Fabled Diaspora Yeshiva celebrates milestone (JP)

The thousands of people who visited Mount Zion on Shavuot several weeks ago may not have noticed the banners proclaiming the 50th anniversary of the Diaspora Yeshiva.

As usual, the Western Wall was packed with people who had stayed up all night studying as part of the festival. Around the corner, just outside Zion Gate, sits the Mount Zion neighborhood, which for 19 years, until the Six Day War of 1967, was the closest an Israeli could get to the Old City.

The young people who streamed in on Shavuot, prayed at local holy sites and even camped out on the grassy field outside the courtyard were not born when the Diaspora Yeshiva was first started.