Shevah Mofet

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Shevah Mofet (Hebrew: שבח מופת‎; also Shevach Moffet) is a high school on HaMasger Street in Tel Aviv, Israel. It was established in 1946 as a vocational school. Since the 1990s, new programs were inaugurated to meet the needs of the Russian immigrant population in Israel.

1 History
2 Organization
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

The school was originally called Shevah, named after a British World War II pilot, who was the uncle of one of the founders of the school. Founded in 1945, it was the second Hebrew high school in Tel Aviv, after Gymnasia Herzliya.

In the beginning, Shevah was a vocational school, where students studied a trade, such as carpentry, and graduated with a diploma. Unlike other early Hebrew schools, Shevah did not serve a particular neighborhood, and students came from the surrounding areas, as demand for professional schools was high and the amount was low. As demand for such schools declined in the 1980s, Shevah's role began dwindling, until it reached an all-time low in 1989-90. It was eventually decided to convert it into a regular school for that reason.^[1]

In 1989, new olim came to the school, which put them into regular classes, causing them to immediately fail many subject due to the language barrier, and leave the school. As such, in the beginning 1990s, with the immigration from the Soviet Union, the management of Shevah decided that Ulpan classes needed to be created, and some heterogeneous classes were made, teaching Hebrew to children ages 13-17 in the same class. The classes also integrated the students' parents, who came to learn Hebrew once a week, and taught non-age-dependent Hebrew subjects, such as Jewish history and culture.^[1]

In the 1990s, a professor from Russia, named Yakov Mozganov, who worked as a security guard at the school, founded the Mofet night school on Shevah's grounds, and attracted to it many Russian immigrants from the mass aliyah of the 1990s. In turn, this attracted more Russian Ph.D.s and former professors to teach, as they couldn't find a job anywhere else, due to their lack of Hebrew knowledge. Eventually a decision was made to merge Shevah and Mofet and the Russian teachers started teaching in the regular school, which became known as Shevah-Mofet. Mofet is an acronym containing the words Mathematics and Physics, but also means excellence.

From left to right: Mikhail Gorbachev, Shimon Peres, then school principal Avi Benbenishti

This gave the school a reputation of being one of the best (due to the extremely high quality of teachers), but also discouraged attendance from many non-Russian students, who did not want to be part of a Russian-speaking high school in Hebrew-speaking Israel. The school was nicknamed 'Little Russia' by many.^{[citation needed]} A Shevah student won a silver medal at an international junior software engineering olympics in Zagreb, Croatia on August 21, 2007.^[2]

Shevah Mofet has attracted many Russian visitors, notably figures such as Sergei Brin, one of the creators of Google, and Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president.

On June 1, 2001, an Arab suicide bomber killed 21 Israeli teenagers in the Tel Aviv "Dolphi" discotheque. Seven of the victims were from the Shevah Mofet high school, with more injured.^[3]

The bombing created an international outrage, but also caused many worldwide to donate money to Shevah Mofet. This helped improve the financial situation of the school and create a new library and cafeteria.

In November 2002, it was discovered that the school cafeteria served expired, or otherwise bad food products. It created a citywide scandal, where the media (newspapres such as Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv) was involved, as well as the health ministry. Despite this, the cafeteria was still operating and employing the same workers in a repeat check-up in August 2003.^[4]

[edit] Organization

For many years, Shevah Mofet was a 6-year school organized into a junior-high school (grades 7-9), and a secondary school (grades 10-12). In 2007-08 however, a new organization was introduced, and the school was split into 3 two-grade sub-sections.

The secondary school has five departments, each focusing on a specific subject. In order of introduction, they are: Science and computers, business administration, robotics, electronics, and humanities. Each department except business administration has two classes, for a total of 9 classes per year.