page_title: Arad, Israel
section_title: Education and religious institutions
hierarchical_section_title: Arad, Israel / Education and religious institutions
caption_attribution_description: Avishur elementary school in Arad, Israel - main building facing Hen St.
context_page_description: Arad is a city in the Southern District of Israel. It is located on the border of the Negev and the Judean Deserts, 25 kilometres west of the Dead Sea and 45 kilometres east of Beersheba. The city is home to a diverse population of 26,451, including Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, both secular and religious, Bedouins and Black Hebrews, as well as new immigrants.
  After attempts to settle the area in the 1920s, Arad was founded in November 1962 as an Israeli development town, the first planned city in Israel. Arad's population grew significantly with the Aliyah from the former Soviet Union and peaked in 2002 at 24,500 residents.
  Landmarks in Arad include the ruins of Tel Arad, Arad Park, a domestic airfield and Israel's first legal race circuit. The city is known for its annual summer music festival, the Arad Festival.
context_section_description: Arad has a public elementary school in every central neighborhood (Halamish, Tlalim, Avishur, Leva'ot and Ye'elim (called Ye'elim-Ofarim)), while Tlalim is a religious school. There is one public middle school, Re'ut, located near the junction of the Yoshiyahu and HaKana'im streets. The second middle school, Allon, was closed in 2007 and merged into ORT Arad, the city's only public secondary school, which shares a building with the Re'ut middle school and the former Yigal Allon school. In the 2006–07 school year, 57.14% of Arad's 12th graders were eligible for a Bagrut (matriculation) certificate, compared to a national average of 45.9%. In the 2007–08-year, the number dropped to 49.67%, compared to a national average of 46.3%.
  In addition, there are several private and Haredi schools in Arad, such as the Shuvu movement's grades 1–8 school, and the Gerrer Haredi school. Other Haredi schools include the boys' Beit Ya'akov and girls' Kol Ya'akov in the Halamish neighborhood, the Lev Simcha Yeshiva, and the Beit Ya'akov High School. Religious Zionist schools include the Ne'ot Avraham Bnei Akiva Ulpana, which also provides young women with the guidance to perform volunteer activities in the community, and the Tlalim Elementary School, founded in 1971.
  Also in Arad is the Kedem Democratic School, which is an alternative school for students up through the high school level. It allows students to create their own schedules, and choose how they would like to spend their entire day at school.
  SOS Children's Village Arad (known as Kfar Neradim) was built in the southern outskirts of Arad and inaugurated on 27 October 1981. It consists of twelve family houses, to accommodate up to 120 children. There is also an SOS Youth Facility to accommodate 12 to 14 youths from the SOS Children's Village. In January 2005, an SOS Social Centre was opened at Arad. It runs a day-care center and various community outreach programmes to support socially weak families. Until fall 2008, the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS), funded by Jews from New Jersey, had an institute in Arad which allowed post-college young Jews from around the world to study Israeli society and the Hebrew language. When WUJS's ownership changed, the institute was moved to the center of the country.
  Arad has 22 synagogues, of which 11 are Ashkenazi, 9 are Sephardi, one is Yemenite, and one is Ethiopian. Both the central Ashkenazi and Sephardi synagogues are located in the Ye'elim neighborhood. A Masorti synagogue, Shira Hadasha is in the Rishonim neighborhood. There are Gerrer synagogues in Avishur and Halamish, and a Chabad synagogue in Ye'elim. There are two mikvehs in the city–in the Tlalim and Ayanot neighborhoods. The city also has a small Messianic community that is being accused of illegal missionary activities by the Haredim and certain right-wing groups. Arad's dead are mostly buried in the local cemetery, located in the northeastern outskirts of the city, close to the road to Masada.
caption: Avishur elementary school
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