Jerusalem-based real estate agency Uricka Homes is renting out apartments in the neighborhood of Nachlaot exclusively to observant Jews.
An ad posted by the company offers a three-room apartment for rent on Shilo Street in central Jerusalem, stating that the potential lodgers must be "a religious couple or family."
Yitzchak Van Leeuwen, a company agent, explains that the property owners, who hold several apartments in the Nachlaot neighborhood, insisted on the tenants' religious affiliation.
Wanted neighborhood (Photo: Gil Yohanan)
"The owners' vision is to populate Nahlaot with religious families," he says.
Van Leeuwen adds that he too, as a religious person, is frustrated by the demand and has tried in the past to change the owners' mind.
He says that the same demand stands for the rest of the owners' properties offered for rent, but that the company markets other apartments without religious demands.
Contrary to the landlords' interesting vision, Nachlaot is home to many non-religious students and families. Ultra-Orthodox newspaper Yom Leyom even featured a series of stories recently on the failure to fill up the neighborhood's synagogues in recent years.