Shababnikim

The series centers on Avinoam, Meir, Dov Lazer and Gedaliah, four students whose different relationships to religious study and wider Israeli society drive stories about friendship, dating, matchmaking and institutional authority.[1][2] Its comedy and satire also address military service, religious leadership, personal desire and Sephardi–Ashkenazi tensions.[2]

The title draws on modern Hebrew slang for yeshiva boys on the margins.[2] Earlier usage associated the term with youths who had left yeshiva and spent their time on city streets, sometimes drifting into crime; it subsequently also became a designation for young men who participate in both Haredi and modern-secular worlds.[3] Other recorded definitions include a yeshiva dropout, a youth who does not study, or someone who thinks secularly while retaining Haredi dress for cultural reasons.[4]

The Jewish Review of Books connects the word to Arabic shabab, meaning “youth,” and the Yiddish suffix -nik, interpreting this combination as suggestive of the cultural hybridity of Mizrahi students in Ashkenazi institutions.[2] In the television series, designer clothing, carefully chosen hats and other aspects of personal appearance help establish the protagonists’ position between religious convention and contemporary style.[3]

Eliran Malka said that after moving from Nahariya to Jerusalem, he encountered yeshiva students at a men’s gym and became interested in how they moved between traditional religious life and the wider modern world.[5] A yeshiva graduate himself, Malka wanted the characters to look appealing without losing credibility and imagined an alternate reality in which yeshiva students could be seen as cool.[6][7]

Malka developed the series with veteran producer Daniel, also known as Danny or Dani, Paran.[6][8] He spent months writing before Paran accepted the project, after which they worked on the script for four years.[6] Malka also recalled carrying the project among broadcasters for six years before it was made and credited Paran with encouraging him to persist.[8] Paran’s approach was to treat each character as an individual rather than reduce him to a religious type.[6]

Casting involved 700 auditions for the four principal roles, with the production seeking relatively unfamiliar actors undertaking their first leading prime-time parts.[9] The actors spent a week at a yeshiva learning how to speak and move in that environment, then developed clothing choices, including shoes, to suit their characters.[9] Malka particularly noted the distinctive walk developed by the actor playing Gedaliah while carrying a Gemara.[9] The Jewish Review of Books also recounts Malka’s statement that the production employed yeshiva students as regular consultants.[2]

The series was scheduled to premiere on HOT 3 and HOT VOD on December 24, 2017, with Maor Zaguri also involved as a director.[7] Its first season ran for 12 episodes.[10] Season two returned in 2021 after a gap of more than three years, and season three was showing on HOT 3, HOT VOD and Next TV in March 2025.[11][12] The first season was subsequently available to American viewers on ChaiFlicks under the title The New Black.[1]

The initial group forms when Gedaliah, a gifted but socially awkward scholar, is moved into the room occupied by the more rebellious Avinoam, Meir and Dov Lazer.[2] Their stories combine dating and matchmaking with conflict over institutional authority and interests beyond religious study.[2] The Jewish Review of Books describes the opening as deliberately extravagant: the head of the yeshiva delivers a spirited lecture beneath an ostentatious chandelier, which falls and kills him before the program cuts to a funky theme song.[2] His successor, Rabbi Ashi Spitzer, introduces an increasingly strict regime.[2]

The four leads are differentiated by background and conflict: Avinoam is the son of a prominent Sephardi Haredi Knesset member and is enchanted by secular society; Dov is the pampered son of an American businessman; Meir comes from a working-class North African family and struggles with his place in the yeshiva hierarchy; and Gedaliah is exceptionally devoted to Torah study while wrestling with personal desire.[1]

Meir’s place in the group brings ethnic and class hierarchies into the story.[2] In the interpretation of the Jewish Review of Books, he faces prejudice in the yeshiva and matchmaking worlds despite adopting Ashkenazi Haredi dress and speech, but receives an enthusiastic welcome in his working-class Mizrahi neighborhood, where neighbors value his Torah lessons and fertility blessings.[2] The same review contrasts Avinoam’s wish for acceptance in secular society with Dov’s readiness to defend his community’s dignity after a soldier insults Haredi avoidance of military service.[2]

In season two, Avinoam, Meir and Dov attempt entrepreneurship and high-tech work after expulsion from yeshiva, while Gedaliah wants to return to study and pursue rabbinic ordination.[11] Matchmaking remains important, and the characters encounter a secular study community across the street.[11] The Jewish Review of Books describes their eventual decision to establish “Chevron HaChadasha,” or “The New Hebron Yeshiva,” to protect their social prospects and marriageability.[1] They consequently confront the practical work of recruitment and maintaining a building as well as religious and personal disagreements.[1]

The new institution stands in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood beside a secular yeshiva depicted as a spiritual commune.[1] The Jewish Review of Books highlights encounters ranging from the neighbors helping the Haredi students assemble a minyan to an argument about moving a yoga class away from the yeshiva windows.[1] In one scene, the neighbors’ leader agrees to the requested move in exchange for Avinoam’s new MacBook.[1] By the end of the season, the four have lost their plan for the Rehavia yeshiva after a prolonged conflict with secular residents and head toward the Western Wall.[13]

