Jerusalem's Ultra-Orthodox Riots

Violent protests are again drawing attention to fraught Jewish intercommunal relations in Jerusalem, as fears grow concerning the ultra-Orthodox community's growing preponderance, Dr Dominic Moran writes for ISN Security Watch.

Months of violent weekend clashes between police and ultra-Orthodox hard-liners, protesting the opening of a municipal parking lot on the Sabbath, have exacerbated extant fears concerning the fragility of inter-communal relations in Jewish West Jerusalem.

Sixteen rioters were arrested over the weekend and a passerby, six police and at least three Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) rioters were injured, including a protester who was dragged underneath a car for several dozen meters.

The parking lot protests are just the latest in a pattern of similar protests through the years that have focused on the alleged desecration of the Sabbath by secular drivers, the council and city businesses.

The protests have been presented in a foreboding manner in the secular Hebrew press, with shots of demonstrators chasing cars and calling police Nazis aired repeatedly.

Shlomo Guzmen-Carmeli, from Bar Ilan University, told ISN Security Watch the protesters are a "small group within the Haredi world."

"The Israeli media doesn't mention that fact. They present the scenario that this is the entire Haredi world that is at war with the State of Israel, which is not true at all."

Zealots

The demonstrations are being led by a fringe communal religious organization, Eda Haredit, which incorporates a number of mystical Hasidic sects such as Satmar, Toldot Aharon, a Bratslav offshoot and other small Haredi groups.

Eda Haredit is known for its stringency on kosher maintenance and certification and other halakhic (religious law) issues and stands out within the ultra-Orthodox community for the vehemence of its anti-Zionist stance.

Aligned religious movements are prevented from accepting any direct economic benefits from the state and boycott all state and municipal institutions - though some unacknowledged links or temporary associations do appear to exist.

Guzmen-Carmeli explained that another group is also involved in the demonstrations, dubbed shababnikim. "This is a group of Haredi kids and adolescents who were rejected from yeshivas [Torah academies] and they are out of control," he said.

Eda Haredit has enjoined protesters not to resort to violence and has blamed the repeated clashes with police and motorists on the shababnikim, although protest footage does not appear to bear this out.

"They see this as an opportunity to fight or demonstrate against the State of Israel," Professor Menachem Friedman, a leading expert on the Haredi community, told ISN Security Watch, referring to Eda Haredit.

He explained that some of the organization's constituent groups have a long history of protests against Shabbat desecration and have been vituperate in their criticism of the more mainstream Ashkenazi Haredi coalition, Agudat Yisrael, which has made accommodations with the state and participates in its institutions. 

Blood libel

The secular authorities have been accused by Eda Haredit's Toldot Aharon of external pageblood libel in a case that has shocked the country.

A woman from Toldot Aharon is accused of starving her three year-old-son to the point of death. Pictures of the emaciated body of the child appeared on the front pages of the secular Hebrew press.

The Jerusalem Municipal Court found last Wednesday that there was sufficient evidence to try the woman on abuse and other charges.

She was arrested in July after being videotaped pulling a feeding tube from her child's body at a time when he weighed only seven kilos.

The woman's arrest involved the perceived intrusion of social workers and police into the fiercely insular Toldot Aharon community and sparked days of rioting in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Jerusalem, including external pageattacks on municipal institutions.

To Guzmen-Carmeli the protests are a means for collective self-definition and to promote group cohesion.
 
"It is quite hard to live in such a small group that is in such contrast to the State of Israel and you need to maintain that narrative of struggle all the time, so each and every summer you will find demonstrations. It's almost a part of their education," he said.

Rabbis outflanked

The relative quiescence of prominent Haredi rabbis over the current protests reflects the difficulties faced by more mainstream ultra-Orthodox rabbinical authorities when outflanked by extremist movements within their sharply divided community.

Haredi Jerusalem city councillors effectively flip-flopped in reversing their initial acquiescence to the car park opening under the pressure of the street protests.

The opening of the parking garage has been condemned by the leading spiritual authorities of the two main ultra-Orthodox religious parties, Shas' Ovadia Yosef and Agudat Yisrael's Yosef Sholom Elyashiv, but their followers and affiliated groups do not appear to be playing any role in the protests.

"The mainstream Haredi leadership will not speak against the Eda Haredit but I think that [behind closed doors] there isn't any support for Eda Haredit," Guzmen-Carmeli said.

Playing politics

The lack of mainstream Haredi support for the protests has presented a relatively easy opportunity for the city's new, avowedly secular mayor, Nir Barkat, to be seen as standing up to Haredi protests without risking the collapse of his coalition, which incorporates ultra-Orthodox factions.

Barkat's victory in last November's mayoral election was due to divisions among Haredim over the community's candidate, Meir Porush, and to wider popular concerns at the city's rapid impoverishment. It was also related to the perceived political pre-eminence of Haredim under his predecessor Uri Lupolianski, Jerusalem's first ultra-Orthodox mayor.

"Nir Barkat identified himself and is a symbol (not against his will, it was part of his agenda) of regaining control of Jerusalem for the non-religious communities," Friedman said.

Barkat responded to the child abuse case protests by temporarily cutting off all municipal services to affected Haredi neighborhoods areas, citing concerns regarding the safety of council workers.

Nonetheless, the exigencies of municipal politics require the cultivation of relations with prominent rabbinic authorities and attendant budget disbursements to their institutions in return for political support.

Demographic shift

Recent years have seen a significant boost in the number of nightclubs, cafes, shops and other establishments violating state and council edicts to open on the Sabbath in Jewish West Jerusalem.

For militant secular proponents of Shabbat openings, the issue is related to the purported efforts of Haredim to change the character of the city and to limit the role of other communities in deciding the nature of public life therein.

In play since before the state's founding, these culture war tensions have become more pressing with the burgeoning of the Haredi populace and flight of secular Jewish Jerusalemites to outlying suburbs and cities of the coastal plain.

This demographic shift has led to the movement of ultra-Orthodox into some previously mixed or secular neighborhoods, creating a series of sharp localized conflicts.

In one such instance, the predominantly secular residents of the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood have external pagemobilized to prevent the "haredization" of their area. They are accusing the mayor of selling out to ultra-Orthodox through allowing the sale of a disused building in their neighborhood to Haredi buyers. The building was quickly transformed into a synagogue.

The Jewish religious community is far from monolithic and many traditional and Orthodox residents of the city view the development of ultra-Orthodox demographic, socio-cultural and political predominance with as much trepidation as their secular counterparts.

These fears were further piqued when teenage girls dancing at the opening of a landmark city bridge in June 2008, were forced by external pageultra-Orthodox threats to cover their arms, legs and hair and to alter their performance to conform with Haredi tastes. 

"It is very likely in the very near future that the Haredim will become a majority in Jerusalem […] and they will gain control of Jerusalem from the social point of view," Friedman concluded.

JavaScript has been disabled in your browser