A mile apart, a world apart, the massed representatives of two very different Israeli lifestyles gathered to demonstrate yesterday afternoon.
They were battling for the future direction of the Jewish state. Numerically, there was no doubting who was victorious. While perhaps 50,000 mainly young, non-Orthodox Israelis in Sacher Park listened to mainly left-wing politicians praising them for defending democracy, five times that number of overwhelmingly black-coated, ultra-Orthodox Jews rallied just up the road, chanting psalms, swaying as rams' horns blew, proclaiming their fealty only to God's law and the rabbis who interpret it.
Alongside the ultra-Orthodox protesters were some of the leaders and adherents of modern-Orthodox Judaism - more open-minded, worldly Jews.
Yesterday's demonstrations were focused on the Israeli Supreme Court, reviled by ultra-Orthodox Jews for its perceived intervention in issues of religion, relied upon by the rest of Israel as the symbol of justice and equality.
That some modern-Orthodox Jews would join the ultra-Orthodox protest was unprecedented and ominous.
The ultra-Orthodox insist they are merely defending themselves. "We implore you," said Rabbi Menachem Porush in an appeal to the Supreme Court, "don't interfere in matters of religion."
His supporters, meanwhile, distributed leaflets. Thirteen of the 14 Supreme Court judges, one leaflet noted accurately, were secular, non-Orthodox, Jews. Eighteen of 19 recent court decisions, it continued, less convincingly, were "against the Orthodox."
In particular, the ultra-Orthodox Jews of Israel - perhaps 600,000 in a state of six million - are concerned about court rulings that threaten to draft into the army up to 30,000 full-time yeshivah students, about rulings to open shops and cinemas on the Sabbath, and about the gradual undermining of the Orthodox hegemony on all issues of religion.
But the court has been hesitant to rule on some of these issues - inviting the Knesset, for example, to legislate on drafting yeshivah students, and the parameters for rights.
To the self-styled "defenders of democracy" the underlying concern was that the ultra-Orthodox Jews, and those protesting with them, had no desire to live in a democratic, pluralistic state, and sought to coerce the rest of Israel to follow their interpretation of halacha - Jewish spiritual law - as well.
"The ultra-Orthodox ideal is akin to that of the ayatollahs in Iran," one speaker, a student leader, told this rally, echoing an oft-heard theme. "They want a regime that brooks no criticism, that features no equality, that provides no respect for one's fellow man. That's not our ideal."
It was, perhaps, no coincidence that yesterday's rallies took place in the run-up to May's general elections. The ultra-Orthodox, it seems, were demonstrating their political power. In the short term, this may work. But in the long run it may backfire, as mainstream, often indifferent but certainly non-ultra-Orthodox Israel recognises the incompatibility of the two world-views, and is forced to make an electoral choice.