The ultra-Orthodox Jews on a mission to save Jerusalem from secularism
Pastor Dale Morgan
The ultra-Orthodox Jews on a mission to save Jerusalem from secularism*
From anti-gay protests to airline boycotts, campaigns by anti-Zionist
community are vocal and effective
Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
Friday August 3, 2007
The Guardian
His office is in a dark and musty basement, the shelves laden with
religious and legal texts and boxes of files. Two white shirts are slung
over hangers in the corner and Yoelish Krausz is sitting at his desk.
Here he works as the operations officer of his deeply religious,
ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, the Neturei Karta.
Posters on the walls attest to years of campaigning and his files are
stuffed with the many thousands of letters, rulings and pamphlets issued
in challenge to secularism in Israel. In recent years Mr Krausz, 35, who
is married with 10 children, has campaigned against Jerusalem's gay
community, roads dug near ancient Jewish graves, shops, restaurants,
cinemas and even airlines which operate on the sabbath, and against
buses that do not segregate male and female passengers.
"Jerusalem is becoming a lot less religious on a daily basis," says Mr
Krausz. "We are really fighting for the truth... Sometimes it seems they
are trying to uproot our faith."
Israel's ultra-Orthodox community is a growing minority, around 13% of
the total population, but it is particularly strong in Jerusalem and is
popularly perceived as having an increasing influence throughout the
country. In part this is down to an electoral system that can produce
coalition governments in which the smaller religious parties have an
influential role. Elsewhere, religious politicians have taken major
positions on their own: Jerusalem's mayor, Uri Lupolianski, is the first
ultra-Orthodox in the job.
The community is also very vocal and can quickly bring large numbers of
young men on to the street. Protests against a gay pride march in
Jerusalem this year and last sparked riots that left several police
officers injured.
The Neturei Karta is one of several ultra-Orthodox communities, though
perhaps the most radical because of its opposition to the existence of
the state of Israel. The community believes Judaism is different from
Zionism and that Jews should not have a state on earth until the Messiah
returns. It believes it is sinful to establish a Jewish state in Israel
before that time.
The heartland
Its heartland is in Mea Shearim, where Mr Krausz has his home and
office. On the walls in the area are posters, many in English, stating:
"Zionists are not Jews, only racists," or "We pray to God for an
immediate end to Zionism and their occupation."
Mr Krausz's family came from Hungary but moved to London, where most of
the family still live. His father moved on to Jerusalem, where his son
was born. The boy, who studied in a yeshiva - religious school - has
since left the city only occasionally, usually for protests, and has
never left Israel. In protest at the existence of the Israeli state he
does not hold an Israeli passport or identity card and does not buy
state-subsidised bread. At home, dressed in his dark suit and
broad-brimmed hat, he speaks Yiddish, not Hebrew, which he reserves for
religious occasions.
"The point is not to enjoy the benefit of the state. Not to take social
security or welfare, not to take jobs or education from the state," he
says. "It doesn't matter to us who rules here. What is important is what
happens after the redemption of the Messiah."
This summer Mr Krausz was one of the key figures behind ultra-Orthodox
protests against the gay pride march in Jerusalem. Two years ago one of
the marchers was stabbed and seriously injured by a religious Jewish
protester. Last year the march was cancelled in the face of protests and
had to be held in a sports stadium.
This year the march went ahead, but under tight security, and limited to
a walk of a few hundred metres and a brief rally in a park.
In earlier years community members tried not to protest to avoid having
to discuss issues of sexuality among their deeply conservative peers.
But now he says: "We cannot keep silent any longer." He accepts there
are gay men and women living quietly in the ultra-Orthodox community,
but says he regards their sexuality as an "illness". "We can take care
of it," he says. "There is medication. It can be treated."
Of his opposition to the march, he says: "If we accept the march today,
tomorrow they will do worse things."
Organisers of the march, who are vilified in public by the
ultra-Orthodox, frequently suffer harassment and hire private security
guards in the runup to the event. They regard the march as a fundamental
test of democratic freedoms. "We are Jerusalemites and we are expressing
our very, very basic civil rights," Noa Sattath, head of the Jerusalem
Open House and organiser of the march, said before this year's event.
Her group has a number of gay men and women from the ultra-Orthodox
community. "They come here, they call us on the phone. There is always a
big surge of activity after the march," she says. "But it is not easy
for them at all."
Opposition to the gay march is one of many campaigns for the
ultra-Orthodox. The community threatened a financially painful boycott
of the national airline El Al last year, when a handful of planes flew
on the sabbath to help passengers who had been stranded by a labour
dispute. Eventually the airline, which suffered losses as a result of
the dispute, agreed to take on an ultra-Orthodox "adviser", who would
have a say on sabbath flights.
Harry Potter
There were even protests last month when some bookshops opened overnight
on the sabbath for the first sales of the latest Harry Potter book. A
growing number of buses in Jerusalem districts are segregating men and
women, in deference to the demands of religious Jews, and businesses in
the city which try to open on the sabbath are met with high-profile
complaints and demonstrations. Most ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods are
fenced off on Saturdays to keep drivers away.
Yet the clash between Israel's secular and religious Jews is not new. In
the years after the creation of the state in 1948, a constitution was
never drawn up, in part because of the difficulty in agreeing a
relationship between religion and state. The community has made
headlines in recent months, both with the gay pride march and a major
debate on the renewal of a law exempting young members of the
ultra-Orthodox community from national service. But some academics argue
the community is not growing more influential, but is simply always active.
"It is very popular to say that the religious-secular conflict is
growing and is the most serious conflict in society. I say a lot of this
is ritualised," says Ira Sharkansky, emeritus professor of political
science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Often the community simply
hopes to raise new contributions from donors abroad, he says. "They
always manage to put themselves on the agenda."