Swimming pool (illustrative)
Swimming pool (illustrative)Flash 90

Kiryat Arba council head Malachi Levinger held a meeting with representatives of the secular residents of Kiryat Arba following a dispute over the opening of the local pool for mixed swimming.

The city's rabbis called on the religious public not to renew membership at the pool and even boycott it following a Supreme Court decision obligating "family hours" (entailing mixed swimming) at the pool.

Yediot Aharonot reported that last week the directors of the Kiryat Arba community center, which operates the pool, sent a breakdown of the budget to the municipal council, in which details about a deficit of 300,000 shekels were laid out. Because of the deficit, the community center announced that it could no longer bear the costs of the operation of the pool, and that its operation would therefore be transferred to the council.

Sources at the community center explained that the deficit stemmed in part from the rabbis’ order to residents not to renew membership at the pool.

"At the moment we do not know what will happen, we have to go over the numbers and check," one of the leaders of the secular struggle was quoted this morning in the newspaper as saying. "We know that there were similar deficits in previous years. After it passes to the council, we will decide accordingly. We can say that in any case the pool will not return to the previous state in which there were no family hours. We hope that it will also not be closed.”