Weekly International News
In Jerusalem’s Culture War, Secular Residents Make Gains
Crowds of angry ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, wearing long beards, black and white garb and large black hats, protested in the streets of Jerusalem earlier this month against a new cinema opening its doors on the Sabbath.
The demonstration was meant to be a show of strength in a long-running dispute over the role of strict Jewish law in the cultural life of Jerusalem. But in many ways, it was also a sign of desperation after a series of gains by the city’s secular community in recent years.
“No one’s saying we’re giving up,” said Shmuel Poppenheim, an unofficial spokesman for the ultra-Orthodox community. But, he conceded, “We know it’s a lost cause… We know that we can’t stage a war” over every new establishment open on the 
Sabbath.
Despite Jerusalem’s image as a city that grinds to a halt on the Sabbath, which runs from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, more than 200 cafes, restaurants, bars, cinemas, museums, cultural institutions and other entertainment centers now stay open in non-religious Jewish areas of the city.
That is a major shift over the last 30 years from a time when only a handful of establishments stayed open and a law forbade cinemas from operating on the Sabbath. The “Yes Planet” cinema that drew the recent protests was the second major destination to open with Sabbath hours in the past two years, after a former train station reopened as a commercial center in 2013.