I tend to think I have a fairly good grasp of Jewish lingo, but this YNet article on a real-life haredi West Side Story used a word I’d somehow never come across: Shababnik.
YNet defines this as “a yeshiva dropout.” FailedMessiah defines it as “a kid who hangs out on the streets and doesn’t learn.” According to a TalkBack post on YNet, a shababnik is “a person from a haredi family who thinks secular but for cultural reasons dresses with a Kippa and like a Hareidi.”
Two questions I haven’t answered yet: Can a girl be a shababnik or does it specifically refer to haredi young men? Where does the word come from?
haredi
Pronounced: hah-RAY-dee, Origin: Hebrew, literally “in awe of” or “fearing” God, this means ultra-Orthodox or fervently Orthodox.
yeshiva
Pronounced: yuh-SHEE-vuh or yeh-shee-VAH, Origin: Hebrew, a traditional religious school, where students mainly study Jewish texts.
