Secular Israelis in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Kiryat Yovel are fighting the ultra-Orthodox’s growing influence in both the area and the state. The secular say that it’s a struggle for Israel’s identity and that they hope to protect the country’s “pluralism” and democratic space. But is their battle truly pluralistic? And how can we talk about democracy after 64 years of dispossession and discrimination?
On a recent Friday night, I attended a free, outdoor concert just a few blocks from my apartment in Kiryat Yovel. As religious families settled in for a quiet Shabbat, us secular settled onto mats to listen to Greek rebetiko, courtesy of Perach Adom. Because Kiryat Yovel has been the site of tensions between ultra-Orthodox and secular Israelis, I worried that the amplifiers, lights, and donation jar might draw the anger of our neighborhood’s Haredi residents–handling electrical devices and money, among other things, are forbidden on the Sabbath as is playing musical instruments.
Will they throw things at us? I wondered. In other places in Jerusalem, the ultra-Orthodox sometimes stoned passing cars on Shabbat. And, after all, this was concert was a form of protest.
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The event was arranged by Free Kiryat Yovel, a local grassroots movement that seeks to build a strong, pluralistic country, starting with our neighborhood. It took place on the Warburg Lot, the piece of land that sparked the battle between the neighborhood’s veteran secular residents and the ultra-Orthodox newcomers. During the summer months, Free Kiryat Yovel sometimes screens movies on Warburg on Friday night.
There are other battle grounds in Jerusalem. At the shuk, ultra-Orthodox women have begun bullying secular women who dare go to the market in tank tops, Ynet reports (Hebrew). Groups of ultra-Orthodox women have started a modesty patrol, pointing at women’s bare shoulders, saying, “The next time, you won’t come to the shuk like this. The next time, you come in sleeves.”
This is the type of behavior that Kiryat Yovel’s secular residents are worried about.
The fight for Kiryat Yovel began on a hot August morning in 2008, when tractors arrived and began digging on Warburg. Residents understood the lot to be public and they used the space to exercise, walk their dogs, and to park cars. Surprised to see the construction, locals rushed out and asked the workers what they were doing.
When the workers hesitated to explain, residents stood in front of the tractors and called the municipality. Eventually, it became clear that the men had come to install two caravans and connect the structures to water and electricity. The buildings would serve as kindergartens to the ultra-Orthodox community, a group that insists upon having its own educational system, separate from both Palestinians and secular Israelis.
But there was no ultra-Orthodox community in Kiryat Yovel. And the workers did not have the appropriate papers from the municipality to carry out the construction. Rather, they had received verbal permission from then-Deputy Mayor Yehoshua Pollack, who is ultra-Orthodox and was later arrested in an unconnected real estate scandal. Among other charges, he was accused of taking bribes.
Dina Azriel is an activist with Free Kiryat Yovel. She says the attempt to build the kindergarten was reminiscent of the founding of some Israeli settlements, “They come, they dig, they put a caravan, and that’s it.”
Just as infrastructure helps pull Israelis across the Green Line, schools and synagogues serve as a magnet to attract new religious residents to traditionally secular neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Additional infrastructure is then built to accommodate the new residents. Religious buyers sometimes come and make secular homeowners generous offers, and little by little the veteran residents are edged out. It has happened across Jerusalem – to the extent that some 20,000 secular Israelis have left the city in recent years.
While secular Israelis represented about 40 per cent of Jerusalem’s population a decade ago, today the city of 800,000 is split almost evenly into thirds between the secular community, Muslim Palestinians, and the ultra-Orthodox.
Though their birthrates have dropped in recent years, the ultra-Orthodox still have more babies than Palestinians, Arab Israelis, and secular Jewish Israelis. It is estimated that 20 percent of the country will be ultra-Orthodox by 2034 – meaning they are expected to change not just the landscape of Jerusalem, but the face of Israel.
But the secular residents of Kiryat Yovel are determined to stay. The day after construction workers attempted to build the ultra-Orthodox kindergarten, Azriel and other locals started a committee to protect the neighborhood.
