Large posters can be seen throughout Jerusalem's Ramot neighborhood with strident calls by maranan verabbonon gedolei Yisroel shlita and local rabbonim urging the public to step up the battle against the dangerous new breach in the form of a "nationalist chareidi" school, Ahavat Yisrael-Rapaport, which the Jerusalem Municipality hopes to transfer from Talpiot, on the southwest end of the city, to Ramot in the north. So-called nationalist chareidi schools have been banned by all gedolei Yisroel, a form of "shatnez" that stands in stark contrast to the age-old Jewish educational legacy.
All of the neighborhood's rabbonim have issued an appeal to uphold "the walls of Jerusalem," calling for a struggle to stave off the effort to import the foreign, unsuccessful form of education into the heart of the neighborhood.
The campaign to buttress the foundations of untainted education got under way in recent weeks when court records from a hearing were discovered, revealing that the explicit aim of moving the school is to introduce new educational models to the chareidi community, inculcate foreign values in the children and channel them to yeshiva high schools and IDF service. Ramot was specifically chosen for its high concentration of children, but maranan verabbonon have declared a holy war under the battle cry, "Al tig'u bemeshichoi."
The campaign to uphold educational values received a strong tailwind in the form of the illogical, rankling attempt to transplant a school into the neighborhood when Ramot's thousands of school children already face an acute overcrowding problem.
Local rabbonim even signed an impassioned plea to the parents of Rapaport students, noting that the Alef National-Religious School building "was promised to over 1,700 neighborhood children suffering from a severe lack of classrooms who have already occupied eight classrooms." The Jerusalem Municipality's efforts to bring the Rapaport School into this building "flies in the face of all logic, is inconceivable and is akin `stealing from the poor,'" they added. "As such, the Rapaport School should relinquish this building and ask the government authorities to provide an alternative solution that is not at the expense of the neighborhood's children."
HaRav Shlomo Neiman, the rov of Ramot, noted in a conversation with Yated Ne'eman that "thousands of our boys and girls have no proper place to study. The chareidi population has grown significantly, bechasdei Hashem, but the judge before whom the neighborhood's petition was brought said explicitly that the state does not have as much of an obligation to Chinuch Atzmai as it does to schools that belong to the official school system, like Rapaport. Where is the logic here?!"
"We have had the merit of building a very special place," said HaRav Yisroel Goelman, the rov of Kehillas Shaarei Tevuna in Ramot Alef. "The neighborhood is home to hundreds of cherished avreichim absorbed in Torah in sanctity and purity. This is a place where the children receive the purest education. A different form of education cannot be brought into such a place."
In their call, the rabbonim wrote that they attest that the neighborhood of Ramot, which [has the status of] a major Jewish city, is run in holy purity by a group of avreichim who have a fear of Heaven and are of thoroughly upright standing, under the guidance of maranan gedolei Yisroel ztvk"l v'ybdlct"a, as a city filled with scholars imbued with a fear of Heaven and fully engaged in the pursuit of Divine service and acts of kindness.
Now "a spiritual threat hangs over the neighborhood due to the municipality's intentions to house, in one of the neighborhood's buildings, the "chareidi nationalist" institution, Ahavat Yisrael-Rapaport, with its emphasis on [secular] studies, which runs counter to the spirit of the age-old form of education handed down to us through our rabbonim. They also intend to add a chareidi "yeshiva high school," which all gedolei Yisroel have opposed in the past, publishing their view, daas Torah, against these institutions, where foreign winds from within blow into the midst of the camp [of the faithful]. They are [now] scheming to come to the Ramot neighborhood, and to Ramot Alef in particularly, to ensnare the children of Ramot neighborhoods and turn them into victims.
"Now it has come to light that the administration of the institution also plans to prepare young Jewish men for induction into the army.
"And therefore, upon seeing the holiness under the threat of destruction, we hereby issue a holy call not to lend a hand in this matter, chas vesholom, and every individual has an obligation to strongly voice opposition to this before all of the entities involved in the matter.
"Activists and public representatives must stand up to this breach, waging a holy war for pure education, and parents are warned in accordance with the Torah not to enroll their children at these institutions.
"We pray that Hashem bring a spirit of purity from the Upper Realms to educate the offspring of the holy nation, in the way of the Torah and in the spirit of the age-old Jewish tradition, and in this merit may we soon merit the redemption and salvation of the Jewish people."
(signed)
Yosef Sholom Eliashiv
A.L. Shteinman
Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz
Chaim Pinchos Scheinberg
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Nissim Karelitz
Chaim Kanievsky
Shmuel Auerbach
Gershon Edelstein
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Boruch Shmuel Hakohen Deutsch
Tzvi Friedman
Nosson Zochovsky
Yosef Chaim Kopshitz
