Hours before an eviction order was set to take effect, Israel's Supreme Court (Bagatz) issued a stay of execution on Tuesday in response to a petition filed by the Masoret HaTorah association and HaRav Shmuel Markowitz shlita. The eviction, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, is now delayed until next Thursday.
The stay means that Rav Markowitz's faction will be permitted to continue using the yeshiva buildings through Simchas Torah, in accordance with the terms of the court order.
The appeal to the Supreme Court was filed Monday morning by Rav Markowitz's side. The move follows a ruling by Judge Yehudit Shevach of the Tel Aviv District Court, who upheld an arbitration award issued by retired judge David Cheshin. Judge Shevach rejected in detail the petition to annul the arbitration award that had been filed by the Masoret HaTorah association, HaRav Shmuel Markowitz and Rebbetzin Tzipora Markowitz.
In her ruling, which spans 19 pages, Judge Shevach ordered the students and personnel of the yeshiva under Rav Markowitz's leadership to vacate the Ponevezh Yeshiva premises by Wednesday, September 30.
The original eviction date set by arbitrator Cheshin had been the end of July, but Judge Shevach postponed it in light of the proximity of the summer zmanim and the approach of the Yamim Noraim, expressing hope that the eviction would be carried out peacefully and "without further escalation."
Beyond the eviction order, the arbitration award imposes additional severe restrictions: Rav Markowitz's side is barred from using the yeshiva's trademarks, including the name "Ponevezh Yeshiva" and its well-known logo. Rav Markowitz is also prohibited from presenting himself with the title "Rosh Yeshiva of Ponevezh."
Throughout the legal proceedings, Rav Markowitz's faction argued that arbitrator Cheshin exceeded his authority in his ruling, and that the arbitration award violates historical rights granted to Rav Markowitz in earlier arbitration proceedings conducted within the yeshiva. The district court, however, rejected these claims and gave full force to the arbitrator's decision.
Now, moments before the eviction was to proceed, the Supreme Court justices ruled that the eviction must be stayed pending a comprehensive hearing at the High Court.
In a statement, the petitioners said:
"What has been placed before the Supreme Court is not just another chapter in the Ponevezh dispute. This is a fundamental question of the rule of law: Is a final judgment truly final, or can it be rewritten 25 years later, with an 'implied condition' invented and inserted into it that was never written there, and then retroactively determine that rights defined as perpetual simply disappeared.
The result is absurd: In 2025, an entire community is told that it has effectively been 'trespassing' since 2007, even though throughout all those years it was never told that its rights had expired, it was never determined when they expired, and the basis for their expiration never appeared in the final judgment under which it operated.
Worse still, the judgment that upheld the arbitration relies, in our view, on a claim of estoppel that was not raised against the petitioners in a manner that allowed them to respond to it. Rights cannot be stripped away on the basis of a claim that the injured party never received a real opportunity to answer.
Now they seek to carry out the irreversible before the Supreme Court has had its say: to evict 1,266 students and avreichim, hundreds of them minors and dormitory students, and to dismantle a campus and fabric of life built over decades, when even the arbitration award itself determined that the other side does not need the premises for its current functioning. First it must be clarified whether the judgment can stand legally, and only then should a result be carried out that cannot be reversed. A final judgment is not a draft that can be rewritten after a quarter century."
