Top 10 suggestions for Jerusalem's mayor

By Barbara Sofer
Jun. 19, 2003

Amid this year's travel books is a relatively new and intriguing genre of guide called Top 10. It short-lists the 10 best of everything - the 10 top museums, the 10 swankiest hotels, the 10 most significant ancient sites, even the 10 best Jewish restaurants. The success of these guides lies in their ability to distill and simplify a complex travel experience into a list. As we Jerusalemites move into complex and unfamiliar territory with our new mayor, Uri Lupolianski, here are the top 10 suggestions I've gleaned from a variety of city residents. * Mayor Lupolianski, let your conscience be your guide. Nearly everyone in this city believes you're a decent person with high-minded life goals. Leadership is about character. Your voters will be pleased if you use your own uprightness as a moral compass for making decisions in Jerusalem. Voters didn't elect you to cede your own good sense to external advisers, rabbinical or other. * As the old expression goes, if you can afford one newspaper, read the opposition. Despite your decade-long public political career, Nir Barkat - your nearly unknown opponent in the municipal elections - came close to defeating you. His energy and creativity inspired many Jerusalemites, particularly young people. Here is a rare opportunity to get what Barkat would call "added value" from your city council. One of Barkat's campaign pledges was to cut through the city's infamous kingdom of clerks and give nascent businesses a chance. Another of his employment-boosting suggestions was to make use of the relative advantage of literate and multilingual Jerusalemites in Jerusalem-based companies that would provide information abroad using telecommunications. He proposed enlisting greater citizen activism by bolstering neighborhood councils. Jerusalemites don't want to go back to the time of the haluka, when they lived off outsiders' handouts. The relatively low number of persons paying city taxes makes the tax burden unusually high on working Jerusalemites. How delighted we citizens would be to see you cooperating with Barkat to stop the flow of young people from our city. * Ten measures of beauty descended to the world - nine were taken by Jerusalem and one by the rest of the world, says the Talmud in Kiddushim. We'd like to be proud of our beautiful city, but its splendor can't shine through if the city isn't cleaned up. Jerusalemites feel disgusted by the dirt in their streets and the deterioration of the downtown area. We don't need pricey fireworks and circuses. We want sanitation. * Yes, we're all expecting you to keep your campaign promise to maintain the status quo on religious matters. Attempts at coercion inevitably bring backlash. We cringe when we remember the battles of Bar-Ilan Street and the violence in Shabbat Square. The best way to lead is to inspire by irresistible example. * But we don't want you to maintain the status quo in municipal government. That would be a great disappointment. In the country's poorest city the outrageous salaries - 500 city workers earning more than NIS 30,000 a month - have long been a source of disgust to Jerusalemites. You have the city's mandate to remedy this. Why should the average citizen feel motivated to volunteer and get involved when so many workers are getting rich from our taxes? Use your majority in the city council to streamline the municipality and you will gain the respect of the entire electorate (minus about 500). * Jerusalem has to be a city with a heart. Feeding the hungry must be a priority. Said Zecharia: "The city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the broad places thereof." No matter what our political persuasion, we cannot tolerate the idea of hungry boys and girls. Likewise, Jerusalem should be a model city for the 13% of the population who are physically or emotionally challenged. Your background in building Yad Sarah should give you a head start in these areas. * Study English. The mayor of Jerusalem needs to be able to reach out to the world and engage the minds and hearts of world leaders. Yiddish is not an adequate substitute in the global village. * Make your religious background an advantage, not a disadvantage. Most Jerusalemites, observant or less so, have a warm spot for tradition and spirituality. The mayor could be a source of spiritual strength, encouraging resilience in a population suffering from more terror attacks than any other city in the world. As we face still another summer shadowed by terrorism, we're badly in need of inspiration. * Reaffirm your Zionism. The mayor of the capital city of the modern Jewish state should lead the way in celebrating our independence with exuberance. While our enemies question our right to exist, our own mayor should be a beacon of national pride. * Make all us Jerusalemites feel you are truly our mayor. Hebrew University political science professor Shlomo Avineri was recently outraged when you wouldn't shake a woman's hand at the Israel Prize award ceremony. With all due respect to the professor, it's not having our hands shaken that we women are concerned with - it's being able to raise our hands and our voices within the city's governing system. That's true for women, being the majority in the city, as well as for all the minorities. Above all, may Jerusalem be - as the text says in the talmudic tractate Hagiga - the city that unites all Jews in companionship.