After 20 Years… A New Jewish Neighborhood in Chevron


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The last three articles that I have written have been about Israeli elections, and I have grown weary of that topic. Fortunately, living in Israel, there are always positive things to write about, and I am going to write about one of them now. We just enjoyed a very successful Shabbat Chayei Sara here in Kiryat Arba/Chevron, with almost 30,000 guests celebrating Abraham’s purchase of Me’arat HaMachpela, and there is no better time for this article than now. (Last year, the whole celebration was cancelled due to Covid-19.)

One final comment: The first 1,100 words of this 1,800-word article are really just a preface to the last 700.

As a resident of Kiryat Arba, an eleven-minute walk from the Tomb of the Patriarchs (Me’arat HaMachpela) in Chevron, I know firsthand that the political goal of our local political and rabbinical leadership over the past 53 years has been to bring as many Jews as possible to live in Judea and Samaria, and especially in Chevron. No less important, they also hoped to infuse the Jewish people with the religious faith to advance our goals without fear of what the world would say. Our rabbinical leadership was inspired by their mentor, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook.

When Rabbi Moshe Levinger led 100 Jews into Arab Chevron, in 1968, renting space in the bankrupt Arab Park Hotel and leading the first Pesach Seder there since 1929, no one knew for sure where this would lead. On paper, he was breaking the law. All Jews were supposed to be out of Judea and Samaria each night by 8:00 p.m. Yet he declared, “The Jewish people have returned to Chevron! We shall never leave!” His goal was to settle hundreds of thousands of Jews in Chevron and to restore Chevron to its position as sister-city of Jerusalem. The masses of Israeli Jews admired him as an idealist, even if some considered him eccentric.

Rabbi Levinger called upon the Israeli government to allow Jews to buy Arab property in Chevron, rent Arab property in Chevron, and reclaim ownership of all the Jewish property stolen from the Jews following their evacuation in the wake of the 1929 massacre. The ongoing political struggle that followed has seen many starts and stops, much progress followed by setbacks, but the net result has been overwhelmingly positive. Today we are in a totally different place, both in terms of our political footing vis-à-vis the world, and in terms of the belief level of the Jewish people as a whole.

Today, besides the 10,000 Jews in my town, Kiryat Arba, there are 105 Jewish families living in four Jewish Chevron neighborhoods: Avraham Avinu, (the largest), the Beit Hadassah enclave, Beit Romano and Tel-Rumeida (Biblical Chevron). These large families, together with the several hundred students in the Shavei Chevron Yeshiva, make up a Jewish community of 1,000 Jews. Each neighborhood has large, permanent buildings that were built from scratch. Each constructed building comes with a story of a political struggle, and sometimesas with stage two of Avraham Avinu, Beit Hadassah, Beit HaShisha, and Beit Menachem in the end it was terror attacks that led the government to put aside its opposition and to build, as punishment to the Arabs, recalling the Biblical prophecy, “I say to you, you shall live through your blood!” (Ezekiel 16:6).

The last new construction in Chevron was in Tel-Rumeida, in 2005, when Beit Menachem was built, providing permanent homes for seven families previously living in caravans (The government permitted construction after Rabbi Shlomo Ra’anan was murdered.) We have been waiting 16 years since then for permission to build more.

In the meantime, the Jewish community of Chevron has developed another means of bringing more Jews to live in Chevron: the quiet purchase of Arab homes. This approach was perfected in East Jerusalem. The Elad and Ateret Kohanim organizations have turned these purchases into an art form. Hundreds of Arab homes have been purchased therein Ras Al-Amud, Ma’alei Zeitim, Beit Orot, Shimon HaTzaddik, and Ir David. East Jerusalem now has a sizable Jewish population. The geography of Jerusalem has changed. Every time an Arab home is purchased, the sale takes place through a non-Jewish middle-man. The Arab owner is paid and given a chance to start a new life outside the country, and only then is the sale revealed. Often the purchase is followed by a fight in the Israeli court system as the Arab owners, to save face, deny the sale. But eventually justice prevails.

Because Chevron is less in the consensus, things have moved more slowly, but they are starting to pick up speed. Each purchase creates legal precedents which pave the way for the purchases that follow. Enormous sums are required to cover legal expenses. No one is trying to become rich here!

