Keeping up with the Jerusalemites

One of the most important goals of this trip was to catch up with the characters who we started filming last summer, and there have been some really interesting developments in their stories.

RACHEL
One of the most fascinating stories playing out among our protagonists is that of Rachel Azaria, the Modern Orthodox City Council member who represents young families in the city, and who has been a vocal dissenter of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) policies such as forcing women to sit in the back of public buses that pass through their neighborhoods. Prior to my arrival in Jerusalem, the mayor had been in the process of promoting Rachel to be one of his deputy mayors, a move that would increase her power and visibility.

The Haredi City Council members, whose representation on the council is greater than their actual representation in society, blocked the move. Ultimately, they agreed to a coalition with the far-left Meretz party in order to keep Rachel out. In other words, the Haredi members were so threatened and upset by the idea of a religious, yet socially liberal, woman rising in the ranks, that they chose to join forces with the councilors who are most ideologically different from them in order to prevent it.

Rachel Azaria

I filmed the City Council meeting that occurred right after this decision was made, where members essentially yelled at each other for over an hour while nothing of substance happened, and Rachel sat entirely quiet. The most telling moment of the evening was when one of the modern religious, male councilors basically said, “It doesn’t matter who is in the coalition because the religious parties run this city and we all know it.”

We will now see how Rachel deals with the remainder of her tenure after this large blow. I have a feeling it will make her stronger than ever.

MATAN
Matan Israeli, the artist in Musrara who founded a collective to turn the diverse neighborhood into an evolving, outdoor art gallery, has taken his project to a whole new level. His Muslala Collective was always about more than “just art,” building a community garden and hosting events for the neighborhood but now they’ve literally taken over the streets.

Perhaps because of its unique location on the border of Haredi enclave Me’a Shearim and primarily Arab East Jerusalem, Musrara is also historic home to Israel’s Black Panthers movement, made up mainly of Jewish, North African immigrants. Many of the former Panthers still live in Musrara, so Matan and his group decided to honor this fact. All over Israel, streets are named after people and groups who played fundamental roles in building the country, but Matan realized that no one would ever honor the Panthers, despite their important equal rights activism for “Mizrahi” or dark-skinned Jews. Muslala collaborated with the local Panthers to change that fact.

Matan Israeli dedicates "Black Panthers Way" in Musrara

The artists created elaborate new street signs and embedded them into concrete walls, and held an unveiling ceremony to dub two walkways in the neighborhood “Black Panthers Way” and “They’re Not Nice” alley—all without official city sanctions. (The latter referring to a comment made by former Prime Minister Golda Meir, after meeting with the Black Panthers.)

I filmed the unveiling ceremony with one of my Israeli camera-men, Lior, and was moved by Matan’s underlying philosophy of the project—that you can’t just wait for change to happen or for someone else to recognize your value; sometimes you need to literally create the reality that you want to see in order to make it so.

When I met up with Matan over soup one evening prior to the event, I learned that in addition to all of his activities with Muslala, he actually makes a living by teaching art in a school for religious women—an “only in Jerusalem” dynamic that I look forward to exploring further.

ESTI
I didn’t get to see Esti, the young activist from Kiryat Yovel, but her story has taken a fascinating turn. Last summer, she was working on the opening of a kindergarten for her young daughter and the other secular children in the neighborhood. It shares a playground with an ultra-Orthodox school, whose patrons have recently insisted that they don’t want their children interacting with—or even seeing—the secular children. The municipality’s solution was to build a wall separating the two playgrounds, which Esti and the other secular parents are now protesting. We’ll definitely keep our eyes on this situation, a perfect metaphor for what’s happening all over the city.

The kiddie separation fence--soon to be a wall. (Image from Ha'aretz)

…AND MANY MORE
I also met up with Ofer Berkovitch and Shahar Fisher, the young activists from the Hitorerut (“Awakening”) movement, and artist Einat Arif-Galanti, all of whom will be featured on Jerusalem: Unfiltered. Einat has recently had a solo exhibition in Tel Aviv, and Ofer and Shahar are as active as ever in trying to galvanize the secular youth of Jerusalem to fight for their city. There are many successes but an equal number of small blows in this battle, like the fact that Shahar lost the job he started last summer as a freelance writer at Time Out Jerusalem, since the publication couldn’t even last a year in the city.

Ofer and Shahar both stressed, however, that the “Battle for Jerusalem” that I refer to in the film’s title is about much more than just a conflict between Haredi and secular Jews. While many young Israelis are giving up on Jerusalem and trying to become more European, they are fighting for the unique character of the city, as a truly diverse capital that combines both the history and future of its diverse people. I will continue to explore and unpack the many angles and nuances of this “battle” throughout the project.