Israelis Will Shape Their Identity in Monday’s Vote

REHOVOT, Israel — In the bright Sabbath sunshine, Tommy Lapid campaigns in what locals call “Secular Paradise”: the Bilu shopping mall. With Cher blaring on the loudspeakers, Lapid greets Israeli voters outside the Ace Hardware store, near the Burger King.

“They want to close these places!” he booms. “They” are ultra-Orthodox Jews for whom shopping on the Sabbath is a sin. “We have to fight off this religious offensive that attacks the rights of people to buy and entertain wherever and whenever they want. You cannot have a modern society that bases its rules on biblical laws of 3,000 years ago.”

Like many Israelis, Lapid has a very clear vision of what Monday’s national election is all about. Vote for his small Shinui Party, says the gadfly and former talk show host, and put an end to the influence of the ultra-Orthodox in public affairs. It is a stance that runs head-on against the deeply held religious beliefs of other Israelis.

From the crowded markets of Tel Aviv to the wind-swept and rapidly expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank, from Jerusalem’s Zion Square to Russian community halls in working-class immigrant towns, the election for prime minister and parliament is about many things to many people. It embodies the conflicting visions Israelis have about what their state and society should be.

With the basic issue of Israel’s right and ability to exist more or less decided, and with a campaign season largely void of new ideas and real debate, Israelis are turning to a fundamental question over their identity.

And the answers align Israelis into polarized camps of the two main candidates for prime minister: the incumbent, Benjamin Netanyahu of the center-right Likud Party, and the challenger, Ehud Barak of the center-left Labor Party.

If Tommy Lapid, a somewhat abrasive 67-year-old Holocaust survivor, has one vision, Yisrael Friedman has a decidedly different one.

Friedman made his contribution to the election with an eight-minute videotape that he wrote, produced and distributed to other ultra-Orthodox men like himself. It is called “The Day After” and gives an ominous glimpse at what the future under Barak might look like.

Flames fill the screen. Rapid-fire pictures show the closing of yeshivas, synagogues, ritual baths and other symbols of religious Jewish life. “Wake up!” the video implores. “Do something about this!”

It also shows Lapid, repeating his now-famous battle cry: “A government without haredim”--without the ultra-Orthodox.

‘I Am Not a Menace to Society’

To Friedman’s ears, that kind of talk echoes the Nazi-era policies of eliminating Jews. For him, removing haredi influence from the Israeli state is an end to Judaism itself.

“I am not a menace to society,” Friedman said as he drove from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and conducted business on a cellular phone. “But the day somebody tells me to desecrate the Sabbath, well, just take me to prison.”

Friedman is 40, married and has five children. He lives in Bnei Brak, a predominantly ultra-Orthodox suburb of Tel Aviv. He wears the black hat, long black coat and beard associated with the haredim. “Black is beautiful,” he said with a smile in the one bit of English he felt comfortable uttering.

Unlike most ultra-Orthodox men, Friedman is an officer in the Israeli army. Exemption from military service, housing subsidies and other benefits are perks that the ultra-Orthodox enjoy and that the secular majority resent.

Barak, Lapid and many secular politicians would reduce those perks. Barak argues that the ultra-Orthodox drain government coffers, do not pay taxes and then hold the state “hostage” to their demands, while at the same time insisting on regulating who is a Jew, where Jews can be buried and whether they can marry. Netanyahu, by contrast, brought the ultra-Orthodox into his coalition and makes huge concessions to them as a way to ensure their support and their votes.

Lapid and Friedman are two extremes in the battle over whether Israel should be a theocracy or a democracy. This is not a new battle but one that has taken on prominence as other existential questions of war and peace seem closer to resolution.

If the white-haired Lapid and the black-hatted Friedman are extremes, the question is also debated in shades of gray throughout this society.

Posters Compete in ‘Russian’ Community

In Rishon Le Zion, Israel’s fourth-largest city and one whose character has changed dramatically with an influx of Russian immigrants, posters compete fiercely, in the Cyrillic alphabet, on behalf of Netanyahu and Barak.

Five women sat in the city’s main auditorium and talked about the candidate they had just seen. Barak was fairly impressive, they mused in Russian whispers. A general. He plays piano.

“He’s not bad,” said Haya Rumen, who came to Israel from Ukraine with one of the first waves of Soviet immigrants in the 1970s. “But who am I voting for? These things you don’t speak out loud.”

“Russians,” as all immigrants from the former Soviet Union are called here, now constitute nearly 15% of the Israeli electorate. Unlike many other ethnic or tribal blocs, however, Russians can be persuaded to change their allegiance at election time, and this year they are considered the crucial swing vote.

