A regular Saturday morning in Jerusalem offers a kind of peace and quiet unlike anywhere else in the world – construction halts, music is silenced, and most storefronts stay shuttered until the stars come out.
This past Saturday, that stillness broke, and one of the most polarizing issues in Israeli politics followed me to my doorstep.
As a new olah (immigrant) studying diplomacy and foreign affairs, I’ve spent the past year trying to understand complex issues compounding Israeli politics, and the fault lines running through them. For most of these issues, I’ve held back from taking a side, but this wasn’t one of those days.
I sat on my balcony watching around 50 haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men and children harass a new cafe’s patrons and staff in Jerusalem’s city center, angry that it was operating on Shabbat. Cafe Basimta sat behind a police barricade most of the day. The protesters chanted “Shabbos” over and over – all day long, disrupting Shabbat rest for residents throughout the block, myself included.
I watched, horrified, as many of the residents in my building began retaliating. From their balconies overlooking an alleyway leading to the cafe, many of my neighbors started throwing garbage, fruit, spices, and even buckets of water at the protesting men and children below. I had to tell the young men in the apartment one floor below mine to stop spitting on them.
I didn’t see the rest until later. Watching footage obtained by Channel 12 from inside the courtyard, I saw how the turmoil had taken a different shape entirely. As the protest continued, those enjoying the cafe rallied more community members until the line outside Cafe Basimta grew, and supporters flooded the courtyard.
Channel 12 reported that at one point cafe-goers started shouting “Enlist” back at the haredi men. A protest that started over a cafe staying open on Shabbat had become something much more political.
Right now, the IDF reports Israel is short some 12,000 soldiers. An estimated 80,000 men are not enlisting, about half of them confirmed haredi, and another quarter believed to be from haredi communities.
For many in that world, the draft isn’t a policy dispute. It’s an existential threat. Serving in the IDF means stepping outside a life built entirely around Torah study, and for a community whose identity has long depended on separation from secular Israeli life, that step can feel like losing everything that makes them who they are.
Understanding that fear does not make what I watched acceptable. The subsequent turmoil between secular and religious Israelis has gotten out of control, and far past the point of disagreement. We are forgetting each other’s humanity beneath our differences, and both sides demonstrated that on Saturday.
The religious and secular divide
The haredi protesters chose to harass a business full of customers rather than keeping the holy day themselves. A disdain for others and their beliefs proved stronger than their respect for Shabbat itself. And the residents in my building, some religious and some secular, threw garbage and spat on children.
Both groups behaved in ways we would instantly categorize as hateful and intolerant if directed toward any minority in any other country.
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, which means its citizens have the right to choose how and whether to keep Shabbat. In Jerusalem, shared space means haredi Jews can practice as they see fit, but the standard extends to everyone else living alongside them. No one side gets to enforce their beliefs on the other.
I recognize that no one was fully right that day. As a new olah, I understand that this is one of the most fiercely debated issues in the State of Israel, and I am still working out where I stand on most of it. But I have eyes, and anyone with eyes can see that the divide has gone too far.
Cafe Basimta closed early that day. In the end, nobody won.
The writer is a new olah based in Jerusalem who recently served as the youngest participant in a multinational fellowship with Israel’s Foreign Ministry, engaging directly with senior policymakers on Israel’s geopolitical and public diplomacy strategy. She is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, where she completed a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies focused on business, sociology, and media. She is now pursuing work in international affairs and diplomacy, and journalism covering Israeli society and current events.