‘Sabbath War’ Flares in Holy City

A caravan of automobiles inched along Bar Ilan Street on a Saturday afternoon, bearing signs with the greeting used by religious Jews who consider driving a desecration of the Sabbath: “Shabat shalom,” the placards said mockingly. “Good Sabbath.”

From the sidewalks and center divider, thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews and their children hurled epithets at the secular drivers. “Dogs! garbage!” they screamed. “You are not Jewish!” And a volley of stones pelted the car hoods.

Police on horseback moved between the drivers and the demonstrators. A riot squad sprinted through in formation, batons at the ready, while water hoses were used to disperse the crowd to keep traffic moving.

Simon Friedman, a yeshiva student dressed in the black hat and frock coat of the ultra-Orthodox, turned angrily to a secular Israeli in the crowd and demanded, “If the community asks for its street to be closed one day on Shabbat, why not?”

Micha Haas, wearing the secular uniform of sandals, Bermuda shorts and sunglasses, answered disdainfully: “Because those of us who are not religious should not have to live according to the will of the religious. . . . You give these religious people a finger today and they want the head tomorrow.”

Friedman and Haas are combatants in Israel’s latest Sabbath war. Ostensibly sparring over the fate of a Jerusalem thoroughfare, they are, in fact, fighting a more profound battle between secular and Orthodox Jews that dates to the Enlightenment.

This fraternal fight for control of Jerusalem and, ultimately, the future of the Jewish state has erupted anew because the religious political parties made unprecedented gains in May’s national elections. The ultra-Orthodox are testing their new political might, while secular Israelis lash back in horror.

The conflict stems from seemingly irreconcilable lifestyles, values and beliefs. Secular Israelis want to go out to cafes and nightclubs on Friday nights in the country’s capital. The ultra-Orthodox want prayer and quiet respect for the Sabbath, especially in the symbolic Holy City, their main battleground.

Secular Israelis, who rule the nation, see in the ultra-Orthodox an assault on the rational, modern and democratic world they embrace. The ultra-Orthodox believe secular Israelis have undergone a dangerous, collective assimilation--a separation of the Jews from Judaism--that threatens to contaminate religious children.

“We are not only fighting for Bar Ilan Street,” said Ornan Yekutieli, a Jerusalem city councilman from the leftist Meretz Party, which is spearheading the campaign to keep the road open. “Jerusalem is our face to the world.

“The question is whether it will be the face of Los Angeles, Paris, London and other Western cities, or whether it will be Tehran. The religious want to take steps toward Tehran and further from the world that I want to belong to,” he said.

*

Friedman, a 19-year-old yeshiva student, shakes his head incredulously. “This is the Jewish state. In New York, people who have nothing to do with Judaism--Christians--they have less hatred for me than people here do,” he said. “Why? Because deep down in their heart, they [the secular Israelis] know they are wrong. It bothers them that someone is trying to show them the right way.”

About 30% of Jerusalem’s 420,000 Jewish residents are ultra-Orthodox or haredim, Hebrew for “God-fearing.” Demographers say that figure will rise to more than 40% by 2010--far higher than for Tel Aviv, Haifa or other Israeli cities.

The ultra-Orthodox have an average of six children per family--twice as many as secular families--and it is not uncommon to see devoutly religious families with nine or 10 children.

“More than 50% of children in kindergartens are coming from ultra-Orthodox families,” said Israel Kimhi, a demographer at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

The more the devoutly religious population of Jerusalem grows, the more secular Israelis move to what they see as friendlier terrain in cities such as Tel Aviv. “Most of the people who leave are secular, young, educated people, while a great percentage of those who come in are ultra-Orthodox,” said Kimhi.

The economic implications for the city are significant, as the haredi families tend to be poorer and pay less in taxes. Many of the men receive government subsidies to study rather than work in jobs that fuel the economy.

“Jerusalem is going to be a great symbol and a lousy place to live,” moaned Danny Seidmann, a secular lawyer and activist in the Peace Now movement.

