Rabbi Haim (Ian) Pear, a member of the party list for the Religious Zionist party in Jerusalem (טב), spoke with Arutz Sheva - Israel National News to explain his decision to enter Jerusalem’s municipal politics.
He is the founder and director of Shir Hadash, a multi-site Synagogue, Educational Center and Israel Advocacy Institute, and has previously worked as an Environmental Lawyer, the Director of Hillel at Tel Aviv University, and as a Legal Researcher for the JDC-Joint’s Holocaust Claims Department. ‘’I wrote a book called 'The Accidental Zionist', and to a certain extent my decision to do this is akin to that - I feel myself as the accidental politician. I do my best to stay out of politics, but over the years I've done a lot of work with my community and I have to work with the city on a lot of issues and almost all of my interactions with the city have been poor.''
''Recently, I had a particular issue and and I needed some help, and I went to many different people asking for help. The bureaucrats in the city ghosted me for about two years and didn't answer emails. Finally, someone said to speak to Hagit Moshe, the deputy mayor in charge of education. I met with her, and she got the person on the phone in about five minutes and had our problem solved in about an hour after it had lasted two years. It was amazing.”
“She reached out to me a couple months later and said ‘You know, I want you to join my list, to represent specifically the English-speaking immigrant population. It's a huge population, with about three thousand people coming from North America every year, and that’s just in the past thirty years - obviously, there are also older immigrants from before that. A lot of our interests and concerns are the same as everyone else - we want to bring down the price of apartments so our kids can stay here, we want good schools, but we also have some special needs to help contribute to the city that we love. We came as idealists and we want to contribute, but sometimes we need just a little extra assistance in that regard.”
Born and raised in the US (including living in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, Arizona, California and DC), he and his wife, Dr. Rachel Pear, immigrated to Jerusalem – first to Nachlaot and then to Katamon – 20+ years ago. The Pears are parents of five children ranging in age from 6 – 25. This background, he says, gives him a much-needed alternative take on politics. “There's a lot of idealism, but there's a lot of skills. I think that our community has expectations of good governance. We grew up in a society that's multicultural. We were religious, but we were able to interact with people of all different backgrounds. I'd love to see that in politics, finding ways to work together. That's why I like local politics - I'm not ready for the fighting and the screaming that takes place on the national level, but on the local level where we really have the same interests and we want things to work well in our city, maybe there's room for us to to work together.”
He points out that the bulk of what is truly important happens on the municipal level: ‘’What do most parents care about? They want their kid to have a great school, to have a community - that's what's most meaningful to a lot of people - obviously, you want a job, you want services that the city provides, the budgets, the allocations of facilities, even to the extent of what type of jobs are going to be available. You know we want high-paying jobs in Jerusalem, and you know they're all going to Tel Aviv. I think immigrants, many of whom are involved in the high-tech sector, could help bring some of those jobs here. That all takes place at the local level, and that's what's going to impact a person on a day-to-day level.”
Rabbi Pear engages in ‘spiritual diplomacy’, welcoming – and providing educational content – for thousands of non-Jewish political, academic, business, and clergy visitors to Israel. He has also lectured and written widely on the interplay between Halacha and Israeli secular law, and is the author of three books. He extolled how Jerusalem attracted people of all kinds: “When we moved here, we thought that we would live in a cocoon, separated from the rest of the world. Instead, more and more people come here. We’ve seen Governors, Senators, Maroon 5, Bill Maher, Ben Shapiro. We would never have met them in America, and only met them here because Jerusalem is the center of the world and everyone wants to be here.”
He addressed the complexities of holding elections while the war was ongoing: “Elections may seem frivolous, but they're not. Five minutes in the polls is going to decide what the city is going to look like for the next five years.”
Running a campaign in such circumstances is challenging as well: “Our community, which we're very proud of, of course, is serving incredibly well in Gaza and up north, but it makes it more difficult. We have a staff on our campaign of about twenty people, and fifteen of them are away in reserves. More than that, we need the people to come out in order to vote. If we have a low voter turnout, that hurts our community, and we should be proud of our community. Our community deserves the resources, both from the immigration point of view, but also for the general national religious community. Our synagogues, our youth movements, our communities, our schools - all that needs support, and that all happens at the ballot box.”