Kindergarten plan causes religious storm

The parents say they will fight with "every legal means" to prevent a secular kindergarten from being placed in the yard of the Moriah religious school.

By MIRIAM BULWAR DAVID-HAY (TRANSLATED)
A municipal plan to build a secular kindergarten on the grounds of a state religious school in central Tel Aviv has sparked outrage from religious parents, reports Yediot Tel Aviv. The parents say they will fight with "every legal means" to prevent a secular kindergarten from being placed in the yard of the Moriah religious school near Kikar Rabin. According to the report, the current shortage of kindergartens for Tel Aviv's burgeoning pre-school population has resulted in several schools being asked to allocate a portion of their land for kindergartens. But the Moriah parents' committee has come out fighting against the plan, saying a secular kindergarten would clash with the school's values and would "cause additional problems." The committee said it would make more sense to construct a secular kindergarten at a secular school, and that in any case Moriah's school yard was too small to contain another building and that a kindergarten would cause traffic problems. A municipal spokeswoman urged the religious parents to remember that, "We are all Jews," and that secular and religious residents of Tel Aviv could, and do, live in harmony. But the committee was unmoved, saying it could only imagine the "riot" that would break out if religious parents wanted to put a religious kindergarten in a secular school.