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Jerusalem Mayor Says He is Trying to Attract Biotech Companies, With Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical Centers the Main Incubators
Leading text: "Uri Lupolianski is the first to admit that he is running a very unusual city - a place considered holy by Muslims, Christians and Jews, who talk about tolerance more than they actually practice it, at least here. Jerusalem has all the problems of big cities - crime, unemployment, public transportation, garbage. But it also has been the prime location for suicide bombings and other attacks on civilians: 90 since October 2000, including 34 suicide bombings that have killed 183 people and wounded 1,454. Then there are the less existential indignities - physical squabbles among Christian clergy over sacred turf, ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting on the cross carried by the Armenian archbishop, the demolition of Palestinian houses for zoning irregularities. And Jerusalem is surrounding itself by a wall - a concrete security barrier cut by checkpoints that is, in many places, 10 meters, or 33 feet, high.
But Lupolianski, 54, is almost as unusual as his city, and he represents a growing power here. He is Jerusalem's first ultra-Orthodox mayor, a rabbi who is sometimes accused of favoring Jewish interests over Muslim ones, and of favoring his co-religionists over the interests of more secular Jews, an unknown but noticeable number of whom are leaving Jerusalem for less religiously heated places like Tel Aviv and Haifa. Haifa-born, he is haredi, a Hebrew word for the ultra-Orthodox that has its root in fear, awe or dread. He will not shake hands with women, for example, so his aides carefully, politely, and even gracefully insert themselves to spare female visitors any embarrassment.
He has 12 children and 15 grandchildren - so far - he says. And the haredi make up an increasingly large part of the city's population - about a third of it, roughly the same as the number of Muslims - and representing about half the Jewish population. Currently, Jews make up about 66 percent of the population and Arabs about 33 percent, nearly all of them Muslim. The number of Christians in Jerusalem is tiny, fewer than 3,000, while fewer than 9,000 have no stated religion. In office since February 2003, when Ehud Olmert resigned to join the national cabinet, Lupolianski was elected in his own right to a five-year term in June 2003, beating a wealthy businessman, Nir Barkat, 52 percent to 42 percent. In his campaign, Lupolianski promised fair treatment to everyone, and now he says that is what he is attempting to provide.
"If we take the wrong steps here, we can cause a world conflagration, God forbid," he said in an interview in his office overlooking the milky-tea-colored stones of the Old City. "So people have to behave carefully," he said, in what he calls "a great human mosaic." Speaking in Hebrew, he said: "We have to take care of three religions and their interests. But Jerusalem is not just the capital of the people and state of Israel - it's the heart and soul of the Jewish people." upolianski was recently criticized for trying to stop a gay rights parade in Jerusalem - a parade decried by the leading religious figures of all faiths here, who gathered together at a news conference to denounce the idea. In the end, the Jerusalem District Court ordered that the parade be allowed to take place, and a young haredi man broke it up by stabbing three participants.
Lupolianski is best known in Israel not as a politician, but as the founder of Yad Sarah, a medical charity named after his grandmother, who was murdered in the Holocaust. The charity, with almost 100 branches and 6,000 volunteers, supplies medical equipment to those who need it and runs low-cost dental clinics and centers for disabled children of any religion. The big battles in Jerusalem - over housing, zoning, equal education and land sales - are really small versions of the much larger national struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. And given their nature, some of them are beyond Lupolianski's purview: the health services and the police, for instance, which are run nationally, not municipally. Uniquely, Jerusalem, not the state, administers its own educational system, although the state pays the bills out of national taxes. But there are controversies here, too, with suspicions that the mayor is helping religious education more than bicultural schooling...
The mayor says the city is now investing more in services and infrastructure in East Jerusalem than in the west, even buying narrower garbage trucks to navigate the streets there. And he is proud to be pressing ahead with a light-rail system, to ease congested traffic, that should be running by February 2008. Jerusalem, which can feel small and even suburban outside the walls and sites of the Old City, in fact is sprawling, especially after Israel annexed East Jerusalem after seizing it from Jordanian control in the 1967 war. Few countries recognize that annexation, which is why nearly all countries have their embassies in Tel Aviv, though there are many consulates and representative offices in Jerusalem, both east and west, to cater both to Israelis and Palestinians.
Jerusalem stretches over 126 square kilometers, or 49 square miles, and with a population of 706,300 it is Israel's most populous city, with more than 10 percent of the country's inhabitants - more than Tel Aviv and Haifa combined. It has grown quickly with the state; it had only 84,000 residents in 1948. In East Jerusalem alone there are now about 400,000 people, at least half of them Jews and their descendants who moved there after 1967, and who are considered illegal settlers by the Palestinians and much of the world.