“We blocked the entrance to the lot with cars so tractors couldn’t enter,” Azriel recalls. The community also filed a lawsuit that effectively prevented the ultra-Orthodox from using the land for their own purposes.
Still, the ultra-Orthodox community have made inroads in Kiryat Yovel. They have a visible presence in the neighborhood and managed to open a kindergarten next to a secular kindergarten. To the alarm of many secular and some ultra-Orthodox residents, the city erected a separation fence between the two schools. And, because the ultra-Orthodox complained that their children would see secular Israelis with immodest dress and little boys without kippot through the fence, the barrier was covered with a blue tarp.
Azriel and her husband, Danny Unger, emphasise that they and other members of Free Kiryat Yovel do not take issue with the ultra-Orthodox themselves. Rather, they are concerned by the anti-pluralist and anti-democratic trends that, they say, come with the community.
“The problem is not that they’re coming,” Unger remarks. “We’ll gladly accept them. The problem begins when you come and want to make a separation [between yourself and the existing community].”
Azriel and Unger are also concerned about the allocation of the city’s resources. They say that public space should be used for the good of the whole neighbourhood, not for a specific population that is new to the area and that will keep others out.
“Public space has to stay equal and open to everyone,” Azriel says.
City councilwoman Laura Wharton shares this sentiment. “This is my position also about East Jerusalem,” she says, where Palestinians receive services that are disproportionately less than those received by their Jewish counterparts, despite the fact that Palestinian residents pay taxes. “The resources of a given area [should be] devoted to the people who live there.”
Wharton lives in Beit HaKarem, a predominately secular neighbourhood where a park was bulldozed to make way for a mikveh despite the fact that the area is home to only a handful of ultra-Orthodox residents.
While they remain a minority in both Jerusalem and Israel, the ultra-Orthodox wield a disproportionate amount of political power because they tend to vote in a bloc. And perks like subsidised housing and financial assistance for large families come with that power.
The ultra-Orthodox are, for the most part, poor and don’t pay a lot of taxes. Because Jerusalem is struggling to stay afloat financially, the municipality has given developers the green light to build luxury apartment buildings and commercial spaces in the place of apartment buildings that are home to low and middle-income Israelis. The occupants of these new buildings will pay more taxes, carrying those in the city who don’t pay enough.
As Israel moves away from the welfare state that characterized the country’s early days and becomes increasingly capitalist, in part to keep the ultra-Orthodox afloat, more Israelis are attracted to the ultra-Orthodox’s ranks.
“A lot of their appeal is related to the growing socioeconomic disparities,” Wharton explains. “Because the ultra-Orthodox are well-organised and they raise money abroad and obtain funding for things, not always legally, they can do things like offer kindergartens that work until later.”
Wharton points out that the ultra-Orthodox have gotten a stronger foothold in poor areas of Kiryat Yovel, where residents need the services once provided by the state.
But the ultra-Orthodox struggle with housing and infrastructure issues of their own. As their population has outgrown their traditional neighborhoods, they head toward secular areas – or the illegal settlements over the Green Line.
“The biggest and fastest-growing settlements… are ultra-Orthodox,” says Wharton, who is also a political science lecturer at Hebrew University. “The current government is interested in attracting settlers, and they offer land for free and really good mortgages and really good social systems … so the state uses the [ultra-Orthodox] and the [ultra-Orthodox] use the state.”
Which is exactly what Azriel and Unger don’t want to see in Kiryat Yovel. “Israel can be a democratic state,” Azriel says. “But there has to be a separation between religion and state.”
But should there be limits on Israel’s “democracy” and “pluralism” to safeguard these values? Azriel and Unger say yes.
I’m not sure. I’m a more than a little cynical about the talk of keeping public spaces open and equal and, by extension, keeping Israel pluralistic and democratic. The country isn’t pluralistic just because there are different types of Jews here; and a Palestinian minority that is systematically discriminated against by both public institutions as well as members of the Jewish majority does not make this place a bastion of pluralism, either. Rather than calling Israel a democracy, we ought to be calling it an ethnocracy and talking about the defined democratic space that exists within the country.
