"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot!" went a famous
American song of the 60s.
It was with dismay that early morning mispallelim in
the Old City of Tzfas last week were stunned by the sight of
the famous, spiritual yefeh nof of Nachal Amud
desecrated by a 100 meter tall green, white and orange mast
cell phone antenna that had surreptitiously been erected
overnight, right in front of the entrance to the world famous
Tzfas Beis Olam!
People are perplexed as to how the mayor of Tzfas, who is a
member of the National Religious Party, and the members of
the city council could have allowed such a monstrosity. In
other such cases in Israel it usually turns out that
financial inducements from the cell phone companies have been
the incentive!
Asra Kadisha and the environmental group like Adam Teva veDin
are endeavoring to have the mast reduced in height and moved
to a less prominently-visible location, on the grounds of the
law that a municipality is legally obliged to minimize the
damage to a view, whereas the antenna's current location does
just the opposite and maximizes it in the most blatant manner
possible, as if it was actually intentional.
As one of the four holy cities of Eretz Yisroel, the
antenna's location exhibits a lack of appreciation of
aesthetics and ambience, just to achieve slightly better
audio reception for the few users in the immediate area of
one cell phone company! It is an affront to the honor of
Tzfas, its residents, tourists, and especially the meisim
buried there who include the Ari, R' Yosef Karo, R'
Shlomoh Alkabetz, R' Moshe Cordovero, R' Moshe Alshich and
others. This is the city which will first witness the
appearance of the Moshiach and the techiyas hameism.
Is that how we want to greet them?
