CAN'T BUILD A FUTURE OUT OF THE BLUES:

Leaving Jerusalem: A farewell essay by a veteran journalist has many secular Jews in the Israeli capital asking, Should I stay or should I go? (David B. Green, December 5, 2004, Boston Globe)

Four years of intifada, a lengthy recession, and a declining tax base (thanks to its poor population and high number of religious, academic, and government institutions) have all left Jerusalem's downtown feeling like something of a ghost town. A popular image of the main highway heading out of town is of a one-way channel taking all the city's secular, middle-class population anywhere but here.

A recent article in the weekend magazine of the Ha'aretz daily by Neri Livneh, a veteran reporter for the paper, offered a dramatic expression of the feelings of one of those who deliberated lengthily before finally leaving Jerusalem, and sparked an exchange that went to the heart of how secular Israelis perceive their nation's largest city and capital -- whether as an increasingly closed, dangerous, and economically depressed town, or as one of the world's most vibrant caldrons of multicultural coexistence.

Livneh described her recent decision to move from the capital to Tel Aviv as part of an inevitable process that is emptying the city of all of its enlightened class. "Almost everyone I know from Jerusalem has left the city or plans to leave it," she wrote, adding that "the others stare sadly at the backs of those who are leaving, in a kind of collective fear of abandonment." Thirty years after she had arrived in Jerusalem as a university student, few of the things that had originally attracted her -- a bohemian community, lively cafes and night-life, a bustling university community at its heart -- exist here anymore.

Others interviewed by Livneh agreed. "There's no reason to stay in Jerusalem," said one woman. "From every point of view you can think of, you have to leave." Says another, "Already now, there's a feeling that the liberal residents that have remained in the city are under a kind of siege, that they're in the minority and on the losing side. . .."

True, Livneh's elegy isn't quite matched by the facts. Though more Jews are leaving the city than are arriving, thanks to a high birthrate the Jewish population (which currently makes up 67 percent of the total) is still growing, if not as fast as the Arab population. More of those Jews who are migrating are ultra-Orthodox than are secular, and in both cases the vast majority cite lack of jobs and of affordable housing, not a culture war. Still, perceptions can count for more than facts, and many secular Jews in Jerusalem are certain that if they don't go the way of Neri Livneh, they will become the Last of the Mohicans.

If Israel is to have a Jewish future it will be even Redder than America's.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 9, 2004 6:19 AM