Orthodox Jews protesting the legal opening of a public parking space on Shabbat.

 Prayer at the Kotel.

 "am ysrael chai" / "the people of Israel are alive"

"lo etzleynu" / "not at our place"

These are just some of the photographs we looked at in our last class, depicting the tension that exists in Israel today between Orthodox and secular Jews. Upon first viewing the photos had no captions, and we were free to interpret them just by what we saw in the picture. We discussed our observations, what we thought each photo was revealing to us, and then we uncovered the captions... 

So what did we learn? That pictures truly are worth a thousand words and that some conflicts are more than surface-deep. The religious tension is visible on the surface, but it permeates life in Israel in a deeper way too, as some of the photographs didn't immediately show the tension... you needed the caption to understand that it was a depiction of conflict.

Here are some of our own reflections:

"As opposed to facts and information, a photograph can capture a raw moment - raw tension, raw fear, raw passion. It's true that a photo can push an agenda, but there is something to be said for the power of a photograph, even a staged one. The photos we looked at today were compelling. It seemed like no one tried to doll these images up, make them look pretty (with the exception of a few), and I think that's highly reflective of the conflict itself."

"When I was in Israel myself the tension between religious and secular Jews was very apparent - you walk through the old city and Orthodox Jews are everywhere...but at the holiest of sites you also see secular Jews, right there beside them. The irony of that just dawned on me with this activity. Photography is such a beautiful way to capture it because the conflict between the two ends of the spectrum is age-old and photography has the ability to freeze it in time, static, like the tension itself in many ways."