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Strongholding the Synagogue to Stronghold the City: Urban-Religious Configurations in an Israeli Mixed-City

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Strongholding the Synagogue to Stronghold the City: Urban-Religious Configurations in an Israeli Mixed-City STRONGHOLDING THE SYNAGOGUE TO STRONGHOLD THE CITY: URBAN-RELIGIOUS CONFIGURATIONS IN AN ISRAELI MIXED-CITY MORIEL RAM & MEIRAV AHARON GUTMAN Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Received: October 2015; accepted September 2016 ABSTRACT This article explores the geopolitical significance of public religious institutions and the ways in which it has corresponded to changes in their urban environment. Based on a spatial analysis and ethnography of urban synagogues in the northern Israeli mixed city of Acre that were established and constructed by communities of Jewish immigrants from North African countries, we demonstrate how significant shifts in the city’s demographic pattern and landscape have affected these institutions’ ascribed functions and meanings. We theorise this dynamic as ‘strongholding’, or, more specifically, strongholding the synagogue as a means of strongholding the city. The formation of the synagogue as a stronghold is enacted through a dual configuration process by which the religious legitimacy, which the synagogue bestows on those who maintain it, is interwoven into a broader urban sociopolitical struggle to claim a presence in the city. Key words: Religion, Israel-Palestine, mixed cities, synagogues, urban-religious configuration INTRODUCTION their worship a ‘public prayer’ (tefilat tzibur). According to Jewish custom, public prayer is It is approximately ten past seven in the considered prayer on behalf of the commu- morning in the Mediterranean coastal plain nity and therefore holds greater spiritual sig- city of Acre in northern Israel. Jewish wor- nificance than the prayer of any one shippers are beginning to trickle in to Rakia particular individual. From this perspective, a Marom (Hebrew for ‘Heaven’s High’) syna- minyan is what turns a synagogue into a pub- gogue for Shaharit, the morning Jewish lic space. prayer service. The house of prayer is located When it becomes clear that they lack inside a bomb shelter, which was converted enough men to form a minyan, the tension into a synagogue during the 1970s, soon mounts, and the atmosphere in the syna- after the neighbourhood’s construction. gogue gradually morphs into one better Those arriving begin to recite the prayers suited for a war room than a house of prayer. quietly, each in his own designated spot. Worshippers whip out their mobile phones, Today, however, there is a palpable tension attempting to mobilise sons, neighbours and in the air. Every now and then someone friends. An older man named Menachem, a looks up to assess whether enough men have regular at Rakia Marom, goes outside and arrived. The number they need is ten, as it shouts up at the windows of the homes on takes ten Jewish men to form a minyan – the the block, trying to wake some of the resi- quorum required under Jewish law to render dents he knows. Pinchas, also an older man Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie – 2017, DOI:10.1111/tesg.12231, Vol. 00, No. 00, pp. 00–00. VC 2017 Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG 2 MORIEL RAM & MEIRAV AHARON GUTMAN and another synagogue regular, expresses his manifested in our main case study of urban approval of Menachem’s rallying cry: ‘Good, synagogues established by Mizrachi commun- let him shout. I want them to hear that there ities in the ethno-nationally mixed city of are not enough men here’. Those who do Acre. We conclude with reflections on the eventually arrive for the prayer service are ways in which the notion of the ‘stronghold’ reprimanded. ‘Where have you been?’ asks and ‘strongholding’ can enrich our under- Aharon, one of the more frequent attendees, stating of urban-religious configurations. addressing a man who had not shown up for prayers the previous day, remarking half- URBAN-RELIGIOUS DIALOGUES jokingly that the man has gone AWOL (absent without leave, or nifkad in Hebrew). From their very inception, religions and This comparison between AWOL soldiers urban environments have been closely inter- and people who fail to show up for daily twined, with religion shaping, defining, and prayers provides us a metonymic illustration giving meaning to built environments, and of the formation of the synagogue as a stronghold that needs to be maintained at all built environments providing the physical costs, for the sake of preserving and strength- infrastructure in which religions function. ening the Jewish identity of the locality in Nonetheless, the modern Western city has which it is situated. This dynamic, which we been perceived and conceived primarily as a theorise here as ‘strongholding’, or more secular space bent on dismantling rather specifically, strongholding the synagogue as a than securing traditional institutions (Garbin means of strongholding the city, is enacted 2012). It is therefore no surprise that a prev- through a dual configuration process by alent assumption of the scholarship on the which the religious legitimacy that the syna- contemporary built