About 600 people attended a special melave malka gathering at the Ayelet HaShachar synagogue in Givat Ze’ev on Saturday night, in solidarity with the syangogue ahead of its slated demolition. 

Haredi, hassidic, national-religious, and traditional Jews flocked to the event, including Rabbi Eliyahu Schlesinger, rabbi of Gilo in Jerusalem, Rabbi Tzvi Kostiner, Rosh Yeshiva (dean) of the Mitzpe Ramon hesder yeshiva, and Rabbi Yosef Toledano, rabbi of Givat Ze’ev. 

Clarinetist Yechiel Frank and his band played music for the attendees, who danced in the hopes of the decree being overturned. 

MK Rabbi Meir Porush (United Torah Judaism) also participated in the event last night and sharply criticized the Supreme Court decision to demolish the site.

“Everyone here represents hundreds of thousands of people in Israel and around the world who express anger and repudiation against the High Court ruling to demolish this synagogue, G-d forbid,” he said. 

Several attendees called on him to leave the government over the decision.

The Ayelet HaShachar synagogue is slated to be demolished after a far-left group filed a petition with the Court, claiming that the structure had been build on privately-owned Palestinian Arab land.

The petition had been working its way through the courts for at least three years. Members of the congregation have offered the land’s alleged owners a high price for the purchase or rental of the land, but they, and their lawyers, have insisted that the synagogue be torn down. 

Public officials have rallied behind the synagogue and called to save it, stating that sends the wrong message to Israelis over the character of the Jewish state. 

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