Rival Cities in Israel Divided by Centuries
JERUSALEM — Almost every Friday evening, as the stillness of the Jewish Sabbath settles over this holy city, a white-bearded man wearing a black hat and suit takes up his post at its western entrance.
Seated on a folding chair on a small island in the street, he glares and shakes his finger at drivers entering Jerusalem, delivering a stern reminder to the faithless, or forgetful, that religious law prohibits observant Jews from driving on the Sabbath.
It is not by chance that his message is aimed at cars coming up the hill from the direction of Tel Aviv, a city so freewheeling, so adamantly secular, that it often seems the eager antithesis to historic, sacred Jerusalem.
And never more so than today. The two cities, one built of stone, the other on sand, are ever more starkly divergent in their politics, economies and outlooks, embodying for many Israelis the growing rifts within their small but complex nation.
"They are cities apart, different in every conceivable way," said David Nachmias, a political science professor who teaches in both.
In the recent national elections, for instance, Tel Aviv residents gave 65% of their vote to Ehud Barak, the center-left candidate who won the race and became Israel's new prime minister. By the same ratio, Jerusalem residents cast ballots for the right-of-center incumbent, Benjamin Netanyahu.
For Yair Lapid, a Tel Aviv-based journalist who hosts a popular television interview program, the differences between the two cities boil down to this: "Do you want a fast connection to your ancestors or to the Internet? . . . Jerusalem is dragging us back to the past and Tel Aviv to the future. Israel has to decide what it wants."
If Jerusalem veers to the right politically, Tel Aviv leans hard to the left. Jerusalem is poor, insular and divided, a "collection of alienated islands," according to its former deputy mayor, Meron Benvenisti. Tel Aviv is wealthier, more homogenous, more cosmopolitan.
Anyone who has ever seen a Charlton Heston film knows something of Jerusalem's appearance. It is dramatic, imposing and hard, with every building--by law--faced in limestone from the surrounding hills. Tel Aviv is anything but classic, a hodgepodge of styles ranging from Bauhaus to bad taste. Elegant office buildings mingle with crumbling slums; tree-lined boulevards abut decrepit back streets.
