What's so special about the Israel Festival?

Ruth Abraham
Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies    www.jiis.org

The program of the fifty-fifth Israel Festival was unveiled on April 11, and tickets have started to be sold. The festival originally began in 1961 as a festival of classical music, and over the years it grew into a multidisciplinary event. Today, it hosts dance, theater, music and art performances. The festival takes place during an eventful month, beginning in the end of May. The goal of the festival is described on the official website as "enriching the cultural landscape of Jerusalem and Israel, encouraging international cultural relationships, and promoting discourse on art".

Up until the 1980s, the festival, financed mainly by institutional funds, stood out in Israel as one of the main importers of international culture. In July 1983, however, Davar described a situation in which other private and institutional bodies were also bringing shows to Israel throughout the year: "The main difficulty [of the Israel Festival] and benefit for the consumers of culture is that a yearlong festival is taking place, unofficial, and unsponsored by national agencies."(Mai Paz). Unlike the Israel Festival, these shows were based mainly on self-generated income, namely commercial sponsorships and ticket selling.

According to the report Festivals in Israel, 2011 by the culture administration of the Ministry of Culture and Sport, the Israel Festival was the longest in Israel: it lasted 27 days, hosted 66 productions, and was the second largest in terms of number of productions and of Israeli shows specially produced for it. The number of paying visitors reached 28,600, which was second only to the dance festival in Karmiel, visited by over 53,000 paying visitors.

A look at the Israel Festival programs since 2007 reveals that visiting (international) productions form approximately 55% of the hosted acts, and 35%-70% of the running shows (see graph). At the most recent festival (2015), the international shows formed 59% of the hosted acts, and 69% of the running shows. Budget reports of the last seven years show that the self-generated income covers approximately one-third of the festival's budget, and number of tickets sold is around 40,000. The year 2014 was an exception, with 59,000 tickets sold.

To conclude, in its over thirty years, the Israel Festival is not the single actor in the arena of culture imports to Israel; as such, its task is not only to maintain high standards of both local and international acts, but also to include an exceptionally large volume of work.

Municipal Assets – Public Goods

Ruth Avraham

Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies 

www.jiis.org

Municipal assets are assets which the municipality owns or rents, as well as manages. These are a rare public resource, mostly used by various municipality departments or private voluntary associations that receive the building in a land allocation process.

In 2012, the "Public Knowledge Workshop" together with "Hitorerut" movement compiled a list of municipal assets in Jerusalem. The list contains 2,590 assets, with a total area of 3,400 dunams, or 3% of Jerusalem's municipal area. Sixty-eight percent of the assets serve as educational facilities such as kindergartens, elementary or intermediate schools, yeshivas, ulpena etc.; eleven percent are used by community, sport and welfare facilities; eight percent are bomb shelters; and the other 13% are divided between various cultural venues, libraries, mother and child care, offices, storage and others.

East Jerusalem residents constitute 37% of the city's population, but only 10% of the municipal assets are located in East Jerusalem. In Ultra-orthodox neighborhoods, whose population composes approximately 20% of the population, the "Public Knowledge Workshop" and "Hitorerut" found 25% of the assets. East Jerusalem has less than two assets per thousand residents; the large neighborhoods such as Gilo, Pisgat Ze'ev, and Har Homa have 2-5; and southern neighborhoods, mostly populated by the "General" Jewish population (non-Ultra-orthodox), such as Bak'a, Kiryat Yovel, Ein Karem and Makor Haim have 5-8. The overall average in Jerusalem stands at 3.2 assets per 1,000 residents.

All cultural venues, according to the list, are located in West Jerusalem. Only 5% of community, sport and welfare facilities are in East Jerusalem, along with only 3 branches of mother and child care (5% of the total in Jerusalem). Only 2 of 196 bomb shelters are in East Jerusalem.

The street and facility mapping's accuracy is limited, so there may have been errors in the geo-coding process. A further error may have been caused by the analyses of the number of assets, which greatly differ in size, but the overall trend is quite clear, and in line with other findings. We did not compare these findings to world trends, since definitions are very different in different countries.

