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June 8, 2007
Secular Jews flee Jerusalem
Changing neighborhoods make it impossible to stem the tide.
RHONDA SPIVAK
Shai Gottesman is the artistic director for Hora Jerusalem Dance
Foundation, a non-profit organization that is part of the art department
of the Jerusalem municipality. Gottesman's troupe consists of 19
performers between the ages of 17-27, all of whom live in Jerusalem.
"All of the dancers in my troupe are secular Israelis,"
said Gottesman. "only one is masorti/dati (traditional/religious)."
Ten years from now, he predicts that "only at most 30 per cent"
of them will still live in Jerusalem.
Gottesman himself commutes to Jerusalem daily from the Tel-Aviv
area and would never actually consider living in Jerusalem. It is
obvious to him that any secular Israeli in the arts scene, like
himself, would not want to live there.
When it comes to issues such as job opportunities, affordable housing
and a varied cultural life, Jerusalem has become much less appealing
to secular Israelis than the Tel-Aviv area. As Naomi Schneider,
a Jerusalem-born student at the Hebrew University, said, "I
always thought I would live here but I'm not so sure anymore. I
am starting to feel confined in the city. I used to walk through
the Arab quarter of the Old City, but since last summer's war, I
stopped. A lot of the Arabs there were supporting Hezbollah. I am
not Orthodox – and I'm starting to feel that there are fewer
and fewer places to go to in Jerusalem.
"I don't know if there will be work for me here. As it is,
I am still living at home, because I can't find an apartment that
is affordable to rent."
The departure of Jerusalem's secular population has been a phenomena
that has been ongoing for the last 20 years, although in the last
decade, it appears to have accelerated noticeably.
Currently, there is a non-Zionist majority in Jerusalem, consisting
of Palestinian and ultra-Orthodox (Charedi) communities.
These communities are low-income to poverty level, and it is difficult
to see how middle-class secular Jews and business people will be
attracted to return to the city to support them. The city's already
weakened tax base and strained municipal services only contribute
to the further outflow of the secular educated middle class.
Ten years ago, neighborhoods such as Ramat Eshkol and French Hill,
which were built following the Six Day War, used to be secular in
their complexion. But as the ultra-Orthodox communities have grown,
the character of these neighborhoods has changed.
As soon as there is an influx of ultra-Orthodox Jews into a neighborhood,
secular Jews worry that their lifestyle is being threatened. They
feel they can't as easily walk around wearing shorts or sleeveless
T-shirts in the summer, or playing their radio or television too
loudly on Shabbat. They anticipate that soon enough, there will
be demands not to drive in their neighborhood on Shabbat. If their
political views are dovish, they feel more out of sync with their
neighbors.
"My father, who is a retired contractor, built his own house
on Ramat Hagolan Street," said Jerusalem-born Doron Raphaeli,
who grew up in Ramat Eshkol. "
He never thought he would leave his house, but when he became the
last one on the block who wasn't haredi, he had to get out."
One 70-year-old real estate consultant, who has lived in French
Hill since it was built close to 40 years ago, said bluntly, "I'm
getting out of here. I'm looking for a condominium in Ramat Hasharon.
Jerusalem is now only Arabs and Charedim, and I don't want to live
with them."
Was there anything that could have been done over the years to have
stopped the exit of secular Zionist Israelis from Jerusalem?
Many Israelis believe that in the last 20 years, a concerted effort
ought to have been made by Israeli governments and previous Jerusalem
mayors (such as Ehud Olmert) to have transformed Jerusalem into
a financial centre. This would have brought job opportunities and
kept secular, educated Jews in Jerusalem. However, too little was
invested in road infrastructure and nothing concrete was done to
attract businesses and high-tech companies to the city.
Last month, Olmert announced he was allocating 5.75 billion shekels
to advance Jerusalem's development, which will include moving more
government departments to the capital, building new courthouses
and cancelling the employer's tax. But critics say the measures
are too little, too late, and that bringing more low-paying government
jobs to Jerusalem will not make the city a financial centre.
Prof. Amiram Gonen has headed Jerusalem's Floersheimer Institute
for Policy Studies for 17 years. In his just-published book Towards
a Strengthened Jerusalem, he has proposed a plan to integrate
Jerusalem into the global economy by using its assets – such
as the Hebrew University, its advanced hospitals and its multilingual
communities – to transform it into one of the world's major
suppliers of medical, academic and high-tech support services.
Gonen isn't the only academic who has proposed plans to deal with
Jerusalem's economic woes. But it seems that his proposal, like
many others, will likely just collect dust on various bookshelves
in Jerusalem.
It seems possible that at some point in the future, the Israeli
government may decide to join the town of Mevasseret Zion –
which contains a substantial secular population – to Jerusalem's
municipality.
Still, even this boundary change will not reverse the overall trend
of secular Jews fleeing Jerusalem. It's like trying to reverse the
law of gravity.
Rhonda Spivak is a Winnipeg freelance writer who spends
several months of the year in Israel.
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