JERUSALEM — After years of brewing discontent between religious and secular Jews in Israel's ancient capital, residents have drawn battle lines over the construction of an ultra-Orthodox kindergarten in a mostly secular Jewish neighborhood.

The proposed kindergarten has become emblematic of a greater struggle over the future of Jerusalem's Jewish identity. It pits proud secularists, whose parents and grandparents built the modern city, against the fast-growing religious community who consider Jerusalem to be a sanctuary for prayer and study.

Despite their common language, religion and nationality, the sides coexist uneasily.

The supporters of the kindergarten say it would serve the needs of ultra-Orthodox families newly arrived to the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood whose children attend separate state religious schools. Secular residents oppose the kindergarten because they say it will only attract more ultra-Orthodox families to the neighborhood.

Several secular Jewish neighborhoods have turned religious in the past decade because of high birthrates among ultra-Orthodox residents as well as a migration of secular Jews out of Jerusalem.

In ultra-Orthodox communities, driving is banned on the Jewish Sabbath, and women are generally forbidden from showing their bare arms or legs in public. Ultra-Orthodox men sometimes throw stones at passing cars on Saturdays or spit on women in tank tops or shorts bicycling through neighborhoods.

Tensions bubbled over at the last City Council meeting when ultra-Orthodox council member Rabbi Avraham Feiner labeled those who are seeking to block the kindergarten "Nazis," perhaps the worst insult in a country founded in the wake of the Holocaust.

"You're not letting us live where we want to live," Feiner told the opponents.

Secular residents shouted him down. Security guards physically removed more than a dozen who wouldn't keep quiet.

"You're selling out our neighborhood!" one woman shouted.

Outside observers have long said that the conflict with the Palestinians binds together Israel's Jewish communities and has kept the country from a conflict from within. But as Palestinian violence in Israel has waned and the ultra-Orthodox community has gained in numbers and political clout, Jewish residents in Israel's largest city are targeting each other.

"Mr. Mayor, your kindergarten is a provocation," secular council member Joseph "Pepe" Alalu told the ultra-Orthodox mayor, Uri Lupolianski. "What you are doing is causing a war."

Once a minority in Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox Jews, who follow a strict interpretation of the Torah and prefer to live in enclaves to shield youth from the outside world, now constitute an estimated 38 percent of Jerusalem's Jewish population of 481,000. In 2003, ultra-Orthodox candidates won the mayoral office and a majority on the City Council.

Religious Jews, including modern Orthodox, who also strictly observe Jewish law but take part in secular society, constitute a majority of Jerusalem's Jewish population.

Jerusalem's 252,000 Palestinians aren't represented on the City Council; they don't vote because they don't recognize Israeli control of east Jerusalem, captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.

Israel's media has focused on the so-called culture wars in recent months.

In June, furor erupted after city officials forced a secular girls dance troupe to dress "modestly" for a public performance. They wore black knit caps and smocks over their uniforms. Israeli tabloids called it the "Taliban dance troupe."

Last month, two people accused of being part of a secret modesty patrol were arrested in connection with the severe beating of a woman who left the ultra-Orthodox community and was accused of "improper relations" with married men. Another man was arrested for setting fire to nonkosher shops.

Secular residents have fought back, destroying religious structures.

Residents of Kiryat Yovel hired a lawyer to temporarily block City Hall plans to put two temporary classrooms for an ultra-Orthodox kindergarten on a vacant lot and have parked their cars on both sides of a street to prevent access by construction vehicles. They keep a constant daytime presence at the site under a sign that reads: "The war for our home."

"We came to this neighborhood partly because it's a secular neighborhood where no streets are closed on Shabbat, where we can raise our kids in a secular education system," said Michal Gomel, 27, who lives in an apartment overlooking the contested site and is one of the leaders of the opposition. "We're not against ultra-Orthodox people. We're against not asking the citizens what they want and not having a democratic process."

There are currently 150 ultra-Orthodox children in the neighborhood either attending kindergarten in other neighborhoods or in a makeshift school in a rented apartment, according to the nonprofit organization Etz Hadaat, or Tree of Knowledge, which is sponsoring the proposed kindergarten.

"Nobody really believes this isn't going to happen," said Yeshayahu Wein, director of the organization's 51 kindergartens, "because it's a real need. Nobody wants the children to stay at home."

"It never stops with a kindergarten," said Danny Unger, 44, an art history professor who was born and raised in the neighborhood and moved back with his family about 10 years ago. "They build a synagogue, then they build a school, then they build a yeshiva (religious school). Once there's a yeshiva, we're out of here. We won't be able to live here anymore."

Ultra-Orthodox leaders say their inroads into secular neighborhoods are part of the natural growth of their community. The ultra-Orthodox birthrate of about eight babies per woman is nearly three times the rate of secular Israeli Jews.

"It's better for Jerusalem to have a tendency to be more religious," said Deputy Mayor Yehoshua Pollack, who is ultra-Orthodox. "We try not to bother the secular and their way of life, but for going out and entertainment, they can go to Tel Aviv

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/world/09/22/0922isrelig.html