Not so quiet on the western front

For many residents, Kiryat Hayovel is symbolic of the haredi/non-haredi battle being waged in the city.

By PEGGY CIDOR
kiryat hayovel (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
kiryat hayovel
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
On February 8 of this year, residents of the Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood woke up to what some saw as a bad joke, and others as a serious insult. Covering four of the neighborhood’s billboards were posters depicting naked women, all taken from famous Renaissance paintings and displayed – deliberately – near buildings where haredi (ultra-Orthodox) families lived.
In answer to a local press correspondent’s question, Shai (not his real name) stated bluntly over the phone that this was the work of his fellow “Free Jerusalem Patrol” members, aiming to keep the neighborhood completely secular.
“We did it so the haredim would run from here as cockroaches run from bug spray,” he added.
Such harsh incidents have not recurred since then, perhaps because this extreme measure angered even the activists struggling against haredi hegemony in the neighborhood. In addition, many of those who oppose haredi hegemony are themselves religious and felt personally offended by the posters. But the general feeling that Kiryat Hayovel has become a battlefield between haredim and non-haredi residents has far from faded.
Some 22,000 people, most of them born in Israel and a large number from the former Soviet Union, live in the southwestern Jerusalem neighborhood. Established in 1950 on Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund land and the ruins of the Beit Mazmil Palestinian village (veterans of the neighborhood still call it by that name), it is a heterogeneous area, with fancy villas beside the run-down shikunim housing projects of the ’50s. And lately, due to its location between the predominantly haredi Bayit Vagan and Har Nof neighborhoods and to its relatively low-cost housing, it has become a preferred choice for young haredi families.
Over the years, especially in the last decade or so, the original blend of traditional immigrants from North Africa and eastern Europe (mainly Romania) has changed, and today haredim represent a majority of the neighborhood’s residents (if one includes Bayit Vagan, which was part of the Kiryat Hayovel local council community until last month). However, this is not obvious on the ground; the haredi residents are scattered throughout the neighborhood, which covers a broad area, so many of the original residents are still not aware of the demographic change that Kiryat Hayovel has undergone.
Recently a new reason for tension emerged: the decision, promoted by Mayor Nir Barkat, to establish a separate