With the mayoral campaigns in most Israeli cities set for November 11, the hareidi-religious public is looking at two campaigns in particular: in Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh.
In Jerusalem, Shas candidate Aryeh Deri has filed a request with the Jerusalem District Court to allow him to run for mayor, despite the fact that only six years have passed since he completed his prison sentence for bribery. The law says that in a case such as his, he must wait seven years before assuming public office.
The State has submitted its dry response to the court, stating straightforwardly that the law does not allow Deri to vie for the mayoralty of Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Meir Porush of United Torah Judaism - scion of a family that has been influential in Jerusalem politics for many decades - has put his mayoral campaign into high-gear. He plans to meet with Torah sage Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv on Monday, apologize to him for a political trick he played in the mayoral elections in Beitar Illit last year, and request his endorsement - which is likely to be forthcoming. One of the two major hareidi-religious newspapers, HaModia, has already all but given its endorsement to Porush.
The other candidates - billionaire philanthropist Arcady Gaydamak and Nir Barkat - are playing catch-up. Barkat is attempting, with some success, to ally himself with the national-religious public in the city, while Gaydamak took out full-page ads in the country's leading newspapers on Sunday. The ads accused what Gaydamak called the 'holy trinity' - the business community, the regime, and the media - of "acting towards me so aggressively because they are afraid that I will denounce the small circle of money-men who control everything in Israel."
Beit Shemesh
In Beit Shemesh, which has an increasingly growing hareidi population, candidates from both the hareidi-Sephardic Shas Party and the more Ashkenazi UTJ (United Torah Judaism party) plan to challenge the incumbent Danny Vaknin of the Likud. Relatively-unknown Moshe Abutbul is the Shas candidate, while the former mayor of the hareidi Shomron city of Emanuel, Yeshayahu Ehrenreich, will run on the Ashekanazi-hareidi ticket. Ehrenreich is in the process of moving to Beit Shemesh from Emanuel, where he is credited with having turned around the once-failing city.
Beit Shemesh has grown at an approximate 4.3% annual rate over the past 18 months, climbing from 69,500 people in December 2006 to 74,100 in June of this year. Most of the growth is in the hareidi neighborhoods.