11 July 2009

After the incentive of having an out-of-town friend free on a Saturday afternoon, we wandered over to one of the sites of the weekly riots. Ever since Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat decided to emerge from his cloister since being elected in November, his agenda has been primarily occupied by the opening of a parking lot in the center of the city to ease congestion caused by tourists and out-of-towners looking for parking. That this parking lot was to be the municipal lot under City Hall and to be open on Shabbat caused several of the ultra-Orthodox factions to protest. After enough threats, political and physical in nature, caused the mayor to close the lot, a solution was found by having the Supreme Court to issue an injunction to open a private parking lot close to the Old City. The protests continue, quickly becoming riots.

As we got closer to the lot, under the shadow of the Jaffa Gate and the Tower of David, the din of the protestors was already echoing through the valleys surrounding the Old City. The scene was more comical than incendiary: Crowds of ultra-Orthodox men in their Shabbat garb, bedecked in crème satin robes and topped in sable shtreimels, ebbing and flowing with each pushback from what few policemen were there. Shouts of “SHAAAAAABBESSSSSS!!” bounced from the protestors on the street to their kin cowardly perched above, cheering them on but reluctant to join the spectacle. As they congregated near the parking lot entrance spectators were to be found all over, from tourists busily snapping away with their cameras along with photojournalists; Arab kids, laughing away at the scene while sipping from soda can and performing daredevil feats on their bikes; and Shabbat-observant families trying to reconcile their otherwise-peaceful afternoon walk with the noise of repressed ultra-Orthodox youth whose bottled-up energy manifests itself into shouts of “Nazis!” at police. Their tactic was to lie down in front of passing cars, causing the police to hurriedly drag the protestor to the sidewalk. This would go on for some time, with an occasional escalation like someone standing in front of a bus filled with tourists while another would climb under the bus to disrupt it.

It was more sad than anything else, especially after I fixated my then-hypnotized stares at one particular protestor. Fully bedecked in the finest of heat-absorbing garb, the sandy side-locked boy was slowly keeling over from shouting for hours on end. He was more in a trance than I was, yet determined to vent his frustration to whoever would hear it while being surrounded by his community. Here is a boy, who may very well be good at his studies in Yeshiva, but nonetheless due to familiar and communal pressure will remain in Yeshiva and collects welfare checks from the State, instead of making a living from him and his family. His only source of teenage-fueled energy goes into protest like this, lest they be spent in less wholesome way. Once Shabbat ends, the hordes go back to their beighborhoods and light garbage cans on fire, causing extensive damage and whose cleaning is paid for by the municipality (i.e. non-ultra Orthodox taxpayers, as ultra-Orthodox who study in yeshiva get their municipal taxes paid off in full).

The results of David Ben-Grion's decision at the advent of the State, when he allowed the then-miniscule ultra-Orthodox community to receive welfare and continue studying, ends at the parking lot adjacent to the Old City walls. An impasse for the State, now beholden to their political parties to keep coalition governments stable, and an impasse for Judaism, as these same protestors have a monopoly on the Rabbinate (and thus control over which resturants receive a certificate confirming they're kosher; whose overseas conversion is acceptable; and who gets to marry whom and when).

There's nothing wrong with being ultra-Orthodox, nor is there anything wrong with being ultra-Orthodox and working at the same time (West 47th Street in Manhattan, for example); but this form of ultra-Orthodoxy, and halachic Judaism as well, leaves little over which to celebrate, much less emulate. It's only too ironic that we've just entered the Three Weeks, a period of religious mourning which culminates with the commemoration of the destruction of the First and Second Temples (traditionally destroyed due to senseless hatred among Jews) on that most existential of Jewish days, Tisha B'Av. Albeit a jumbled-up view of Jewish history, my mind invariably has created an image of these protestors knocking down the walls of the Old City, only steps away from City Hall, much like the Babylonians and Romans of long ago. A truly sad occasion for a Jew to have such thoughts of fellow Jews.