environment has been gogue bestows on those who maintain it is the continued contraction of religion’s ability interwoven into a broader urban sociopoliti- to shape city spheres and the fading potency cal struggle to claim a presence in the city. of the relationship between faith and urban- In this way, the synagogue can be understood ity (Lanz 2013). as both an urban place that enables its In recent years, however, it has become attendees to practice their religious identity extremely clear that the potency of this rela- and a means of forging a claim to the city tionship is far from fading and in fact consti- through religious practice. tutes the beating heart of many city spheres This paper explores the dual process of around the globe (Kong 2010; Gokarıksel€ & configuration through which the synagogue Secor 2015). One of the main issues consid- becomes a stronghold. The first sections sit- ered in the discussion of religious presence uate our discussion within the contemporary in the city is reciprocity, as an increasing effort to let religion ‘speak back’ to geogra- number of works have focused on the impact phers (Yorgason & Della Dora 2009) by using of the urban experience on the ways in Lanz’s (2013) notion of urban-religious con- which religion is practiced and experienced figurations, in which the urban and the reli- as an urban phenomenon (Orsi 2002). gious are in constant dialogue, and discuss Yorgason and della Dora (2009, p. 631) how the concept of the synagogue as an point out the growing need to let religion urban stronghold can be understood as a ‘speak back’ to geographers and urban schol- particular form of urban-religious configura- ars in order to problematise the disciplinary tion that enables religion to ‘speak back’ to narrative of the human geographer. Implicit the city. We then place this discussion within in this call is the fact that religion speaks the empirical context of the Israeli- back not just to geographers but to the city Palestinian conflict, in which national aspira- itself. That is to say, when religion is reorgan- tions for spatial domination are laced with ised to accommodate or challenge urban religious practices, and demonstrate how the dynamics, regulations, and norms, it is in urban-religious configuration of stronghold- response to changes and conflicts taking ing the synagogue to stronghold the city is place in the city. Religion’s powerful capacity VC 2017 Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG STRONGHOLDING THE SYNAGOGUE TO STRONGHOLD THE CITY 3 to carve up communal space in the city and of two frameworks that have yet to receive to reorganise its built environment is attested sufficient academic attention. to, for example, in Vincent and Warf’s The first is religious discourse’s overall piv- (2002) analysis of the practice of Eruv as well otal influence over the geopolitics of the as Valins’s (2003) work on ultra-orthodox contemporary city (Dumper 2014), which is Jewish communities in Manchester; Chiodel- particularly pertinent to the empirical con- li’s (2015) review of Muslim spatiality in text of the urban geopolitical conflict Milan; and Finlayson’s (2012) work on the between Israelis and Palestinians and its sacred spatialities created by the church in impact on Israel’s mixed cities (Yacobi 2009; Tallahassee. Monterescu 2011; Piroyanski 2014), where However, as Lanz (2013) argues, when ethno-national strife is entwined with reli- talking about religion in the city, one must gious identity (Yiftachel & Roded 2010). In not forget the city itself, meaning, the ways this asymmetrical confrontation, Israel’s Jew- in which the urban impacts and shapes new ish majority enjoys the support of the state, forms of religion and the ways in which reli- maintains sovereign power, and enforces ter- gious communities and practices affect the ritorial domination through various govern- city (Wilford 2012; Middleton & Yarwood ment techniques to maintain its hold over 2013). Watson’s (2005) discussion of the most resources (Yiftachel & Yacobi 2004). practice of the Eruv in London and New Jer- As the primal rationalisation of the Jewish sey and Kuppinger’s (2014) research on the national project is a specific form of national- measure of flexibility provided by the Muslim ised religious discourse, the ethnonational space in German cities represent a call to conflict in this context has a distinct religious underpinning. Thus far, most of the litera- understand both the manifestation of reli- ture addressing the manifestation of religious gion in the urban sphere and urban gover- discourse has focused on Palestinian society nance’s responsibility for novel forms of and dealt primarily with the national conflict communal experience through religion. Sim- with Israel (Reiter et al. 2012; Dumper 2014). ilarly, Andersson et al. (2011) consider not Jabareen (2006) has shown how the national only how churches affect and give meaning struggle has been manifested in different to urban encounters but also the city’s Israeli planning policies that impinge on Pal- impact on the ways in which churchgoers estinian urban environments within Israel, view difference, namely in relation to creating tension and distrust that can erupt sexuality.
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