Israeli municipal election campaigns have entered the final stretch before next Tuesday’s vote. The atmosphere in Jerusalem is electric, with banners and posters festooning buses, billboards, and balconies. Party headquarters teem with hundreds of activists manning the phones.

They are fighting over every single vote. For the first time in 30 years, the two main chareidi Ashkenazi parties, the chassidic Agudas Yisrael and the litvish Degel HaTorah, are fielding separate slates for the city council. The chareidi camps have also split their support for mayoral candidates, with Degel and Shas supporting Moshe Lion (see below), and Agudas Yisrael backing Rabbi Yossi Deitsch (last week’s cover story).

In the months leading up to the elections, leaders of the two Ashkenazi parties held frequent late-night discussions to try to achieve unity. Degel complained about inequality in the joint list, whereupon Agudah agreed to divide the future council seats evenly. Apparently this was not enough to bridge the gaps, and Degel decided to split off and form its own independent list of city council candidates, in what will become a test of the party’s clout in Jerusalem. Degel is confident that it will garner at least five council seats.

Heading Degel HaTorah’s operation in Jerusalem is Councilman Yisrael Kellerman, considered one of the city’s most accomplished politicians. “There is a tremendous energy and feeling of responsibility among the Jerusalem litvish community to ensure the campaign’s success,” Kellerman told Mishpacha. “We’re seeing huge numbers of volunteers — neighborhood residents, avreichim, and bochurim — knocking on our doors and offering their assistance, in answer to the call of gedolei Torah.”

One of the challenges facing Kellerman and his staff is educating their supporters about the actual printed ballot; in Israel, the voting booth is stocked with a supply of tickets for every party, each denoted by a Hebrew letter or two. “For many years, every frum Jew in Jerusalem knew to vote Gimmel [the united Agudah–Degel list],” Kellerman says. “Now that we’ve decided to run separately, we’re using the letters Daled-Tav. We’re working very hard to get the message out to our community so they don’t get confused and put the wrong ticket in the ballot envelope.”

Kellerman and his team are leaving no stone unturned in getting their constituents out to vote. “In recent weeks, we’ve done intensive work in the neighborhoods. Our goal is to have in each building a representative who’s familiar with all the residents, and who knows how to speak to each one, to explain why to vote for us, and where necessary, to help them get to their voting station on Election Day.”

The Agudas Yisrael headquarters in the capital is about a 15-minute drive away from Degel’s home base. Highly motivated activists from the various chassidusen are working hard for the Agudah city council list and mayoral candidate Yossi Deitsch. Last Thursday, Gerrer chassidim in Jerusalem were summoned to the central beis medrash, and in the presence of the Rebbe shlita, Deitsch addressed the crowd, exhorting them to do their part for his success and that of Agudas Yisrael.

“We’re working very intensively,” says council member Yochanan Weitzman, a Gerrer chassid. “We have a well-oiled machine that we’ve used in the past to bring as many people to the polls as possible from the chassidic kehillos, and also to turn out supporters from other sectors in the city.”

The Agudah campaign is implementing a groundbreaking initiative borrowed from the world of fundraising known as “matching.” Each Agudah voter in Jerusalem is asked to bring one additional vote from the general community on behalf of Deitsch and the party’s council slate.

“Every chareidi Jew in Jerusalem knows at least one person who doesn’t belong to our voting bloc,” Weitzman explained. “It could be the cleaner, a taxi driver, or the mailman. So now we’re working on this dual track — first, to bring every single eligible voter to the ballot box, and second, to double our strength through matching.”

As of the end of this week, it looks like the Jerusalem mayor’s race won’t be decided in the first round. Degel HaTorah and Shas are convinced that the second-round contenders will be Moshe Lion and Ofer Berkowitz, the secular candidate who recruited 14,000 university students from outside the city to transfer their addresses to the capital so they’d be eligible to vote for his party. This figure translates to two seats on the city council. In an interview with Mishpacha, mayoral candidate Moshe Lion asserted he would make it to the second round and he would corral the first-round supporters of Yossi Deitsch, and of the Likud candidate, cabinet minister Zev Elkin.

Last week, Lion received the brachos of several gedolei Torah including Rav Chaim Kanievsky and Rav Shalom Cohen, nasi of the Shas Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah.

Moshe Lion, 57, is not your standard politician. In 2013 Lion mounted an unsuccessful campaign against Mayor Nir Barkat, losing 51% to 45% despite garnering support from MKs Aryeh Deri and Avigdor Lieberman. Lion ended up joining Barkat’s coalition on the council in 2015, and was appointed to the city’s community management department. Until a year and a half ago, the kippah serugah wearer owned an accounting firm with 300 employees, making it the seventh-largest of its kind in Israel.

“HaKadosh Baruch Hu showered me with abundant parnassah, and my life was very good,” he shared with Mishpacha. “I’ve been an accountant for the last 25 years. I had many respected clients who would often consult with me. It’s only because Jerusalem is in my soul that I’ve entered politics.”

Lion has served in various senior positions in the public arena, most notably as director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office from 1997 to 1999, chairman of Israel Railways from 2003 to 2006, and chairman of the Jerusalem Development Authority from 2008 to 2013.

“During my tenure at the Jerusalem Development Authority, a position I filled at the request of former Mayor Uri Lupolianski, I noticed in the course of my drives around the city and my conversations with residents that the people don’t get what they deserve from the municipality,” he said. “In the last decade, when Nir Barkat was at the helm, there was no one who listened to the ordinary resident. A year and a half ago I sold my accounting firm so I could devote myself to the city of Jerusalem and its residents. My past public roles gave me the training and experience needed to manage a city this size.” (See full interview in sidebar.)

Unity in Beit Shemesh

The only city that has succeeded until now in maintaining full unity between all the chareidi factions is Beit Shemesh, where Moshe Abutbul is running for a third consecutive term. “B’chasdei Shamayim, all the representatives are backing me with full unity,” Abutbul told Mishpacha. “It’s truly difficult to find such a unified table these days, and I am gratified that we succeeded in Beit Shemesh. Much has been said about achdut, and Beit Shemesh has risen above the divisiveness that has afflicted other parts of the country.”

According to Abutbul, the greatest threat to his reelection is the complacency that is likely to cause some constituents to stay home. “On the one hand, we see the numbers, the unity, and we know that b’ezrat Hashem, we’ll win the elections. We need to target each and every resident and remind him of all we’ve done, from opening Highway 38, to building 100 new playgrounds across the city, giving substantial municipal tax discounts to avreichim, and of course development of new neighborhoods. Frum voters must bear all this in mind on their way to the ballot box.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 732)