Photos: Elchanan Kotler, Eli Cobin

Supermarkets were full of anxious shoppers, the Kosel plaza was mostly empty and the city was already in an advanced stage of corona-induced shutdown last week when Jerusalem’s City Hall, or Kikar Safra as it’s known, hosted its most unusual event in living memory.

Just down the hall from the mayor’s suite and the silent city council chamber on the building’s sixth floor, stood a tastefully arranged chuppah, complete with flowers, candles and photographers. There was a happy couple, a few nervous guests – and the “mechutan”, Mayor Moshe Lion, who the previous day, had broadcast his offer to host municipality-sponsored weddings, live on Kol Hai, a religious radio station.

Tension chased emotion across his face, and then his powerful voice filled the atrium. “Baruch atah Hashem…”, he sang the last of the Sheva Brachos to the melody used by his ancestors, chazzanim in Salonika, Greece. The glass was broken, Lion boomed a short Mazal Tov speech, and the mayor’s big Jewish heart and cantorial voice disappeared – replaced by the CEO’s drive that he’s brought to managing the capital’s fight against the deadly virus.

That wedding was only one of many worldwide as Jewish families try to salvage happiness from the destruction of corona, but it’s also key to understanding the many worlds of Moshe Lion.

He’s a successful Israeli entrepreneur, yet he’s presided over a range of state-sector agencies; he’s a bureaucrat, yet he loves to get behind a microphone to sing; he’s a Likud insider, yet he mixes comfortably with all sectors of the chareidi world, from chassidim to Shas.

But if that moving scene exemplifies Jerusalem’s current religious-friendly administration, there’s another one that could as well come to define Moshe Lion’s tenure in City Hall.

A few floors below is an off-limits war-room that Lion has set up to deal with the crisis now engulfing Israel’s capital city. Representatives of the Defense Ministry, the National Security Council and the Health Ministry meet there to deal with the at-risk demographics such as the elderly and special-needs children and how to ensure a food-supply for people who can’t get out in the lockdown now tightening on Israel’s cities.

Over the last few days, he’s sat with chessed organizations to provide volunteers to help those in need. The Iriyah is helping small businesses on the verge of financial ruin by delaying arnona payments and other business taxes for two months. But at the same time City Hall is in crisis itself. “We’re trying to use our reserves,” explains an aide, “because there’s no income.” As one of Israel’s leading CPAs, corona will tax Lion’s accounting skills to the limit.