Merkaz Shapira

Merkaz Shapira מֶרְכַּז שַׁפִּירָא‎
One of the village synagogues
Merkaz Shapira
Coordinates: 31°41′48.47″N 34°42′24.48″E / 31.6967972°N 34.7068000°ECoordinates: 31°41′48.47″N 34°42′24.48″E / 31.6967972°N 34.7068000°E
District	Southern
Council	Shafir
Founded	1948
Population (2015)[1]	2,179
Name meaning	Shapira Center

Merkaz Shapira (Hebrew: מֶרְכַּז שַׁפִּירָא‎), also Shapira Center, is a religious village in the Southern District of Israel. Located in the southern Shephelah between Kiryat Malakhi and Ashkelon, it falls under the jurisdiction of Shafir Regional Council. In 2015 it had a population of 2,179.

History

The village was founded in the beginning of the 1950s as the Shafir Regional Center, a group of regional educational facilities on land belonging to the depopulated Arab village of Al-Sawafir al-Gharbiyya.^[2] In 1958, it was merged with the farm Dganim, which was abandoned due to failure. The name was changed in October 1957 to Merkaz Shapira, after the wounded Knesset member Moshe Shapira, but due to legal problems, it was only changed officially in 1970.^[3]

Merkaz Shapira contains the Or Etzion yeshiva which consists of both a high school and post-high school religious learning institutions (on its eastern end) and an elementary and middle school for itself and nearby villages (Azrikam, Ein Tzurim, Masu'ot Yitzhak, Shafir, Shtulim and Zerahia). The offices of the Shafir Regional Council are also located within the village. Merkaz Shapira has five synagogues - Ohel Yitzhak, The Jerusalemite Synagogue, The Moroccan Synagogue, the Ashkenazi Ashmoret Avraham and the Yemenite Ahuzat Shalom.

References

1. "List of localities, in Alphabetical order" (PDF). Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 16 October 2016.
2. Khalidi, Walid (1992), All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, p. 133, ISBN 0-88728-224-5
3. Merkaz Shapira Homee.co.il (Hebrew)