Lupolianski, who smiles constantly as if to demonstrate haredi harmlessness, won the municipal election last June by reassuring non-haredim that he would apply just this kind of tolerant approach to the city. Even critics concede that he has, in his private life, demonstrated a commitment to co-existence. He is founder of Yad Sarah, a charity that annually distributes free medical equipment to more than a quarter million Israelis and Palestinians. And, in an increasingly sleazy political system, he conveys integrity. A father of twelve, he lives in a cramped apartment in a modest haredi neighborhood. Recently, when he accompanied New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Hadassah University Hospital to visit children wounded in the bus attack, he stood to the side as photographers recorded Bloomberg's interaction with patients; only when journalists left did Lupolianski approach the children and hand out gifts.

Still, the problem with judging Lupolianski as an individual rather than as a haredi is that, by definition, being haredi means sacrificing individuality for the community. And, even if Lupolianski does represent a new breed of haredi politician, who sees himself as responsible not just for ultra-Orthodox interests, it's doubtful whether the haredi community will allow him to get away with it.

Lupolianski took office at a time of unprecedented crisis for Israel's haredim--and for Jerusalem. Nationally, the rise of the anti-haredi Shinui Party, the exclusion of haredi parties from Ariel Sharon's coalition government, and imminent cutbacks in child allowances for large families threaten haredi males' ability to study Torah full-time rather than work at normal jobs. In fact, the cutbacks could force the community to end its dependence on government handouts. Voluntary poverty may soon be replaced by involuntary destitution.

Many of those poor live in Jerusalem, the heart of Israel's haredi community. One-third of the capital's 700,000 residents are Palestinians, and nearly 40 percent of the Jewish population is haredi. Together, those two sectors make this Israel's second-poorest city, with nearly half the residents living below the poverty line. The city the rabbis said received nine of the world's ten measures of beauty is today filthy. The security situation has forced leading restaurants to relocate to Tel Aviv or close altogether. Secular flight, especially among educated young people, has become routine. Already, a majority of the city's under-18 Jewish population is haredi.

To counter the poverty and reduced government subsidies, some haredim are suggesting that the ultra-Orthodox move slightly closer to the mainstream, including taking regular jobs. "To preserve our traditional culture, we need minimal prosperity," says Dudi Zilbershlag, who publishes a haredi weekly newspaper. "Once haredim enter the workplace, they'll be more connected with other Israelis." A key proponent of such controlled integration is Zaka, the haredi organization that helps evacuate the wounded from terrorist attacks and collects body parts for dignified burials. The 900 Zaka volunteers, who are under the command of the army's home front, could be preparing the way for others to enter some form of military service, a prerequisite for absorption into Israeli society. Zaka head Yehuda MeshiZahav, who once organized anti-Zionist demonstrations for an extreme haredi faction, last year became the first haredi to participate in the Independence Day ceremony on Mount Herzl, lighting a torch and affirming "the honor of the state of Israel."

And some secular Israelis have recently shown a willingness to embrace the ultra-Orthodox. After August's terrorist attack on a bus filled with haredim returning from prayers at the Western Wall, secular Israelis were deeply moved by the haredi response to grief. One haredi woman who'd lost her three-year-old granddaughter on the bus told a reporter that what mattered now was "how do we reach out to people, how do we connect more closely with God?" In response, novelist Yoram Kaniuk wrote in Ha'aretz, "When I saw how they stood and prayed over their own blood, with terrible grief and restrained horror, begging God to forgive them, I could only be envious that my forefathers were like them." It is hard to recall a prominent secular Israeli relating so warmly to haredi piety.

Lupolianski knows that, to bolster Jerusalem's economy and build upon this initial rapprochement between secular Israelis and haredim, he must keep Jerusalem a mixed city. A more heavily haredi capital would dissuade investors and accelerate secular flight, undermining the city's fragile tax base. And it would further distance the country's secularists, whose relationship with Jerusalem is uncertain anyway: Fully half of the army's most recent recruits have never visited the Western Wall. So, since taking office, Lupolianski has been eager to exhibit a live-and-let-live attitude. Resisting haredi pressure, the mayor didn't contest Jerusalem's recent gay pride parade. And he has worked behind the scenes with leading rabbis to stop haredi rioting against Sabbath traffic on Bar-Ilan Street, long Jerusalem's most contentious secular-haredi flash point.

ut, despite these symbolic victories, Lupolianski is too cautious and indebted to challenge his own community on larger political issues. The mayor owes his political career to his elderly mentor, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, who dispatched Lupolianski into politics. Elyashiv, the haredi world's leading expert on Jewish law, is a religious hard-liner whose pressure on city hall last year prevented the Reform movement from establishing a high school in Jerusalem.

Elyashiv and other haredi leaders have exerted significant influence over the mayor. Until Elyashiv's recent illness, Lupolianski consulted with him so often that Jerusalem's local secular press referred to the rabbi as the real mayor. So far, Lupolianski has included only one secularist in his haredi-led city coalition, though the left-wing Meretz Party may soon be joining. In the city council chambers, the large, round table is dominated by a solid phalanx of men in black; the only women are in the opposition. Critics fear that Lupolianski will not be able to resist haredi pressure to divert municipal funds to haredi institutions hit by cutbacks in government subsidies. "You feel like you're paying taxes for the haredim," says Shahar Ilan, author of Haredim Ltd., which examines how the state subsidizes ultra-Orthodox separatism. Adds Amotz Asa-El, executive editor of the Jerusalem Post, "The mayor of Jerusalem needs to be a cultural innovator. Lupolianksi won't create secular cultural institutions. Whatever he will create will cater to the haredi community." Indeed, the mayor has refused to meet with an emergency committee that's trying to save the city's secular cultural institutions, which are facing bankruptcy because of government cutbacks. Committee members recently disrupted a session of the city council, singing and jeering and holding signs that quoted a children's Hanukah song, we've come to banish the darkness. "This is culture?" taunted Lupolianski, banging his gavel. In a rare but revealing display of contempt, he sarcastically referred to the demonstrators as "cultureniks." The haredi council members watched, amused, as ushers expelled the cultureniks from the hall.

Ironically, haredi separatists have actually grown more radical since the bus bombing. In their post-attack soul-searching, many haredim have become convinced that God punished the community for its spiritual flaws and that the answer is to become more divorced from secular society. One poster I saw recently in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood blamed the bus attack on women who wear immodest clothing, such as "colorful bathing suits." Rabbi Elyashiv's newspaper denounced haredi families who sit together in mixed seating in hotel dining rooms; a rabbi from the Sephardic Shas Party warned that women who wear short skirts would be punished with cancer.

Nowhere is the mayor's dilemma more evident than on Bar-Ilan Street. On a recent Saturday afternoon, only a few dozen haredi protesters, many of them children, were gathered behind a row of border police, shouting, "Shabbes!" at cars driving past--a violation of the holy day of rest. No one threw rocks, and most haredi passers-by averted their gazes, unwilling to encourage the troublemakers. Lupolianski's efforts to calm tensions here were clearly working. Yet the mayor's efforts had pleased no one. "I wonder what Lupolianski had to give them to get them to stop rioting," one secular Israeli watching the scene said to me. And some ultra-Orthodox think even the cosmetic changes Lupolianksi has made go too far. On a nearby wall, someone had written, "Lupolianski, Secularist with a Yarmulke."