Bagatz hears dramatic appeal by Rav Shmuel Markowitz shlita's faction to halt eviction order affecting hundreds of dormitory students, minors, and use of the yeshiva's name, with a 10-million-shekel debt on the line
The yeshiva world is watching closely today as the High Court takes up an appeal that could shape the future of Ponevezh, one of the great Torah institutions of the Lithuanian chareidi world.
On Monday, one day before the Knesset elections, Justice Ofer Grosskopf will hear a request from the faction led by Rav Shmuel Markowitz to halt enforcement of a ruling against it. That ruling orders the faction to leave the yeshiva campus and to pay debts and fines totaling about NIS 10 million.
Justice Grosskopf has already intervened once. At the end of September, he issued a temporary order that stopped an eviction planned for the eve of the Yamim Tovim. Now he must decide whether to extend that stay until the appeal is fully decided, or allow the judgment to go ahead.
In their motion, Rav Markowitz’s representatives argue that an immediate eviction would cause irreversible harm to the institutions and their talmidim. According to the figures they presented, 1,266 bochurim and avreichim learn in their framework, including 226 minors and 837 dormitory students. Finding and preparing an alternative campus, they say, would take about two years and cost roughly NIS 200 million.
They also argue that the new arbitration ruling contradicts earlier court decisions on how authority and rights in the yeshiva are divided.
On the other side, the Ponevezh institutions led by Rav Avraham Kahaneman are seeking to enforce the judgment in full, including the eviction from the campus and securing their rights to the yeshiva’s name.
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