9/3/98

Eeeeeeek!!! Haredim in Eilat!

    The sunbathers are still sunbathing, the beach bums are still bumming.  The prostitutes are still, well, you know, and the restaurants are still posting silly-looking men at the door to lure passersby, who are still passing them by. 
    Eilat is still Eilat. 
    But something's happening here.
    Call it a crusade, a revolution, an awakening. Whatever it is, some residents are afraid.
    Eilat is becoming religious.
    In these histrionic days of religious-secular antagonism, those words are a red flag. With Jerusalem surrendered, the battleground has moved to unexpected places like Emmanuel and Pardes Hanna.
    But Eilat? Eilat?!
    When Habad gained a toehold here, years back, it was sort of cute. A few black-hatted bochers scuttling about prodding pot-bellied tourists to put on tefillin. 
    Now, though, it's Shas. Now it's getting serious. 
    All three local cab drivers I queried were less than enthusiastic. On one short ride, we passed three small Shas posters. The driver exhausted his vocabulary of English swear words describing what that meant. 
    Jacky Opinsky, an oldtimer here formerly from England, expressed herself more quotably. "If it's true that the haredim are getting strong here, I'm worried."
    Significantly, all the reactions reflected alarm of what could be, rather than what is. No one claimed their city had yet changed. 
    And it won't, promised Yitzhak Shauli, the number two man in the city's religious council. He claims to have started it all.
    In a three-hour interview, Shauli was most convincing that there's nothing to worry about. Topless Swedes won't be stoned, hotels won't lose their kashrut licenses for holding New Year's Eve parties, pork and shrimp will still slither down willing gullets.
    Shauli, 48, is a dyed-in-the-wool Shas man: two immense photos of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef -- one of them larger than life -- cover the wall behind his office chair. He claims to be in Yosef's inner circle, and indeed, the Shas mentor's office called him during our interview, to discuss financing for a special beach for haredim. 
    But Shauli points out that he does not wear a beard or peyot, dresses modernly, and even looks Ashkenazi (he's of Egyptian stock). As strongly as Shas is part of his identity, so is the career he spent in the Air Force. In other words, he was saying, park your preconceived notions outside.
    "Eilat has had the stigma of being a Sodom-and-Gomorrah city. It used to be you couldn't say you were religious here. If you walked around with a kipa, they'd say, stop joking around, take that thing off. 
    "I changed all that. In the '92 Knesset elections, Shas had 186 voters in Eilat. In the 1996 elections, 2,407. You understand what's been happening here? Nowhere else in Israel has there been such a jump. Add to that another 600 voters for Aguda, and about 700 for the NRP. That's 3,700 out of 16,000 voters." Shauli leans in on me for emphasis. "You understand? This - is - a Jew-ish - city-y-y-y-y!"
    He speaks like a slick politician -- using measured doses of charisma, bombast and subdued hypnotic flourishes. He'll occasionally pummel a key phrase, stressing each syllable and ending with a protracted intonation. 
    "If I hadn't been crazy, like they said I was when I started this in 1989, it wouldn't have happened. But those 3,700 voters were here all along; they didn't come from outside. They weren't brought here to boost Shas. I wasn't sent here from somewhere else to bring terror, to be a dictator.  
    "I'll give you an example. There's a nude belly dancer in town who said she voted Shas in the Knesset election. 
    "A - bell-y - dan-cer! Sha-a-a-s! 
    "And you know what she says? 'I see in Shas a party that brings me back to Judaism, back to my family.' She now keeps Shabbat and kashrut -- yet she still dances; nu, she gets $500 for a performance...." He doesn't seem bent on coercing her to change. 
    "In 1971 there were 8,000 residents, seven synagogues. Today? 48,000 residents, still seven synagogues. But in the last four years we took all 15 available bomb shelters, cleaned them out and made them into synagogues. And they're all full." His voice rises. "For 40 years the public was not given what they need." 
    "Walk around here at 8, 9 in the morning on Shabbat, what do you see? Like Bnei Brak. Li-i-ike - B-nei - Bra-a-a-k! It's unbelievable -- all you see is people going to -- synagogue. Religious people? SEC-u-lar people! Yes! Here! In Eilat!"  
    And what about secular fears of haredization? 
    "The seculars are not afraid of us. Maybe 1 percent. There are a few people who want to make trouble, but I don't pay attention to them. They once held a meeting against us, on a Shabbat, 12 people were there -- and 30 journalists. You understand? 
    "You see in the newspapers 'you're going to make a Bnei Brak in Eilat, you're going to close Eilat' -- No. We're simply going to give a voice to people who've lived here 30, 40 years, people who want a Jewish life for their grandchildren.
    "And if the city becomes haredi, or religious, and the people say they don't want pork sold here, it would be legitimate, no? Do you want democracy only when it suits Meretz? 
    "You in the hotels, do what you want -- but give me that same right."
    Shauli recalls a story, and fulminates. "A few months ago, Ovadia Yosef went to the Begin School. Parents screamed, 'how can you let him come and brainwash our children? Fire the principal!' Can - you - im-a-gine? A month later, a homosexual was brought to the school, to talk about his lifestyle. No outcry.
    "Secular community centers we have, a basketball team with two blacks from Harlem we have, a soccer team we have, escort girls we have, a casino we have, we have everything but for me nothing, why?" 
    Shauli boasts about Shas's charity work, but rejects as demagoguery my assertion that this is precisely Shas's formula: building political power on goodies to the disaffected poor.
    "A quarter of Eilatis live under the poverty line. There are 2,500 single mothers. We're helping 600 families -- but qui-et-ly-y-y. No one has to know.
    "It's not like up north, where you buy a seat on Yom Kippur for $1,000. No. Here's a siddur, here's a kipa, here's a talit, here's a hazan, here's a Torah, here's a seat for you and your family -- freeeee!" he thumps his desk and then spreads his hands. "No - mo-ney-y-y! 
    "We go further. We send every boy in Grade 7 a notice: we, the religious council, will teach you to read from the Torah for your bar mitzva, we'll teach you Judaism, to pray, to put on tefillin. Free.  
    "And if there's a family with nothing to eat, the synagogue will take care of everything:  for a bar mitzva, even for a wedding. Yes, even a wedding! Somebody wants to get married, but they have no money, no job; no problem, just go to Shauli. We have donors who'll give them a nice suit, a wedding dress, they can have photos or a video of their wedding, and tasty catered food, and they can invite 50 people, or 100, or 150. And nobody in town will talk. They can tell everyone they did it: by - them-se-e-e-elves."
    The religious council distributes a wide variety of printed guides for Shabbat and all major holidays, plus giveaways of religious products and services to help with observance. 
    So why doesn't everyone love Shas?
    "We have a problem with hasbara (publicity). We haven't learned to make from a fly an elephant. We -- write this down -- we make from an elephant a fly. That's our mistake. We do a lot, but it seems like a little. Others, professionals, they have a big PR company working for them, they make a big thing out of nothing. 
    Two years ago, Shauli demanded and got a separate beach for the religious. "How can you live here and ignore the beach? There was an outcry at the beginning: women in bikinis posed next to our sign, and newspapers ran the pictures with the headline: 'Eilat goes haredi.' Why? Why? Don't we have this right?" 
    Shauli's assistant, Ilan Adam, dropped in for a moment. Perfect timing. "Nu? This Ilan decided he wants a better life for his children, a normal life, a Jewish life."
    Adam looks like a typical Shasnik. In Eilat terms, he is. "Know what I used to do before this?" he says, tapping his peyot. "I was a lifeguard. Best lifeguard in town." He smiles warmly. "Now I'm busy saving myself."