Bus traffic through a section of Jerusalem inhabited largely by ultra-Orthodox Jews was suspended until noon today, when the Hamekasher Bus Company retaliated against residents of the area who had mobbed and stoned buses, Saturday, The Sabbath buses were carrying medical personnel to the Hadassah-Hebrew University hospital on the outskirts of the city.
Mayor Mordechai Ish-Shalom, who warned at a meeting of the Municipal Council last night that the municipality and people of Jerusalem will not permit individuals to take the law into their own hands, promptly condemned the bus company this morning when transport was halted on company orders.
The Mayor insisted that the bus company cannot take the law into its own hands, any more than individuals can. He called upon the Ministry of Transport to order the firm to resume bus service, and the Ministry issued such an order. Bus service was put back on schedule by noon.
Mr, Ish-Shalom’s warning to the population, to desist from harassing the buses, was issued at the Municipal Council meeting which debated Saturday’s occurrences. During the disturbances, Saturday, two persons were injured, and 10 were arrested.
Orthodox members of the Council insisted that the bus company had promised to run no more buses to the hospital on Saturdays. The city Rabbinical Council had decreed a dispensation for special transport carrying medical personnel needed by the hospital on Saturdays. Now, however, the rabbinate holds that such transport should be only by ambulances, since the running of buses on Jerusalem’s streets on a Sabbath establishes irreligious precedents.
Rabbi Jacob Katzenellenbogen, deputy chairman of the Jerusalem Religious Council, declared that, while regular bus transport for the hospital’s staff should not be permitted on the Sabbath, “there is no question but that transport should be allowed in cases where lives are endangered. ” “I myself, ” he said, “am ready to drive a doctor to the medical center on a Sabbath in such cases.”
Rabbi Katzenellenbogen, however, raised a question as to the number of medical personnel needed by the hospital, aside from Sabbath travel. Stating the hospital has “an enormous staff, ” he said there were 400 medical personnel marked for relief duty at the hospital Saturdays to take care of 300 patients, while the total medical staff numbers 1, 200.
Members of the Council representing Mapai told the municipal body that Jerusalem citizens should be permitted to travel to the hospital on Saturdays “to visit their relatives on their only day free of work. “
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
