Before Rosh Hashana the news reported that Minister Deri was arranging assistance on the municipal level to prepare all public buildings such as schools and community centers to be used for minyanim so many of the outdoor minyanim would be able to be indoors with air conditioning.
Personally I have not heard of a single outdoor minyan that was allocated space in a classroom with an air conditioner or provided shade and air conditioning from the government. Maybe it happened, but I know a lot of people who davened in outdoor minyanim and I haven't heard of a single one that was moved indoors into a public building at the expense of the government (or even out of their own pockets, for that matter).
And now the news is reporting that Ministers Katz and Deri have agreed to allocate 25million NIS immediately to local government to prepare shade, chairs, lighting, fans and coolers in outdoor areas to be made available to minyanim. This will help, and also possibly encourage, people to daven outdoors. This would also be used not just for Yom Kippur but for the entire duration of the lockdown.
I want to know who gets this. Where is this money going and which minyanim are being helped in this way? How does a minyan apply for a piece of this pie? Which local minyanim will be granted the shade and fans from the government? Is this all a scam for a bit of public relations, as if they are trying to help or do some people actually benefit from this? Where can I see this government aid in action?
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I heard that in my community someone had made arrangements for davening in a local chabad school. They were requesting 50NIS per seat to cover the costs.
ReplyDeleteThe outdoor minyan I go to has fans, a tarp and some tents from a simcha/aveilut gemach. I am not aware of them receiving any public money for their efforts but I have no idea who paid for it.
Families at our outdoor minyan each gave a few hundred shekel for quality shading, and several people donated fans and lights.
ReplyDeletePeople were happy to give as is still much less than they would have spent for seats in shul for the Chagim (in fact we raised more than the 9000 shekel we needed)
About 2 months ago the Iriya (Modiin) had an online form for people running outdoor minyanim so that they would be able to coordinate needs with the Iriya. But it was largely ignored until a few days before Rosh HaShana when they offered plastic chairs (which are useful, but not as useful as fans would have been)
We got a few shades and plastic chairs from the iriyah, it helped the community a bit but we are running about 4 out door car park minyanim, so it didn't really go far.
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