Dudi Weissman is one of probably very few businessmen who have been severely impacted by the ultra-Orthodox boycott on businesses that open on the Sabbath. In 2006, Weissman purchased the AM:PM chain of 24/7 convenience stores in Israel and refused to close it on the Sabbath. The ultra-Orthodox rabbinical Committee for the Sanctity of the Sabbath warned him that if he continued desecrating the Sabbath — keeping the stores open on Saturdays — the ultra-Orthodox would avoid not only the convenience stores, but also his supermarket chain, Shefa Shuk, which targets the ultra-Orthodox sector and does close on Saturdays. However, Weissman did not give in to what he deemed "religious coercion."

Soon enough, Weissman was sustaining huge losses, and branches of the Shefa Shuk supermarket chain started closing one after the other. He then reopened the chain under a new name — Zol BeShefa — but the ultra-Orthodox community steered clear of these stores, too. Thus, after years of major losses, while insisting on keeping the chain and refusing to cave to ultra-Orthodox pressure, Weissman gave up and sold the chain.

This story is indicative of the potential of the targeted and efficient use of consumer purchasing power — in this case, the purchasing power of ultra-Orthodox consumers. At the same time, it illustrates the tenacious struggle waged by the ultra-Orthodox community for several decades now over the image of the Jewish state, as the community perceives it — a struggle over the operation of public transportation and shopping centers on the Sabbath.

Today, a similar struggle is taking place over the Big shopping center in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod. In a rally at the end of April and in another demonstration May 18, the local rabbinical committee threatened to boycott the entire chain of Big shopping centers and to impose "economic sanctions" on it by exerting pressure on insurance companies and equity funds to withdraw their investments from the Big group, in Israel and worldwide.