By Ronen Zvulun

Coming back home at 5am sunrise, I was just beginning to digest the grand event I was lucky to witness and cover: the wedding of the grandson of one of the most influential spiritual leaders in Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community.

GALLERY: ULTRA-ORTHODOX WEDDING EXTRAVAGANZA

The wedding, attended by some 25,000 people, was a massive event that was conducted like a military operation.

How do you take care of thousands of people, feed them, accommodate them, seat them and provide safety for the huge crowd? There was a 20-story stand that needed to hold thousands of dancing Hasidic men.

“One million plastic cups” bragged one of the ultra-Orthodox men who I was squeezed in next to. A team responsible for managing the event were running around, communicating through radio headsets. A control room overlooked every corner of the venue and a production company was responsible for the live coverage of the celebration, which was displayed on large screens placed throughout the neighborhood, giving people who couldn’t make it into the venue itself an opportunity to witness the wedding.

The female guests sat some two kilometers (1.2 miles) away from the men in a separate hall, where they followed the men’s celebration on large screens.

About 50 percent of prime-time television in Israel is taken up by reality television programs. Members of the Hasidic community are often isolated from the secular society and would not watch popular television shows. This made me think that this celebration, which drew large numbers from their homes, was like the Hassidic community’s prime-time viewing. It can be thought of as a kind of “reality show” within the Hasidic community.

At the end of the day, the massive turnout from various sects of the ultra-Orthodox community who came to show their respect for the legacy of the Belz community and its spiritual leader, Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach, left its mark on me.

As a native of Jerusalem, an Orthodox Jews’ appearance is not alien to me. The thought which often comes to mind when thinking about the ultra-Orthodox community is “so close yet so far”.

SLIDESHOW: ISRAEL’S ULTRA-ORTHODOX

How does my life as a secular person differ from the life of a Haredi man (Hebrew for “those who tremble (before God)?

How different are the lives of my daughters from that of a child growing up in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood: the education, the atmosphere at home, the games, the books, the Western-based culture in which my family lives versus the sheltered lives of the Haredim. Nonetheless, despite all these differences, I find the common ground between us and am mostly welcomed when I cover their reality.

I photographed the Kreus family preparing for the Sabbath on a Friday evening. As a father of two, I was amazed to see how a family of 14 works in harmony like a well-oiled machine. One child peels potatoes while the eldest dresses her siblings as others go to help relatives nearby.

Their house is small, including a simple kitchen, two bedrooms and a front courtyard yet nothing feels missing. I can’t help feeling as if I went back in time while photographing the family.

The eldest daughter, 13-year-old Ester, opens a cabinet door and suddenly disappears, for a second I don’t understand where she disappeared to and then it dawned on me, there is another room in the house, a basement only accessible through the cabinet door, that the family uses as an additional bedroom.

At some stage the smell of food fills the house and an entirely different atmosphere starts to take over, the switch from a week day to a holy day is clearly felt.

At the end of the day and the shoot, I returned home before the Sabbath with a sweet, freshly baked traditional loaf of bread and with a feeling of connection to the family that had opened their home to me, despite the rather closed-off, tight-knit community to which they belong.