Clash With Ultra-Orthodox Believers : Secular Jews Retaliate in Jerusalem ‘Sabbath Wars’

It was last May and Lia van Leer, director and founder of Jerusalem’s Cinematheque theater complex, was at one of those traditional Saturday night socials where Israelis get together at someone’s apartment for coffee, dessert and often-animated political discussion.

A few days before, she had sent a small shock wave through the capital by opening her theater on Friday night in apparent violation of a religiously inspired city-wide ban on film showings during the Jewish Sabbath. And one of the other guests wanted to know why.

“Somebody has to start standing up to those people,” Van Leer replied.

There was no need, in this gathering of upper-middle-class, mostly non-observant Israelis, to explain that “those people” are Jerusalem’s fast-growing population of militantly religious Jews, usually referred to as the “ultra-Orthodox” or, in Hebrew, as haredim --the “fearful” of God.

The haredim are opposed to public film showings anywhere in the country on the Sabbath, but they particularly object to them in what they see as the uniquely holy city of Jerusalem.

Four months later, Van Leer’s action has triggered a new round of secular-religious conflict in Israel, known this time as Jerusalem’s “Sabbath wars.”

Up to 1,000 riot-equipped police, backed by water cannons have been deployed for the last three weekends here to separate rival haredi and secular demonstrators. By last Friday, three additional Jerusalem theaters were screening movies on the Sabbath, and on Monday about 25,000 religious Jews responded with a protest “pray-in” at the Western, or Wailing, Wall.

There is probably no other issue which inspires such powerful passions here as does the secular-religious question. It has become almost trite for Israelis to say that the Arab-Israeli conflict will probably be resolved long before it is possible to bridge the gap between the country’s haredim and its non-religious.

In the apocalyptic terms usually used here to describe the conflict, the secularists see the haredim as fanatics intent on turning Israel into a theocracy, or religious state, while the ultra-Orthodox depict the secularists as amoral hedonists leading the Jewish people to ruin.

The conflict is exacerbated nationally because of the political stalemate between Israel’s two major secular parties. That gives the small religious parties, which hold the balance of power, disproportionate influence.

As Van Leer’s comment of last spring suggests, however, the current secular-religious clash is different from those that have preceded it through much of the history of the Jewish state.

While those earlier confrontations were usually triggered by an aggressive, religious minority trying to assert itself against a clearly dominant secular majority, this time it is the secular Israelis who are feeling embattled and so have turned to take the offensive.

David Rosen, a former chief rabbi of Ireland who lived and studied among Jerusalem’s haredim for three years in the 1960s, remarked:

“When I came to that world, there was an overwhelming feeling of being under siege by a triumphalist secular society that had its own way.”

Tables Have Turned

But now the tables have turned, and it is the secular resident of Jerusalem who exhibits “a fear that didn’t exist in the ‘60s,” added Rosen, currently director of interreligious relations for the Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

Neither side shows any readiness to back down in the current clash, and officials are concerned that the situation could get out of hand.

“I’m worried that the whole decision on this will go to the streets,” commented City Councilman Meir Porush, who represents the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel political party. However, he added in an interview, “I don’t know how we can live together in Jerusalem if they show movies on the Sabbath.”

A whole series of secular taunts based on the Hebrew word dosim, or “religious,” are now common parlance. “Dros kol dos”-- “Run over all religious,” admonishes one. Mea Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood on Jerusalem’s near north side, is known as “Dos-neyland,” and militant secularists are “Dos-busters.”

Last week, an unknown assailant, believed to be a militant secularist, cut off the payots, or earlocks, of a religious 11-year-old boy. And a secular Jerusalem city councilman told a meeting of his political party about a plan to provoke the haredim by sending a scantily clad woman into Mea Shearim along with truckloads of secular youths ready to battle any ultra-Orthodox Jews who might protest.

“In no country of the world, except this one, have I ever been spat on because I’m a Jew,” said one haredi man.

Secular Israelis say these actions are only a response to ultra-Orthodox violence.