Will the Dream Soon Come True?

Ruth Abraham

Recently it seems that the Ethiopian community has raised its head. What began as a video that circulated through the internet, depicting racially motivated police brutality, turned into a protest reminiscent of the violent riots taking place simultaneously in Baltimore, Maryland, in the United States. Data of the Central Bureau of Statistics indicate that the cities in Israel with the highest percentage of Ethiopians relative to the total population of the city are Kiryat Malachi (16.2%), Afula (8%), and Kiryat Gat (7.9%), all of which are characterized by low socioeconomic status. Jerusalem’s Ethiopian community constitutes 0.7% of the total population, and the city takes second place – after Tel Aviv – in a ranking of localities with 2,000 or more residents of Ethiopian heritage. The Ethiopian community’s protest raises questions with respect to all new immigrants in Israel. 

From 2010 to 2013 a total of 67,000 new immigrants moved to Israel from throughout the world: 43% from the former Soviet Union, 14% from the United States, and 12% from Ethiopia and France each. A total of 14% settled in Jerusalem, which ranks third as a destination city for new immigrants, after Tel Aviv and Netanya. Analysis of data from the Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem reveals that the percentage of new immigrants from countries with high socioeconomic status who choose to settle in this city is equal to or greater than their percentage among new immigrants to Israel during these years. This trend is reversed among immigrants from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union.

The immigrants who settled in Jerusalem during these years – 52% of whom were from the United States and France and not one from Ethiopia – chose to take up residence primarily in neighborhoods with high socioeconomic status. In Talbiya the proportion of new immigrants who arrived during these years constitute 9% of the Jewish population of the neighborhood; in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, City Center, and Rehavya they constitute 7% of the population (in each neighborhood); and in the German Colony they account for 6%. In contrast, a broad look at the years 1990-2013 reveals that the neighborhood with the highest percentage of immigrants as a proportion of its Jewish population is Pisgat Ze’ev North, with a total of 4,900 residents, accounting for 30% of the neighborhood’s Jewish population. Most of the immigrants in this neighborhood arrived during the years 1990-1999, primarily from the former Soviet Union, and they number 3,700 residents, constituting 23% of the neighborhood’s Jewish population. There are 980 immigrants who arrived during the years 2000-2009, accounting for 6%, while the immigrants who arrived during 2010-2013 – who, as noted, represent more than 6% of the affluent neighborhoods in the city center – constitute only 1.4% of the Jewish population of Pisgat Ze’ev North. 

Jerusalem does indeed offer a home to new immigrants, but primarily those from wealthy countries. At the same time, immigrants from other countries actually stay away from the city. One might attribute this to Zionist considerations motivating the first, but one cannot ignore the socioeconomic exclusion that results from housing prices and employment opportunities in the city. 

Sources:

1. “The Ethiopian Population in Israel – Selected Data on the Occasion of the Sigd Holiday,” Central Bureau of Statistics, November 2014

2. Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem, Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 2015

How Much Do Jerusalem Residents Pay to Live near the City Center?

Ruth Abraham

In late November the Central Bureau of Statistics published data about the completion and commencement of construction during the first nine months of 2014. The data reveal that the number of housing units completed in Jerusalem is the largest in Israel, constituting 6% of all completed construction in the country. Likewise, Jerusalem is also in first place in terms of housing units begun, constituting 9% of new construction. It is important to note that the population of Jerusalem comprises about 10% of the overall population of Israel.

The “Madlan” index of housing prices provides an indication of typical prices at which apartments are sold. The index is based on business transactions listed in the real estate database of the Tax Authority after being optimized and sorted. The index reveals that housing prices in Jerusalem (for the months examined – April to September 2014) are among the most expensive in Israel. The price per square meter in Jerusalem is 40% higher than in Haifa, 57% higher than in Be’er Sheva, and about 20% higher than in Rishon LeZion. However, it is lower by 45% than the price in Tel Aviv.

