This is what Jerusalem’s Geula neighborhood, a predominantly Haredi Jewish area, looks like during Hanukkah in December 2025: narrow streets, cold Jerusalem stone, and rows of menorahs glowing behind improvised glass cases. There is a clear preference here to minimize the use of the internet and television, and in many cases to do without them altogether. As a result, world-shaking events, including the recent attack in Sydney, Australia, barely register in local awareness. Not out of indifference, but because information simply does not arrive. News does not move in real time, and the streets follow a quieter rhythm, where light is physical and tangible rather than digital.
What does a Haredi neighborhood in Jerusalem look like when it lives outside time?
Geula was established in the early 20th century as part of the Haredi expansion beyond the walls of the Old City, adjacent to Meah Shearim. Since then, generations of Jerusalem families have lived here in near-continuous succession, often within the same family line for decades. It is a dense, tightly knit neighborhood, filled with synagogues, schools, and small local shops, where tradition is not a slogan but a daily routine. Its boundaries are cultural as much as geographic, and when a mobile phone shop opens in the area, it often encounters protests and community pressure aimed at closing it or pushing it beyond the neighborhood’s borders.
