Ateret Cohanim

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Ateret Cohanim is a religious Zionist yeshiva situated in the Moslem Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The Rosh Yeshiva (dean) is Rabbi Shlomo Aviner. The yeshiva was involved in buying property from Arabs in the Old City and its environs. Since aprox. 2000, such activities are done by a separate organization carrying the same name.

[edit] History

The Yeshiva was founded in 1978, following the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967. The Yeshiva's premises had been used prior to the 1936 Arab riots by the Torat Chaim Yeshiva, and had been entrusted to an Arab caretaker for the period between 1934 and 1967. In 1967, the caretaker handed the keys to Vivian Hertzog (in his function as the military governor of the West Bank), telling him that "the holy place watched over me more than I watched over it" during those years. The Torat Chaim Yeshiva was the only one of over 80 synagogues and yeshivas that was not destroyed during the Jordanian occupation of Jerusalem.