Residents in Safed say the city is changing fast under growing ultra-Orthodox influence, with some claiming it is already affecting education, public space and daily life. The complaints surfaced in interviews aired on Radio Tzafon 104.5FM on June 20, 2026, and centered on the closing of secular school options and the conversion of sites that once served the general public.
Iris Segev, mother of Staff Sgt. Nimrod Segev, who was killed in the Second Lebanon War, said the memorial room for her son was turned into a religious kindergarten at a Safed school. She said she only learned about it after being told the computers had disappeared. “It was a very special and beautiful ceremony back then when they invited us to the school,” she said, adding that it had been a public school, not a religious one. Safed municipality said it values the memory of the fallen and that the computers were moved during a school merger, while promising to check sensitively whether any memorial project had been removed.
Keren Shitrit, whose daughter attended the “Agamim” kindergarten, said city officials told her two weeks ago that the building was being handed over to the Haredi community and that no secular kindergarten was available nearby. She said she was offered only a state-religious option, despite asking for a regular public kindergarten and transport to another one across town. “They can put the child in a state-religious kindergarten with knitted kippahs,” she said, calling the situation a denial of her right not to choose a religious setting. She also said the previous year’s children disappeared from the registration list and argued the kindergarten was closed under the pretext of low enrollment.
The municipality said enrollment for Agamim was too low to open the kindergarten and that, together with the Education Ministry, it had offered alternative placements. Other longtime residents said Safed now has only one state elementary school left, down from three in the past, and that the city’s secular population has steadily declined over decades. One former resident said Safed once had a lively mixed population and entertainment scene, but has become poorer and more religious over time.