Michael Elkins, a retired broadcaster, said he and a companion were showered with glass two Fridays ago when a haredi demonstrator hurled a bottle through his windshield as he drove home from a dinner party along a downtown street. To the ultra-Orthodox, driving on the Sabbath is a violation of religious laws.

“I understand when Arabs throw stones,” an angry Elkins commented. “They’ve got every reason to be our enemies--so they define themselves and so we, for the most part, define them. But as far as I’m concerned, all these (ultra-Orthodox) people are bastards. For the first time in my life, other than the Nazis, I’m in a position of hating an entire community. Their concept of ‘Jew unto Jew’ is like Cain unto Abel, and I’m prepared to confront them at every level now.”

Many Are Anti-Zionist

Secular and some more moderate religious Israelis resent it that most of the ultra-Orthodox recognize only limited powers of the state. Many do not pay taxes. Some are virulently anti-Zionist. And, perhaps worst of all, the critics say, most haredim do not serve in the army under an exemption for those engaged full-time in religious studies.

At the same time, their critics say, these same haredim seem to have the power to circumscribe the life styles of secular Israelis who do support the state and even risk their lives for it in the military.

“To some extent, I can understand their point of view,” said Shimon Naftalis, an American-born translator and ultra-Orthodox resident of Mea Shearim. “But we have a different point of view.”

It was strict adherence to their religious faith that maintained Jewish identity through 2,000 years in the Diaspora, Naftalis said. Without the haredim, in this view, there would have been no Jews around to build the Jewish state.

The conflict spilled over into the port city of Haifa last weekend, when religious protesters, demonstrating against the showing of films on the Sabbath there, roughed up two journalists and tipped over tables at an outdoor cafe.

Still, nowhere else in Israel is secular-religious tension nearly as high as in Jerusalem.

For one thing, the restrictions of the so-called status quo are more stringent here than elsewhere. “Status quo” is a term relating to the series of laws and understandings, dating from the earliest days of the state, which are supposed to govern secular-religious relations in Israel.

The status quo requires that the Israeli army observe kosher rules, for example, and that public transportation and movie theaters be shut down in Jerusalem--but not in Haifa or Tel Aviv--on the Sabbath.

“The problem is that the status quo is based on the standards of the 1950s, not the 1990s,” said Meron Benvenisti, a lifetime Jerusalem resident and former deputy mayor of the city. “The needs are so different that the secular people can’t stand this status quo. It’s like a straitjacket for them. The status quo is anachronistic.”

Complex Population

Meanwhile, Jerusalem’s complex population mix is constantly shifting against the secular Zionists who played the leading role in the foundation of the state and who are the Israeli equivalent of American WASPS, or white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

The Arab, eastern section of the city, captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, now accounts for about one-third of its total population. Of the Jewish population, more than half is religiously observant, and according to a 1985 study, at least 27% are haredim. That leaves the formerly dominant secularists accounting for less than one-third of the total population.

Adding to their sense of siege is the fact that the Arabs and the haredim, both of which place a high social premium on large families, are enjoying by far the fastest natural population growth.

There is also a strong return-to-religion movement among Israelis, inspiring significant numbers of secular youths to join the haredim. And the ultra-Orthodox account for the largest percentage of new immigrants both to the nation and to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek says the haredi population of the city is growing by an average of 400 to 500 families a year.

The haredim, who prefer to live in segregated neighborhoods where they can practice their faith with minimum outside interference, desperately need more room, but efforts to build a new ultra-Orthodox housing development are tied up in a political squabble over where it should be located. Last week, the city planning committee approved a project for up to 600 new apartments designed specifically for the ultra-Orthodox, but it is seen as a stopgap measure at best.

Meanwhile, those formerly secular neighborhoods on the fringe of the haredi neighborhood are slowly being swallowed up.

“They try to eliminate the expansion of haredim by getting them to move from the center (of Jerusalem), but they are having just the opposite effect,” said Moshe Hirsch, a leader of the ultra-Orthodox Naturei Karta (Guardians of the City) faction. While the politicians dawdle, Hirsch explained, “if I want an apartment for my son, I give the secularist $10,000 more (than he could otherwise get), and he leaves.”

