Shabbat: Day of rest

The resolution of the Cinema City battle will decide whether those in search of weekend leisure options can find them close to home.

By PEGGY CIDOR
Jewish Quater in the Old City of Jerusalem, 521 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/ The Jerusalem Post)
Jewish Quater in the Old City of Jerusalem, 521
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/ The Jerusalem Post)
The free-market laws are sometimes the best indicators of the public’s mood in many aspects. Take for example the issue of leisure and entertainment activities on Shabbat. The common impression is that Jerusalem, unlike Tel Aviv, is more or less under curfew on that day. That is, no places of entertainment are open. Recently, the closure of Restobar, a restaurant that was a bastion of entertainment on Shabbat, turned into a symbolic act, far from its simple and earthly reason: the right of an owner to use his property according to his own principles.
But while keeping restaurants and leisure establishments open on Shabbat is becoming more acceptable, having cultural venues be open on Shabbat remains all too rare.
“It’s nice that one can find a restaurant or a coffee shop or even a movie theater open on Saturday morning, but that’s not culture,” points out Tzfira Stern, director of the Kolben Dance Company and a social activist in the city.
Opening a leisure or cultural venue in Jerusalem on Shabbat has never been simple.
What in any other city would have been seen solely from a business perspective has a wide range of aspects and difficulties to overcome in the Holy City. Some of these venues have become symbolic over the years, hence the conflict over opening a mixed public swimming pool in the 1970s, to non-kosher restaurants (My-Bar in the city center and the first McDonald’s on Shamai Street in the 1980s and others), to public parking and now Cinema City. The late Meretz city councillor Ornan Yekutieli said at one of the monthly meetings (under mayor Ehud Olmert) that the real struggle was not financial or commercial but political and cultural: Will it incur religious opposition and protest? “It is more like a street battle, in every house and every lane,” this reporter said to city councillor Shlomo Rosenstein (United Torah Judaism) in regard to Mayor Nir Barkat’s decision to open the Karta parking lot on Shabbat three years ago. Street battle or not, over the last 10 years the situation regarding various venues being open on Shabbat has changed the face of the city dramatically.
While many factors have brought about the change, on the image level many – locals as well as visitors – still consider Jerusalem to be a place where “everything is closed on Shabbat.”
So here are the facts for the summer of 2013, less than four months before the municipal elections, where a major issue is likely to be which candidate will promise to keep the city open on Shabbat and seem capable of delivering on that promise. Besides the public places (such as Cinema City, which requires a decision from the Finance Ministry to permit its opening), private places, such as restaurants, bars and coffee shops, are mainly motivated by business reasons. In fact, if an establishment doesn’t operate under the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate and doesn’t have kashrut certification, there is nothing to prevent it from opening on Shabbat and holy days. The question is, do such venues have enough clients? Over the last three years, all the nonkosher restaurants on Emek Refaim have closed down for lack of non-religious clients, perhaps due to the increase of new olim from France and North America, many of whom who are observant. Yet when Restobar (a very popular non-kosher restaurant on Rambam Street) closed following the decision of the new owner to not allow it to open on Shabbat, the closure was taken as a serious threat to the freedom of the city’s secular residents and resulted in a series of demonstrations, protests on Facebook and many articles in the local and even national press.
Nevertheless, more and more places are open on Shabbat, mainly in the Talpiot Industrial Zone (clubs and bars) and the city center (restaurants and coffee shops). No fewer than 11 places are open on Shabbat in Ein Kerem and 28 restaurants and 27 bars and coffee shops open seven days a week in the city center. Coexistence has its place in this matter as well, with 24 restaurants, coffee shops and bars in French Hill and the nearby streets of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. In Baka, restaurants and pizzerias are open on Shabbat, while the German Colony has only one place – the Smadar coffee shop linked to the movie theater, which is always packed on Saturday mornings.
“Things have changed, that’s for sure,” says Marik Stern, a member of the Yerushalmim movement and adviser to city councillor Rachel Azaria. “But I believe that we need to bring a different approach to the whole idea of places being open on Shabbat. For example, if this local trend of restaurants that keep kosher but are not under the supervision of the rabbinate continues, we will see theaters and concert halls and the like open on Shabbat because they will be able to get a financial and business basis to enable this change – otherwise they can’t afford it.”
Such a change is, in fact, happening with groups of residents connected to leisure and entertainment venues who have learned about the laws of kashrut without being connected to the rabbinate and can serve a growing number of religious people who are willing to frequent such places if they feel confident enough. Some of these places are open on Shabbat, which will not suit the strictly Orthodox, but will cater to those who will eat food cooked on Shabbat, as long as other kashrut laws are followed.
“Once this becomes a larger phenomenon,” adds Stern, “we will have traditional people who will go to the theater or the concert hall and sit at the coffee shop inside, which will operate according the principles of kashrut, and thus enable these cultural venues to be open. We already know about quite a few that would like to have that.”
But recently, dramatic new data have been added with the opening of the First Station, the leisure and culture compound at the old railway station on David Remez Street, facing the Khan Theater. With seven restaurants and coffee shops already in operation (the plan is to have at least 10 such venues eventually), in addition to a center of family sports and leisure, galleries and vendors, this has changed the picture entirely.
Some of the venues have kashrut certification and some do not, according to the owners’ discretion. At first, the owners and the entrepreneurs feared that a threat on the part of the haredi leadership to prevent its opening would lead to clashes and protests – something that is bad for business anywhere – but nothing happened. There was not even one protest, except for a few articles in the haredi press, and within a few days of its opening, the First Station became one of the city’s success stories.
Within a few months, the Sherover Culture Center in Abu Tor will open its doors, with 12 movie theaters and a few galleries, coffee shops and restaurants, all open on Shabbat.
The last issue still awaiting resolution is Cinema City. This, too, according to city council member Ofer Berkowitz, head of the Hitorerut movement, will likely operate on Shabbat. If that indeed happens, the issue of the rights of the city’s secular residents to have somewhere to go on Shabbat without having to leave the city will reach its resolution, some 40 years after the conflict about Shabbat in Jerusalem started.