl Judea Pearl (; born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belie ...

, professor * Shuli Rand, actor, writer, singer * Mary Schaps, mathematical scholar * Elazar Menachem Man Shach, leader of the ultra orthodox Lithuanian Jews * Dovid Shmidel, rabbi * Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, rabbi * Motty Steinmetz, singer * Tuvia Tenenbom, theater director and writer * Michal Waldiger, Knesset Member in the

Religious Zionist Party The Religious Zionist Party (), known as Tkuma () until 2021 and officially known as National Union–Tkuma (, ), was a Far-right politics in Israel, far-right, Ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist, Jewish supremacism, Jewish supremacist, and R ...

* Ariel Ze'evi (born 1977), Olympic

judo is an unarmed gendai budō, modern Japanese martial art, combat sport, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally.『日本大百科全書』電子版【柔道】(CD-ROM version of Encyc ...

International relations

Twin towns

Bnei Brak is twinned with: * Lakewood,

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

, since 2011

Gallery

File:בני ברק - מראה המושבה עם שער הכבוד.-JNF043493.jpeg, Bnei Brak 1925: "View of Colony with the Gate of Honor" File:בני ברק - מראה.-JNF045698.jpeg, Bnei Brak 1928 File:בני ברק - בית הספר.-JNF044403.jpeg, Bnei Brak, school 1931 File:Esh Sheikh Muwannis cropped.jpg, Bnei Brak (Benei Beraq) 1928 1:20,000 File:Petah Tiqva 1945.jpg, Bnei Brak (Benei Beraq) 1945 1:250,000

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * *

External links

{{Authority control 1924 establishments in Mandatory Palestine Cities in Tel Aviv District Orthodox Jewish communities Populated places established in 1924 Religious Israeli communities