“Whole neighborhoods that used to be completely secular are now branches of Mea Shearim,” complained an anti-haredi resident of Jerusalem.

The ultra-Orthodox life style is so foreign, even to observant, so-called modern Orthodox Israelis that they talk about those neighborhoods as if they were on another planet.

The haredim themselves are instantly recognizable by their clothing. Men and boys wear black suits and hats in public, summer or winter. Those who can sport beards do so, and most have long payots, following an injunction in the Bible. Women wear long dresses and keep their natural hair covered.

Signs along the perimeter of Mea Shearim warn visitors, particularly women, that they should be modestly dressed before entering, and request that religious sensibilities be respected. On the Sabbath, roads leading into the area are blocked by police barricades to ensure that no motorist accidentally strays in.

“In religious areas, we expect individuals to honor the Sabbath,” said Councilman Porush.

Outside those areas, he added, the haredi community differentiates between the violation of the Sabbath by an individual, which it reluctantly tolerates, and a public violation like the showing of films on the Sabbath, which Porush says it will not.

Secular residents of Jerusalem say that they do not care what the haredim do within their own neighborhoods. They just want the same latitude in secular neighborhoods, including the freedom to enjoy public entertainment on the Sabbath if they desire.

Kollek contended in an interview that the feelings of secular Jerusalemites that they are under siege are “more psychological than real.”

City More Lively

It is true that night life in the city is much more lively now than it was just eight years ago when this correspondent first visited. There was no Cinematheque in 1979. Neither did the bustling Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall exist, with its 23 coffee shops and outdoor tables giving it a European flavor.

“It’s more of a question of one evening--Friday evening, the eve of Sabbath, where this city is closed and the lights of Tel Aviv are sparkling,” Kollek said.

When Saturday is the only day that most people here do not have to work, however, having the town shut down on Friday night except for a handful of restaurants, two or three pubs and one discotheque is more of a burden than it might otherwise appear.

As a result, the highway to Tel Aviv--just 45 minutes and a completely different mind-set away--is generally packed on the weekend.

“Tel Aviv is the expression of the new Israel,” Benvenisti said. “It’s very Mediterranean, very open, very sensual. Just look in the paper and see how many entertainment events you have every night! It’s a very, very vibrant society.”

Many Israelis claim that virtually all their young or single friends are moving permanently to Tel Aviv in order to escape what they feel is Jerusalem’s stifling atmosphere. But there is little hard evidence to back up such claims.

An often-quoted survey by the Jerusalem Institute of Israel Studies found that 40% of respondents cited secular-religious tensions in Jerusalem as one factor influencing their move. However, researcher Israel Kimche noted in an interview, only 3% mentioned that as their primary reason. Most ranked it behind job, housing and “personal” factors.

Similarly, said Kimche, only about one-third of the 6,000 to 9,000 individuals who have been leaving Jerusalem annually since 1979 go to Tel Aviv. Another third move to Jerusalem’s suburbs.

It is true that most of those who are leaving are secular, while the great majority of those moving into the city are religious, the researcher added. Also, he said, while only 3% said it was the main reason for their departure, 13% of respondents said they thought it was the primary reason that others were leaving.

Kollek went to the outskirts of the city two Friday nights ago to interview young people headed for the lights of Tel Aviv. What he found, he said, is that “they don’t even go to the cinema there. They go down there because they feel under pressure here, and they want to be somewhere (where) they are free.”

The mayor stressed that Jerusalem must retain a special character, and most residents would agree that they do not want it to be a clone of Tel Aviv. Kollek has named a committee to recommend ways in which the city might provide more Sabbath entertainment for its secular residents without unduly offending the ultra-Orthodox.

To Lia van Leer, meanwhile, the escalation of the Sabbath wars is a bit of a surprise.

“I certainly didn’t expect it to turn out like that,” she said of her decision to open the Cinematheque last May.

However, she added, “I think it’s very important that we stand up and fight for my way of life, too.”

Jerusalem may be holy, she said, but the status quo is not.

“It didn’t come down from Mt. Sinai.”