Partnership Park planted in Rosh Ha’Ayin

Members of the Birmingham and New Orleans Jewish communities recently visited Partnership 2000 sister city Rosh Ha’Ayin to help inaugurate the Partnership 2000 Park.

Birmingham’s Jewish community has an almost 30-year connection to Rosh Ha’Ayin, and New Orleans was also paired with the town of 40,000 under Partnership 2000 by the Jewish Agency.
On March 25, New Orleans Partnership 2000 co-chair Ann Kimball planted trees in the new park while in Israel on a synagogue mission.

While 7th and 8th grade students from Birmingham’s N.E. Miles Jewish Day School were in Israel recently, they spent an afternoon planting flowers and trees in the park.

The students had previously been paired with E-Pals, fellow students from Rosh Ha’Ayin, While in Israel, the Birmingham students met their E-Pals for the first time and stayed in their homes overnight.

For both communities’ visits, plaques were unveiled in the park.

Rosh Ha’Ayin was originally a Yemenite development town of 14,000. Since the early 1990s, additional neighborhoods were built for what is now a bedroom community to Tel Aviv. The new park is between the old and new sections of the town.

The formal initiation of the park will take place during the Partnership 2000 steering committee meetings in June, involving all three communities.