A palatable event?

After haredi opposition torpedoed a liturgical festival in synagogues and churches, the culinary festival is being deemed not kosher.

By PEGGY CIDOR
Food 521 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Food 521
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Less than three weeks have elapsed since a cultural project had to be canceled due to religious pressure, and here we are facing the same scenario once again. Here are the details of the latest affair, freshly culled from the Jerusalem Municipality.
Some of you may recall the report in these pages a few weeks ago about the attempt to run a mini-festival of liturgical music in the synagogues and churches of the Old City. The idea was brilliant, the concept was attractive – but the result was a total disaster. The haredi contingent of Mayor Nir Barkat’s coalition didn’t like the idea of using public money to “encourage residents and visitors to go to churches” and managed to have the whole project canceled.
At the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA), where the project was born, there was a sense of frustration, or as one high-ranking official put it, “a painful but perhaps necessary lesson in how sensitive any step taken in this city can be.”
But the feeling – and the official attitude – was that this wouldn’t happen anymore and that nothing would prevent the JDA – or any other official body in the city – from planning beautiful cultural projects. Or so they thought! In lieu of the planned liturgical music festival in synagogues and churches in the Old City, the JDA came up with the idea of a culinary festival in the Old City in the various restaurants and eateries in the Jewish, Muslim and Christian quarters. The festival would be both a local and an international attraction and thus address Israelis, as well as foreigners. So far so good, except that eating at restaurants in the Muslim and Christian quarters would mean, of course, having non-kosher food.
Needless to say, this was a major stumbling block for the haredi members of the coalition.
After all, if they refuse to use public money to send people to listen to music in a church, why would anyone expect them to spend that money to send residents and visitors to eat nonkosher food in patently non-kosher restaurants? Embarrassing perhaps, but definitely logical.
So this time, the request came from the local chief rabbinate, through the representatives of the two haredi parties (Shas and United Torah Judaism), who managed to corral an unusual ally – Habayit Hayehudi representatives on the city council – and issued on Sunday an urgent letter to Mayor Nir Barkat requesting that he cancel the festival or at least restrict the visits to good kosher restaurants in the Jewish Quarter.
And the JDA? In a phone conversation on Monday morning, CEO Motti Hazan sounded quite certain that no harm would come to this festival. He sincerely believes that since his organization was very cautious on that sensitive issue and has issued flyers in Hebrew, English and, for the first time, in Arabic, specifying exactly which and where the kosher restaurants are, to prevent any regrettable mistake, “I believe that reason will prevail over extremism and save the festival.”
But for city council member and soon-to-be deputy mayor Yossi Deitsch from United Torah Judaism, nothing is so simple. Asked about his plans in the matter, he simply answered, “It is out of the question that we will allow the JDA, which is half owned by the municipality, to organize a festival that encourages people to eat in non-kosher restaurants in the Muslim and Christian quarters. No way!” The culinary festival in the Old City is scheduled for the last week of March. Not enough time to organize something totally different, but enough time to allow for quite a lot of pressure on each side. Representatives of the Meretz opposition party immediately expressed their support of the project, but Deitsch told In Jerusalem what he had in mind: “We will explain to the mayor that we simply cannot accept this.” Which, in political language, means that according to the laws of physics, the pressure of United Torah Judaism (eight members), together with Shas (four members) and Habayit Hayehudi (three members), has much more chance of having an impact on the mayor than the support of three opposition members.
Thus the planned culinary festival is on shaky ground. It is therefore recommended not to wish anyone “Bon appetit” for the moment.