Season three opens with Avinoam, Dov and Meir, without Gedaliah, attempting to find work as rabbis in a Jewish community in Rome.[13] They also work as low-ranking supervisors at the yeshiva from which they were expelled and later take responsibility for running Netivot Avraham after Rabbi Bloch transfers its management to them.[13] Gedaliah, now married to Deborah, becomes an inspector for the Ministry of Religious Services, placing him in a position to threaten the institution’s budget.[13][12]

The third season was initially planned as ten episodes, with an eleventh bonus episode written after October 7 to address the war and the characters’ response.[14] Malka said he had nearly finished writing when October 7 occurred and initially hesitated to engage with events that felt too close.[5] After encouragement from HOT drama head Mirit Tovey, he wrote a final episode that he described as moving away from escapism in recognition of a historic moment.[5]

Malka described the series as a story about “the collision of the old and the new,” rather than simply a story about yeshiva students.[8] He also explained that the four protagonists were, in a sense, one person divided into four so that the narrative could approach its subject from several angles.[8] His account of the show’s appeal rejected a simple secular–religious division: “There is something very close between the worlds. The paradigms break down. Everything is fluid.”[8]

The Jewish Review of Books emphasizes the contrast between the characters’ black-and-white dress and the production’s bright camerawork and eclectic soundtrack, which includes Israeli pop, Middle Eastern rock, folk, blues, funk and rap.[2] It interprets these choices as a way of depicting a less familiar Haredi subculture in which worldly interests coexist with yeshiva study.[2] Its later review identifies the 1980s rock song “Welcome to the Jungle” as the first season’s unlikely theme song and reads the conflict with the strict head of the yeshiva as favoring a more permissive but character-building approach.[1]

Religious learning and romance are intertwined rather than presented as separate narrative worlds.[1] The Jewish Review of Books characterizes the combination of style, romance and sophisticated religious content as novel, with the protagonists negotiating communal expectations, personal ambitions and questions about how to live a Jewish life.[1] It quotes one character’s formulation of the emotional intensity produced by restrained dating conventions: “there is no greater longing than the longing of a yeshiva bochur for a young woman who drank water for the first time across from him.”[1]

A Tikvah Ideas editors’ pick interprets the four men as seeking engagement with the outside world without intending to leave their communities, and describes the series as lighter in tone than Shtisel.[15] It presents the second season as a portrayal of what Israeli media call the “new Haredim.”[15] For his part, Malka has argued that integration involves education, higher education and work as well as military enlistment, framing the characters as people negotiating religious and modern identities.[5]

The first season became one of Israel’s most discussed new television shows, and HOT’s published ratings placed it as the channel’s most-watched program of the preceding year, ahead of other original productions and imported series including Game of Thrones and The Handmaid’s Tale.[10] It quickly attracted millions of viewers on the channel.[6] Asked whether Haredi viewers watched, Malka joked that he had heard yeshiva study halls were empty on Monday nights, when the series aired.[6]

Published coverage was inconsistent about the total at the 2018 Israeli Academy of Film and Television awards: Ynet’s introduction said the series won three awards, while its results table listed four—Best Comedy, Best Screenplay, Best Direction and Best Actor for Ori Laizerovich.[16] Its recognition accompanied an approach to religious characters that Paran described as grounded in individuality rather than in religious labels.[6]

Sapir Journal characterizes Shababnikim as a raucous comedy about four misfits at an elite yeshiva and places it among Israeli screen works offering viewers feeling, knowledge, passion and connection with Jewish tradition.[17] The Jewish Review of Books argues that its stylized treatment can ring true even though its approach differs from productions celebrated primarily for ethnographic attention to detail.[2]

In 2018, two yeshiva students were reported to have been expelled after appearing as extras in the series, although yeshiva sources disputed the reported expulsions.[18] One student said he had participated in filming about two years earlier and had not expected his appearance to become known; a casting agent said other students had asked for broadcasts to be stopped or their appearances removed.[18] Malka appealed for the students’ readmission, while Maor Zaguri defended television’s ability to portray the complexity and warmth of communities in ways that could bring Israelis closer together.[18]

Debate has also concerned the relationship between stylization and representation.[1] The Jewish Review of Books argues that the series is not an exact realist rendering of Haredi life and identifies Deborah’s religious feminism as closer to religious Zionist settings than to typical Haredi life in the reviewer’s account.[1]

The third season appeared amid heightened sensitivity over Haredi men who neither study Torah nor enlist.[13] A Walla reviewer criticized its lack of direct engagement with the current security situation, while Malka defended its exploration of religious and modern identities and explained that an additional final episode addressed the events following October 7.[13][5] He also described a storyline involving Avinoam’s father and attitudes toward gay people as an exploration of generational differences within the Haredi community, drawing on the example of Shas politician Yigal Guetta attending his nephew’s same-sex wedding.[5]