Beit Shemesh – The Education Ministry followed through with its threats to seek the closure of part of a haredi girls school that was opened on the premises of another school in Beit Shemesh, and filed a request to the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court to close it down.
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Earlier this week, the Beit Shemesh municipal administration ordered construction workers to separate the two floors of the Safot Ve’Tarbuyot (“Languages and Culture”) school in Beit Shemesh and give the ground floor to the Mishkenot Daat (“Habitation of Knowledge”) haredi girls school due to lack of classroom space in the city.
The construction work, which includes a 2.5-meterhigh wall in the school yard, caused uproar in the volatile city and led the ministry to declare the separation of the school premises illegal and threaten to cut off funding to Beit Shemesh’s education department.
On Tuesday, the Education Ministry confirmed that the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court had approved its request to issue an injunction against the division of the school pending a final hearing.
“Until a decision to be made after a hearing, I forbid the defendant to make use of any part of the Safot Ve’Tarbuyot school without receiving written permission from the Education Ministry,” the judge wrote.
In addition, the ministry issued a closure order against the branch of the school opened in Safot Ve’Tarbuyot.
In response, a spokesman for Beit Shemesh’s municipal administration, led by Mayor Moshe Abutbul of Shas, invited Education Minister Shai Piron to visit the city in order to witness the crisis in lack of classroom space.
The spokesman added that the Safot Ve’Tarbuyot school had a far larger capacity for students than its current enrollment of 144 pupils and said that the haredi girls school lacked even mobile classroom structures for some pupils for the beginning of this academic year.
Yesh Atid MK and Beit Shemesh resident Rabbi Dov Lipman welcomed Piron’s intervention.
“We are happy with the decision of Minister for Education Shai Piron to fight against the actions of Mayor Moshe Abutbul who built a wall in the middle of the night to divide the Safot VeTarbuyot school,” Lipman said. “Walls must not be built between Jews… The time has come for the haredi community to break down walls between the different parts of the population, not to build them.”
Content is provided courtesy of the Jerusalem Post
Please do not use the title “rabbi” for this renegate lipman who is a traitor to hateidim shame on him it is the governments duty to see to it that all jewish children have a classroom to sit in.
Its sad that a common sense solution to the space shortage has to fall victim to the usual divisive fights along chareidi/chiloni lines. Rather than promoting a solution that would allow the kids to mingle coming and going to school and at recess where they might learn from one another and gain some insights into the others’ life styles, the mindless mayor of Beit Shemesh and rabbonim of this school insisted that a ghetto-like wall was necessary to isolate their kids from the normal kids. It seems like every opportunity that arises to promote achdus is squashed by the Chareidi leadership.
Piron was always a Jew-hater.
He’d rather have girls without a school on the street.
Poor girls learn nothing in their schools.
Is there anyone in the world who still thinks israel is a jewish state?
Why cant people from there own neighborhood build like they want?
If the non-jews dont like it they can move away.
It is the chilonim who, by separating themselves from our holy Torah, have positioned themselves in a spiritual void that needsto be walled off wherever they may be.
Beit Shemesh = Northern Ireland
The issue is clearly the illegal building of walls indoors and outdoors – the separation of school spaces rather than the sharing of spaces.
If the charedi school needs the public space, then they can share it – but no walls, as if the other children’s presence will contaminate them.
It sounds like a misprint “Minister for Education Shai Piron” The correct words should be ” Minister for no Education Shai Piron”
“And that’s what the regime really wants: to make your holy daughters mingle with jewish-in-name-only boys”
Did you ever meet any of these children? That is how you speak of Jewish children? There is story in the Artscroll “Guardian of Jerusalem” about R. Sonnenfeld and how he reacted to what you call “jewish-in-name-only boys”. You have a lot of serious teshuvah to do. You can start by looking up the story.