Ateret Yerushalayim

Ateret Cohanim (), also Ateret Yerushalayim, is an Israeli Jewish organization with a yeshiva located in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. It supports the creation of a Jewish majority in the Old City and in Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.
Notable alumni of the yeshiva include Rabbi Nissan Ben-Avraham and Rabbi Eyal Karim.

History

Founded in 1978, it was originally known under the name Atara Leyoshna (lit. “ eturning theformer glory"). After many disagreements about the nature of its activities, the organization closed and re-opened as a new association called Ateret Cohanim with a yeshiva. While the activities of Atara Leyoshna focused mainly on locating Jewish assets in the Muslim Quarter and transferring them into Jewish hands through legal means, the activities of Ateret Cohanim involves acquiring houses in the Muslim quarter or renting them from government companies and populating them with Jews. The association owns many buildings in the Old City, where over 80 families live. Some estimate that 1,000 Israeli Jews live in houses that Ateret Cohanim purchased in the Old City since 1978. It controls at least seven other organizations that are not registered in Israel, but they are registered in tax shelters, like the Virgin Islands and Guernsey.

The head of the association is Mati Dan. It depends heavily on donations from American Jewish businessman Irving Moskowitz and his wife Cherna Moskowitz.

Land purchases

Around 2000, Ateret Cohanim and another organization, the Ir David Foundation, began to acquire land in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem outside the Old City. They operate mainly in the village of Silwan Yeshiva on the Mount of Olives.

In the Old City, the yeshiva was involved in buying property from Arabs, Greeks, and Armenians. Ateret Cohanim reportedly owns more than 70 buildings in the Muslim Quarter. The property includes their yeshiva, the building that houses Yeshiva Shuvu Bonim, several dormitories, a museum, and about 50 apartment units. Some of the property belonged to Jews who lived in the Muslim Quarter before they were driven out by pogroms in 1929 and 1936.

In early 2005, news came out that Ateret Cohanim had bought three buildings in the Christian Quarter of Old City of Jerusalem that belonged to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. This led to the destitution of then Patriarch Irenaios by the Holy Synod of Jerusalem, the ruling body of the Patriarchate, composed by the bishops who had elected Irenaios. A new Patriarch was elected, and, since 2005, the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem has been trying to have the sale of the three properties of the Church to Ateret Cohanim cancelled by Israeli courts. The Patriarchate claimed that the sales had not been approved by the Synod (the ruling body of the Greek Church), and that the finance director responsible for the sale, Nikolas Papadimos, had received money from Ateret Cohanim to advance the deal and had committed acts of theft and corruption involving funds of the Patriarchate. It was also pointed out that the price paid for the buildings by Ateret Cohanim was significantly lower than their market value. Still, in June 2022, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that Ateret Cohanim had purchased the properties legally, and that the three properties in Jerusalem's Old City now legally belong to the Jewish organization.

In May 2015, ''Ateret Cohanim'' reclaimed legal ownership of the Old Yemenite Synagogue in the nineteenth century Jewish Yemenite Village ''Kfar Hashiloach'' () neighborhood in the Jerusalem district of Silwan