*

Many secular people are embarrassed by Jerusalem’s religious neighborhoods, which they see as re-creations of the overcrowded East European ghettos that Jews once were forced into. The religious look upon the secular neighborhoods as dens of immorality. Neither side wants to mix.

“Our public tries not to go out and be in places where they will be offended, except when absolutely necessary,” said Moshe Hassida, a leader of the haredi campaign to close Bar Ilan.

“We have our own banks, businesses, shops in our neighborhoods that meet most of our needs,” he said.

City planners already talk about Jerusalem as if it were three distinct places--Jewish secular, haredi and Arab urban. While Arabs are concentrated in East Jerusalem, the haredim dominate the north and secular Israelis the south, near the city’s shopping mall, movie theaters and stadium, where soccer games are played on Saturdays. Jerusalem’s Main Street, Jaffa Road, serves as the dividing line.

Bar Ilan is a main east-west thoroughfare in northern Jerusalem that secular Israelis and urban planners argue should remain open to serve all residents of the city. It is, they say, Jerusalem’s equivalent of a freeway.

Residents of the Bar Ilan neighborhood respond that secular Israelis are more than happy to close a key street such as Ben Yehuda in central Jerusalem when they want it for cafe life, but then do not respect religious “minority rights.” All but a handful of the Bar Ilan neighborhood’s residents are religious, they say, and want the road closed on the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, as are dozens of smaller streets in Jerusalem’s religious neighborhoods. Drivers can take an alternate route one day a week, they say.

The now-weekly ritual of animosity between the secular and the religious began earlier this month after Transportation Minister Yitzhak Levy, a leader of the National Religious Party, announced that for a four-month trial period Bar Ilan would be closed for a total of 10 hours during the three prayer times on Friday night and Saturday.

Opposition Labor Party leaders quickly challenged the move in the Supreme Court, which issued an injunction against any change and gave the government two weeks to explain its policy.

Secular Israelis fear that the decision to close Bar Ilan is but an early example of religious influence in the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose narrow victory in the May 29 elections was due in large part to religious voters.

*

And due to religious hocus-pocus, secular Israelis say. In the days before the elections, the religious Shas Party distributed thousands of amulets engraved with a picture of its leader, Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, who supported Netanyahu, and a promised blessing for those who would vote Shas. When a court ruled that the amulets could be construed as election bribes, the party instead distributed candles wrapped in a picture of Kaduri that were to be lighted after voting on election day. Then the voters would be blessed.

Netanyahu’s victory mirrored that of Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert three years earlier. Olmert ousted the more liberal Teddy Kollek--who had been in office for 28 years--with support from the haredim, who were following the counsel of their rabbis. With 13 of 31 seats on the City Council, the devout won control of key committees on planning, education and social services.

Netanyahu’s government relies on 23 religious votes in the 120-member Knesset, or parliament. His ministers of education, housing, transportation, labor and interior come from religious parties.

In Jerusalem, the religious parties have managed to funnel more of the city’s resources their way for haredi housing. Olmert created departments of Torah Education and Torah Culture for the ultra-Orthodox, and city money for the separate religious school system was doubled.

At the same time, however, the secular are gaining ground. Whereas five years ago virtually no restaurants or entertainment centers were open on the Sabbath, now, according to the weekly newspaper Kol Hair, 58 of 147 restaurants in Jerusalem stay open, along with 10 coffee shops and nine tourism kiosks. Several restaurants are non-kosher, mixing meat and milk and even serving pork, which is prohibited by Jewish law.

Among the non-kosher restaurants is a McDonald’s that has opened during Olmert’s tenure so that secular Israelis might eat burgers and drink milkshakes on the Sabbath.

Haredi leaders in Jerusalem point to these changes to show they are not trying to infringe on secular Israelis’ free time. But secular Israelis say there are issues far greater than McDonald’s, such as marriage and burial--now exclusively in the hands of the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate--and the right to excavate Jewish archeological sites, which the religious sometimes block.

A small minority of haredim are anti-Zionists who do not recognize the state of Israel, which they believe should not exist before the coming of the Messiah. The majority do acknowledge the state and accept public subsidies for their religious studies. This often angers secular Israelis, who are quick to point out that the ultra-Orthodox enjoy a collective exemption from national military service.

