(PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE)
In 2017, YWN-ISRAEL reported the planning board gave its approval for Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s plan for new dati leumi schools in Kiryat Yovel and Ramat Eshkol as part of a new larger complex in Ramat Eshkol that would also include cultural activities.
The community rabbonim are opposed to the plan and residents of Ramat Eshkol, Fiat HaMivtar and surrounding areas are urged to come on Wednesday evening 16 Sian between 19:00-21:00 to sig a petition against the plan. An attorney will be present as well. Persons are asked to come to the Givat HaMivtar Shul at 8 Paran Street with one’s passport or identity card.
There will be a second opportunity on Thursday evening, 17 Sivan between 21:00-22:30 at the Bnei Yeshivas Shul. Signing for both men and women.
The revised plan is to construct a massive (4000 students are the latest estimate) chareidi educational institution in Ramat Eshkol, known as Plan #101-0443762. The plan calls for cutting down trees and even groves in the Nachal Tzofim Municipal Park (which the City ironically had a major role in creating) will be destroyed. The planned entrances and exits to this facility are totally inadequate, if not downright dangerous. Traffic on Paran Street will be totally impassable.
The program as outlined will greatly inconvenience, if not downright threaten the safety, welfare and future of the Board of Education’s flagship school, Yad Ha-Moreh.
This major project according to city planners, will sit on 52 dunams (13 acres) of green areas between the Ramat HaGolan Street / Paran and Sheshet HaYamim Streets. Rabbonim and community leaders feel the plan will severely damage exiting quality of life in the neighborhood, due to endless traffic jams, and even the destruction of the green strip of the area.
As reported, in addition, the District Committee approved the plan for the Education Campus in Ramat Eshkol. As part of the plan, an educational complex will be established that will provide a solution for the chareidi and dati leumi sectors. The compound will include an educational complex for the chareidi, an educational site for the dati leumi sector that will include an educational institution and an academic college. In addition, the nearby soccer field will be renovated for the benefit of the neighborhood residents.
The city feel this plan can be implemented now, due to the Municipality’s actions to reduce thousands of classrooms and reduce physical gaps that increase the budgetary pie and reduce friction. In the merit of the existence of public leadership in the two sectors under the leadership of the mayor and in cooperation with him, they feel the two sectors can operate under one leadership and successfully manage life in Jerusalem.
However, it also means in a neighborhood like Kiryat Yovel, authorities will not build an exclusively chareidi school with the exception of kindergarten, to “safeguard the delicate fibers of the character of the community”, and therefore, students will have to travel to an adjacent neighborhood. Is short, the city wishes to prevent additional neighborhoods from turning chareidi and is fighting to maintain the dati leumi presence when possible.
In addition, in Ramat Eshkol, they are building and building but for the wrong demographic group since the neighborhood has for some time been 95% chareidi. While it was once a bastion of upper middle-class secular and dati leumi residents, the character has long changed to chareidi.
The reality today is, Paran Street becomes a parking lot in the morning when parents drop off children for school while the local chareidi children walk to Sanhedria Murchevet and have no local school, and this plan will not resolve the issue but lead to even more traffic congestion.
Rabbonim who are included in the call for action include Rabbi David Putash (Rav of Shaare Orah in Ramat Eshkol), Rabbo Nissan Kaplan (formally maggid shiur in the Mirrer for many years and now Rav of Kehillat Givat HaMivtar), and Rabbi Tzvi Sharlin (Rav of Ramat Eshkol’s Bnei Yeshivos).
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
What a muddle. I have been in Ramat Eshkol quite a few times in the past year or two and I didn’t see it being 95% haredi. Why can’t we acknowledge that the Mizrahi sector also has a right to give its children a Torah education? Instead we hear talk about quality of life etc. as though the haredi community is suddenly concerned about trees!
Hard to find much sympathy for this in the US, where we actually have to pay for school. You’re complaining that the schools built for you at taxpayer expense are in the wrong place?
In the United States public schools are built by the city!!!!
In this country – many Charedi schools are at least partially funded by the taxpayers money – in Yerushalaim alot of the money from the city was funded by Chardim paying Arnona!
@avreimi – there is absolutely no argument that if not 95% it is very close. Chareidim are moving in and the Dati Leumi are moving out – and while we are at it, maybe the iriya should also build something for my pork eating yom kipper desecrating neighbor who has been living there before any chareidim at all… Chareidim are the future of the neighborhood and the city should recognize this instead of Barkat making moves to help his knesset run on the Likud List (he won’t be seeking reelection as mayor…)