And if secular Israelis wanted true pluralism and democracy, their struggle should have begun much earlier–64 years earlier. What is happening in West Jerusalem now is the natural outcome of decades of discrimination and of privileging one group over others.
Portions of this article first appeared on Al Jazeera English.
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Aaron the Fascist Troll
I completely support Ms. Guarnieri’s neighborhood in its efforts to protect itself against the mass influx of migrants who pose an existential threat to her community, intentionally or not.
As I’ve said before, migration is one of the biggest themes at +972. Let’s keep in mind the commonality of different migrations of different peoples in the region, past, present, and future.
Sarah
I have to say I find this situation rather ironic…Israelis getting upset about another group coming onto their land/into their community and essentially taking over, erecting separation walls and providing exclusive services…just the tip of the iceberg when you think about how how this is being done on a much larger and more horrific scale to Palestinians in the illegally occupied territories. Secular Israelis won’t get much sympathy from outside until they put a stop to the illegal settlements in Palestine as well.
Greg Pollock
“And if secular Israelis wanted true pluralism and democracy, their struggle should have begun much earlier–64 years earlier. What is happening in West Jerusalem now is the natural outcome of decades of discrimination and of privileging one group over others.” You cannot expect saints. Most people will only object to privileging when it limits them or theirs. What is interesting in this piece is the apparent spillover of settlement tactics in the Bank into Jerusalem. Such is necessary if ever there is to be a reaction against it.
Pluralism is not pure democracy but a check on democracy–as is rights jurisprudence. The war history of Israel, mobilizing a nation, has been equated with democracy internally. Rights, however, are partly about when and what one cannot mobilize. Which means that those calling for rights will at times be called traitors to the nation if not race. The Ultra-Orthodox, claiming the incarnation of nation, then become a symbol against rights jurispurdence, and what such can harm.
Louis
A very good piece on 972 by a friend… one point that it makes is about the nature of democratic and pluralistic struggle… that it must be integrated. The struggle over a pluralistic and democratic public sphere cannot focus on one ‘problem’ in isolation. The nature of the struggle against theocracy is not so different than the struggle against the Occupation… it is one of ideology critique at its best.
That is, Haredim moving to a “secular” or mixed neighborhood is not a problem… what is a problem is the ideologies of isolation and separation that allow for us to accept that there are designated living areas for certain populations within the confines of the borders of the particular nation state. This is where the power struggle of place and space occurs.
Politics of power and manipulation which includes the politics of settlements and Occupation, the politics of race & anti immigrants, the politics of gender discrimination and homophobia then compete against a politics of democracy, pluralism and civil society for civic good.
Within a political system that is based in later framework any person can live and thrive and espouse their ideologies even those that are hateful but within the first framework a democratic person cannot live or thrive and nor can a democratic idea. For many who are faced with what is described in the article their concern is not “OMG Haredim are encroaching”. Rather the concern is that there are political frameworks that allow for the disregard of a democratic and pluralistic public sphere… within which those taking advantage of their political power in Jerusalem’s city hall thrive on creating confrontations.
Those of us in the grass roots must resist giving them the satisfaction of fighting and rather join in a struggle for democratic life. This means that Haredim are Shachenim (neighbors) this means that we fight against diverting funds in Jerusalem and Israel to the settlement enterprise (etc.) and re-divert and re-invest funds of oppression into funds for sustainable democratic society (SDS).
Aaron the Fascist Troll
Not a problem? Driving through the neighborhood OK on Shabbat, or no driving on Shabbat? It has to be one or the other. Either way, one group loses. How is that not a problem?
aristeides
The problem is one group forcing their rules on another. No seculars are trying to force Haredim to drive on Shabbat. Haredim are trying to force seculars not to drive on Shabbat.
The problem is a mindset that says one group loses if another group peacefykkt pursues its own way of life. The problem is a mindset that says it has to be one way or the other, where everyone else in the world, it’s both.
Aaron the Fascist Troll
Sure – if you don’t agree to live by my secular, liberal ideology, then you’re forcing your rules on another.