The selection of a place of residence and the purchase of an apartment often depend very much on the distance from the city’s main business center. Some prefer a place far from the center in order to benefit from the option of a larger home with a garden or a view, whereas others insist on an urban lifestyle and prefer to be near the center. These decisions have a bearing on key aspects of our lives, such as transportation, service consumption, trade, and the like.

Evidently, in Jerusalem there is a positive correlation between proximity to the city center and housing prices. The closer one is to the center, the higher the housing prices per the index. This trend indicates that the average home buyer in Jerusalem is prepared to part with 35,331 shekels in order to be one kilometer closer to the city center. Accordingly, we see that in neighborhoods associated with a high socio-economic status – such as Mishkenot HaLeum, Rehavia, Talbieh, Nayot, Beit HaKerem, and Old Katamon – the prices are higher than in neighborhoods of a comparable socio-economic status that are located farther away from the city center – such as Ramat Sharet, Talpiot, Arnona, and Holyland.

Jerusalem neighborhoods may be divided into ultra-orthodox and secular neighborhoods. The price trend which characterizes ultra-orthodox neighborhoods is the opposite of the one described above. As the distance from the center increases, the housing prices in these neighborhoods rise. This trend is in part due to the larger apartments in the outer neighborhoods.

Sources of data:

Madlan website: www.madlan.co.il

Construction in Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics

Between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem – Galleries for Contemporary Art

Ruth Abraham

Every two years the Pilat Center for Culture Research and Information publishes data about activities, funding, and numbers of visits to the museums and galleries supported by the Ministry of Culture. In 2010 the Ministry supported 41 art galleries throughout the country. About one-third of these are located in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In Tel Aviv 8 galleries receive support (20%), compared to 6 (15%) galleries in Jerusalem. 

The Pilat data reveal that as of 2010 Tel Aviv had the larger number of galleries receiving support (8 as compared to 6) and more visitors (about 115,000 as compared to 100,000). Yet Jerusalem had more space devoted to exhibits (960 square meters as compared to 866 square meters) and a larger number of exhibitions (69 as compared to 65), as well as higher quality exhibitions and a more developed perspective on art (rating 3.6 as compared to 3.1 out of 4) – based on the innovation of the exhibit and the curatorial perceptions as determined by the Committee on Quality within the Department of Plastic Arts in the Ministry of Culture. The most significant difference is in the number of events that took place in the various galleries, which stems from increased activity in the printmaking sector in the context of the Jerusalem Print Workshop (187 events).

While a large number of museums receive support from the Ministry of Culture, there are also many private galleries that constitute an inseparable part of the world of contemporary art in Israel. These galleries form a variegated infrastructure for cultural activity in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Most of these galleries are situated in Tel Aviv.

On the occasion of Tel Aviv’s Year of Art (2012) the “Global City” initiative of the Tel Aviv Municipality compiled a list of 110 exhibition spaces in the city. To date, no such list has been produced in Jerusalem. In order to form a clear picture of the number of galleries engaged in contemporary art in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, one may examine exhibition season openings during 2013 in both cities. The Jerusalem event “Manofim” (“Cranes” – in the sense of construction) was spread out over 22 contemporary art galleries, a majority of the city’s galleries that focus on this type of art. The event “Ohavim Omanut” (“Love Art”), which took place simultaneously in Tel Aviv, had 38 participating galleries. Thirty other galleries, including some of the city’s main galleries, opted to boycott the event in the context of their struggle for the reduction of municipal taxes on galleries.

Although government investments in galleries in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem appear to be comparable, Tel Aviv actually has a broader and more varied infrastructure for exhibitions and discourse in the area of contemporary art. This infrastructure is distributed across a space created by independent galleries, most of which are supported by external investors, art collectors, and creative art groups. The number of galleries and exhibition spaces in Jerusalem – where nine art schools of various types exist, more than in any other Israeli city – constitute about only one-fifth of the number of galleries in Tel Aviv.

Source: 2010 Annual Report on Museum Activities, Pilat Center for Culture Research and Information