The vote was 8 to 6 in favor of handing over two dati leumi schools in Jerusalem to the chareidim as the former no longer has enough students and the latter is short on classroom space. The vote pertains to the Brandt and N’vei Etzion Schools. Members of the dati leumi community were instrumental in assisting by permitting the vote to pass. Yael Entebbe voted in favor while Moshe Leon and Meir Turgeman absented themselves from the vote. This permitted the chareidi majority to emerge successful.
Leading the battle to prevent handing over two more schools to the chareidi tzibur was Chairman of the Hisorarus party and deputy mayor, Ofir Berkowitz. He and his party opposed the move and Mayor Barkat’s program of portioning. Berkowitz and his party, along with Dov Kalmonovitz and Aryeh King voted against the move in the Allocations Committee.
On the eve of the vote, Berkowitz tried to remove the schools from the agenda when he sent a harsh letter to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat: “Within the framework of the agreement, you chose to favor one child over another, to seriously harm religious Zionism in Jerusalem. All the children of the city are our children, and we are committed to caring for them, but not one at the expense of the other, but one next to the other. We supported taking a loan of NIS 1 billion to build classrooms and narrow gaps, and this is the right solution for managing the city.”
After the vote, deputy mayor Ofer Berkowitz said: It is regrettable that anyone who pretends to represent religious Zionism in the city has now given a hand to abandon them. Today, we could move one vote to bring down this despicable decision, but out of personal political considerations, some of the representatives of religious Zionism in the city chose to cooperate with the mayor and turn their voters into being second class.”
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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5 Responses
Mashiach must be coming
Unbelievalbe
jerusalem is becoming a city of older foreigners and chareidim; neither need the great dati leumi schools for which the city is famous. hardly a reason to celebrate. my suspicion is that the blight of some old neighborhood will be encroached on by those seeking to build new apartments.
if you daven at the great dati leumi synagogues outsides a few wealthy yuppie enclaves, the population is growing old. during kol haneorim, they announced – anyone under seventy. funny, but true.
The buildings belong to the Jerusalem municipality, not to whatever school occupies it. If there’s not enough students for the previous configuration (Dati Leumi) so it is better to leave the buildings empty?!? So, the city council votes to let the buildings be used for Chareidi schools. Just like many other school buidings in Jerusalem, This is not something new. It’s been going on for decades. Many Dati Leumi families move to Judea/Samaria, while the Chareidim want to stay in the city. Boo hoo, so the secular pork-eaters are wringing their hands in despair. The city is becoming ever more Orthodox!! While at the same time, many secular families are decamping and moving to the Tel Aviv area where there is more “night life,” and more fun on the weekend (Shabbos), etc. It’s an old story. The secular believe in “democracy” and “majority rule” only when it suits their agenda.
american yerushalmi, i think everyone agrees to democracy but what group should be counted in determining a majority matters – the state, municipality, neighborhood, housing development, individual. this requires some thought and consistency.
DrYidd: The lead sentence in the article about “handing over two dati leumi schools to the chareidim” is not quite accurate. The buildings belong to the Jerusalem municipality and leases them (I’m not sure about the precise legal arrangement) to different schools. This is a municipal matter that was decided by a vote in the city council.
In case there is any ambiguity here, the “Hisorarus Party” (they call themselves the Hitorerut Party) is an offspring of Meretz, one of the opposition parties in the knesset. One of their primary politcal goals is to hinder “religious expansion” in Jerusalem.
Let’s be thankful that this matter turned out for the good.