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the United States carried an 
advertisement signed by many 
of the leading Orthodox rab-
bis in America congratulating 
Rabbi Rosner and urging 
American Jews to consider 
joining him. 
Jason Schwartz and his 
family did just that. They 
had already planned to move 
from America 
to Beit Shemesh. 
They just had 
to decide on a 
neighborhood. A 
just-completed 
townhouse on 
Rehov Hasitvanit 
seemed well-built 
and spacious enough for the 
family, and building a new 
community seemed like an 
adventure. Furthermore, 
Schwartz and his wife, Chani, 
had known Rabbi Rosner and 
the rabbi’s wife, Dr. Tamar 
Rosner, since their school-
days. 
Many of the families on that 
street are “Anglo-Saxim” (a 
term for immigrants to Israel 
from English-speaking lands), 
but not all. Avner Shlomi, a 
native Israeli whose 
family roots go back 
to Yemen, explains 
how his family came 
to live on this street 
and mentions Rabbi 
Rosner right near the 
top of the list. “My 
Rosh Yeshiva in Israel 
approved.”
Even the founding 
members of the syn-
agogue were not all 
Anglo-Saxim. Rabbi 
Amir Avraham, one 
of the founding members of 
Kehillat Nofei Hashemesh, 
was born in Ethiopia. His 
family escaped to Sudan, 
where they lived in a refugee 
camp for three years until 

the opportunity came to fly 
to Israel. He came to Israel 
shortly before his bar mitz-
vah. 
What attracted him to Beit 
Shemesh? He calls it a strange 
story: As a teenager he was 
impressed by the polite way 
some basketball players from 
Beit Shemesh treated each 
other and even invited him to 
join their game. People think 
of native Israelis as assertive 
and direct, Ethiopians as def-
erential and circumspect. As a 
young man, Avraham felt that 
he would like to live in Beit 
Shemesh among these polite 
Anglo-Saxim. He now says, 
with a sweet smile, “After I 
served in the Israeli Defense 
Forces as a paratrooper, I got 
more comfortable with Israeli 
manners.” 

AN ETHNIC MIX
A series of new apartment 
buildings line Rehov Rabbi 
Yannai, a fishhook-shaped 
street right next to Rehov 
Hasitvanit. A couple of these 
buildings were already in 
place when the new syna-
gogue started, and 
they already had an 
ethnic mix. Israelis 
from a variety of 
backgrounds showed 
up at the inaugural 
events of the new 
synagogue. 
As Schwartz 
describes the process, 
the native Israelis 
might have been 
puzzled at first by the 
emphasis on social 
events and family 
activities at the synagogue, 
but many of them soon real-
ized that they wanted to live 
in a community centered on 
the synagogue.
Since those early days, 

new synagogues opened in 
the neighborhood to pro-
vide services according to 
various liturgical traditions 
of North African, West Asia 
and Eastern Europe. Schwartz 
explains, however, that 
numerous community events 
combine members of all local 
synagogues, as do networks of 
friendship. 
The former mayor of Beit 
Shemesh, Dr. Aliza Bloch, 
explains why those apartment 
buildings had Jews from a mix 
of different ethnic 
backgrounds. “If 
you want to live 
in a city where 
everyone is like 
you, you would 
not choose Beit 
Shemesh,” she 
said. Some neighborhoods in 
Beit Shemesh have a relatively 
homogeneous population, 

secular, national religious, 
Ethiopian, haredi Sephardi 
or Mizrahi, haredi Hasidic 
or haredi Yeshivish; but even 
there, the next neighborhood 
has a different population. 
Modern Beit Shemesh has 
always had Jews from differ-
ent communities and with 
different religious orienta-
tions. Bloch observes, “In Beit 
Shemesh, you will find this, 
and also this, and also that.” 
It was mixed from the 
start. “In the early days of the 
state,” according to Bloch, 
“Beit Shemesh was a small 
Ma’abara, a temporary tent 
city for refugees, most of 
whom came to Israel from 
Morocco, India, Yemen and 
Romania.”

A BUILDING BOOM
A building boom began 
more than 30 years ago: Beit 

Jason 
Schwartz

Aliza Bloch

Rabbi Amir 
Avraham, one 
of the founders 
of Kehillat Nofei 
Hashemesh

Apartment buildings on 
Rehov Rabbi Yannai 

