Blind up in arms over ultra-Orthodox management of school sports facilities

A decision by Jerusalem's veteran school for the blind to allow an ultra-Orthodox sports club management company to run its sports facilities has placed it at loggerheads with an advocacy group.

The Center for the Blind says the Jewish Institute for the Blind is refusing show it the contract with KosherGym, which runs fitness rooms for the ultra-Orthodox and the Orthodox.

"If you do not take the opinion of the blind community into consideration, we will thwart your decision, which appears to be transforming the Jewish Institute for the Blind into a country club for the ultra-Orthodox," wrote Herzl Muchtar, the director general of the Center for the Blind in Israel, and attorney Zohar Ginio, a member of that organization's board, to Jerusalem's deputy mayor Yehoshua Pollack. Pollack is the chairman of the board of the Jewish Institute for the Blind.

Muchtar, it should be noted, is Orthodox.

The letter was also addressed to the institute's treasurer, Dr. Eli Schusheim, who responded yesterday.

"I was shocked at your audacity, your ungratefulness and your racism, which may smack of anti-Semitism," he wrote. "You should be ashamed of yourself. If the ultra-Orthodox and the Orthodox public did not visit the place and pay good money to use the pool and the facilities, it would have closed down a long time ago," Schusheim wrote, adding that he was discussing the planned move with representatives of blind groups, but only with "the blind who are not racist."

The Jewish Institute for the Blind was established 106 years ago. It has five dunams (1.25 acres) of land near the entrance to the capital. It includes a school, a pool and the only field in the country for goalball, a game designed for blind players in which the ball is embedded with bells. Under renovation plans submitted by KosherGym, the field will cease to exist.

The Center for the Blind has accused the school's directors, led by Pollack and Schusheim, of trying to close a deal without their knowledge. The board of directors has eight members, two of whom are blind.

"They put a gun to our heads and said we had to sign in a week. We refused and blocked the contract from being signed," said Chief Superintendent Amos Be'er, an institute graduate who is active in the association that operates it.

Pollack said he could "assure that nothing would be done without the consent of the blind. If their rights are not kept, there's no deal," he said.

Pollack said they were working on an agreement to preserve the goalball field, and said the blind would continue to use the facilities at no cost. They would be upgraded by KosherGym at a NIS 2.5 million investment.