Jerusalem

In the middle of the general election campaign for the Israeli Knesset, that I described here, there has been a significant election at the local level in Israel.

Nir Barkat was elected mayor of Jerusalem last week. Barkat defeated Rabbi Meir Porush. The most notable difference between the two candidates is that Rabbi Porush is Orthodox, while Barkat represents a secular viewpoint.

Since its founding in 1948, the modern State of Israel has faced the question: What does it mean to be a Jewish state?

Jewish identity can be both a religious identity and an ethnic identity.

The Law of Return, enacted by the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in 1950, allows virtually all Jewish people to immigrate to Israel, and become citizens. The key to that, of course, is how to define what is means to be Jewish.

The original text of the Law of Return was vague about that definition. However, a 1970 amendment added a specific definition:

"Jew" means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.

The effect has been that immigration to Israel has not been restricted to religiously observant Jews. Here is a description in The New York Times, by Tom Friedman, of the size of various groups within Israel's Jewish population, grouped according to their degree of religious observance. That description was written in 1987, and the percentages might have changed in the meantime, but the point is that the population is still divided in that way, and various political issues have arisen from those divisions.

Despite that diversity, Orthodox rabbis control some aspects of Israeli social organization, such as marriage. This story tells of an example of how that works.

Some Israeli couples leave the country in order to get married, when they fail to meet the requirements of the Orthodox rabbinate.

The office of mayor of Jerusalem has been batted back and forth over the years, between Orthodox and secular factions. Teddy Kollek, who was mayor from 1965 to 1993, was secular in his outlook. But, for the past five years, Uri Lupolianski, who is Orthodox, has been mayor.

On the national level, small religious parties have sometimes held the balance of power, under Israel's system of proportional representation.

One last point about Jerusalem: Amid all of this conflict between Jewish factions, Arab residents of the city generally boycott mayoral elections.