Correspondent in Jerusalem
Neatly rolled peyots, felt hat and long black coat: Just three days ago, Ariel* passed unnoticed in the streets of Mea Shearim, the large Orthodox Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, but this morning he is a slumped teenager, feet naked, on a gray sofa, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, playing with his mobile phone.
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Three days ago, Ariel reported to the army to do his military service.
It was the only solution available to him to leave his community of ultra-Orthodox Jews.
On the instructions of an army adviser, he pushed open the door of a small house in the suburbs of Jerusalem.
There, they cut off his red locks, stripped him of his black coat and, for the first time, he put on jeans.
From his old life he has kept only heavy iron-rimmed glasses which fall on the end of his nose and which he regularly pulls up.
But his new look does not matter to him: we always have him…
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