Despite its tourist glitter, now returning to some degree with a period of truce between Israelis and Palestinians, Jerusalem has problems more typical of poor countries than of the modern power that Israel believes itself to be. Jerusalem is growing quickly, with nearly 18,800 babies born here in 2004, more than the next three largest Israeli cities combined. It also has Israel's youngest population - with 53 percent under the age of 25, compared with 30 percent in lively, beachfront Tel Aviv - and widespread underemployment. All these figures hint at Jerusalem's largest quandary: the sizable number of people who are not working. Its large population of ultra-Orthodox Jews includes many who study for a living and do not enter the work force; its many Palestinians from East Jerusalem have endemic problems of joblessness, made worse by security limitations on travel. And both of these communities have high birth rates.
Jerusalem's unemployment rate is 7 percent, which seems fine compared to those in the next three largest cities: 9.3 percent in Tel Aviv, 10.2 percent in Haifa, and 10.5 percent in Rishon Letzion. But given the high percentage of ultra-Orthodox who study and a disaffected Arab population, only 44.5 percent of Jerusalem's adults are active in the labor force, compared with 62.5 percent in Tel Aviv, 54.5 percent in Haifa, and 64.5 percent in Rishon Letzion. About two-thirds of the population pay the minimal level of tax, and there is little industry beyond tourism, which is recovering only now after the past four years of intifada. The tax base is weak, meaning that the secular working class inevitably pays more.
The passion of the haredi, many of whom do not recognize the state of Israel, is one of the glories of Jerusalem, Lupolianski believes.
"For you, he's unemployed, but he studies and his wife works at something," said Jacob Rosen, the mayor's political adviser for international affairs, on assignment from the Foreign Ministry. "And many of them are supported by other haredi who are working in Brooklyn!" But the increasingly religious nature of the city - with very few restaurants or shops open on the Sabbath and many restaurants, like the famous Fink's, forced to become kosher to survive - is also driving more secular Israelis away.
In an interview last year, the Israeli writer Amos Oz, who is Jerusalem-bred, told The New Yorker magazine that he rarely could bear to spend the night in Jerusalem now. "It is hyperactive," Oz said. "Everyone is expecting something, either the messiah or disaster or both. Tel Aviv is becoming more and more Mediterranean, like the south of France, whereas Jerusalem is moving in the direction of, I don't know where, maybe like Qum, in Iran..."
The mayor says he is trying to attract biotech companies, with Hebrew University and Hadassah medical centers the main incubators.
Lupolianski is sometimes surprised by his situation. "It's hard to believe that I have to sit, as a religious Jew, with the representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenians to try to make peace between them," he said. "But I'm their mayor, and they need to be able to come here and talk to me about their problems."
As a city, he said, "we want to help everyone to preserve their traditions in freedom, so that everyone can dance their dance - so long as they don't step on other people's feet."
Source: Steven Erlanger. Jerusalem mayor tries balancing act. The New York Times (11 July 2005) [FullText]
But Lupolianski, 54, is almost as unusual as his city, and he represents a growing power here. He is Jerusalem's first ultra-Orthodox mayor, a rabbi who is sometimes accused of favoring Jewish interests over Muslim ones, and of favoring his co-religionists over the interests of more secular Jews, an unknown but noticeable number of whom are leaving Jerusalem for less religiously heated places like Tel Aviv and Haifa. Haifa-born, he is haredi, a Hebrew word for the ultra-Orthodox that has its root in fear, awe or dread. He will not shake hands with women, for example, so his aides carefully, politely, and even gracefully insert themselves to spare female visitors any embarrassment.
He has 12 children and 15 grandchildren - so far - he says. And the haredi make up an increasingly large part of the city's population - about a third of it, roughly the same as the number of Muslims - and representing about half the Jewish population. Currently, Jews make up about 66 percent of the population and Arabs about 33 percent, nearly all of them Muslim. The number of Christians in Jerusalem is tiny, fewer than 3,000, while fewer than 9,000 have no stated religion. In office since February 2003, when Ehud Olmert resigned to join the national cabinet, Lupolianski was elected in his own right to a five-year term in June 2003, beating a wealthy businessman, Nir Barkat, 52 percent to 42 percent. In his campaign, Lupolianski promised fair treatment to everyone, and now he says that is what he is attempting to provide.
"If we take the wrong steps here, we can cause a world conflagration, God forbid," he said in an interview in his office overlooking the milky-tea-colored stones of the Old City. "So people have to behave carefully," he said, in what he calls "a great human mosaic." Speaking in Hebrew, he said: "We have to take care of three religions and their interests. But Jerusalem is not just the capital of the people and state of Israel - it's the heart and soul of the Jewish people." upolianski was recently criticized for trying to stop a gay rights parade in Jerusalem - a parade decried by the leading religious figures of all faiths here, who gathered together at a news conference to denounce the idea. In the end, the Jerusalem District Court ordered that the parade be allowed to take place, and a young haredi man broke it up by stabbing three participants.
