Beit Orot
Coordinates: 31°47′08″N 35°14′47″E / 31.78556°N 35.24639°E
Beit Orot (Hebrew: בית אורות) (lit. The House of Lights), is a new Jewish settlement and neighborhood on the northern ridge on the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem, near the Augusta Victoria Hospital and the Arab neighbourhood of At-Tur. The Irving Moskowitz Yeshiva & Campus, a Religious Zionist yeshiva (Jewish theological seminary), is the nucleus of the neighborhood.
The purchase of the land that was to become Beit Orot was arranged in 1990 by Hanan Porat, an Israeli politician, and financed by Dr. Irving Moskowitz, an American Jewish philanthropist, and his wife, Mrs. Cherna Moskowitz. The site was chosen for its historic significance: during the Six-Day War in 1967, Porat was a paratrooper and his commander, Giora Askenazi, was killed there in the fight for the Old City in Jerusalem. The purchase of the land represented the first Jewish acquisition outside the Old City after the Six Day War. Porat founded Beit Orot together with Binyamin Elon.
The purchase was controversial, as the site of Beit Orot had originally been planned as an Arab school, and the purchase of the land for the yeshiva was opposed by then-mayor Teddy Kollek, but Kollek was soon voted out of office and the purchase allowed to be concluded. The project continues to stir controversy as Palestinian and international authorities decry continued Israeli settlement in Arab neighborhoods.
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