The first attempted purchase (that I know of) was Beit Shapira, back in 2002. A large building just outside the Avraham Avinu neighborhood was paid for, and 30 Jews moved in. Yet within a month, the Jews were physically removed and a court battle ensued. In that case, the Arabs managed to prove that the wrong Arab had been paid. Interestingly, however, the home was not given back to the Arabs. Rather, Beit Shapira has stood uninhabited for19 years, with enormous steel plates blocking entry by anyone, like the wall that half falls and half stays up in the Talmudic story of the “Oven of Achna’i” (Bava Metzia 59b).

More successful was Beit HaShalom, purchased in 2007. The entire sale was filmed. Every “i” was dotted and every “t” was crossed. Families moved in, but after a year they were physically evacuated. It then took 10 years in the courts for a resolution to be achieved. Today, there are three families living in the building, just to hold on to it. Renovations are going on right now to prepare 20 apartments, many of which have already been purchased.

Next came Beit HaMachpela, purchased in 2012. The sale moved fairly quickly, and six families moved in. But legal problems arose. Those families moved out consensually and were allowed immediately to move into the next project, Beit Rachel and Leah, likewise purchased in 2012.

At present, renovations are going on in Beit Rachel and Beit Leah, and five Jerusalem families have already purchased apartments there and are waiting for the renovations to be completed so they can move it. Hopefully, by the time the renovations are completed, the six families will be able to move back into Beit HaMachpela.

*  *  *

Everything I have described is important, but it is only an introduction to what follows: There were three political decisions by the Israeli government during the past five years which may prove much more important than the ones mentioned so far.

1) In 2017, the Israeli government, with the signature of the defense minister, agreed to build a new neighborhood of 31 homes in the Beit Romano compound, where the Shavei Chevron Yeshiva is located. Half of that compound was the property of Yisrael Romano, a wealthy Turkish Jew who built Beit Romano in the 1870s, and half was owned by the Schneerson family of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

The Israel government also decided to take the army camp that has been functioning there since 1980, and build the army a large two-story permanent building. That neighborhood will be called Beit Chizkiya, named after Rabbi Chizkiya Medini, who sat in Beit Romano during the first decade of the 20th century writing his encyclopedic Sdei Chemed commentary on the Talmud.

After starts and stops, construction was actually ready to begin on that project. My friend Mendi Arieli, from my Chevron Daf Yomi shiur, lived in one of six caravans sitting right where the construction is supposed to take place. Two years ago, he and the other six families were moved elsewhere in Chevron so that the construction could begin. But there were so many unforeseen legal challenges that they ended up moving six other families into the caravans, which were still sitting there.

Then, finally, three months ago, construction actually began on the two-story army building, the first totally new Jewish construction in Chevron since 2005. And three weeks ago, they removed the caravans and began digging down to prepare for construction of Beit Chizkiya!

2) In December of 2019, once again with the signature of the defense minister, there was a decision to construct 70 homes in the Avraham Avinu compound, on lands purchased by the Jews at the beginning of the 19th century. That site is called the “Wholesale Market” site, because after the Jews were forced out in 1929, the Arabs put a produce market there. The local Jews, however, call it Shalhevet, after the 10-month-old girl, Shalhevet Pass, murdered in 2002 by snipers from the hills above.

3) Finally, in October of 2020, the Israeli government approved construction of an elevator to bring handicapped people up to the entrance of Me’arat Hamachpela. This is such an obvious thing to do it shouldn’t even be news. Only the pigheadedness of the Arabs could keep this from happening. The Arabs are still fighting to stop it. (Five years ago I came to the Me’ara with my wheel-chair-bound mother, and watched as four border policemen carried her up the 60 steps.) But at least the government has made the decision to do it.

If all three decisions are implemented, it will change the face of Jewish Chevron. There will not be 105 Jewish families but 205, plus a permanent army building.

I wrote above that when Rav Levinger first appeared, he was admired as an idealist and a hero, but some outsiders said, “You've got to be a bit nutty to do this sort of thing.” The more Jews live in Chevron, the less nutty you have to be, and the more rooted the community will be. Maybe they will even need their own grocery store, which they don’t have so far. The very fact that the army is building a large permanent building makes a statement to the world that Jewish Chevron is here to stay. And the fact that all this is happening when the Arab Islamic movement’s Ra’am party and, lehavdil, Meretz, are in the coalition, is good news indeed. We have come a long way since 1992, when Rabin won the election and construction on a Jewish neighborhood in the middle of Kiryat Arba stopped overnight. We have much to be thankful for.

 

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