“You are parasites; go serve in the army,” seethed a secular demonstrator on Bar Ilan Street.

“Nazis,” a religious demonstrator yelled back at him. The police moved in to separate them.

Secular Israelis charge that the haredim frequently exert pressure in the realm of art and culture, leaning on the Israel Museum to keep its exhibits “clean.” They blame the ultra-Orthodox for influencing the city’s decision last year to decline a gift from Florence, Italy, of a full-scale reproduction of Michelangelo’s “David” because it was a naked male figure.

“Jerusalem is not like other places. The statue was to be placed outside, in a public place, and it was legitimate for us to consider how the population would react,” Olmert said in a radio interview shortly after the decision.

*

Likewise, the haredim have pressed companies to keep “immodest” or “inappropriate” images out of advertising by either ripping down the ads or threatening to boycott products.

“Once we proved we were a public with financial power and we won’t buy their products if they advertise them like this, they have been considerate of our feelings,” Hassida said. “There is less and less advertising that hurts us.”

To many secular Jerusalemites, the conflict boils down to the haredim imposing their will. Whether about art, advertising or Bar Ilan Street, they see coercion--pressure to conform to a religious way of life that is all-encompassing.

Jewish law spells out every detail of daily life, from how to rise in the morning and wash and pray, to broader issues such as marriage, sexual relations, work, charity, study and death. Life moves according to the Jewish calendar of holidays and fasts, and involves an unending stream of ritual. On the Sabbath, it is forbidden to engage in anything defined as work--driving, riding an elevator, turning on a light switch.

The religious schools teach basic reading, writing and arithmetic, but beyond that all education is based on the Torah. Television, magazines, novels and other influences considered corrupting are forbidden.

The rules are unbending. Those who violate them are dealt with harshly, as Rima Gach, a recent Russian immigrant, discovered this month. Gach, who was wearing a sundress, parked her car at the edge of the haredi Mea Shearim neighborhood and walked away. Upon returning, she found three of her tires slashed, apparently as punishment for what was determined to be immodest clothing. A group of haredim surrounded her in her car, banging on the windows and throwing stones.

“I could have gotten killed there. The haredim simply took the law into their hands and assaulted a law-abiding citizen,” she told the daily newspaper Maariv.

For secular Israelis, the highest law is civil. Israel was founded in 1948 by secular Jews who wanted to build a Jewish state like all other states, a homeland for Jews with a Jewish army, Jewish holidays and Hebrew as the official language, but otherwise not all that different from many Western societies. The law of the land and the high court would prevail.

For ultra-Orthodox Jews, the highest law is the Torah. They turn to rabbinical courts to resolve their problems, and they expect Israeli civil life to be conducted according to the spirit, if not the letter, of biblical law.

“You cannot have a divided truth, in some cases living according to Torah and in others not,” said Hassida. “For example, if you say this is our land because of the Bible, then we have to stay tied to the Bible and not undermine our own foundation.”

*

Secular Israelis shudder at that logic, which they say led to the murder of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin last year by a religious law student. The assassin, Yigal Amir, argued that Rabin was betraying the Bible and the Jewish people by giving Palestinians control over West Bank land.

Many of the religious disavow Amir’s deed, saying that the commandment against killing is supreme. Hassida, a Torah scholar, says nothing in the religious law permits even the throwing of stones at the secular drivers on Shabbat.

He sees the haredim as the vanguard of Jewish life and education, safeguarding spiritual survival and pursuing the ultimate Jewish goal of redemption. In his religious view, secular Israelis are the lawbreakers for limiting Bible study in public schools.

“An enlightened people learns its history. Here the general education prevents the youth from learning the history of the Jewish people in its authentic form,” said Hassida.

“As long as a secular person practices his way of life in his house, it doesn’t bother me. But when it is in public and in front of my children, it hurts my religion.”

But what does the scholar say to the secular fear that closing Bar Ilan Street will lead to the closure of more and more Jerusalem streets, infringing on secular lives?

“Yes,” Hassida said. “If there is a majority of Orthodox, we want the street closed.”