Reform Kindergarten Torched

Arson suspected in suburban
Jerusalem fire as accusations
fly as to who is responsible.

LARRY DERFNER
Israel Correspondent

T

he kindergarten of the
Reform Movement in the
Jerusalem suburb of
Mevasseret Zion was
torched by arsonists on the eve of the
opening of the school year. No one
was injured, but the kindergarten's
walls were blackened with soot, win-
dows were broken, and equipment
and toys were destroyed.
Chana Sorek, chairperson of
Mevasseret Zion's Reform congrega-
tion said that at a town council meet-
ing in January Sephardi residents
aligned with local politicians and rab-
bis from the Shas (Sephardi
Orthodox) party told Reform mem-
bers, "We'll burn you," and, "It's too
bad they didn't burn you at
Auschwitz."
The threats came as the council was
about to decide on a plot of land
where the Reform congregation,
which numbers about 225 families,
could build a community center and
synagogue. The meeting was
adjourned, Sorek said, when the Shas-
aligned group appeared on the verge
of physically attacking the Reform
Jews present.
Hours after the blaze was discov-
ered, a local Reform member received
a telephone call from someone who
told her, "You'll be hearing from us."
A spokesman for Jerusalem police
confirmed that the fire was caused by
arson and that the connection Sorek
spoke of was one of the possibilities
being investigated. The spokesman
said he did not want to elaborate
"because this is a very sensitive mat-
ter," adding that no suspects had yet
been arrested.
Meanwhile, the 41 children at the
Kehilat Mevasseret Zion kindergarten
were gathering daily at the home of a
nearby Reform Jewish family. The
local council was due to try to find an
alternate site for the kindergarten.
Rabbi Uri Regev, Israel's most

9/19
1997

28

prominent Reform leader, stressed the
arson was the inevitable result of con-
tinuous incitement.
"The incitement against Reform
Judaism does not stop; it has gotten
out of control, and it is orchestrated

by the leaders of the Orthodox estab-
lishment," Regev said.
The verbal attacks have escalated in
the last month following the Supreme
Court's decision that Joyce Brenner, a
Reform Jew, was entitled to sit on
Netanya's Religious Council. When
Brenner tried to take her seat in the
council chambers, a Shas member said
angrily, "We don't want lesbians, or
people who care more about Arabs
than about Jews."
Israel's Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi
Yisrael Lau recently blamed the
Reform for assimiliation, and was

Chief Rabbi Lau blames reform for assimiliation.

quoted in an Orthodox newspaper as
saying, "Hezbollah, Hamas and
Islamic Jihad commit suicide at
Mahane Yehuda, and they [Reform
Jews] commit suicide of a different
kind."
Interior Minister Eli Suissa of Shas
said from the Knesset podium: "We
will do everything in our power to
banish them [the Reform] from our
midst."
Regev said that when unsophisticat-
ed Israelis hear this sort of talk from
Orthodox leaders, "It's easy for them —/
to translate it into violent deeds."
Surveying the damage in the
kindergarten, Sorek said she believed
the arsonists were connected to the
300-odd local Sephardi residents,
many of them homeless, who have
recently been battling police while try-
ing to take over Mevasseret Zion's
immigrant absorption center.
The squatters, children of Sephardi
immigrants who settled in the Ma'oz
Zion neighborhood of Mevasseret
Zion in the 1950s, resent the thou-
sands of richer, mainly Ashkenazi resi-
dents who bought expensive new cot-
tages and apartments in the
Mevasseret Yerushalyim neighborhood
over the last couple of decades.
Squatters accuse the newcomers of
"stealing" land that should have gone
L7:
to them.
They see the Reform congregation
— liberal, middle-class, and largely
Ashkenazi — as a symbol of their ene-
mies, Sorek said.
Sorek added that last January Shas
activists went around Ma'oz Zion
hanging posters and telling people,
"The Reform are going to build their
synagogue on your land," and, "The Y-\
Reform eat pork on Yom Kippur."
Rabbi Avraham Yosef, the official
rabbi of Ma'oz Zion, condemned the
arson as "criminal," saying he would
impart this message in his coming ser-
mons. "I'm not for the Reform, but
I'm not for violence, either," he said.
Yosef went on to say that he was
unaware of any local incitement
against the Reform, and said he was
convinced the arson could not have
been carried out by Mevasseret Zion
residents.
Asked why he was certain of this,
Yosef replied, "Whoever heard of a
j\
Jew doing such a thing to another
Jew?"

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