The educational institutions of what used to be N'vei Dekalim have already finalized arrangements for the current school year. Yeshivat Torat HaChaim will spend the next 2-3 weeks in Shoresh/Ramot Shapira, west of Jerusalem, until its permanent quarters in Yad Binyamin are ready. Similarly, the Tohar Girls' Seminary will re-open in Yad Binyamin next week.
The Yamit hesder yeshiva, combining army service and Torah study - and which is known for its large, striking Star of David architecture - has opened its doors in Kfar Maimon. The girls' ulpanah high school of N'vei Dekalim will reopen this week in Givat Washington, adjacent to Kibbutz Yavneh.
Gush Katif boasted five elementary schools, with the largest and oldest - Neot Katif - running in N'vei Dekalim. Other schools opened over the course of the years in Kfar Darom and Atzmonah, and are now being reopened in their current locations - Ashkelon and a tent city outside Netivot, respectively.
The children of Netzarim will be learning, starting this Wednesday, in the classrooms of the Ariel College in Ariel. Within the coming weeks, their parents will have to decide where to rebuild their lives and their community. The alternatives are three: to respond favorably to an invitation from the city of Ariel to form a new neighborhood; to start a new community in the Halutza Sands on the Egyptian border; or - what appears to be the least likely - to move into an apartment building in Ashkelon, next to the former residents of Kfar Darom.
Hundreds of families from N'vei Dekalim are still living in hotels in Jerusalem. Though the children have now begun school - the boys in Bayit Vegan and the girls in Kiryat Moshe - many of the parents describe life in the hotels as a nightmare. "It's impossible to enter a normal routine," one woman said. "It's even worse than a vacation. The children go to sleep very late, everything is up in the air, and you just want to go back home - but there's no home to go back to..."
But in additions to the concerns of the immediate present, the expellees also have to worry about the near future, the medium-range future, and the long-term future. "There are a few possibilities that we [the families of N'vei Dekalim] are considering," Meir Cohen said, not with an upbeat tone. "At present, the most realistic is Nitzan, which has its own set of problems. But even Nitzan can only be temporary; we have to then think where we go from there."
"Another group of us might want to start a new community in the Lachish-northern Negev area. But this means that we have to figure out where we'll be for the next couple of months until everything begins to get started, and then we have to worry about our temporary housing until the community is actually built. It's truly a difficult situation..."
In any event, Cohen is fairly confident that most of N'vei Dekalim will remain together in, at most, two or three large groups. "Only a few individual families will go off on their own," he predicted, "for our togetherness is one of the most important things keeping us strong as we try to pick up the pieces."
The Yamit hesder yeshiva, combining army service and Torah study - and which is known for its large, striking Star of David architecture - has opened its doors in Kfar Maimon. The girls' ulpanah high school of N'vei Dekalim will reopen this week in Givat Washington, adjacent to Kibbutz Yavneh.
Gush Katif boasted five elementary schools, with the largest and oldest - Neot Katif - running in N'vei Dekalim. Other schools opened over the course of the years in Kfar Darom and Atzmonah, and are now being reopened in their current locations - Ashkelon and a tent city outside Netivot, respectively.
The children of Netzarim will be learning, starting this Wednesday, in the classrooms of the Ariel College in Ariel. Within the coming weeks, their parents will have to decide where to rebuild their lives and their community. The alternatives are three: to respond favorably to an invitation from the city of Ariel to form a new neighborhood; to start a new community in the Halutza Sands on the Egyptian border; or - what appears to be the least likely - to move into an apartment building in Ashkelon, next to the former residents of Kfar Darom.
Hundreds of families from N'vei Dekalim are still living in hotels in Jerusalem. Though the children have now begun school - the boys in Bayit Vegan and the girls in Kiryat Moshe - many of the parents describe life in the hotels as a nightmare. "It's impossible to enter a normal routine," one woman said. "It's even worse than a vacation. The children go to sleep very late, everything is up in the air, and you just want to go back home - but there's no home to go back to..."
But in additions to the concerns of the immediate present, the expellees also have to worry about the near future, the medium-range future, and the long-term future. "There are a few possibilities that we [the families of N'vei Dekalim] are considering," Meir Cohen said, not with an upbeat tone. "At present, the most realistic is Nitzan, which has its own set of problems. But even Nitzan can only be temporary; we have to then think where we go from there."
"Another group of us might want to start a new community in the Lachish-northern Negev area. But this means that we have to figure out where we'll be for the next couple of months until everything begins to get started, and then we have to worry about our temporary housing until the community is actually built. It's truly a difficult situation..."
In any event, Cohen is fairly confident that most of N'vei Dekalim will remain together in, at most, two or three large groups. "Only a few individual families will go off on their own," he predicted, "for our togetherness is one of the most important things keeping us strong as we try to pick up the pieces."