The head of the Jewish Home party, Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz, and Tel Aviv-Yafo Mayor Ron Huldaee, held a joint tour of Yafo (Jaffa) Thursday and discussed advancing science and Torah projects in the city. They visited the religious-Zionist nucleus group that has moved into Yafo in recent years in order to rejuvenate its Jewish character.
Until now, Huldaee - mayor of Israel's most secular city - had refused to visit the religious nucleus group.
The tour began in Tel Aviv, at the municipal center for sciences (known by the Hebrew acronym Hemda), where science classes for all of Tel-Aviv Yafo's high school students are centered.
From there they went to the veteran neighborhood of Nachalat Yitzchak and visited Aviv HaTorah Yeshiva, which attempts to bring secular and religious Jews closer together and assist the socioeconomically weaker population. Rabbi Micha HaLevi, who heads the nucleus group, showed them the unique day care center that the nucleus group runs, which serves both secular and religious families.
After Hershkowitz and Huldaee visited the Tel Aviv-Yafo Academic College, which serves southern Tel Aviv, they went further south to meet with the Zionist-religious nucleus group in the Ajami neighborhood of Yafo. Hershkowitz was happy to have convinced Huldaee to visit the group and see from up close the numerous social activities it conducts in the neighborhood.
Head of the Yafo Hesder Yeshiva, Rabbi Eliyahu Mali, told the visitors that there has been relative calm and peaceful coexistence between Jews and Arabs in the neighborhood in the last three years. This happened, he said, after the Arabs learned to accept the Jews' presence and their contribution to Ajami.