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Photo Archived pf separated beach in Israel

Jerusalem - Haifa chareidim are incensed with Mayor Yonah Yahav, who decided to temporarily close down Haifa’s separate beach to enable an international sailing competition ° The closest separate beach for religious Haifa residents to use is in far off Kiryat Chaim ° The city says the chareidim are ungrateful bordering on the scandalous

Haifa mayor Yonah Yahav had divided the Pacific Beach along Haifa’s shore into two beaches—one for surfers, and the other for the religious public who wanted a beach that had separate hours for men and women.

This year, the Haifa municipality decided to close the religious beach temporarily in July, to enable an international sailing competition. This means that during the hottest swimming season (both meanings intended), the religious will not have a beach to bathe in.

The municipality claims that it didn’t forget the religious public, and offered them an alternative in the Kiryat Chaim separate beach. However, families with many children will find it difficult if not impossible to afford transportation to the far off beach.

The Pacific Beach has served Haifa’s religious population for years. The beach was bounded off by fences according to the religious residents’ needs, but the city has increasingly reduced the beach area for the benefit of sailing aficionados, whose boats share the same beach strip.

Religious bathers say that July is prime swimming time for them, coming as it does after the Three Weeks when families cannot partake of swimming and other leisure activities.

“This month is the most important for us,” said one perturbed Haifa chareidi. “Bein Hazmanim falls during this month and we can’t bathe in the sea before that because of the Three Weeks. This is the only form of leisure that large families can enjoy and which involves a minimal cost. And they want to take this from us too?”

Moshe, who lives in the Hadar neighborhood and frequently takes his 6 children to the sea, complained, “We’re a large public, most of whom lives in Hadar. It’s too difficulty to go to Kiryat Chaim. Why are we always the ones whose rights are trampled? We pay property taxes like everyone else! Because we didn’t vote for Yahav, he’s getting back at us in various ways.”

The religious residents appealed to city councilman Aryeh Blitenthal for his assistance in preventing the closure of the separate beach. Blitenthal says he’ll try to reach an arrangement with Yahav that will be acceptable to all sides.

The city issued a statement: “As we told the religious public, they can use the separate beach in Kiryat Chaim. We even arranged with the Egged bus cooperative that they’ll run a special line to the beach [i.e. at full cost to the passengers]. The complaints of the religious public are scandalously ungrateful.”

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