The Tel Aviv Planning and Building Commission's Objections Subcommittee has published an amendment to the sections of the Neve Tzedek Border Plan in order to ensure the preservation of Torah Gates (Shaarei Torah), which included in the government's list of Jewish heritage sites for preservation last week, thereby saving the site from the wrecker's ball for redevelopment as a residential high-rise. The committee accepted the position of the Historic Sites Preservation Committee, the Action Committee for Saving Synagogues in Neve Tzedek, and the Jewish Head movement.
Boston area real estate investor Edmund Shamsi, who owns the site, is eligible to receive from the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality an alternative site. Torah Gates was built 120 years ago in the Neve Shalom neighborhood, now part of Neve Tzedek. It includes a synagogue, Beit Midrash, workshops, and classrooms in five buildings arranged around an interior courtyard. It was the first institution to combine Torah learning and vocational studies in the spirit of Rabbi Kook's religious Zionism.
Torah Gates was part of the religious, cultural, and economic life of the first Jewish community outside the Jaffa city wall in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was badly damaged during the War of Independence in 1948, deteriorated, and eventually closed for financial reasons, and the site abandoned.
The Torah Gates' trustees sold the site to Shamsi a year ago for $6.3 million, and he applied to build a residential high-rise.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 1, 2010
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