Corridors of Power: Order, please!

By PEGGY CIDOR
Aryeh Deri (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Aryeh Deri
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Spirituality has many faces.
According to a reliable source in the Gur Hassidic community, their rebbe, the Admor of Gur, was horrified to find out that two new city center supermarkets are open on Shabbat.
The rebbe is a practical and pragmatic spiritual leader. Therefore, instead of seeking an explanation for this desecration somewhere in the skies, his reaction was more down to earth – and to realpolitik.
The first step was to contact some of the haredi city council representatives to find out exactly what happened. How was it possible that in a council with 16 haredim and religious members – plus two additional religious members in non-religious lists – this Shabbat desecration could happen? According to our source, the rebbe was so outraged that his emissaries at Safra Square understood that something serious had to be done before his wrath would fall on their heads.
Considering that the discovery of this new breech in the status quo occurred barely a week ago or so, things moved quickly.
The city council has nine Ashkenazi haredi members, four Shas haredi members and three religious members (United Jerusalem and Bayit Yehudi). The 13 haredi members are united – at least in this case – on the struggle to protect the Shabbat in the capital.
The first operational step was taken by Interior Minister Arye Deri (Shas). Immediately upon hearing about the problem (and about the anger of the Admor of Gur) he decided to summon Mayor Nir Barkat to his office to clarify the situation.
This is a bit tricky. Officially, the Interior Ministry is in charge of the city and local authorities. This is more than a matter of procedure; the local authorities get most of their budgets from that ministry, something that no mayor can totally ignore. But in this particular case, it is not clear whether Barkat has to show up at a meeting summoned by Deri, since this is not a matter for the Interior Ministry, but rather a political issue. For the moment, there are no indications that Deri is planning anything more serious than a meeting to convince Barkat that he should do more regarding Shabbat issue in his jurisdiction.
But there is more. The president of the United Torah Judaism list at city council, Itzhak Pindrus, says that the city budget for 2017 is at stake. Pindrus says that the plan is to vote against the budget – which will be presented for approval next week at the council – since it will include several activities desecrating Shabbat and violating the status-quo, including cultural activities planned and financed by the municipality in some of its public venues, such as community centers.
“There is no way we, the haredi city council representatives, will approve a budget that openly desecrates the Shabbat. There are 13 haredi and three religious members on the council, thus the majority. We represent 40% of the Jewish population in this city, and Barkat expects us to approve that? This is not going to happen.”
Because Barkat is planning to ask for a special loan from the government (something that is done more often than we might think) to finance the needs of the city that are not covered by the official budget – like constructing more than 1,000 classrooms in both the Arab and haredi sectors – and because he seeks extended Treasury support for the city, the mayor cannot afford to squander political capital.
Last year, the street fighting (there is no other word to describe it) between Barkat and Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon resulted in a larger grant for the city, but this year Barkat’s objective is even more ambitious.
Barkat wants to obtain two separate grants – the “Capital Grant” and an extended “Grant Balancer” provided by the government to cities in financial difficulty (provided that these city councils can prove a balanced budget). Together, these grants should reach the impressive sum of NIS 800 million.
This a sensitive moment. Kahlon is not eager to approve these grants, so the last thing that Barkat needs is a rerun of the Shabbat Wars of last year, and the haredim, a key part of the government coalition, are the last parties one would want to have as adversaries. A spokesman for the municipality explained that Barkat is adamant about respecting the status quo in the city, but didn’t say whether he was planning to “report” to Deri’s office.