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August 2008
Kindergarten politics
Israeli democracy may be a work in progress. At least it seemed so last night at the monthly Jerusalem City Council meeting.
The council, which is dominated by ultra-Orthodox representatives — all men — even though that community constitutes less than a third of the Jewish population, tackled a proposal to put an ultra-Orthodox kindergarten in a predominantly secular Jewish neighborhood that apparently overwhelmingly rejects the plan.
The mayor and his deputy, along with a white-bearded rabbi, argued passionately for the kindergarten, even though there is an existing public kindergarten 50 yards away from the proposed site. Residents of the Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood accused the council of plotting to “take over” their neighborhood. They feared a Jewish bathhouse would be next, and then a religious school.
Once a tiny minority in Jerusalem, the ultra-Orthodox, who often impose a ban on driving on the Jewish Sabbath, as well as other restrictions in the areas where they live, together with the modern Orthodox, constitute roughly half of the Jewish population of the city, largely because of their high birth rates. There are no entirely secular Jewish neighborhoods left in the city.
One secular council member accused the mayor of starting a war among Jews and destroying the “third temple,” a reference to modern Israel. “Every bare piece of land, you put up a synagogue,” he said. One mixed secular-religious neighborhood has 14 synagogues and no community center, said another secular council member.
The rabbi suggested the secularists were “like the Nazis.”
“You’re not letting us live where we want to live,” the rabbi said.
A man stood up and shouted at the rabbi: “This is not Germany!” He became so enraged, security guards forcibly removed him from the hall.
The rabbi continued: “The Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) are staying in the city and they’re not leaving for Tel Aviv and the secular people are leaving. You should deal with demography. You should have kids.”
There was no public comment period, as is common in American city council meetings. Instead, observers in the tiny galleries stood and shouted down the council members. Security removed more than a dozen citizens after loud outbursts.
In the end, the outnumbered secular Jewish council members put forth a resolution that said, in part: “The city hall will nor represent one sector over another … (and) will not disturb the status quo.”
The council rejected the resolution and pledged to build the kindergarten.
Palestinians have not been represented in city council meetings since the city was “reunited” in 1967. They now constitute 39 percent of the city’s population and do not vote because they consider Israeli control of East Jerusalem an illegal occupation of their land.
In 15 years, Israeli demographers expect Palestinians will constitute a majority of the city, at which point, perhaps a Muslim mayor will be deciding where to put the ultra-Orthodox Jewish kindergartens.
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200 free, 9,000 to go?
Mahdi Rahami was imprisoned before his third son was born and he saw him only once while in captivity. Today, he was free, and he kissed the boy amid 198 family reunions, singing, dancing and nationalist slogans.
Hussein Al-Shawahim was released a half year early from a 27-month sentence and he said he would return to university and finish his accounting degree.
Ata Jabril was in prison for five years and his father, Jamal, called him a hero.
“This arrest destroyed us and destroyed our lives,” he told me.
Israel released roughly two percent of Palestinian prisoners today as a goodwill gesture to the moderate Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas as both sides struggle to reach any agreement, however small, that might lead to a peace settlement. Condoleezza Rice, traveling to Jerusalem today, told reporters that reconciliation was unlikely by the end of the year.
If the prisoner release was meant to soften Palestinian public opinion toward Israel, there was no talk in Ramallah of offering any concessions for peace.
“There will not be peace without the release of all the prisoners,” Abbas told a cheering crowd outside his headquarters.
“It can be seen as the start of a new hope,” said Abdallah Abu Ali, who came from Hebron to greet his cousin, Mohammad Abu Ali — convicted of killing an Israeli in the West Bank and a Palestinian he said was a collaborator — released from Israeli captivity after 28 years.
But, Abdallah told me, as he surveyed the celebration: “It’s not enough. All prisoners should be released. … This is nothing. Their family members are waiting like we were waiting.”
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Talking peace in Tel Aviv
An Israeli delegation sat down across from their Syrian counterparts to hash out an agreement on sharing water resources in the Golan Heights. Down the hallway, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators discussed the future of Jerusalem in the context of a two-state solution.
For years, the grownups haven’t been able to find a way to peace. Perhaps they should leave it to 50 college students from 18 countries and the Palestinian West Bank at a five-day mock peace conference at Tel Aviv University.
“We hope this can set an example,” said Dana Sender, one of the event organizers, who is a Far Eastern Studies major at Tel Aviv University. “Maybe if we can show our leaders this initiative comes from students who care, maybe it will make a difference.”
One student came from Lebanon via Syria and Jordan on a foreign passport. His circuitous journey to Israel underscores an absence of peace in the region. Tel Aviv is just a couple-hour drive from the Lebanon border.
In many cases, Israeli students played the part of Arab negotiators and Arab students represented the Israeli side.
“The goal is to show the complexity of the situation,” Sender told me today as more mock negotiations were unfolding. “The more you learn, the more confused you get.”
In this afternoon’s session, Israeli and Palestinian teams stalled over a resolution to the 60-year Palestinian refugee crisis. Israelis, as well as an Egyptian representative, were proposing refugees forfeit the right of return in exchange for citizenship in Arab countries.
The Palestinian team refused.
“Perhaps it’s too complicated,” Sender said, “to reach a peace agreement in five days.”
