Open seven days a week, flashy new mall near Tel Aviv rekindles Shabbat battle

A gorgeous new open-air mall in a suburb of Tel Aviv is the country’s newest battleground over public Shabbat observance.

BIG Fashion Glilot opened with a big splash in February, advertising itself as the country’s premier shopping destination seven days a week, including Saturday.

The decision has attracted not only masses of shoppers but also an avalanche of scrutiny, placing the mall at the center of a raging controversy over the contours of how the Jewish day of rest is marked in Israel and pitting its owners and the city’s mayor against the courts, government ministries, and ultra-Orthodox protesters.

Flouting laws forbidding shopping centers in Israel to operate on Shabbat, the mall has reignited long-simmering tensions between religious values and personal freedoms, seemingly shattering a status quo according to which businesses that stayed open on Shabbat in secular areas were illegal but quietly tolerated.

During a recent weekday visit, store managers at BIG Glilot told The Times of Israel that Labor Ministry inspectors stop by every Saturday looking for stores employing Jewish workers in violation of the Hours of Work and Rest Law, as the government looks for ways to force the mall to close on Shabbat.

The 1951 law prohibits most businesses from employing Jewish workers on Shabbat, allowing only non-Jews to staff stores and other nonessential workplaces. Those that do can be fined more than NIS 40,000 ($11,000) per infraction.

“They are clamping down on us because we are large, trying to make an example of us,” said Shaked, a franchisee who owns the mall’s Steve Madden clothing store. “None of the owners knew this was coming when we opened up here, and it is harming our sales. I hope that eventually, everything will be open on Shabbat without these inspections.”

So far, the ministry has yet to announce collaring any violators in BIG Glilot, with stores careful to only employ non-Jewish workers on Shabbat. But it has kept the heat on.

Last month, Labor Minister Yoav Ben-Tzur of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party levied a NIS 280,000 ($73,506) fine on a kitchenware store that was open on Shabbat at the Seven Stars Mall in neighboring Herzliya after it was found in violation of the law for the second time. Ben Tzur made clear that the fine was a warning shot aimed at BIG Glilot, saying that stores in the glitzy new shopping center would face the same fate if they ran afoul of the law.

These fines have become the government’s main tool to put pressure on the mall, due to the city resisting levying its own fines on stores as prescribed in another law, though that may change.

Until recently, cities could choose for themselves whether to allow certain types of businesses to operate on Shabbat, a day on which Jewish law prohibits most commercial activity. In practice, for most of Israel’s history, retailers rarely opened on Shabbat, even if legislation and enforcement remained uneven.

As societal attitudes changed in recent decades, though, those norms began to be chipped away at, prompting the government in 2018 to pass what came to be known as the Supermarkets Law — legislation that gives the interior minister the authority to override local decision-making on the issue.

Proponents said the move would protect a status quo in which supermarkets and retail stores would close for Shabbat, while entertainment venues and businesses deemed essential would stay open.

Opponents portrayed it as another form of coercion by the religious over the secular, and claimed that laws governing public activities on Shabbat are often subject to political whims and do not necessarily reflect Israel’s changing social realities.

Crucially, the 2018 law left enforcement of rules prohibiting retail activity in the hands of local authorities.

Backing BIG Glilot, Ramat Hasharon Mayor Yitzhak Rochberger has refused to send inspectors to the shopping center and fine stores found violating the law. Last week, Rochberger and the city’s legal adviser Micha Blum got into a shouting match over the issue, after Blum issued an opinion stating that the city was obligated to enforce rules prohibiting stores from operating on Shabbat.

“You can’t tell the inspector not to go,” Blum yelled during the meeting, according to Hebrew media reports. “You don’t have the authority for that.”

The issue has been made all the more potent by the fact that the shopping center sits just 450 meters (just over a quarter of a mile) from the border of Tel Aviv, which is exempt from some aspects of the Supermarkets Law thanks to a 2014 court ruling that amended some of the city’s bylaws. That right has not been extended to other cities, though Rochberger is said to be exploring changes to Ramat Hasharon’s bylaws that he hopes could allow the mall to stay open.

For Ramat Hasharon, a well-off bedroom community sandwiched between Tel Aviv and Herzliya with some 50,000 residents but little in the way of a commercial tax base, the mall’s opening this year was a boon worth going to bat for.