Barak’s steady climb in the polls is attributed largely to the defection of about 100,000 Russian voters from Netanyahu, whom they supported overwhelmingly in 1996, to the Labor Party camp. Roughly half of Russian voters remain loyal to Netanyahu, the polls indicate.

Rumen and the women she was sitting with form part of a community that has felt increasingly alienated by the religious fervor that has taken over some elements of the Israeli government.

Most former residents of the Communist world do not practice the same strict brand of Judaism that Israel’s ultra-Orthodox require. Many Russians say they have been discriminated against by an Orthodox-dominated Interior Ministry that doles out jobs and housing.

Long-standing tensions between the generally better-educated Russian immigrants and older, Sephardic Jewish immigrants from Morocco and Middle Eastern countries have been stoked by the election.

“Look,” said Rumen, a 72-year-old retired economist, “for myself, I have everything I need. But for my children and grandchildren, I want this country to rise to a higher level.”

One of the motivating impulses for founding Israel in the first place--to gather Jews together from around the world--has led to an inherent contradiction. The word “Jew” means different things to the many different people who now call Israel their home. For some it is a religious definition, while for others it is a matter of nationality, history, entitlement.

Their ideas on how to build a nation seem mutually exclusive.

Bitter Battle Over Land

Simeon Yazersky can look out from the hilltop trailer where he lives and see for miles. Miles of rocky plateaus, pale green valleys and the Judean desert in the distance. And lots of new roads crisscrossing the panorama.

It’s a view that, for Yazersky, symbolizes his attempt to hold onto land he considers to be Jewish, rather than relinquishing it to the Palestinians. The election, he says, will determine how long he can resist.

“If Barak is elected, the Palestinian state will be 300 meters from here,” Yazersky said with a sweep of his hand. “Netanyahu will at least give us breathing room, of a few more miles and a few more years.”

Yazersky, a dental surgeon originally from Queens, N.Y., is one of scores of Jews who worked to expand settlements in the West Bank in the weeks leading up to the election. A month ago, Yazersky, his wife and their three little blond daughters moved into a five-trailer outpost called Kohav Hashahar Darom, about nine miles northeast of Jerusalem and a mile up the hill from the settlement where they had been living.

By staking their claim, the Yazerskys and other settlers--encouraged by Netanyahu’s government--thumb their noses at the peace accords that the majority of Israelis say they support. The U.S. government, a mediator in negotiating the accords, says settlement expansion endangers the peace process.

This does not seem to bother the Jewish settlers living on West Bank hilltops. Outside Yazersky’s trailer, the whir of a generator signaled electricity, and workers were laying brand-new water pipes.

Concrete blocks marked the spots where four more trailers will be set up for four more families.

Judging by much of the Israeli press, political experts and quite a few citizens, the election comes down to one thing: a vote for, or against, Netanyahu, known universally by his nickname, Bibi.

Several hundred college-age students in T-shirts and jeans, along with a few older Israelis, rallied in Jerusalem’s Zion Square the other day in an anti-Netanyahu demonstration.

Buoyed by polls giving Barak a big lead, they chanted to the passing cars and tourists who frequent the nearby sidewalk cafes.

“Anybody but Bibi!” their banners read.

“Barak. [Candidate Yitzhak] Mordechai. [Soccer star] Ohana. [Rabbi] Ba-Gad. A goat. Me. You.

“Anybody but Bibi.”

For these educated and generally well-to-do Israelis, the election is about reordering priorities and redividing the economic pie. They want less money to go to the ultra-Orthodox and more to be spent on schools and on the creation of jobs.

“Bibi separated morals from politics,” said Yael Shumer, a 23-year-old political science student at Hebrew University. “The elections will determine whether we go in a more extremist direction and whether we’ll be governed by immoral people . . . and whether, once again, we’ll be subject to religious coercion and blackmail.”

Cradling his 1-year-old baby, Lior Nathan said he’d never participated in a demonstration before. Nathan, a graduate communications student at the conservative Bar Ilan University, wore a kippa, or skullcap, a sign that he is an observant Jew.

But public policy of late has made Judaism into something that excluded many well-meaning Jews, he said. “We need change,” Nathan said. “I would like to see all Israelis have an active part in the society, and a leader who would encourage everyone to contribute. I’ve never gone to the streets before, but this time I feel I must act. I have a duty.”

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Times staff writer Rebecca Trounson and researcher Efrat Shvili of The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.