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Men in front, women in back
If you’re a woman, and you get on the 15A, don’t sit in the front.
“I didn’t even know it was a segregated bus and people started yelling at me to move to the back,” said Mamit Asras, 22, a secular Jew waiting for a bus in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. “I was in shock because it was a public bus.”
The Israeli national bus cooperative, Egged, opened a second gender-segregated bus line in Jerusalem earlier this year after ultra-Orthodox Jews shut down streets demonstrating for more segregated buses.
Last year, the company created the country’s first gender-segregated bus line, also in Jerusalem, which was opposed in petitions by secular Jews.
But several women waiting at a bus stop in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof, told me they preferred to sit in the back of the bus.
“The more the better,” said Hani Zonenfeld, 17, of the busses. “At noon time, when it’s really crowded, it’s much more modest.”
By keeping the sexes apart, unmarried men and women won’t incidentally touch each other.
“The most important thing is the touching,” Zonenfeld said.
But, why put the women in the back?
“Women,” Asras said, “always get the bad part of the deal.”
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Shabbas Goy on Duty
Abu Ali is a taxi driver every other day.
On Friday evening he opens up a small plastic storage shed a rabbi bought for him and he hangs his sign in Hebrew: “Goy for Shabbas.”
Goy is a sometimes-derogatory Yiddish word for non-Jew. Shabbas is the Jewish Sabbath.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews follow a strict interpretation of the Torah, which forbids working during the Sabbath, including turning on a light, making a telephone call or driving. The Jewish Sabbath runs from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
Abu Ali, who is from the village of Beit Safafa outside Jerusalem, didn’t want to give his full name because he doesn’t report his income as a shabbas goy to tax authorities.
He charges 30 shekels, or about $9, for house calls. Most common, he said, is turning on or off lights, including refrigerator lights that families forget to unscrew. Once a boy turned on a faucet and his father asked Abu Ali to turn it off.
He charges 100 shekels, or about $30, for taking women in labor to the hospital, a service he performs on average one to three times a Sabbath.
Last Sabbath, he said he made $300. Others are less lucrative. He serves a relatively small community because, with the exception of health emergencies, ultra-Orthodox Jews do not use telephones during the Sabbath, so they must walk to his small office, opposite a supermarket in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Romema.
He puts a siren on his car and a sign in the window that reads: “Shabbas Goy on Duty” to avoid neighborhood residents from throwing stones at his car for violating the sanctity of the Sabbath by driving.
Other shabbas goys in Israel are Russian or Filipino. Abu Ali says he doesn’t know of any other Muslim shabbas goys. He is a religious Muslim — he wears a skullcap and a beard — which he says the ultra-Orthodox community appreciates because they are also socially conservative and they expect he will respect the ultra-Orthodox women.
“It creates a good relationship,” he said. “They know it’s a way of making a living and that’s what’s important. The whole Jewish-Arab question isn’t relevant.”
Ultra-Orthodox Jews are also forbidden to pay money on the Sabbath — also considered work — so they usually pay Abu Ali later in the week by putting money in envelopes into a slot on his storage shed.
Someone shirked her payment just once in three years, he said.
Abu Ali, who learned Hebrew working for 25 years as a bus driver in Israel, said he wasn’t sure his weekend job would pave the way to greater Arab-Jewish understanding. He said he hadn’t developed any friendships within the closed ultra-Orthodox community.
“On a weekday, I’m nothing to them,” he said. “But on Shabbat, I’m like an angel.”
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Jerusalem’s lattes
Israelis call it the most authentically Middle Eastern market in the country. They come for the fresh bread and produce, meat and fish, and also to eat hummus and falafel in tiny storefronts under the shouts of merchants hawking their wares.
So, it is no surprise that when the Israeli coffee chain Aroma — Israel’s answer to Starbucks — moved into the Mehana Yehuda market, a few people were upset.
“It’s an atrocity,” Ran Shacham, a 24-year-old history and law major at Hebrew University told me today. “It’s the end of little Israel, and I can’t stand it. It destroys the chance to sit in front of oranges and hear people scream.”
The market, located in an old neighborhood of West Jerusalem, has landed on the front lines of Israel’s struggle with gentrification.
Jerusalem cleaves to its identity as an old place, where the stones, even the cries of street vendors are sacred.
Shacham, who grew up near Tel Aviv, called the market “authentic” and “magic.” He was sitting at a cramped table with friends, eating an inexpensive meal of potato and beef stew. The floor was dirty and he didn’t seem to mind.
Meanwhile, the tables at Aroma were packed, mostly with English-speaking tourists.
“We decided to eat here, because, to be honest, it seems the cleanest,” said Rachel Kalter, 26, from California. She called the salads and choice of ice lattes a “nice break from Israeli food.”
A random sampling of nearby merchants welcomed the arrival of Aroma, as well as a couple designer women’s clothing stores.
“It’s something amazing because this market has become a boutique market,” said 65-year-old Menachem Mezrahi, who has worked at his family’s bakery there for 40 years. “We want it to become young. The younger people spend more money.”
Still, the old timers were skeptical.
“Aroma looks clean now, but I’m not sure it will last,” said Menashe Budko, 72, who was playing backgammon at a tea establishment that is so local the owners never bothered to give it a name.