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Jerusalem Is Sold?

The Babylonian Talmud says: “Ten measures of beauty descended the world, Nine of them were taken by Jerusalem, and one by the rest of the world.”

But how many of those measures will be left once the real estate developers are done with the holy city? Jewlicious takes a look at the high-rise developments looming in Jerusalem’s future, and takes us on a walk through the not-too-distant past, when things that now elicit shrugs, instead generated outrage.

It’s the End of Jerusalem as We Know It, and Israelis Feel Fine

In an anguished column, Ha’aretz’s Uzi Benziman warns that Jerusalem — Israel’s capital and the spiritual heart of world Jewry — is being ceded to its ultra-Orthodox population:

For years the Jewish/ultra-Orthodox component in the Jerusalem landscape has been increasingly crowding out the colorful mosaic that characterized it in the past. Not only secular and moderate Orthodox people have become a minority in the city - the multinational and multireligious minorities that once bustled through the city’s streets seem to have withdrawn in the face of ultra-Orthodox domination.

Predictions show that in seven years the number of schoolchildren aged six to 14 in ultra-Orthodox educational institutions will be three times the number in state secular and state Orthodox schools.

The state and the wider public treat this trend complacently: They leave it to Jerusalemites to determine their municipal fate. The most productive population in the city has indeed drawn its own conclusions and is leaving in droves - there has been negative migration of about 60,000 over the past five years.

Why should it matter that Jerusalem is becoming increasingly ultra-Orthodox? Well, for starters, there’s the matter of Israel’s capital being dominated by a population that is, for the most part, either non-Zionist or anti-Zionist and, by and large, doesn’t serve in the Israeli military. Then, there’s the fact that the ultra-Orthodox community hasn’t been the most tolerant steward of the city, whether it was the ugly resistance to gay pride events in Jerusalem or the ridiculous insistence that young girl dancers cover up at the celebration for the city’s new Santiago Calatrava bridge.

But Benziman directs most of his anger, not at Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox community, but rather at the larger Israeli public, which, he suggests, seems remarkably indifferent to Jerusalem’s fate. Perhaps they forgot the words of the Psalmist: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cleave to my palate if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.” The ultra-Orthodox, it seems, have not forgotten.

Jerusalem of Ghosts

JTA has a great article on how Jerusalem students are organizing against absentee homeownership. Diaspora Jews are buying up large chunks of the capital’s housing stock and turning entire neighborhoods into virtual ghost towns for much of the year:

When the masses of visiting American Jews who own vacation homes in Israel’s capital leave Jerusalem to return home after Passover, they’ll be leaving behind mostly empty apartments – and frustrated Jerusalemites.

While many Diaspora Jews consider their Israeli homes an important investment in the Jewish state, many locals say absentee homeowners have driven up market prices, drained the market of available rentals and made many Jerusalem neighborhoods unaffordable for Israelis.

That’s why a coalition of student activists has launched a campaign to persuade the absentee homeowners to open up their homes to Israeli renters.

“We think it’s great that foreign Jews are buying here and investing in Jerusalem,” said David Uziel, 29, a graduate student in urban planning at Hebrew University. “But if they keep their apartments empty, they are weakening Jerusalem.”

…

To highlight the problem, a group of some 80 students held a demonstration last December in which the students dressed as ghosts and marched through “ghost town” neighborhoods of Jerusalem, including the upscale David’s Village development opposite the Old City’s Jaffa Gate.

“We walked with megaphones through these neighborhoods shouting, ‘Is anyone home?’ ” said Roy Folkman, the head of Hebrew University’s student union. “We saw no one. No one came out.”

Read the full article here.

There’s also, of course, a larger point to be made about the ethical and practical implications of real estate speculation, and what happens (as we’re now seeing here in America) when homes come to be seen, primarily, not as places to live, but as investment opportunities.

On Jerusalem, Breaking a Taboo

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, the spiritual leader of a Modern Orthodox Los Angeles synagogue, has penned a tremendously brave article in this week’s L.A. Jewish Journal. In it, he writes:

The question of whether we could bear a redivision of Jerusalem is a searing and painful one. The Orthodox Union, National Council of Young Israel and a variety of other organizations, including Christian Evangelical ones, are calling upon their constituencies to join them in urging the Israeli government to refrain from any negotiation concerning the status of Jerusalem at all, when and if the Annapolis conference occurs. And last week, as I read one e-mail dispatch after another from these organizations, I became more and more convinced that I could not join their call.

It’s not that I would want to see Jerusalem divided. It’s rather that the time has come for honesty. Their call to handcuff the government of Israel in this way, their call to deprive it of this negotiating option, reveals that these organizations are not being honest about the situation that we are in, and how it came about. And I cannot support them in this.

These are extremely difficult thoughts for me to share, both because they concern an issue that is emotionally charged, and because people whose friendship I treasure will disagree strongly with me. And also because I am breaking a taboo within my community, the Orthodox Zionist community. “Jerusalem: Israel’s Eternally Undivided Capital” is a 40-year old slogan that my community treats with biblical reverence. It is an article of faith, a corollary of the belief in the coming of the Messiah. It is not questioned. But this final reason why it is difficult for me to share these thoughts is also the very reason that I have decided to do so. This is a conversation that desperately needs to begin.

No peace conference between Israel and the Palestinians will ever produce anything positive until both sides have decided to read the story of the last 40 years honestly. On our side, this means being honest about the story of how Israel came to settle civilians in the territories it conquered in 1967, and about the outcomes that this story has generated.

The full article is very much worth reading.

Among hawks and doves alike, there are those who see everything in black-and-white, whose top priority is feeling affirmed in their own certitudes and feelings of self-righteousness. On the left, these are the people who insist with complete certainty that Israel would have peace, if only it behaved justly — ignoring the Jewish state’s very real security concerns (not to mention the agency and culpability of the Palestinians). On the right, those who want Israel to hold onto every inch of the West Bank conveniently conclude that peace is not possible anyway (and turn a blind eye — and a hard heart — to Palestinians’ legitimate grievances).

Rabbi Kanefsky definitely does not fall into either of these camps. That’s why his voice is so refreshing, particularly since he hails from a community that has been known more for zeal on this issue than for thoughtfulness. One can only hope that his article will be widely read and openly debated within the Modern Orthodox world. Let the conversation begin!

If You’re Bored by Holocaust Denial….

Holocaust denial may be big in the Muslim world, but it’s not the only kind of Jew-targeting denial that’s popular. There’s 9/11 denial. And then, of course, there’s Temple denial. The Jerusalem Post reports:

The former mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, has made the claim that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall was really part of a mosque.

“There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa [the mosque compound] and there is no proof that there was ever a temple,” he told The Jerusalem Post via a translator. “Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand.”

Sabri rejected Judaism’s claim to the Western Wall as part of the outer wall of the Second Temple.

“The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque,” he said. “There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews.”

Not a single stone!