'I Don't Need to Be King"

How could you do this to us?" the unshaven porter shouts angrily at Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek. The porter used to have a regular parking place for his motorized tricycle, but now he has been displaced by a new taxi stand. "We're a whole family, and we need this place to make a living!" he cries.

Kollek stops to listen for a while, impatiently, then loses his temper. "We're trying to make improvements in this city!" he shouts back. He is a rumpled and impetuous man, and his red face is getting redder. "We're doing it for everybody. It's for you too."

"But what's going to become of us?" the porter demands.

"Well, we'll look into it," says Kollek, moving on.

Looking into things in Jerusalem is a way of life for Kollek, who is at work in his city ha11 office (one of his three working places) by 6:30 every morning. "See those neon signs," he says to an aide as he bustles along on his frequent midtown tours. "They're ugly. We have to do something about them." And to another aide: "Those mailboxes with the peeling paint. Do something about that." The two aides exchange looks of despair. "You don't have to do it today," Kollek reassures them. "Tomorrow is soon enough."

Kollek's friends have ranged from Anwar Sadat, who called him "the most famous mayor in the world," to Frank Sinatra and Marlene Dietrich. Another friend is Saul Bellow, who has provided a vivid portrait: "Kollek is ponderous but moves quickly--a furiously active man. His is a hurtling, not a philosophical soul. His face does not rest passively on its jowls ... His reddish hair falls forward when he goes into action... Everyone serves his ends, and no one seems harmed by such serving."

"Destiny" is Kollek's description of how he came to be mayor: "My whole life led up to it." Born in Vienna 70 years ago, he became an ardent Zionist and arrived in Israel in 1935 to work on a kibbutz. During and after World War II, he undertook a number of foreign intelligence missions and helped smuggle refugees and arms into Palestine. After independence, he served for more than a decade as director general of the Prime Minister's office. Elected mayor of Jerusalem on a Labor ticket in 1965, he has been re-elected three times, and in 1978 swept 276 of the city's 322 districts. At the parade that climaxed last month's merrymaking festival of Purim, Kollek was crowned king of Jerusalem. "I don't need to be king," said he. "I'm Teddy Kollek the mayor." The crowd roared its approval.

Though the Arabs of Jerusalem generally do not vote, a solid 95% of those who do cast their ballots for Kollek. They know they can bring him their complaints and get a fair hearing. Kollek can deal with his constituents in five languages, all of which he speaks with a Viennese accent. He is one of the world's few big-city mayors whose name is in the telephone book (his number: 63 3147). And his constituents are perfectly likely to call him at 3 a.m. His wife Tamar is used to such disturbances. She has been married to Kollek for nearly 45 years (they have a son, Amos, 34, a novelist, and a daughter, Osnat, 21, a student at Hebrew University).

Kollek prefers to concentrate on solving specific problems, on making the city work. "If we look to everybody's distant expectations," he says, "then we keep getting a little farther away from each other, but if we look at everyday activities, we are getting closer. There is no ultimate solution here. Is there a solution for the problems of Chicago? Or New York? In not solving the problems of your cities, don't you try to grapple with questions as they come up, to answer them piecemeal?"

As he looks ahead to the end of the century, Kollek predicts that many of the problems of Jerusalem's everyday life will largely be solved. "We will have better housing," he says. "We will have more schools and community services. Whether people will have better relations with each other, I don't know. It is very difficult to say. But we will have great celebrations in the year 2000, because it will be 2,000 years of Christianity and 3,000 years since King David made this his capital. We are already preparing. So if you want to write a great oratorio or great works of art, you should start soon."

About that unhappy porter: Kollek found him a new parking place.

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