HERZLIYA — It is not a typical Israeli city.
Herzliya is unusually liberal, being one of only two municipalities in the country with a woman mayor, Yael German (the other is Netanya’s Miriam Feierberg), and the only one with a Meretz mayor. It is much more secular than the country at large, with only 11 percent religious among its 90,000-plus residents.
Along with Tel Aviv and Haifa, this coastal city is one of Israel’s high-tech capitals, and a preferred address for high-earning professionals in all fields.
In sum, Herzliya is cutting-edge Israel.
So it’s no coincidence that Herzliya is also the first city to consider opening a shopping mall for retail business, restaurants and cinemas on Shabbat.
“People in the high-tech industries often work until 10 p.m., so they have no other time to go shopping except Shabbat,” German notes.
In early September, the mayor went public with the Shabbat mall idea. Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein promptly ruled it was illegal, whereupon German said she would change the law.
The question is: Does this controversy affect only Herzliya, or is the character of Shabbat in Israel at stake? And another question: Is the main issue here religion, or economics?
The recently opened Shiv’at Hakochavim (“Seven Stars”) mall, located at the edge of Herzliya just east of the Ayalon Freeway, is chic and cavernous-looking. The $70 million mall’s three-story exterior bears green-tinted glass, swirling light-brown stone and something that looks like silver alligator skin. Along with the cinema, restaurants, supermarket and department store, there’s a Boarder surf shop, Royalty jewelry store, Baginda leather-goods shop and some 100 more retailers, mostly upscale.
Deputy general manager Revital Hecht says the retail stores in the mall will not open on Shabbat until local and national law allow it.
“But we would, of course, like those laws changed to accommodate Shabbat commerce,” he adds.
Religious demonstrators have taken their complaints to City Hall, and German says she’s gotten two anonymous threatening letters — one of which informed her of her imminent death should she allow the mall to open on Shabbat.
“The writer added ‘God willing,’ and a swastika,” she notes.
Some 100 downtown Herzliya merchants have also besieged City Hall, contending that opening the mall on Shabbat would badly hurt their businesses.
“People who used to come here to shop after work will say, ‘Ah, let’s wait until Shabbat, we can buy it at the mall,'” says Shmuel Tennenbaum, owner of a clothing store on busy Sokolow Street and a leader of the Herzliya Merchants’ Association.
A recent poll commissioned in Herzliya by the local weekly Al Hasharon found 70 percent favored opening the mall on Shabbat, with 22 percent opposed.
“It’s the talk of the town,” says Ma’ayan Naveh, Al Hasharon’s city reporter.
Says Eliahu Shriki, the fervently religious Shas’ Party’s lone representative on the City Council, “The Christians respect their holy day. The Muslims respect their holy day. Why can’t the Israeli people?”
Although local religious parties have received national support from the United Torah Judaism and Meimad Parties, they hold only three of the 21 seats on the City Council.
“The religious are going through the motions of protesting, but they know it’s a lost cause,” says Naveh.
Behind the counter of one of the shops, “Amir,” a secular Jew, says, “Everybody should be allowed to do whatever they want on Shabbat.” He wants to keep his business closed so he can take a day off. One of the conditions for renting space in the mall is that you stay open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and also Saturday nights. For the big chain stores this is not a problem because they have lots of employees to fill the shifts.
“But for the shopkeepers who basically run the stores themselves, these are very long hours. And if we’re also going to work on Shabbat, it begins to get a little crazy,” Amir says.
Shopkeepers in the mall are split over the issue.
“Some say they’ll do great business on Shabbat,” says Amir. “I don’t plan to join them, but I don’t want to make any great declarations, either, because it may turn out that I’m losing too much money by closing on Shabbat, and I’ll end up having to change my mind.”
Even within German’s own Meretz/Independent faction, there is a pocket of opposition to Shabbat retail business in the mall.
Councilwoman Gila Tolkowsky says, “At any rate the mall will be half open — the restaurants, the cinema and the bowling alley. This is legal Shabbat entertainment, and nobody’s arguing over this.”
She also notes that large national chains won’t open on Shabbat because they don’t want to risk a nationwide haredi boycott.
At issue is a relatively small number of local stores, she contends, and they aren’t worth making such an fuss over. Two other members of German’s eight-member faction, Danny Ya’acovson and Adina Zilberstein, have also come out against Shabbat business in the mall, arguing the social need for a day off.
For downtown merchants, says Tennenbaum, “the key words are ‘equal opportunity.'”
He argues it is unfair to allow mall businesses to open on Shabbat and prohibit competing businesses, a couple of kilometers away on Sokolow Street, from opening. A religious Jew, Tennenbaum says he prefers equality under the status quo, whereby all retail businesses are closed on Shabbat.
German says she has no intention of allowing businesses in the populated parts of the city to be open on Shabbat, explaining that the mall is a special case because it is on the outskirts of town, away from residential areas and synagogues. What happens at the mall will therefore not affect the “character of Shabbat in Herzliya,” German insists.
Ornan Yekutieli, Jerusalem city councilman and chairman of the Am Hofshi secular movement, supports German’s position, saying, “The religious will have to really go out of their way to be offended by any desecration of Shabbat.”
Tennenbaum fears that the trend could spread. “Industrial zones now have retail businesses too, and they’re on the outskirts of town, so what’s to stop them from opening on Shabbat?”
But above all, Tennenbaum maintains, the laws of capitalism will turn the mall into an Israeli economic landmark — and not a beneficial one. When nearby malls begin losing customers to Seven Stars, “they’ll be forced to open on Shabbat as well. It’ll snowball across the whole country.”
Hecht agrees. “Once other malls see that Seven Stars is doing well on Shabbat, this will start them thinking.”
Proponents of Shabbat commerce, however, insist that Seven Stars is not so much the start of something new as the reaction to something that’s already taken root in Israel.
“Why should people be able to shop in stores at Kibbutz Shefayim, Kibbutz Ga’ash, Bilu Junction and all sorts of other places, but not in Herzliya?” German asks.
Not only do thousands of Israelis flock to the Toys ‘R’ Us, Home Center and furniture showrooms in these and other spots on Shabbat, but they also jam the cut-rate markets in border Palestinian towns like Kalkilya and Bidya.
The only difference between these sites and the mall is that Seven Stars lies within a city, German points out.
She says Israel’s status quo is outdated, that Shabbat shopping is now a national habit and that it’s unjust to keep it out of the Seven Stars Mall.