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 neighborhood council for Bayit Vagan that will serve the haredi community only. During the city council session devoted to defining the new council’s territory, city council member Rachel Azaria discovered that two prestigious high schools, neither of them haredi, were “incidentally” included in the new haredi neighborhood council. As a result, the session turned into a fierce battle between the haredim and non-haredim, with Deputy Mayor Yitzhak Pindrus heading the haredi representatives.
More than a week later, he still sounds upset.
Unsurprisingly each side feels it is under attack from the other on false grounds. But while there are multiple voices representing the non-haredi side, the haredi residents have largely refrained from responding, especially to the press, and have left the task to Pindrus.
Over the last few years, there have been numerous incidents on both sides that have raised tensions: secular kindergartens becoming haredi, swimming pools (there are four in the neighborhood) with separate hours for men and women, Friday night cultural events that the community center has arranged and that bother the haredi residents, a few attempts to enforce gender segregation in supermarkets and health clinics, unauthorized synagogues in private apartments. On top of this, there have been quite a few cases of stone-throwing on Shabbat and nasty remarks from haredi residents regarding secular people’s clothing. Another recurring event is the apparent war over the eruv, the thread-boundary around the neighborhood that enables those within it to carry items on Shabbat. No sooner does the haredi side set up the cords – without permits – than the secular activists cut and destroy them – also without legal authority.
Of course, not all Kiryat Hayovel residents feel the same degree of anger or suspicion toward the haredi community. However, the general feeling is that there is a case for a struggle, mostly because the neighborhood is situated so close to two large haredi neighborhoods – Bayit Vagan and Har Nof – and is thus a popular location for young haredi families who wish to remain close to their parents.
“It’s not that we have some underground plan to take over the neighborhood,” says Sarah Berman, a mother of three in her late 20s whose husband studies in a yeshiva in Bayit Vagan. “My husband’s parents live there, it’s within walking distance for us on Shabbat, yet it is less expensive than buying an apartment there, so we came to Kiryat Hayovel for convenience.”
With a wry smile, she adds, “We are not part of some conspiracy.
We are just a family who needs to live somewhere.”
ESTI KIRMAYER, a married mother of two in her early 30s who has lived in Kiryat Hayovel for eight years and is the Jerusalem District secretary for the Labor Party, says even she doesn’t want to be part of the more extremist secular activism, although there are a few things that really bother her and her neighbors.
“I have had the unpleasant experience of nasty phone calls late at night, with threats like ‘You will die,’ and such,” she recounts. “I have heard remarks on how I’m dressed, though I can assure you, there is nothing wrong with the way I dress. I was wearing pants and a shirt without sleeves – it’s a hot summer – and someone came close and told me in my face to ‘go get dressed.’ And it’s not only me, my friends and neighbors here, too, have experienced these things more than once.”
Yet she adds that the tensions rose particularly around the last election period, in 2008: “We noticed there were many more comments, even toward little children, like ‘Don’t ride your bicycle on Shabbat.’” Then, one Thursday morning in August of that year, municipality employees brought two caravans into the public playground on Warburg Street, where the secular residents would organize outdoor cultural events every Friday, including in the evening.
“At first, some of us thought the municipality was surprising us with a nice garden for us, but soon we realized it was something else,” she recalls.
That something was thendeputy mayor Yehoshua Pollak’s personal decision to set up a new haredi kindergarten there, in the heart of the completely secular Warburg Street. Within two days, the first group of secular residents organized into a team to fight the decision, which some viewed as no less than a declaration of war on the secular community. They decided to build a large succa on the playground – on Shabbat – and organize a protest guard that would remain there until the tractors came on Sunday morning to install the caravans.
Kirmayer remarks that during that period before the 2008 elections, progressive parties like Hitorerut B’yerushalayim, Yerushalmim and New Spirit already existed, “and as a result, many more secular residents preferred to fight back, [in contrast to] the usual reaction that had prevailed until then – that there is nothing to do, let’s pack up and leave Jerusalem.”
THAT CASE was also a turning point for the secular residents – and most of the national-religious residents, who did not want to live in a haredi neighborhood, either.
The general atmosphere was that something could and should be done, that the days of caving in were over. Less than three months later, Barkat defeated haredi candidate Meir Porush in the elections, and many felt that the times were changing.
But the situation on the ground was more complex.
“Of course, there was a feeling that things wouldn’t be the same now, but many residents – especially, but not only, in Kiryat Hayovel – could not, or would not, admit that in politics there is a gap between what we want and what we can [accomplish],” explains a high-ranking official at Safra Square who was involved for a while in bridge-building attempts between the two sides.
At present, there are about 800 haredi families in the neighborhood, compared to approximately 400 six years ago. Zangwill Street is totally haredi. About half of Stern Street is haredi as well, as are Olswanger and Brazil streets.
But the rest of the haredi families are scattered around the neighborhood, and their numbers are only evident on Shabbat or holidays at synagogues and playgrounds.
“The secular people in Kiryat Hayovel speak and act as if they are the majority annoyed by a minority they don’t want to see around,” argues Pindrus. “They just forget or ignore the fact that we are the majority and not them, and I think it’s about time they realize that.”
MEANWHILE, SOME of the mayor’s decisions have the potential to make things easier for the non-haredi camp.
