Over 1,000 people took part in a joyous relocation celebration of the Disengagement-destroyed N'vei Dekalim Yeshivat Hesder to its new (temporary) Ashdod quarters.
The Hesder Yeshiva (combining Torah study and army service in a 5-year program) of N'vei Dekalim, which was dismantled in the summer of 2005 in Ariel Sharon's Disengagement expulsion/withdrawal plan, has now taken up new quarters in the city of Ashdod. Over 1,000 people took part in the joyous celebration last week in its new home.
The yeshiva was well-known for its unique Jewish Star structure, built in the form of a six-pointed Magen David. It originally started in Yamit, in northern Sinai, and was headed by Rabbis Yaakov and Yisrael Ariel, two brothers who now serve as Chief Rabbi of Ramat Gan and head of the Temple Institute, respectively. The yeshiva was later relocated to Gush Katif in 1982 when the Begin-Sharon government dismantled the Jewish towns in the Yamit region and gave the area to Egypt as part of the 1978 peace treaty.
The N'vei Dekalim yeshiva structure also featured an impressive display of glass, rocks, and miniature models of houses memorializing the Yamit withdrawal; the modern city of N'vei Dekalim was reflected in the glass, to show the rebuilding that had come in the place of Yamit.
Click here for photos of the Yeshiva before it was destroyed, and here for post-Disengagement shots.
The building, and its display, was destroyed by Arab Palestinian vandals shortly after the Disengagement.
Meanwhile, the yeshiva resumed studies in Kfar Maimon, not far from Sderot. Over the course of the past year, Yeshiva Dean Rabbi David Gavriel weighed two options: relocating to Nitzan, where hundreds of former Gush Katif families now reside, or Ashdod, and he finally chose the latter. "Despite all," he told the crowd at the ceremony, "we will not disengage from our nation and from our country. Just like in the famous King Solomon case of the two mothers, we refuse to cut a living organism by making a split between ourselves and our nation."
The day before the commemoration, 100 of the yeshiva's students traveled to the now-closed Kisufim checkpoint - the former entrance to Gush Katif - to express their longing to return to Gush Katif.
The new, temporary quarters are adjacent to the site where the new yeshiva building is to be constructed.