Lupolianski is best known in Israel not as a politician, but as the founder of Yad Sarah, a medical charity named after his grandmother, who was murdered in the Holocaust. The charity, with almost 100 branches and 6,000 volunteers, supplies medical equipment to those who need it and runs low-cost dental clinics and centers for disabled children of any religion. The big battles in Jerusalem - over housing, zoning, equal education and land sales - are really small versions of the much larger national struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. And given their nature, some of them are beyond Lupolianski's purview: the health services and the police, for instance, which are run nationally, not municipally. Uniquely, Jerusalem, not the state, administers its own educational system, although the state pays the bills out of national taxes. But there are controversies here, too, with suspicions that the mayor is helping religious education more than bicultural schooling...
The mayor says the city is now investing more in services and infrastructure in East Jerusalem than in the west, even buying narrower garbage trucks to navigate the streets there. And he is proud to be pressing ahead with a light-rail system, to ease congested traffic, that should be running by February 2008. Jerusalem, which can feel small and even suburban outside the walls and sites of the Old City, in fact is sprawling, especially after Israel annexed East Jerusalem after seizing it from Jordanian control in the 1967 war. Few countries recognize that annexation, which is why nearly all countries have their embassies in Tel Aviv, though there are many consulates and representative offices in Jerusalem, both east and west, to cater both to Israelis and Palestinians.
Jerusalem stretches over 126 square kilometers, or 49 square miles, and with a population of 706,300 it is Israel's most populous city, with more than 10 percent of the country's inhabitants - more than Tel Aviv and Haifa combined. It has grown quickly with the state; it had only 84,000 residents in 1948. In East Jerusalem alone there are now about 400,000 people, at least half of them Jews and their descendants who moved there after 1967, and who are considered illegal settlers by the Palestinians and much of the world.
Despite its tourist glitter, now returning to some degree with a period of truce between Israelis and Palestinians, Jerusalem has problems more typical of poor countries than of the modern power that Israel believes itself to be. Jerusalem is growing quickly, with nearly 18,800 babies born here in 2004, more than the next three largest Israeli cities combined. It also has Israel's youngest population - with 53 percent under the age of 25, compared with 30 percent in lively, beachfront Tel Aviv - and widespread underemployment. All these figures hint at Jerusalem's largest quandary: the sizable number of people who are not working. Its large population of ultra-Orthodox Jews includes many who study for a living and do not enter the work force; its many Palestinians from East Jerusalem have endemic problems of joblessness, made worse by security limitations on travel. And both of these communities have high birth rates.
Jerusalem's unemployment rate is 7 percent, which seems fine compared to those in the next three largest cities: 9.3 percent in Tel Aviv, 10.2 percent in Haifa, and 10.5 percent in Rishon Letzion. But given the high percentage of ultra-Orthodox who study and a disaffected Arab population, only 44.5 percent of Jerusalem's adults are active in the labor force, compared with 62.5 percent in Tel Aviv, 54.5 percent in Haifa, and 64.5 percent in Rishon Letzion. About two-thirds of the population pay the minimal level of tax, and there is little industry beyond tourism, which is recovering only now after the past four years of intifada. The tax base is weak, meaning that the secular working class inevitably pays more.
The passion of the haredi, many of whom do not recognize the state of Israel, is one of the glories of Jerusalem, Lupolianski believes.
"For you, he's unemployed, but he studies and his wife works at something," said Jacob Rosen, the mayor's political adviser for international affairs, on assignment from the Foreign Ministry. "And many of them are supported by other haredi who are working in Brooklyn!" But the increasingly religious nature of the city - with very few restaurants or shops open on the Sabbath and many restaurants, like the famous Fink's, forced to become kosher to survive - is also driving more secular Israelis away.
In an interview last year, the Israeli writer Amos Oz, who is Jerusalem-bred, told The New Yorker magazine that he rarely could bear to spend the night in Jerusalem now. "It is hyperactive," Oz said. "Everyone is expecting something, either the messiah or disaster or both. Tel Aviv is becoming more and more Mediterranean, like the south of France, whereas Jerusalem is moving in the direction of, I don't know where, maybe like Qum, in Iran..."
The mayor says he is trying to attract biotech companies, with Hebrew University and Hadassah medical centers the main incubators.
Lupolianski is sometimes surprised by his situation. "It's hard to believe that I have to sit, as a religious Jew, with the representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Armenians to try to make peace between them," he said. "But I'm their mayor, and they need to be able to come here and talk to me about their problems."
As a city, he said, "we want to help everyone to preserve their traditions in freedom, so that everyone can dance their dance - so long as they don't step on other people's feet."
Source: Steven Erlanger. Jerusalem mayor tries balancing act. The New York Times (11 July 2005) [FullText]
posted by BioMedMarket.Info @ 12.7.05
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