22 | AUGUST 1 • 2024 
J
N

A

t the playground 
up the hill from the 
apartment building 
where I live, little children 
clamber around all sorts of 
play structures. 
The children, 
Black, white and 
shades of brown 
in between, play 
together. At 
the end of the 
school day, stu-
dents swarm out 
of two schools, 
the boys’ school and the girls’ 
school; the students walk 
together. The neighborhood 
is thoroughly integrated. 
These children are Jewish, 
like just about everyone in 
this neighborhood called 
Nofei Hashemesh in Beit 
Shemesh. Most of us are fairly 

observant. We, however, look 
different from each other 
and trace our recent ancestry 
back to far-flung parts of the 
world. I have been asking 
locals to explain how it hap-
pened that we all wound up 
in the same neighborhood.
Most of the people on one 
street in this neighborhood 
come from English-speaking 
countries. That did not hap-
pen by accident, as I learned 
from Jason Schwartz, who 
has lived here since he moved 
from America with his family 
in 2008. 

THE ORIGINS OF BEIT 
SHEMESH’S ENGLISH-
SPEAKING RESIDENTS
In the early 2000s, real estate 
developers committed to 
putting a line of elegant 

townhouses along the north 
side of a not-yet-paved road 
across a steep hill in Beit 
Shemesh, facing downhill. 
They named the road Rehov 
Hasitvanit, after a 
local wildflower, the 
Sitvanit, the autumn 
crocus. 
To market these 
new homes, the 
developers turned 
to Shelley Levine, 
an immigrant from 
America who had 
become a power-
house of Israeli real 
estate. She proposed 
an innovative strate-
gy for populating the street: If 
you can, get a respected rabbi 
from America to move in, the 
rabbi will start a synagogue, 
and the community will grow 

around the synagogue.
Rabbi Shalom Rosner took 
on the challenge of founding 
Kehillat Nofei Hashemesh 
(Roughly, “Congregation 
Sunscape,” echoing 
the name of the 
city, Beit Shemesh, 
“Sun House”). Rabbi 
Rosner, then 35 
years old, headed a 
growing synagogue 
in Woodmere, New 
York; taught Talmud, 
Bible and Jewish Law 
at Yeshiva University; 
and recorded expli-
cations of classical 
Jewish texts for a 
huge group of followers. 
When, in April 2008, he 
announced that he and his 
family were moving to Israel, 
Jewish publications across 

The evolution of an ethnically diverse 
The evolution of an ethnically diverse 
neighborhood in Beit Shemesh
neighborhood in Beit Shemesh

 A 
Microcosm of 
 Jewish Israel

Rabbi Shalom 
Rosner, one of 
the first English-
speaking rabbis 
to move to the 
neighborhood.

ERETZ

Girls walking home from 
school in the neighborhood

Louis 
Finkelman 
Contributing 
Writer