Built with an investment of NIS 2.7 billion ($745 million), the 160-store mall boasts some 43,000 square meters (463,000 square feet) of retail space, more than its two nearest competitors combined: Tel Aviv’s Ramat Aviv Mall and Seven Star Mall. Above the mall, workers are putting finishing touches on a 44-story office tower, the first of two that will eventually be built.

Designed in the vein of outdoor shopping and lifestyle centers that have replaced malls across the United States, BIG Glilot could transform the Israeli retail sector and ultimately force less popular malls in the area to close, analysts say.

But so far, the mall’s biggest impact has been as a lightning rod for wider secular-religious tensions.

In Beit Shemesh, a city that has long wrestled with friction between its secular residents and a booming Haredi community, 15 prominent ultra-Orthodox rabbis signed a letter last week forbidding devotees from shopping at the city’s own BIG Fashion mall. That mall is itself closed on Shabbat, but rabbis are hoping the boycott will put pressure on the owners on the BIG Group, which owns shopping centers across Israel and elsewhere, the Ynet news outlet reported (Hebrew).

That decree followed other similar ones issued by other Haredi groups in recent months.

Secular politicians, meanwhile, have jumped in to support the mall.

“There is no need to close BIG in Ramat Hasharon on Shabbat, just like there is no need to open a shopping mall in Bnei Brak on Shabbat,” Opposition Leader Yair Lapid posted on X last month, referring to the nearby ultra-Orthodox city.

Whose Shabbat?

Throughout the country’s history, countless bitter battles have been fought between those who believe that as a Jewish state, Israel should enforce Shabbat as a day of rest in the public sphere, and those who believe non-Shabbat observers should not be prohibited from riding buses, shopping or other activities on Saturday due to others’ religious traditions.

“I understand that this is an area that is very secular, and people feel like their freedoms are being violated,” the manager of a BIG Glilot store that closes on Shabbat told The Times of Israel. “But I’m a traditional Jew, and I remember when everything was closed on Shabbat and no one fought about it. When I travel in Europe, I see that stores are closed on Sunday in many places. Why can’t we do the same thing? This is a battle over the character of our country.”

Most Israelis agree that Shabbat should be treated differently by the law than other days of the week, said Hebrew University’s Itschak Trachtengot, who specializes in economic policies for Haredi communities.

“There is a general agreement throughout most of Israeli society that Shabbat should be treated as special, but there are different viewpoints as to what that should mean,” Trachtengot said. “The religious see Shabbat as a religious obligation that requires, among other things, all commerce to cease. Meanwhile, many secular people appreciate that commercial activity is kept to a minimum on Shabbat, but they want a day of freedom to go out and do what they want, including shopping.”

Both sides have sought to portray the fight over the mall as part of a larger war over Israel’s character as a democratic state, and a Jewish one.

The owners of Big Glilot say they are adamant that the mall remain open on Shabbat because it is “part of our being a democratic and liberal state.”

“We respect all opinions, do not require tenants to open on Shabbat, do not require customers to arrive on Shabbat, and certainly do not require employees to work on Shabbat,” BIG has said in a statement. “In our opinion, in the State of Israel, every resident should have the right to choose what they do and what they do not do, and we will never give in to any threat arising from religious matters for one reason or another.”

On the other side of the debate, ultra-Orthodox communities object to public support for Shabbat desecration as part of a war against Jewish values, Trachtengot noted.

“There is a tendency to see debates like this as part of a larger battle over Shabbat, but its also important to keep things in perspective and not make mountains out of molehills,” he said.

Black Saturday

For many stores, which must pay rent and other overhead costs even for days when they are closed, staying open on Shabbat — the one day a week many Israelis have time to shop — is simply a matter of staying in the black.

But the conflict and ensuing government crackdown could be no less financially ruinous, store managers inside the mall said.

“Stores are hiring non-Jewish workers to come in just one day a week, but it’s hard to find people to do that, and it doesn’t make sense,” said Osher, who manages the Zip clothing store. “Eventually, more stores will start closing on Shabbat, and then no one will come anymore. Right now, the public is already confused, and it is hurting revenues. I think the mall will probably have to give up in the next few months.”

“We just want to live freely in our country,” he added.

Not everyone agreed, though.

“The situation isn’t so bad for us,” said Yisraela, a manager at the clothing store Yasmin. “Jews work during the week, and non-Jews work on Shabbat. It’s good for us and good for them.”

“I don’t think it’s good for the mall to be open on Shabbat,” said the manager of the store that closes on Shabbat. “A person needs to rest once a week. That’s not just a religious law; it’s also about living like a human being.”