He Speaks Your Language 

The headquarters of the Degel HaTorah party in Jerusalem are surprisingly quiet, considering that municipal elections are scheduled to be held next Tuesday. Maybe that reflects the mood of the country in general — a certain antipathy to holding elections during wartime. But the same phenomenon that’s disrupting the country’s newfound fragile unity on the national level is visible on the local level too, as the pettiness of politics rears its head again. Besides, the law mandates municipal elections every five years — and it’s necessary for the year’s budget to be ratified.

Here, in the headquarters of Degel, which garnered six of 31 city council seats in the last election, there are more offices than people around, although every wall is plastered with the flags of the political party that represents the litvish chareidi community. The slogan for this campaign is “Kulanu” (“all of us”) which might help explain the decision to place American-born Rabbi Reuven Kamenetsky on the slate and lend some credibility to that promise. (MK Rabbi Yitzchak Pindrus, former Jerusalem deputy mayor through Degel HaTorah, is also an English speaker who helped this sector within his municipal role, but he was born in Jerusalem and never identified as “one of the Americans.”)

Reb Reuven, grandson of Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky and son of Rav Noson Kamenetsky, zichronam livrachah, is a Torah scholar and teacher of note in his own right, now likely to become the first chareidi American to join the Jerusalem city council. His placement in the seventh position on Degel’s list — hopefully a safe spot — symbolizes the hope that the substantial English-speaking population residing in Israel, and in Jerusalem in particular, may finally begin to have its own representation.

An additional seat on the Jerusalem municipality should award Degel greater decision-making power over the 12 billion shekels (approximately $3.3 billion) comprising the city’s annual budget. Currently, 31 seats are up for grabs, with Degel HaTorah holding the largest bloc (six) in a council that’s fragmented, but whose unity among religious and right-wing parties (such as Shas, Agudas Yisrael, and Likud, among others) nearly guarantees the reelection of the current mayor, Moshe Lion.