Religious Jews Hold Huge Sabbath Protest

In a massive show of strength, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews marched, danced and sang in the streets for more than three hours Saturday, closing down one of Jerusalem’s main thoroughfares in a protest against allowing traffic on the street on the Jewish Sabbath.

Skirmishes with police were light compared with conflicts in previous weeks, and the scuffles and rock-throwing that did break out after the demonstration seemed more pro forma than passionate.

Eighteen-year-old Brian Lefkowitz summed it up Saturday night, standing in an alley as all around him Israeli police with billy clubs chased after yeshiva boys, whose black frocks and side-locks flew behind them as they ran.

“When they go bruising after the people, the people go bruising after them,” said Lefkowitz, a vacationer from Brooklyn, N.Y. “They want to see some action too.”

It was the fourth consecutive weekend of street skirmishes over whether Bar Ilan Street in Jerusalem should be closed to vehicles on the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, out of respect for the Orthodox Jewish population.

The Supreme Court is due to rule within days on the legality of a plan by the new government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to close the street during prayer times Friday and Saturday, a total of 10 hours.

Many secular Jews want to keep the road open. Complaining that the government proposal amounts to a hoax, Jerusalem City Councilman Ornan Yekutieli predicted that if the street is legally closed for even part of the Sabbath, militant residents will prevent traffic there all day long.

The times are on the side of the religious parties, Yekutieli said. Having played a large role in Netanyahu’s election in May, the religious parties will now demand the new government’s support on social and religious issues, he said.

“The wheel is turning back and turning back fast,” he said.

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But a supporter of the marchers, schoolteacher Miriam Ryder, said it is the secularists who are unreasonable. Most of the people in the area are religious Jews, she said, and they need the street as a pedestrian walkway because they do not drive on the Sabbath.

“I think they could try to respect us,” she said of the secularists. “If Jews cannot reach understanding with each other, how can you ever expect peace with the Arabs?”

Yekutieli’s Meretz Party, which has been at the forefront of defending secular interests in Israel, stayed away from the demonstration Saturday at the authorities’ request to avoid ugly clashes.

Police, who have been criticized in past weeks for alleged brutality, also worked to keep emotions down. Mounted units and water cannons stayed well hidden so as not to provoke the crowd.

The march drew as many as 100,000 demonstrators, virtually all men and boys dressed in black and white and wearing broad-brimmed fedoras or fur hats.

Most dispersed peacefully after a loudspeaker announced that Sabbath and the permitted period for the demonstration were both over.

But a few hundred of the younger participants stayed behind for cat-and-mouse games with police--at one point rolling a burning garbage bin into the middle of the street and overturning it to prevent the resumption of traffic.

At least two police officers suffered head injuries, apparently from hurled rocks.

In recent weeks, police have complained of being struck by a wide spectrum of projectiles, including soiled diapers.