FROM OUR ARCHIVES
50 YEARS AGO
October 25, 1967
A population of 850,000 for metropolitan Jerusalem in the year 2010, of whom 450,000 would be Jews, was assumed in the master plan for the capital approved at City Hall by the public council set up to supervise the plan. Urban Jerusalem proper would have 550,000 residents, 85% of them Jews. One of the team’s premises was that by 2010 peace would prevail between Israel and Jordan and that relations between the city’s two sectors would gradually be normalized. In the former Jordanian sector, construction would be frozen in a number of areas, particularly on the periphery of the Old City walls, at least until a detailed outline scheme had been drawn up. City planner Zion Hashimshoni told a gathering at City Hall that the plan did not adhere to the present borders of Jerusalem, and that modifications of the borders were suggested. “Plans determine borders; borders do not determine plans,” he said.
25 YEARS AGO
October 25, 1992
What started out as a game for two Jerusalem teenagers almost landed them in divorce court – without their ever having been under the wedding canopy. The two 12th graders were sitting on the school steps one day when the boy startled his girlfriend by placing a ring on her finger and uttering the traditional Jewish marriage vow. The surprised girl, concerned that the act meant they were married according to Halacha, told the boy she feared she would be unable to marry in the future without first obtaining a divorce, and the two decided to seek advice from a Rabbinical Court judge. They told their story to Jerusalem chief rabbi Yitzhak Kolitz. After first warning them of the seriousness of their act, Kolitz found out that while there had been two witnesses to the act, as required by Halacha, only one witness was male. Women are not permitted to serve as witnesses for the purpose of wedding ceremonies.
15 YEARS AGO
October 25, 2002
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu angrily criticized prime minister Ariel Sharon for political intervention in the Israel Broadcasting Authority. Netanyahu said the airways should be open to the free market to enable unlimited radio stations and television channels. He promised that if elected he would not control the IBA but would allow it to be independent. “I do not believe in trying to impose political controls on the media. I will remove restrictions, and I will not impose government management by dictating broadcast schedules,” he said.
Antisemitism was surging in the Ukrainian city of Uman, site of the tomb of Rabbi Nahman of Breslov, where Breslov hassidim had been increasingly harassed and even beaten, according to Breslov leaders in Israel, who filed complaints with the Israel Police and the Ukrainian Embassy. Breslov leaders explained that their silence up to that point was due to threats by the local mafia boss, Valodia Karpochov, who ran the company of guards serving at the site, among other rackets in the city – controlled the shrine’s charity boxes, which locals claimed netted over a million dollars a year. Karpochov, active as the local KGB agent during the Soviet era, threatened to close the site should the Breslovers complain or try to terminate their contract with his security company.