The Ultra-Orthodox Live in a Black Box, So One Haredi Man Opened His Home to Secular Israelis
In an interview with Eli Guthelf, Daniel Kalmus explains how growing up between Haredim and religious Zionists, serving in the IDF, and meeting Israelis who had never personally known a Haredi person led him to found an initiative aimed at bridging one of the deepest rifts in Israeli society. Can a meeting around the Shabbat table do what politics and the media have failed to do for years? | Watch (Kikar FM) Daniel Kalmus in an interview with Eli Guthelf 10 10 0:00 / 1:12:48
"The Haredi public lives in some kind of black box that no one knows what is happening inside." This is not criticism from a political commentator, not an academic claim, and not a line spoken by a fierce opponent of Haredi society. It is Daniel Kalmus's own assessment. Kalmus, a Haredi man from Beit Shemesh, has in recent years found himself repeatedly cast in an unofficial role, "the representative of the Haredim." Wherever he went, he was asked the same questions. Why do Haredim live this way?
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Why do they marry through matchmaking? Why don't they enlist? Why do they oppose some of the values of the modern world? And the question that came up more than any other was much simpler: why is it so hard to meet Haredim?
From that question was born "Bo Nesshev" (Let's Sit), an initiative that connects secular and Haredi Israelis through personal meetings, Shabbat meals and open conversations. But to understand how he got there, one has to go back a long way.
The Haredi boy who was "the strange bird"
Kalmus was born in Brazil to a Haredi family that immigrated to Israel when he was two. The family settled in a religious Zionist community, and he grew up for years living between two worlds. In the community, he was almost the only Haredi boy. At school, he was different. In cheder, he studied alongside religious Zionist children. The gaps were visible in every possible detail, clothing, language, habits, Shabbat, culture. "I was always the strange bird," he says. As a child, he did not wrestle with big ideological questions. He simply wanted to be like everyone else. He wanted to wear the same shoes, look like his friends, not be the one immediately marked as different.
But as he grew older, the external difference turned into deeper questions about identity, faith and way of life. At age 12, he made a rather unusual decision for a boy his age. He began distancing himself from friends who were exposed to the world of smartphones and the internet, after, he says, he saw where some of those processes led among older young people. "I saw the road they were going down and I told myself I don't want to be there," he says. The decision sometimes left him lonely. Some of his new friends were three years younger than him. But for him, it was a conscious choice.
The move to Beit Shemesh and the encounter with the Haredi world
The social loneliness eventually led to a conversation with his parents. He asked why they continued to live in a place where he felt unusual in almost every possible way. That question led to a move to Ramat Beit Shemesh. On the surface, that seemed like the end of the story. At last he had arrived in a fully Haredi environment. But in practice, a new stage began.
In the yeshivas where he studied, he again found himself in a special role. This time, not as someone explaining to secular Israelis what a Haredi person is, but as someone explaining to Haredim questions of faith, outlook and identity. At the home where he grew up, questions were encouraged. His father, who for years was involved in outreach and work with diverse audiences, was not intimidated by complex discussions. "There were no questions without answers," he says. That habit, of looking for answers and explaining them to others, would stay with him later as well.
From COVID to the IDF
Then came COVID. Kalmus describes a period of complete stagnation. The yeshivas closed, the lockdowns took over daily life, and he found himself sleeping for long hours and lacking direction. At some point he decided to stop the slide. He went looking for work, found a job at a watch store in Jerusalem, and later began studying computers as part of a vocational training program.
During that period, he got married, became a father, and had to make another major decision, whether to continue on the customary Haredi path or enlist. In the end, after consulting his rabbi, he chose a technological track in the IDF. But even there he discovered that the gaps between Haredi society and the wider public were much deeper than he had thought.
He describes struggles over mehadrin kashrut, efforts to maintain a Haredi way of life within a system that is not always prepared for it, and a sense of frustration when he was separated from his work team because of his demand to keep halachic boundaries. That experience did not distance him from Israeli society. On the contrary. It exposed him to hundreds of people who had never met a Haredi person up close.
"They only know Haredim through the media"
As meetings with soldiers, employees and high-tech workers multiplied, Kalmus noticed a recurring pattern. People wanted to ask. They wanted to understand. They wanted to get acquainted. But they almost never had anyone to ask. "What do secular Israelis know about Haredim? Media," he says. In his view, most secular Israelis are fed reports about political battles, protests, the draft law or extreme incidents, while Haredi life itself is almost inaccessible to the broader public.
That gap became especially clear when he was invited to speak with pre-army preparatory students. At the end of one meeting, a participant approached him and asked a simple question: why isn't there a way to meet Haredim? Why should anyone who wants to get to know the Haredi world have to wait for a rare, arranged encounter? Why isn't there a place where people can simply sit and talk? For him, that was the turning point.
"Bo Nesshev", not outreach, acquaintance
That is how "Bo Nesshev" was born, an initiative that tries to do something that has almost disappeared from Israeli society, get people to meet before they argue. Kalmus did not set up an information website, did not launch another YouTube channel explaining why Haredim think this way or that, and did not try to persuade anyone to change their way of life. In his view, the problem begins long before the argument over the draft law, Shabbat or the relationship between religion and state. The problem is that millions of Israelis live side by side, but know almost nothing about one another.
"Bo Nesshev" was born from that simple understanding. On the site, Haredim from across the country can create a personal profile and invite Israelis to a real meeting, a family Shabbat meal, a living room conversation, an evening coffee or a group gathering. Each family presents itself, its way of life, its story and the type of meetings it is willing to host. On the other side, anyone curious, secular, traditional, religious or anyone who has never sat around a Haredi Shabbat table can choose the family that interests them and make direct contact.
The idea driving the initiative is that for years Israeli society has learned to know Haredim through screens, through stories about political crises, reports on demonstrations, viral social media videos and headlines that by nature seek out the unusual and extreme. But almost no one knows the everyday moments, the father returning from the kolel and reading a story to his children, the mother hosting a family in distress, the family Shabbat table, the conversations, the humor, the doubts and life itself. "Bo Nesshev" seeks to expose exactly those places. Not Haredi society as it is presented from the outside, but as it is experienced from within.
Today, the initiative already has Haredi hosts from a range of communities, Hasidic, Lithuanian, Sephardi, Chabad and others, and Kalmus hopes to expand the circle far beyond that. For him, every family that joins is another door that opens, and every guest who arrives is another person who replaces prejudice with human contact. "You don't have to agree on everything," he says. "You can leave a conversation and still remain with disagreements. But it is much harder to hate someone after you have sat in their living room, eaten dinner with them and heard their story."
Anyone who wants to host, open their home and present their world, or alternatively anyone who wants to get to know up close the Haredi society beyond the headlines and stereotypes, is invited to enter the "Bo Nesshev" website and join the expanding circle of Israelis who chose to replace argument with meeting. Perhaps דווקא in a time when it seems each side is busy talking about the other, it is time simply to sit with them.
The big disagreement that lies beneath the surface
During the conversation, the draft law naturally comes up as well, the issue that in recent years has become one of the central points of tension between Haredim and secular Israelis. Kalmus does not ignore it. But in his view, the dispute is broader. The argument is not only about enlistment, but about entirely different worldviews, Judaism, state, public space, identity, family and values.
He does not expect people to agree with one another. For him, that is not necessary. The goal is to understand. To know. To hear the person in front of you before you judge them. In other words, before trying to solve the dispute, first you have to meet the person on the other side of it.
And perhaps that is the real question his initiative poses to Israeli society: if each side is sure it already knows exactly who is standing opposite it, how is it possible that every personal encounter still manages to surprise anew?
