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Last update - 21:30 05/11/2008
A man for all sectors?
By Avirama Golan
Tags: Israel News, Jerusalem 

Aside from his beard, mayoral candidate Meir Porush has another thing his rival Nir Barkat does not: When Porush says "Yerushalayim," he sounds exactly like Teddy Kollek. But that is the only point in which the legendary Jerusalem mayor resembles the 58-year-old ultra-Orthodox party activist, a seventh generation sabra and scion to a powerful and influential family. Porush, however, begs to differ with this assessment.

"I'll get up at five in the morning to check what the street cleaners are doing, just as he did. I'll look after every detail in this city," Porush says. "That is what I know best - to do things. The public should judge me by my past successes, as minister of housing and as deputy mayor of the city, not by my beard. So what if I have a long beard - what does that mean? That I'm not qualified?"

But just a few days ago, at a meeting of the Belz Hasidim, you were recorded - without your knowledge - as saying that in another few years there won't be any secular mayors left.
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Porush: "Why is Netanyahu allowed to say all kinds of things at election meetings, whereas I am not? I spoke in Yiddish to our public, the Belz Hasidim, who will vote en bloc in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh. Does anyone really believe that I think there will no longer be secular [Jews] here?"

Perhaps yes. You yourself said that according to natural proliferation...

"So what, there will be no more secular [Jews]? That's not realistic. What is true is that, to my regret, I can state with certainty that the secular community lacks leadership. But is it my fault that Labor, Kadima and Likud did not put up any candidates for Jerusalem?"

Will you be elected?

"I have no doubt about it."

A little openness

It is hard to find a house whose decor is as ultra-Orthodox as that of Rabbi Meir Porush. The apartment is located in Jerusalem's Romema neighborhood, on the second floor of an overcrowded and untended building that resembles a long train. Its salon is filled to the brim with dark wooden armchairs, whose velvet upholstery is tightly covered in durable plastic. On the walls hang colored portraits of the family members - the grandfathers and the grandsons, arranged according to their dates of birth, alongside group photos of the daughters and granddaughters, wearing shiny silk dresses.

Porush's wife peeps in for a moment, bringing a large tray laden with dried fruit and nuts, which she places on the vast dining table. Then she disappears again. The man of the house stretches out in his armchair, ties his long side-curls behind his neck, fixes his large black skullcap and takes a sip of tea.

The rabbis have not really given you their support. Instead, they hastened to give their blessings to Aryeh Deri. The Gur Hasidim are opposed to your candidacy and are complaining about the arrangements you and your father made in the independent education stream.

"No one will tell you that Rabbi Elyashiv gave his blessings to Aryeh Deri. Aryeh paid a visit to the rabbi, who told him that if he were to [run], the Lord would help him. He didn't send him to join the campaign. We are a big public and there are all kinds of factions. Even when [incumbent mayor Uri] Lupolianski ran for mayor five years ago, [ultra-Orthodox newspaper] Hamodia printed an announcement that I was running against him."

And did you?

"Yes, but once the rabbis decided that he was in the lead, I withdrew my candidacy. The current conditions are different. I am not the spokesman of the Gur Hasidim but I don't believe they hate me. Mordechai the Jew was also wanted by 'most of his brothers.' Nu, but I have vowed to myself not to say one bad word about anyone for three months and I don't believe they will not support me. That's all."

So you are observing a self-imposed silence? Just smiling, like the caricature [referring to Porush's campaign ad, which features a smiling cartoon version of himself]? Anyway, what was the idea behind the caricature?

Porush smiles, visibly pleased. "To broadcast a little openness," he says.

'Where will it end?'

He knows very well that his image is somewhat stiff, reserved and threatening. Throughout his entire life he never cared about that image, simply shrugging off whatever people said about him. Even during his stint at the Housing and Construction Ministry, where he served as deputy minister but acted with all the strength and authority befitting an energetic minister, he did not try to curry favor with anyone, whether Haredi, national religious or secular. Now he has to chase after all three publics, and he relishes in the realization that at least those wearing knitted skullcaps consider him to be their legitimate representative. "For several years now," he says, "this has been the nature of our ties with the national religious public. One time they help us and another time we help them."

How do you help them?

"What do you mean? After all, they are a public with needs. They need allocations of municipal land to build synagogues and institutes of study. They want their people to be appointed to rabbinical positions - but not only them. I have a very interesting note from Shai Hermesh [a former Kadima MK and the former head of the Sha'ar Hanegev regional council] in which he wrote that 'Porush was the best housing minister for the kibbutzim.'"

So you meet every sector's needs?

Porush nods, ponders his response and finally says "every sector."

But you mainly helped the national religious public in the territories.

"Them, yes."

And, in fact, the ties between the two publics extend far beyond that, no? The ultra-Orthodox are becoming more aware of the nation, more nationalistic even. Suddenly people in your public have begun speaking about the Greater Land of Israel, and you are talking about expanding Jerusalem...

"I am not a Greater Land of Israel [supporter] but I have yet to find a Palestinian leader who says that if we give them land they will give us peace, if we give them the 1967 borders, there will be an end to the conflict. So why should they get neighborhoods in East Jerusalem? For what? So they can later ask for the [Old City's] Muslim Quarter and then the Armenian Quarter, and finally also the Jewish Quarter and Mamila? Where will it end?"

What about the residents of East Jerusalem?

"They must have access to all the services. To return parts of Jerusalem would constitute a danger to the city but they must receive the same services as those afforded to residents of the city's western part - street cleaning, education, investments from abroad - everything to the same extent. True, they will not turn out to vote but I believe that at the very least it is possible to decrease the hostility."

If elected mayor, what will be your first course of action?

"I'll try to get the young people to return to the city. Do you know that in 1967, the city's population was 72 percent Jewish? Today, Jerusalem is in danger. If we don't save it, there will not be a Jewish majority here."

How will you save it?

"First of all, by providing apartments, some 30,000-40,000 units per year. In addition to the Safdie plan [which aims to expand the city westward], it is possible to build more in the neighborhoods inside the city. Secondly - employment, the implementation of government decisions on incentives and grants for employers, defining Jerusalem as a development area..."

Will the city also be attractive to secular people?

"Five years with an ultra-Orthodox mayor have shown that the tensions between the secular and the ultra-Orthodox have calmed down. Besides, I don't believe in coercion and we are no longer in a situation where there is nowhere to go out to and enjoy oneself in Jerusalem. Not like in Tel Aviv but like in Jerusalem."

Meir Porush is no socialite and it is difficult to spend time chatting with him. He feels comfortable only when discussing practical, down to earth matters. As befits someone who comes from a long tradition of people focused on a world that revolves around the Torah, he and his older brother Naftali were once asked, as children, what they would like to be when they grew up. Naftali said he wanted to be a "hafetz haim" (to have a desire for life), while Meir, the youngest of all the children, said he would like to be a Knesset member - not, heaven forfend, a minister, which is forbidden by the rabbis, and not the prime minister, although he might in fact want to.

Would you want to be prime minister?

"No," he hastens to clarify. "Not because I don't have the skills. It is not nice to say it, but I do have the skills. No, no," he protests, but it seems as though if he were entreated to do so, he would agree. "I don't want that."
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