Kiryat is best known for its national park and the World Heritage Site Beit She’arim, which is both a shrine and the seat of the Sanhedrin. It is also home to the Kiryat Shmona Academic College and a youth village for disabled people. The hilly area within the settlement is covered by forests of Quercus ithaburensis, Styrax officinalis and Pistacia atlantica as well as an intensive forest of pine trees planted recently by the Jewish National Fund.
A sociologist by training, Rihan-Withman organized the evacuation of Kiryat Shemona this month following a deadly Hezbollah attack in Lebanon. She’s now focused on supporting those who are being forced to leave the town, and particularly those without the means to travel. “Half of the residents have already left by their own means or in chartered buses to relatives’ homes or hotels paid for by the government,” she says. The other half — elderly or those who don’t have relatives nearby — need help to get out of town.
She also helps the kabbalat shabbat community of the protest camp, which consists of leaders from local kibbutzim and towns who take turns hosting the weekly gathering. It’s the latest in a series of innovations designed to make the protests more bearable. The rabbinical court panel that ruled against the chained husband last week, for example, included three women. And eight of the new judges appointed to regional courts and all 10 full-time Supreme Rabbinical Court judges are members of religious Zionist movements, sometimes referred to as modern Orthodoxy, who tend to be more egalitarian in their interpretation of Jewish law than haredi rabbis. עורך דין גירושין בקריות