Mishmeres HaShabbos of Haifa succeeded in stopping a
merchants' meeting which was supposed to take place on
Shabbos. Activists of the Mishmeres threatened to get a court
order against holding the meeting. As a result, the
organizers decided to cancel their original plans and
scheduled the meeting for motzei Shabbos.
As announced on Friday the 8th of Teves, members of the
Merchants' Federation, the Garage Association and the Labor
and Industry Corporation planned to hold an emergency meeting
to decide on protest measures against the Haifa Municipality
due to the high property taxes imposed on business owners.
Mishmeres HaShabbos of Haifa leard about these plans at its
weekly meeting last Wednesday (6 Teves). As a result, the UTJ
representatives in the Haifa Municipality, Rabbi Chaim
Williger and Rabbi Arye Blitental, asked the meeting
organizers to cancel the meeting. The organizers replied that
they couldn't cancel it because they had already announced it
in the papers, but that they would not do it again.
The religious activists didn't give up, and the fray was
joined also by Rabbi Pesach Morgenstern, one of the heads of
the Religious Bloc, and by Rabbi Arye Stern, one of the
deputy chairmen of the Religious Council, who began to search
for legal ways of canceling the meeting. A team of jurists
was quickly convened. Chairman of the Religious Council of
Haifa, Yitzchok Getz, sent the Councils' legal advisor, Mr.
Zeev Rivlin, to help the team.
The jurists found a legal reason for cancelling the meeting,
claiming that since the religious merchants could not
participate in the meeting, it would therefore be impossible
to make any binding decisions. On Friday morning the meeting
organizers received warnings about the illegality of the
meeting and, as a result, they decided to cancel the meeting
and hold it on motzei Shabbos.
Mishmeres HaShabbos helped pay for the announcement of the
postponement of the meeting, which was duly held on motzei
Shabbos.
Moshe Abramowitz, Chairman of the Labor and Industry
Corporation, noted that the organizers decided to comply with
the requests of the mitzvah-observant merchants, and that
from now on, the corporation would make certain to hold such
events only on weekdays.