It’s like, if you try to stop me from playing loud music all night next door to you, then you’re forcing your rules on me. The problem is your mindset that says one side loses when I blast loud music all night, that it has to be one way or the other.
aristeides
The rules that prohibit persons from making any loud noises that disturb their neighbors aren’t “my rules” or “your rules” but universal rules that ought to apply to all. I doubt if your secular neighbors want to listen to your music blaring all night either.
Aaron the Fascist Troll
OK, to secular and liberal ideology, add “universalist.” My point stands.
aristeides
Claiming it doesn’t make it so.
Greg Pollock
In early Judaism, the commandments of God were social, imposed on all; this also became true of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant. An affront to God was a danger to all. There is still a faint echo in the US, too: State mail delivery on Sunday used to occur, but was removed as against the day of rest. Corporate Judaism, practiced by the Ultra Orthodox, is about general social control, including attacks on resident Palestinians (and their livelihood) by vanguard settlers. Personal affronts to God are distinct from community affronts, the latter a strange kind of spatial libel of the momment, against rights formation, compatible with equating the State with the people. To use an American phrase I have never quite understood, the chickens come home to roost, vanguard settler ideology demands to be followed where ever believers are.
JG
A wise man once said last weeek there is a war between “modern and the medieval.”
Telling people that some ancient fairy tale thing wants people not to start a car engine at saturdays is more than medieval.
Get it. Period.
Aaron the Fascist Troll
You seem a bit hostile.
Palestinian
Arab Israelis ? ah Palestinians who live inside the green line .what do people mean by secular Jews ? Do they believe in God, because if they do not then they are no longer Jewish.
ish yehudi-
@Palestinian… here is an important point which many Palestinians don’t recognize/ refuse to acknowledge: IN our people- the Jewish people- there is such a thing as a “secular Jew.” I know it sounds weird, and there are surely Jewish readers on this site who will contest but– by and large- even us Jews who don’t follow the religious code/ believe in G-d, are still part of our Jewish people. Jews are a People— and Israel is the Land/ Country of our People… I know it’s a bit confusing because you will tell me that Jewish is a religion and Israel is a state and the two things are not connected- but that is your narrative.. if you want to understand how MOST Israelis see it- we are Jewish and Israel is our Jewish country. Zionism was our movement to come home (yes we believe it is our peoples home).
I’ve been realizing that many many Palestinians refuse to acknowledge the connection that most Israeli’s take for granted- Israel is the state of the Jewish people- (anti-normalization is not helping bridge the large gaps of misunderstanding between us, perhaps Palestinian leaders fear that if people would meet/ hear how Israeli’s see themselves it wouldn’t be so easy to rail against Zionism).
thats the rant
Greg Pollock
Israel is clearly an ethnic state, just as many European states are. Some Eastern European states even have something of a law of return (I’m kind of guessing Georgia does). What makes Israel different (apart from the victory of God thing) is 1) an internal sizeable minority one involved in mutual ethnic war; 2) a displaced population of several millions, partly occupied, in a state of declining fortune. I do believe, however, than a significant fraction of Jewish Israels do not see the Torah as divinely given or its strictures so ordained. Certainly at Israel’s foundation those in power were not concerned with Torah. Fusing faith with people creates a sub-population (leaving out Arab citizens) in, essentially, involuntary servitude to others’ view of God.
Palestinian
Ish Yeudi You have your own beliefs but you have no right to impose them on others .I dont recognize your fairy tales including the so-called “Jewish people”.Jews come from different backgrounds,cultures and ethnic group.
XYZ
I don’t recognize fairy tales about a “Palestinian people”. People in Palestine include Jews (both a religion and an ethnic group) like myself, Christians (of different flavors), Muslims, Bahais, and different ethnic groups like Circassians, Arabs, Armenians, Druze (both a religion and an ethnic group).
