Jerusalem mayor navigates sacred city’s religious politics

JERUSALEM (RNS)—When Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat decided to open a municipal parking lot that had been closed on Saturdays, his office said he simply was being practical.

Extra parking is needed to help ease lines of double-parked cars near the Old City that have become an impenetrable maze for emergency vehicles and “an issue of public safety,” mayoral aide Stephen Miller said.

But because ultra-Orthodox Jews consider driving on the Sabbath an abomination, Barkat quickly discovered that in the holy city, even mundane matters of municipal governance are anything but routine. 

In the world’s most contested piece of religious real estate, Barkat has learned that there is no such thing as a small issue—not even a parking lot.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, seen here at the city’s Western Wall, has been forced to navigate the city’s delicate religious politics in a matter as trivial as opening a municipal parking lot on the Jewish Sabbath. (PHOTO/RNS/ Courtesy Municipality of Jerusalem)

Barkat’s decision sparked weeks of protests by thousands of the city’s ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, Jewish residents. Protesters hurled rocks at police, and one man threw himself under the wheels of a bus.

On the surface, the fight is the newest flare-up in an age-old debate on the proper observance of the Sabbath. Yet the demonstrations constitute something larger for Barkat—his first major test as he attempts to navigate his city’s deep-seated religious politics.

The parking lot standoff reflects larger religion-state issues facing ordinary citizens of Jerusalem, who live in a city infused with holiness and blessed with great beauty but fraught with earthly problems like traffic jams, exorbitant housing prices and deep religious-ethnic divisions.

On one side are Haredi Jews, who shun most elements of modern life, and the city’s non-Orthodox Jews, along with Muslim and Christian Arabs.

On the other is Barkat, a 49-year-old successful secular entrepreneur, who took office last December.

Barkat was unavailable for an interview, despite repeated requests.

Every decision is fraught with political ramifications. Recently, panic swept the city’s secular residents when 60 Haredi families announced plans to buy a housing complex in a religiously mixed neighborhood.

Jewish hard-liners, meanwhile, were outraged at early reports that the city—in a move widely seen as a goodwill gesture to Arabs—will not raze 70 percent of the illegally built homes in Arab sections of East Jerusalem.

Even birth rates are a source of competition and contention. Haredi Jews and Arabs, who tend to have large families, have far outpaced non-Haredi middle-class Jews, who are fleeing the city for the less-expensive, more tolerant suburbs. That, in turn, has made the city poorer, because many Haredi Jews and Arabs do not earn enough to pay city taxes.

Meanwhile, Christian Arabs, who have fewer children on average than their Muslim counterparts, are being squeezed out of traditionally Christian neighborhoods. When they flee Jerusalem, it’s usually for Detroit, Toronto or Sydney.

Jerusalem's Old City

There even are turf wars in the larger churches, where various Christian denominations long have been vying for authority.

“Imagine six families sharing the same kitchen,” said Fergus Clarke, a Franciscan priest who maintains the Catholic portion of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, “in Jerusalem religion and politics are intertwined, and it’s sometimes difficult to know when motivations are based on religious belief or constitute a political power struggle,” said Joel Katz, whose blog, “Religion and State in Israel,” follows such developments closely.

Even a word like “tolerance” takes on new meaning. Katz pointed to the Museum of Tolerance being built by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which sits atop a parking lot that once was a Muslim cemetery.

“Jerusalem is a multifaceted powder keg,” said David Rosen, who oversees interfaith relations for the American Jewish Committee from his office in Jerusalem. “There are religious sensibilities, cultural sensitivities, archaeological sensitivities and, of course, political sensitivities. There is no city in the world where one treads so much on egg shells.”

The challenge for the mayor, Rosen said, “is to ensure that Jerusalem is a modern, open city that at the same time respects everyone. Barkat’s primary, and maybe superhuman, task is to give all these components a sense they not only belong in Jerusalem but that their place here is respected.”

That’s a tall order in a city where thousands of police stand guard to protect participants in the annual gay pride parade, and where the size and color of one’s headscarf or yarmulke can make or break a business deal—or a marriage contract.

Despite their many viewpoints, Jerusalemites agree on some things: that their city could be cleaner and more affordable and that the light-rail project that’s dragged on for years must be completed, fast.

They also agree the city must never be physically divided, as it was under Jordanian rule between 1948 and 1967. Dividing the city to make way for a possible Palestinian capital makes Jews nervous about Palestinian militants on their doorstep, and Arabs fret about being shut out of access to jobs and pensions if Jerusalem were split.