The Kamatech project announced on the evening of April 20 the winners of its competition at a glamorous celebration attended by former President Shimon Peres, startup guru Yossi Vardi and other high-tech veterans. An accelerator for ultra-Orthodox high-tech ventures, the success of Kamatech is a sign that something is changing in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox society.

One of the great rifts in the country is between secular society, which sees itself as carrying the weight of sustaining the state through work and military service, and ultra-Orthodox society, most of whose streams believe that they contribute to the state through Torah study. Many married ultra-Orthodox men study at rabbinical colleges (yeshivas) and receive a stipend, while the women bear the burden of earning a livelihood. There are some who do work for a living, but for the most part, ultra-Orthodox men are still not integrated in the job market.

But progress, technology and life outside their community have nonetheless seeped into the margins of the ultra-Orthodox centers over the past few years. Bnei Brak, the overwhelmingly ultra-Orthodox city adjacent to Tel Aviv, is slowly becoming the ultra-Orthodox Silicon Valley. Many of those who made it into the last round of the Kamatech project live there.

Six high-tech ventures by ultra-Orthodox submitters were chosen for participation in the project. Each of them will benefit from four months of close mentorship at leading Israeli high-tech firms, legal advice and accounting services. At the end of the process they can present their vision to investors in Tel Aviv, London or New York for support to fuel their ventures.