Palestinian
I expected such a reply .I never asked an Israeli to recognize us as a people ,there is no need to ,we arent obsessed with who we are .The Palestinian Arab identity is not religious-specific,its normal to have different religious groups in societies (which you arent familiar with ).Circassians and Armenians dont consider themselves Arabs .The Druze faith is a branch of Shia Islam and not an ethnic group ,just like Judaism is a religion not an ethnicity as you claim .
XYZ
Judaism is both an ethnicity and a religion. The Jews are a people and the Torah is their Constitution. Just as a Constitution is operative on everyone among the people it is associated with, regardless of whether they agreed to it personally, it also binds those who do accept it with those who don’t fully or partially accept it. The Jews of Israel more or less accept this definition, which is why the official state Rabbinate is accepted with different degrees of reluctance by almost all Jews in Israel. It is not for non-Jews to tell us Jews what we are.
Greg Pollock
Nor is it for Jews to tell Jews what they are, XYZ. Israel’s Declaration of Independence denies the Torah is the Constitution (and what a Constitution it would be, Moses angry at his warriors for allowing the women of an enemy group to live at one point), providing full equality of social and political rights irrespective of faith.
Let’s begin this new crusade of Toarah with some honesty: what is your name, XYZ? Or does YHWH tell you to hide?
Mitchell Cohen
Greg, so what you are saying is that anyone who says they are a Jew is a Jew and that is it? Even if one doesn’t accept the Torah definition of who is a Jew, there obviously has to be a cutting point somewhere (and it IS for Jews to say who is a Jew, NOBODY else)….
Palestinian
You consider people who come from different continents ,cultures and races an ethnic group ?! get real
Shua Frazer
I’ve always wondered what people mean by “secular Israelis”
I assume I’d fall into that category, but my guess is that the author just means people who aren’t ultra-orthodox, and would use electricity on Shabbat and etc.
XYZ
The increase in observance of Orthodox Judaism, both Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) and non-Haredi is parallel to the spread of Islam in the Arab and non-Arab Muslim countries. I am referring both the “political” Islam as well as non-political Islam as a religious movement. These reflect a genuine disillusionment with the dominant modern Western secular, consumerist culture and value system that inundates the world by way of the media and which is viewed as being negative if not outright destructive of human society. Neither the Jewish nor Muslim version of this 21st century religous revival is going to go away and, in fact, I expect a Christian version to appear, particularly in Europe in the coming years as well. This marks the beginning of a real revolution which has the potential to shake the world as did the Emlightenment and the secularization of Western society that began in the 18th century and which has lasted two and a half centuries but which has exhausted itself.
Greg Pollock
“This marks the beginning of a real revolution which has the potential to shake the world as did the Emlightenment and the secularization of Western society that began in the 18th century and which has lasted two and a half centuries but which has exhausted itself.”–But to Orthodox Jews, Christians worship nothing; to Christians, Jews refuse the new commandments of God; to both Jews and Christians, Muslims follow a false prophet, Jews thinking they have the only God, Christians thinking Muslims have denied God by denying the Godhead of Jesus. Strangely, only the Islamic text, the Qur’an, allows all three faiths some truth value. Your revivals, XYZ, lead to the destruction of each other, save, perhaps, in Islam. What’s a God to do?
XYZ
You apparently have no understanding of how Judaism and the other classic religions view things. All these religions share basic truths and if the members of these religions live up to these truths, they are able to cooperate and live in peace with one another. Judaism does not require people of other faiths to convert to Judaism, as long as they live according to the rules of the “7 Mitzvot given to Benei-Noach” (i.e. mankind as a whole). All Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc, who live according to these rules, which are the basic rules of civilization are fine in the eyes of Judaism. The fact that Jews and Christians don’t view Muhammed as a Prophet does not mean Jews and Christians can’t live in peace and mutual respect with Muslims.
They key to harmony is to emphasize the areas of agreement and not to push the areas of disagreement in each other’s faces. This has been done through much of history and today there is a greater awareness among religious believers of the need to confront the real dangers of the secular challenge. Did you see the Republican convention where a well-known Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi let the invocation QUOTING BIBLICAL TEXTS IN HEBREW and this was respected by the largely Christian audience who bowed their heads in respect. This is the wave of the future. In the West, peoples of different religions cooperate to a greater degree than any time in history. The problem now is in the Middle East, but they will learn too, although it will take time.
