Hebrew word of the week: Datlashim

Currents and counter-currents are common in every democratic society. So, while there are many Hozrim bitshuvah, “secular or atheist Jews who become Orthodox (frum),” there are also many Hozrim bish’elah, “Orthodox who become secular.”* Recently, these have been called datlashim, an acronym for datiyyimle-she-’avar, “formerly religious, or ex-Orthodox).” 

However, there seem to be various kinds or levels of “de-frum-ing,” such as Hardalashim, meaning “ex-Charedic”; datlashim layit, meaning “light ex-frum”; datlashim kippah, “ex-frum who still wear a yarmulke”; and datlashim lashim, “ex-frum who become frum again.”

*Literally: “return with a question,” a wordplay with the traditional expression Hozrim bi-tshuvah (literally, as if “return with an answer”), the traditional idiom for “repentant Jews, returning to God” (as in Isaiah 55:7).

Yona Sabar is a professor of Hebrew and Aramaic in the department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA