Shabbat Wars

RISHON LEZION, Israel — The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, is fac­ing an ugly storm early in his term:

Mayor Nir Barkat expe­ri­enced a rude awak­en­ing regard­ing the real­i­ties of Jerusalem pol­i­tics last week­end when thou­sands of haredim rioted in response [see a photo above] to his open­ing of the Kikar Safra park­ing lot on Shabbat…

Barkat has no plans to back down — the park­ing lot is set to open again this week­end — and his spokesman Evy­atar Elad says the mayor will speak only with his coali­tion part­ners and not with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the anti-zionist groups who were behind Saturday’s riots. The haredim for their part are plan­ning a mas­sive prayer assem­bly for Friday.

As I have writ­ten in sev­eral posts in my Let­ters from Israel series, the Jew­ish state is a polar­ized place in regards to pol­i­tics, reli­gion, and even cul­ture. This sit­u­a­tion is a per­fect exam­ple because there is no room for a compromise.

Sec­u­lar res­i­dents of Jerusalem (and even some mod­ern Ortho­dox ones) rec­og­nize the need for the city park­ing lot to remain open because many non-Jewish tourists come to the city between sun­down Fri­day and sun­down Sat­ur­day. But the charedim (also known as ultra-Orthodox Jews) view this as a des­e­cra­tion of the Sab­bath. Both sides have been hold­ing ral­lies and riot­ing.

The choice is only to open or close the lot. Either way, one side will be extremely unhappy.

But I do have one ques­tion for my read­ers who know more about Jew­ish reli­gious law than I: How is it not a des­e­cra­tion of the Sab­bath to riot on that day? Is not riot­ing a form of work or labor?