Greg Pollock
What you are saying is that you can all agree to fight the common enemy, the secular (which probably includes Zen Buddhism), even though on the issue of salvation you see each other as going to damnation of one kind or another. The secular have been pushed to the margins in Iran; shall you include that theocracy as a God fearing ally? Have you forgotten that when there really was no secular overt, the Christian church often actively persecuted Jews for the abomination of false belief and failure to accept the Jew Jesus as Messiah/God?
If you really want to worship God (oh terrible of me to spell the word complete) find a way to do so which needs no enemy. Let me help you get started: “Vie among yourselves in good deeds, and leave your differences to Me” (Qur’an, both 2nd and 5th Suras, context Jews, Christians, and Muslims). And let us not forget: you will abolish all secular Jews, control them through Torah. Spinoza knew where that leads.
XYZ
You still don’t understand what I am saying. I AM NOT IN FAVOR OF A THEOCRATIC STATE. I am in favor of secular democracy. I think I am speaking for virtually all religious Jews in Israel on this (I can’t speak for Christian and Muslim aspirations, obviously). We live in a world of pluralism. Even though I am Orthodox/religious (not Haredi) I am in principle in favor of state support for non-Orthodox movements.
You will note that although there are Islamist political movements that aspire to state power (e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt—”Islam is the solution”), there is no comparable movement of religious Jews in Israel. The Haredim wouldn’t want state power even if you offered it to them on a silver platter.
However, the religious revival I referred is a real, world-wide phenomenon and the secular have to take note of it. This means religious people have rights. For example, attempts by the Germans, who, of course, have a long history of concern for human rights as we all know, to ban ritual circumcision, or kosher slaughter are unacceptable and will be fought tooth and nail.
There is no denying that there is a significant increase in religious extremism (and by this, I mean, intolerance for those who disagree with them). This is an unfortunately logical reaction to the increasing radical secularism which is being pushed on everyone.
For example, seventy years ago, both liberals and conservative, Republicans and Democrats, opposed homosexual marriages and abortion on demand. The basic differences between the different political groups then were basically ecnomic. Today, the radical secularists are attempting to overturn values that everyone agreed on for centuries. It should not be surprising when people see their treasured beliefs being trampled on that this can trigger extreme responses, which, of course, does not justify violence in any way, shape or form, but which can create an inflamed political climate.
We are all going to have to learn to live together in this new environment. There is no other choice.
Greg Pollock
The Abrahamic faiths do not worship the same God in fine (let alone Hindus). Worshiping a false god is not worshiping God. The alignment you are suggesting is using God talk for social regulation and control (so, no homosexual marriages, which somehow force secularism on you, one who need never talk to such a married couple). You (or one of your XYZ name mates) have already said that the Torah is the constitution of all Jews, secular or not; this is direct social control beyond secular law and would be, if implemented, worse than the German case you mention (and I suspect the lower court’s decision there will not stand). The claim that religious politics does not reach the State in Israel is quite false: vanguard settlers are much Ultra Orthodox, and, as another post presently on 972 shows, a Bedouin village will to be removed to make room for national religous settlers who enjoy several benefits via the State for their belief. Naturally born resident Israeli Jews have to leave their own country if they want a nonreligous marriage, returning after. The requirement is absurd, placeing stigma and unnecessary cost on those wanting secular marriage vows. At least in Israel, the issue is not pluralism but the removal of alternative in marriage; singularity of God and faith, is forced: a natural born Israeli should NOT have to leave her land to make his marriage vows.
You want an alliance for the fear of God in talk.
Greg Pollock
the remainder: The requirement is absurd, placeing stigma and unnecessary cost on those wanting secular marriage vows. At least in Israel, the issue is not pluralism but the removal of alternative in marriage; singularity of God and faith, is forced: a natural born Israeli should NOT have to leave her land to make his marriage vows.
You want an alliance for the fear of God in talk.