Ultra-orthodox jews and business

Today the New York Times included an interesting piece about business appeals to ultra-orthodox in Israel. I thought it was interesting because it took the angle of attempts to gain their business and combined it with what turned out to be almost a profile piece of the community.

It starts out by giving an example of how the ultra-orthodox guy uses his cell phone. It explains how the Rabbi must approvde it and what the differences are with other phones. it then segues into an explanation of who ultra orthodox are, what, generally, their requirements are, where they live, and how many.

The next section goes into the growing sector of business that appeals to ultra orthodox, showing a diversity. It then gives an example of a pizza shop owner who was closed and threatened by them. This is almost the signal for transitioning into more extensive critiques. They tell another story some people who were attacked. It's interesting but I'm not sure the second case was related to this angle. It demonstrated how their restrictions on themselves can lead them to try and restrict others but it wasn't related to economy in this case, like it was in the first example.

in this case I would have liked a little more background about who these people are. How did they form (actually they have a super interesting history that you wouldn't expect, it's relatively youthful movement even though it looks very very old.)