The café
Cafe Basimta opened at the end of May off Agrippas Street, near Mahane Yehuda, and stays open on Shabbat. Roughly 100 restaurants, bars, and cafés in Jerusalem do the same. Only Basimta has drawn six straight Saturdays of Haredi protest. 5
The protests started July 4 with banging on windows and overturned tables. By early August, protesters had broken through police barricades trying to get inside. On July 25 someone threw a bag of feces at the entrance; on Aug. 7 police arrested a 15-year-old for it. Last Saturday, dozens of Haredi men shouted "Shabbos" and threw eggs while hundreds of secular counter-protesters, including Democrats party leader Yair Golan, formed human chains and chanted "Shabbat belongs to all of us." Residents upstairs threw bags of water at them. No injuries, no arrests. 56
The part most of the crowd didn't know: Basimta is an official project of Jews for Jesus, and its operator, Yoel Ben David, is a member of that community. When that came out, some secular supporters got uneasy, and Hapoel Jerusalem pulled an advertising offer. 56
The Haredi side says the fight is about Shabbat and about secularizing Jerusalem, a city that is 46% Haredi and 13% secular by JTA's numbers. The secular side says it's about who owns a public day of rest. Both are defending a storefront neither of them looked into. 5