Devout Mayor Takes Reins in Holy City

When a bearded, soft-spoken man named Uri Lupoliansky arrived at his office in Jerusalem’s yellow-stone City Hall on Monday morning and settled in with some routine paperwork, it could have amounted to a political earthquake.

For the first time in Israel’s history, here was Jerusalem’s mayor’s office occupied by an ultra-Orthodox Jew -- one of the haredim, which means “those who tremble” before God. Theirs is a strictly observant brand of Judaism, whose black-suited, fur-hatted followers model their dress and deportment on the denizens of the vanished Jewish shtetls of Eastern Europe.

Not so long ago, it was secular Jerusalemites who might have trembled -- with fear, fury or both -- at the notion of a haredi politician at the helm of the municipal government.

But in a city worn down by nearly 2 1/2 years of conflict with the Palestinians and jittery over a prospective U.S. war with Iraq, Lupoliansky’s ascent to the top political job generated hardly a tremor. Many nonreligious residents were surprisingly sanguine about the new mayor, an ordained rabbi who does not have a television in his home.

“Look, we’ve got so, so much else to worry about here these days,” said Sarah Katz, a homemaker eating lunch with her 10-year-old daughter at a pizzeria that was the scene of a suicide bombing 18 months ago.

“I’m not religious, and I don’t want the religious people to have too much power over all of us, but I’m willing to wait and see what happens with him,” said Katz, 34. “Which will maybe be nothing.”

Although Jerusalem is a repository of centuries of Jewish tradition, it also has many trappings of a modern-day metropolis: Internet cafes, late-night bars, hipbone-baring jeans. That duality has led to years of religious-secular disputes, fought on the cusp of the mundane and the spiritual.

Is a mixed-sex swimming pool a normal neighborhood amenity or an abomination? Is an art house that shows movies on the Jewish Sabbath an unbearable affront to those who spend the holy day obeying injunctions against work and entertainment? Do fast-food aficionados have the right to chow down on decidedly unkosher cheeseburgers at McDonald’s in downtown Jerusalem?

In the last decade, the demographic scales in Jerusalem have tipped sharply in favor of the ultrareligious, who have gained in both political clout and population share. Haredim now make up an estimated 30% of the city’s Jewish residents and hold more than one-third of the seats on the City Council.

During the intifada, however, Jerusalem’s religious-secular divide has receded somewhat. Before the outbreak of fighting, surveys showed that many Israelis believed the rift between rigorously observant and nonobservant Jews was the greatest threat to the state of Israel -- a view that few would voice these days.

Some commentators, though, say it is not only the debilitating effects of the intifada that have led to a drop-off in religious-secular feuding in the city but also the fact that more and more secular Jews consider Jerusalem a lost cause.

Tel Aviv, a 45-minute drive away, is the country’s secular touchstone, where people flock for non-kosher dining, weekend entertainment, Saturday shopping and a freewheeling atmosphere that seems worlds away from somber Jerusalem.

“Young secular Israelis are fleeing Jerusalem,” the daily newspaper Haaretz said in a commentary about the new mayor. “Secular Jerusalemites, living in neighborhoods completely isolated from haredi neighborhoods, are required to explain time after time why they are still living in the capital.”

Nationwide, the religious-secular rift is still a key concern. That was clearly demonstrated by the big gains in last month’s elections by the secular party Shinui, which wants to cut huge public subsidies to the haredim, force them to pay taxes and end their exemption from the draft.

One possible reason that Lupoliansky’s accession caused so little outcry is that his tenure is temporary. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, gave up the mayor’s job to take a seat in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, where he was sworn in Monday. Lupoliansky will serve until municipal elections are held, probably in October.

Another ameliorating factor is the new mayor’s reputation as personally gentle and politically moderate. As a deputy mayor and 14-year veteran of the City Council, Lupoliansky generally refrained from joining forces with haredi politicians who demanded the shutdown of the few businesses operating on the Sabbath and who sought to ban Friday-night soccer matches.

The 51-year-old father of 12 is best known for founding a much respected charitable foundation, Yad Sarah, which provides free medical equipment and services to needy Israelis, both Jews and Arabs.

Not everyone has been won over by the new mayor. City Council member Roni Aloni called him “the worst thing that could happen to Jerusalem.”

But other secular political figures -- including Teddy Kolleck, who was Jerusalem’s much-loved mayor for nearly 30 years -- have rallied to Lupoliansky’s defense.

Even Kolleck, though, expressed concern that the new mayor, however moderate now, could eventually come under the sway of hard-line haredi rabbis.

Preparing to take office, Lupoliansky sounded a conciliatory note.

“People should not be judged on the basis of their lifestyle and dress but on the basis of their acts,” he told a City Council meeting on the eve of his appointment. “I extend my hand to all -- I will be everyone’s mayor.”