In Jerusalem, a contest for mayor and Jewish identity

Nir Barkat strode briskly into the middle-class community center, looking every bit the retired Israeli paratroop commander he is. “We’ve got a big army in the field, ready to rock and roll,” he said, working the admiring crowd.

His “army” is a legion of 3,000 young volunteers who hand out leaflets and canvass door to door in support of the 49-year-old candidate for mayor of Jerusalem. Before introducing him, his campaign manager called for additional volunteers on election day, likening the task to “one day of reserve duty.”

In long-embattled Jerusalem, the combat imagery fits: Violence between Jews and the Holy City’s Palestinian Arab minority, after ebbing in the middle of this decade, is on the rise. Today’s mayoral election is part of a parallel struggle over Jerusalem’s Jewish identity, a conflict that affects how Jews and Arabs coexist here.

Barkat, a high-tech millionaire who heads an opposition group within the city council, calls himself the voice of Jerusalem’s shrinking population of secular Jews. Thousands flee each year, alienated from a city that has become poorer and more pious under the ultra-Orthodox rabbis who have governed it for five years and again nominated one of their own.

Soundly beaten in the 2003 election, Barkat has mobilized secular resentment to the verge of victory, holding a 12-point lead in a recent poll over Rabbi Meir Porush, his nearest rival. But the contest, one of dozens in Israel today, is considered tight because turnout among ultra-Orthodox voters is traditionally far higher than it is among less devout Jews.

No Arab is running for mayor in Jerusalem, and all but a tiny fraction of the city’s Arab voters are expected to stay home to protest Israel’s claim of sovereignty over all the city.

The electoral battle for the city’s Jewish identity could affect the U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that President-elect Barack Obama wants to sustain.

Israelis and Palestinians both claim Jerusalem as their capital, and many Jews bristle at the Palestinian demand for a divided city. If the urban flight causes Jews to lose their demographic edge, they would face a hard choice: Give up parts of Jerusalem to Palestinian governance or accept minority status in a city of deep religious and historical significance.

Speaking at a rapid-fire clip in the packed community center, Barkat ran the numbers for an attentive audience:

The city’s Jewish majority has been dwindling since Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed Arab neighborhoods.

Today, about two-thirds of the city’s 760,000 residents are Jewish, but their ranks are declining by about 6,000 per year despite a high ultra-Orthodox birthrate.

Together, the growing Palestinian and ultra-Orthodox populations make up slightly more than half the city’s population but hold fewer jobs than less devout Jews do and pay less in taxes.

“Jerusalem is becoming the country’s poorest city,” Barkat warned. “If this continues, we will lose the Jewish majority within 30 years.”

To reverse the trend, he said, Jerusalem needs more jobs, schools and affordable housing, especially for young, educated Jews who lack strong religious ties to the city and are being lured elsewhere.

“This takes business thinking,” Barkat added, holding up San Diego as a model and promising to attract biotechnology research centers and other high-tech ventures.

Barkat’s two main rivals have also pledged to halt Jewish flight and boost the city’s economy. But some voters view the choices with pessimism, doubting that any candidate can muster enough private or Israeli government funding to achieve that goal.

The three main candidates -- none from a major national party -- have limited appeal.

Arkady Gaydamak, 56, has won over some soccer fans by buying and boosting Beitar Yerushalayim, the local team. He’s also rescued a Jerusalem hospital from bankruptcy. But the Russian-born financier speaks poor Hebrew (“Gaydamak doesn’t talk, he acts,” read his campaign posters) and is on trial in absentia in France, where he once lived, accused of evading taxes and organizing illicit arms sales to Angola. He has pleaded not guilty.

Porush is viewed outside the ultra-Orthodox community as an unbending promoter of its political ascendancy and the socially conservative values it often tries to impose on others. Last week, he was recorded on tape predicting to a sympathetic audience in Yiddish that within 15 years Israeli cities will no longer have secular mayors.

With his long white beard and long black coat, Porush, 53, projects a more exotic and formidable image to secular Jews than the affable outgoing mayor, Rabbi Uri Lupolianski.

“Don’t judge me by the length of my beard but on my merit,” Porush quipped in campaign speeches, touting his 25 years in government service.

Barkat is not universally admired among secular Israelis, many of whom consider him too far to the right. Like his ultra-Orthodox rival, he advocates building thousands of new homes for Jews in East Jerusalem, a move that would aggravate Arab unrest.

Despite his perceived negatives, Barkat has rallied a large number of voters, secular and modern Orthodox, by turning the election into a new skirmish in Israel’s long-running Jewish culture war.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews, or haredim, are distinguishable by their black frock coats, hats and long dresses. They follow rituals spelled out in Jewish law, including prayer and quiet on the Sabbath.

Esti Kirmaier, who attended the community center meeting, said she joined Barkat’s campaign after ultra-Orthodox activists, apparently backed by city hall, began moving into her mostly secular neighborhood, throwing rocks at people driving on the Sabbath and admonishing women to dress more modestly.

“Secular people are at the edge of our patience,” said the economic consultant, 29. “It’s not that we’re afraid of the haredim or hate them. But they should not dictate to us. Jerusalem is a mosaic of many populations, and we have to respect each other.”

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boudreaux@latimes.com

Batsheva Sobelman of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.