OP-ED: Are Bar-Ilan St. Violent Protests Productive? Isn’t There Another Option?

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — It seems as if the street in northern Jerusalem named for Mizrachi activist Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan, the son of the famous Netziv of Volozhin, was synonymous with controversy and polemic from its onset. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, the street was a conflagration point between religious and secular Jews over its closure on Shabbat, as it was then the main artery enabling secular Jews from East Jerusalem to exit the city or travel to the western and southern neighborhoods.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling in 1996 that the street would remain open on Shabbat, the advent of ring roads around Jerusalem as well as the gradual changing of the neighborhoods nearby into chareidi enclaves has seen the road more or less closed on Shabbat despite some efforts by secularists to keep it open.

In recent years however, Bar Ilan street has become a flashpoint for different reasons. The Jerusalem municipality and the Transportation Ministry noted the huge numbers of local and intercity buses passing through the crucial artery and saw that it was plagued with traffic snarls and heavy congestion. The obvious solution would be to make a light rail line which will obviate the need for local transport and will streamline travel times across the north of the city. Such a rail line has transformed Jerusalem’s downtown area and is used by millions of people annually.

For some reason, extremist elements entered the fray, claiming that the light rail would change the religious character of the neighborhood. It is hard to understand their claims. Currently the buses which go through the neighborhood include routes from Hebrew University and the Pisgat Zeev neighborhoods, both with secular majorities. The women on those buses dress the same as they will on the light rail and despite this the neighborhood has maintained its conservative character. Indeed, it is unclear whether any of the neighbors on the street (who probably just want an end to the endemic roadwork involved in constructing the light rail) oppose the new line. All of the businesses in the area will surely benefit, just as those in Jerusalem’s downtown flourished when they became more accessible due to the rail line.

For Jerusalem’s long-suffering drivers including this author, the new line will be a game changer, enabling transit from east to west Jerusalem within minutes, just as the Begin road enables effective north to south transit but even better as trains do not suffer from rush hour traffic backlogs.

Even if the ultimate goal is to preserve the charedi locale, burning fences and infrastructure is the last way to ensure this. Last week the Toldos Avraham Yitzchak Rebbe met for the first time with mayor Moshe Leon, who submitted to him solutions for maintaining the religious nature of the neighborhood with the new line. The rebbe said that he now has a new perspective on the matter and stressed that he eschews violent protests. It is obvious that with a municipality and mayor sympathetic to chareidi needs, the way to achieve those goals is via communication and interaction.

Jerusalem has doubled its population in the last 30 years, reaching a million citizens in 2023. It deserves a proper, modern traffic infrastructure. It deserves to maintain its title of nine measures of beauty. It deserves to represent the meaning of its name- “City of Peace.”