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Original caption "Police intercede in Orthodox attempt to break up the Maccabee football game" (1930s) |
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Aerial photo of the sports field, adjacent to the ultra-Orthodox Meah She'arim neighborhood (1931). See a view of the bleachers here, and the field here. |
But access to the stadium would have to be through Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, and Sabbath protests and demonstrations were a certainty.
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"Crowd of mixed Orthodox Jews who arrived on the scene en masse to force the discontinuing of the Maccabee football game" |
Eventually, the stadium was built in southern Jerusalem near Malcha, and the Shuafat ridge became part of a contiguous stretch of ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods.
The Sabbath tensions over public sports games on Saturdays were documented by the American Colony photographers some 80 years ago.
Some of the photographs identify the field as "near Bokharbia," meaning near the Bukhari Jewish neighborhood adjacent to Meah She'arim.
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"Close-up of an Orthodox Jew in the crowd." View another close-up with the police - here (1930s) |
The decades-old issue of Sabbath observance in Jerusalem suggests that this dispute may indeed not be resolvable; rather, like other conflicts in the Middle East, the best one could hope for is that it would be manageable.
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