Rabbis: Light rail train 'a disaster for Judaism'
Ultra-Orthodox Rabbinical Transportation Committee strongly opposes new form of transportation in Jerusalem, saying it constitutes ‘a huge step backwards on a worldly, spiritual level alike’
The ultra-Orthodox community opposes the Jerusalem light rail train. The Haredi population’s Rabbinical Transportation Committee approached Knesset members and ministers this week in a request to reconsider the routes for the capital's light rail train.
“In our meeting with transportation experts it became clear that the Transport Ministry is planning on cancelling a large part of the haredi lines that exist in the city,” the committee stated in a letter written a month and a half ago.
According to them, the goal is to “force the ultra-Orthodox population in specific neighborhoods to take the light train and in other neighborhoods to ride the regular lines.”
The committee’s various rabbis also wrote in the letter, “We conclude that the light train is not at all suitable for the ultra-Orthodox community’s needs, neither worldly nor spiritually. The goal of forcing the ultra-Orthodox community to use the light train constitutes a severe spiritual danger.
“The Transport Ministry intends on altering the bus routes that serve the general public and move them to the Geula neighborhood and thus, to completely ruin the neighborhood’s spiritual character.”
The rabbis warned that due to limitations on the entrance of private vehicles into the city center, the Geula neighborhood will turn into a parking area for all those coming to the center. This is likely to increase the traffic on the neighborhood’s narrow streets and occupy the residents’ parking spaces. [...]
“There are those who will call this ‘a disaster for ultra-Orthodox Judaism,’ and those that will express themselves with greater severity. What is clear is that this is a huge step backwards on a worldly and spiritual level alike.”
Monday, August 25, 2008
Jerusalem - light rail train & spirituality
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I have to agree with the rabbis on this one. This is a case of pure sloppy planning on the part of the ministry of transportation. In the pursuit of strengthening the city center of Jerusalem and making commuting there more efficient, they are turning another neighborhood into an iyr hanindachat. This is a gross infringement on the rights of a significantly large segment of Jerusalem's citizenry.
ReplyDeleteIt is also going to provoke a lot of civil unrest. The very infrastructure that they are creating will make it even more vulnerable to being shut down by civil disobedience. Even without all of that did they actually take into account the traffic jams that will be created by rerouting other bus lines into an already congested area? Obviously there is nobody in the higher relms of the ministry of transportation that has any sort of degree in urban planning.
What about the benefits of LRT vs. buses:
ReplyDeleteThese statistics are from
Transportation Quarterly. Winter 1994:35-36:
1. Light rail gets people out of their cars in a way that buses do not. In San Diego, ridership now exceeds 5.8 million annually on the trolley while demand for the old South Bay was bus lines peaked out at 3.4 million riders two years before the trolley opened.
2.Light rail raises public support for public transit as a whole:
St.Louis opened a light rail system July 31, 1993 which is averaging 23,000 riders daily, 6,000 more than originally estimated. Bus ridership is also up 20% since the light rail line opened.Toronto's transit system delivers 77 percent of the downtown-bound person-trips during the weekday peak hour. The service removes an estimated 122,200 vehicles from city streets each day. Buffalo's light-rail rapid system is carrying 26 percent of daily work trips.
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3.Light rail can reduce the cost of operating the transit system:
LRT systems have also proven cost-effective to operate. An average LRT passenger's ride costs half as much as a bus passenger's ride. San Diego's light rail recovers 90-96% of its costs from the farebox, double the cost recovery of area buses.
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4. Light rail offers improved speed and reliability over buses:
5. Light rail also offers reduced energy and labor costs over buses.
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How can Israel afford NOT to put in LRT in ALL of its cities?
Isn't it a mitzvah to not waste money, natural resources or destroy the environment which buses certainly do?
Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete"How can Israel afford NOT to put in LRT in ALL of its cities?
Isn't it a mitzvah to not waste money, natural resources or destroy the environment which buses certainly do?"
What you are saying is correct but when planning something like this you have to take into account the various percussions that your plan will produce. Causing destruction of a neighborhood is always controversial. What gives them the right to do it. Especially Geula which is not just a neighborhood. It is somewhat of a spiritual and commercial hub. Besides the fact that the residents their are going to have their world thrown upside down. The institutions there are going to be effected. Their property values might also tank from all of this. Moreover there is no shared burden going on here. One specific (and a large one if I might add) segment of the population will be harshly effected by all of this.
The ends does not justify the means. These planners need to go back to their drawing boards. They should have done so years ago.
"1. Light rail gets people out of their cars in a way that buses do not. In San Diego, ridership now exceeds 5.8 million annually on the trolley while demand for the old South Bay was bus lines peaked out at 3.4 million riders two years before the trolley opened.
ReplyDelete2.Light rail raises public support for public transit as a whole:"
I fail to see how these are relevant to Israel where there exists a strong public transit already.
Israel's public transit system may be widely used, but it is very wasteful. Pollution in Ir Hakodesh is legendary.
ReplyDelete"when planning something like this you have to take into account the various percussions that your plan will produce. Causing destruction of a neighborhood is always controversial. What gives them the right to do it."
Unfortunately in every city in the world, the most politically expendable segment of society generally suffers from public policy decisions.
Haredi poverty is exceptionally high, 20% of the Israeli poor despite a population share half that size.
In 2004 the Haredi men’s labor force participation was 37%, about half of the general Jewish population. Haredi women most often function as the family’s main providers, despite a labor force participation rate of only 48%, compared to 58% of non-Haredi women.
Direct financial support of rabbis and students of Talmud is, nevertheless, a relatively new innovation in Judaism.
During the lengthy period of Talmud composition, approximately 50 BC to AD 500, and for centuries thereafter, rabbis and students received no salaries or any other forms of financial support for talmudic study. (Elementary teachers who taught Bible to small children were paid.) Indeed, the Talmud itself prohibited payments for talmudic study.
Some talmudic sages were working-class people who had well-known professions and earned their livelihoods from their labors. The only form of financial reward that was allowed for a talmudic sage was a recompense for not working.
This can be illustrated by a talmudic anecdote about one of the most important sages, Abaye, who lived in Babylonia in the fourth century AD. Abaye was a farmer and cultivated his farm by himself. If asked a question by someone while working, he told the questioner: "Work on this irrigation canal for me while I ponder your question."
Maimonides' ruling in his Learning Torah Laws (chapter 3, verse 10) is often quoted by secular Israelis who object to state support for Torah scholars:
Anyone supposing that he will engage in Torah [talmudic study] and not engage in labor, thus taking his livelihood from charity, should be considered a person who has extinguished the light of religion, put Torah to shame, caused evil to himself and lost his chance to enter paradise, since it is forbidden to make profit form the sayings of Torah in this world. The sages said: "Everyone who makes profit from the sayings of Torah loses his life." They [the sages] have also ordered and said: "Do not make it [Torah] either a crown in which to boast or an axe with which to work." And they [the sages] have further ordered and said: "Love labor and hate the rabbinate." All Torah not accompanied by labor will be nullified, and the end of such a person [so engaged] will be that he will rob the people. "
In every society, material resources and population representation equal political clout.