Kirmayer mentions the decision to set up a branch there of the Secular Yeshiva of Jerusalem – an institution where secular men and women in their early 20s come to study Jewish texts from a pluralistic point of view – and the decision to split the two neighborhood councils. She estimates that these steps will reinforce the non-haredi population.
However, according to Pindrus, things are not so easily resolved.
He repeats that in the case of Kiryat Hayovel, he, as representative of the haredi community, played by the rules of democracy, but lost to a bluntly unfair attitude.
“We are the majority. I keep saying that again and again, they just don’t want to listen. I, as a representative of the haredi majority in this neighborhood, have agreed to relinquish my legitimate right, namely to hold elections for Yuvalim [the Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood council and community center] as one neighborhood [together with the smaller neighborhoods of Bayit Vagan and Givat Ha’antenna], where we would have won the majority of seats at the board, and agreed to limit the haredi area only to Bayit Vagan and Givat Ha’antenna – but I’m still the villain! I am still treated as the minority that threatens the secular people.”
Azaria smiles ironically on hearing Pindrus’s complaints.
“Pindrus forgets to mention how he tried to open a Talmud Torah [haredi elementary school for boys] in the neighborhood, right in the middle of a non-haredi population. He tried, and failed. So it is clear that this a close game, and the rules are to test, time after time, our limits – to test whether we are awake or if we fell asleep on duty.”
However, she adds that there are some positive aspects that should not be disregarded.
“I think in the particular case of Kiryat Hayovel, we have all learned a lesson. I think that Jerusalem and its residents have matured. Such a situation, not so long ago, would have ended with dozens of nonharedi families packing up and leaving at least the neighborhood, probably the city. Instead of that, people got organized and fought back. But more importantly, apart from a very few radicals, things were done without expressions of hatred for haredim. Just as a matter of fact.”
Apparently, she continues, part of what happened in Kiryat Hayovel was expected, and therefore the city’s commitment to maintaining the haredi-secular balance in the neighborhood was part of the coalition agreement that Barkat signed with Yerushalmim following the elections.
According to Azaria, Barkat was already aware, while forming his coalition, that this neighborhood was going to become a front in the city’s haredi-non-haredi battle.
“We agreed that there would be no haredi educational institutions in the neighborhood,” explains Azaria, “so when we found out that Pindrus suddenly tried to open a Talmud Torah, we immediately stood there, refusing to let it happen. I guess that was one more case [of testing our boundaries], and it’s good that we were ready to prevent that.”
WHAT REMAINS is the issue of the secular Boyer and religious Himmelfarb high schools, which, for geographic reasons, found themselves under the jurisdiction of the new haredi neighborhood council of Bayit Vagan and Giv’at Ha’antenna.
Most of the non-haredi residents are convinced this could not have been an innocent mistake, and immediately accused Pindrus of trying to “steal” territory that did not belong to his constituency.
About four years ago, the haredi city council members attempted to acquire the Boyer schoolyard area for their institutional needs, and the main concern in the non-haredi community is that the school’s inclusion in the Bayit Vagan council will enable them to bring those plans to fruition. As for the Himmelfarb school, there is a fear that once out of the area of Kiryat Hayovel, there will soon come a request from haredim to relocate it elsewhere, in order to obtain the building and its facilities.
Asked for an explanation, Pindrus sounds increasingly frustrated.
“I don’t understand that, really,” he says, not trying to hide his anger. “Again, did I ask for a split in the neighborhood councils? No, it was forced on me, by the knights of democracy, who didn’t want to take the risk of seeing how, through free elections, we, the haredi majority, would win the whole neighborhood council and start, for a change, to give ourselves the services we deserve and do not get.”
He adds that the needs of his community are large, and that despite all the complaints from the non-haredi community, the haredim are far from getting what they are entitled to, as residents of the city, in terms of housing, educational institutions and community services.
“But in any case, I didn’t ask for [the buildings to be in a haredi area],” he argues. “It’s a result of the facts on the ground and the decision to split the council. I’m not the one to blame.”
Azaria admits that the move to split into two neighborhood councils was not the best solution, noting that in recent years the municipality’s policy has been to merge close neighborhood councils instead.
For the moment, she adds, the new haredi council doesn’t even have a budget or any source of income (the Yuvalim neighborhood council is the richest in the city and has the highest income, through the swimming pools and the sports facilities it offers).
“So I wonder, how are they going to finance their activities? Where will the money come from? The residents should get a clear answer here,” she says.
SHE, KIRMAYER and many others from the non-haredi community agree that what happens in Kiryat Hayovel will serve as an example of what will happen in the whole city.
“One thing is sure,” says Azaria. “Haredim already understand that here, in Kiryat Hayovel, they will not win as easily as they did in [the northeastern neighborhood of] Ramat Eshkol.”
One thing that makes Kiryat Hayovel different from other communities with similar tensions is that it contains a small but dedicated community of people who are haredi in all but their attitude toward a haredi hegemony.
“I know quite a few of them, they talk to me more easily, since I am a religious woman,” explains Azaria. “They do not want to live with haredim around – they observe a strict haredi private life, but they prefer to live in a non-haredi community.
These people have given people like me a lot of strength not to surrender.”