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Instead of draping the city walls with "Welcome" banners and festive tinsel, Jewish authorities are busy installing video cameras in the streets, assigning security agents to Jerusalem's churches and issuing decrees against Christmas trees in Jewish hotel lobbies. Readers of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish weekly have been warned against Christian missionaries posing as friendly pilgrims, and instructed to bar modern-day crusaders from visiting the city's main Jewish landmark, the Western Wall.

Stories about the recent arrests of apocalyptic cult members who allegedly planned to take part in a millennial battle between the forces of good and evil have circulated widely in the international press. But most residents think the threat of doomsday religious violence is overblown. Among some, the fear is that the city of 600,000 people, which Jews consider their eternal, united and indivisible capital, will somehow lose its Jewish character under the onslaught of Christian celebrations and hordes of foreign gentiles. But an overwhelming majority of Israelis consider Jerusalem's wariness parochial, and believe the negative signals emitted by hard-line rabbis will spoil a golden opportunity for business and religious understanding.

In many ways, the lack of enthusiasm has more to do with the recurring conflict between ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews than with xenophobia directed at Christians. "It's not an anti-gentile campaign, by any stretch of the mind," said Yaron Ezrahi, an analyst at the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.

According to local rabbis, some politically influential Orthodox Jewish leaders fear their less observant brethren will be vulnerable to the religious culture of Christian missionaries, who are headed to the holy city in droves.

Christians in Jerusalem are nothing new. Tradition holds that Jesus Christ was buried here almost 2,000 years ago, where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Christianity's holiest site, now stands. Christians have their own quarter in the Old City, alongside those of Muslims and Jews; and the cityscape has been dotted with the steeples of churches since the Byzantine era.

Although Jerusalem, annexed by Israel in 1967, is under single Israeli administration, the city's Jews, Christians and Muslims live in separate worlds. In the Old City's narrow alleyways, a pious Jew wearing a yarmulke may walk past a veiled Muslim woman and brush shoulders with a robed priest, but the three communities manage to largely ignore each other.

The millions of pilgrims expected next year threaten to change this status quo and transform the city into a "vast center for Christianity," warned Yated Neeman, a weekly newspaper written for and by Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority. "They will carry their crosses on their hearts and in their heads and will blatantly do all in their power to publicize and parade their crosses and their sacrilege."

Fearful that Jewish-run hotels will abandon their traditions to accommodate the crush of Christian guests, the Jerusalem rabbinate, the city's Jewish religious authority, has issued guidelines for hotels wishing to retain their kosher certificates (religious seals of approval which, in Israel, are key to commercial success). Israel's Chief Rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, said recently that crosses and Christmas trees were offensive since they are "an integral part of Christian belief -- a way of serving God that is forbidden to Jews." He commended the rabbinate's decision to keep the Christian symbols out of Jerusalem hotel lobbies and exclusively behind closed doors of reception halls reserved for gentiles.

In addition, there will be no festive music in kosher hotels on Christmas and New Year's because both holidays fall on the Jewish Sabbath, when observant Jews avoid using electricity. Some Jerusalem hotel managers -- including Rony Timsitt, manager of the Jerusalem Hyatt -- have complained that the dour atmosphere in Jerusalem hotels will cost them business on New Year's Eve and have asked the rabbinate to make an exception for the occasion. Rabbi Lau dismissed the idea: "Why should we, because of one evening, destroy everything we have built together?"

The absence of Christmas carols and Muzak is a blessing for some. "If there's one city in the world that should be Jewish, it should be Jerusalem," said Jonathan Rosenblum, a columnist for the daily Jerusalem Post. "As someone who grew up in the United States, I appreciate the fact that there is one place where Jews don't feel like they're living in a foreign culture."

Praying at the Western Wall the other day, Odeya Rotem, a 34-year-old religious woman in a long skirt and soft hat, said "The year 2000 has no meaning for me. We have our own calendar." According to the Jewish calendar, the year is 5760.

Next page | "Their celebration could be our demise"