Pashkevilim.

You may not be familiar with the word. But if you have spent any time visiting some of Jerusalem’s or Bnei Brak’s ultra-orthodox neighbourhoods, you most certainly have seen them. They are the posters which denounce various initiatives of the Israeli government, deny the use of cellphones, and demand that visitors be clothed in modest garb.

In a world where communication is instantaneous and mobile – and in a country known as start-up nation – it is startling to find that a community relies on text-based posters as their means of communication.

A survey of these posters will find them agitating against:

• the use of computers, the Internet and smartphones
• the selling of non-kosher meat
• starting to smoke
• displays of violence by igniting garbage or throwing of stones
• the defiling of Jerusalem with “acts of Sodom”

They invariably use huge fonts to mark the passing of a revered rabbi and are peppered with headlines like “Strong protest!”, “Huge danger!”, “The earth is trembling!”, “Wake up Jerusalem!” and the succinct “Gevalt!”

Although I don’t give much thought to these posters after leaving Mea Shearim, I was pleased to learn that others had. Thanks to the efforts of Israel’s National Library, you can gain a unique glimpse into a fascinating community.

Recently, while surfing the web, I chanced upon the National Library website and learned that it had scanned over 10,000 Pashkevilim – and has made thousands available online (with more here.) That they have done this is impressive but the backstory is equally remarkable.

It never would have happened without the efforts of Yoel Krois. As told in an interesting article in the Jerusalem Post, Krois is an unofficial spokesman of the Toldot Aharon, a virulently anti-Zionist Hassidic sect in Jerusalem who has been collecting pashkevilim for a quarter-century. Krois had shared his collection with researchers for a while but a major breakthrough happened several years ago when he made his massive collection available to the Hebrew University’s National Library. The irony is that Krois’ sect, the Eda Hareidit, bans its members from setting foot in the National Library due to its collection of non-holy books.

“It’s forbidden for me to go there, but it’s not forbidden for me to give them things,” Krois told the Jerusalem Post – as the paper noted “with a sly grin.”

For Israeli’s National Library, this was a major find and an important window into a very insular community. “Pashkevilim are the most important communication tool [for hareidim],” said Dr. Hezi Amiur, the Israel Collections curator at the National Library. “People are really interested in pashkevilim because people are really interested in haredim. It’s a really closed community and someone who’s not inside doesn’t understand, so there’s a lot of curiosity.”

The collection’s posters date from the 19^th to the 21^st century and address four major themes as the ultra-Orthodox society struggles with a changing environment. They focus on:

• preserving the values of the community and the importance of education
• struggles and conflicts with the state
• the haredi woman and her status
• coping with the impact of modern technology and media

The National Library has created a Hebrew-only website about the history of pashkevelim, The Writing is on the Wall. However, if you click on this link you will get a readable version automatically translated into English.

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 Pashkevilim have also caught the eye of scholars who have studied them to gain insight into a community that shuns scrutiny from academics. In one study, Hananel Rosenberg and Tsuriel Rashi have looked at how pashkevilim were as part of a massive campaign to force the replacement of commercial mobile phones with “kosher cell phones” that can make and receive calls but have no other capabilities. They found that while the campaign against smartphones had mixed results in ultra Orthodox newspapers, posters were more successful. They created the impression that there was a public movement against this technology and that the rabbis were simply acceding to the peoples’ wishes.

And what about that strange word, “pashkevilim?” Neither Hebrew nor Yiddish, its origins are actually Italian. In the somewhat provocatively titled article, A Nude Who Inspired Modesty, the Forward explains that pashkevilim date back to a Signore Pasquino, a citizen of Rome in the early 16^th century. As the theory goes, a headless bust had been discovered and was mounted on a busy thoroughfare. Pasquino would affix satires and criticisms onto the bust in what the Forward dubs “a kind of anti-papal bulletin board.” The bust was eventually given a name, a pasquinata. “By the end of the 16th century, the word pasquinata was being used to describe such public lampoons, which were being placed on other statues in Rome, too.” The word bounced around the continent – and the centuries – to the French pasquil, the English “pasquinade,” (meaning a satire or lampoon,) the Polish paszkwil, the Yiddish pashkvil and finally, Hebrew.

Next time, fighting back against pashkevilim – and tips for spotting fake ones.