Ramat Beit Shemesh

In 1998 Ramat Beit Shemesh A and Ramat Beit Shemesh B were built as part of the city of Beit Shemesh.  As a result Beit Shemesh doubled it’s size.  Ramat Beit Shemesh, which means Beit Shemesh Heights, is often considered a separate town.

RBSB is mostly made up of Israeli chareidis many of whom could no longer afford Yerushalayim communities and came here and started new communities.
RBSA has a mix of people some being secular, some religious and some chareidi many of whom are Anglo olim(immigrants). Over the past ten years RBSA has become home to many American, British,  South African and other English speaking immigrants and also many French ones. This wave of Anglo immigration has caused real estate prices in the community to go up tremendously. For many it is no longer possible for them to purchase homes here.
 
The Mercaz (town center) of RBSA gives you a wide variety of shopping options. There are 2 major supermarkets: Shefa Shuk and Yesh. Yesh used to be named Alef and before that Zol poh and Zol Mehadrin. There’s a joke in RBS  that you can tell how long a person is living here by how many former names they can list for Yesh.  It’s a great advantage to having 2 supermarkets in one place. For one, if you are price conscious, you can go to each one and buy the items that they have on special each week. Or, you can compare prices on the regular priced items and buy the things in each store that are cheaper in that store. I very often do that if the lines aren’t too long. Sometimes if I have to do my shopping quickly I’ll shop at the store that has the shorter  checkout lines.
 
In the Mercaz there are 3 banks: Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, and Bank Pagi. Each one has some English speaking officers that can help explain the different account and credit card options to new olim. They also have cash machine and on line services. There is another option to banks which is very popular these days known as “change” places. They can convert your currency from dollars, pounds or Euros to shekels or vice versa. They also cash checks from accounts outside of Israel. And they offer a better rate and faster turnover than the national banks.
 
We have two bakeries in “town”( as some people refer to it) , Angels and Yaaleh (which also has delicious pizza). They offer fresh bread, cakes, pastries, pitas, etc. Then there’s a delicious bagel/dairy cafe , an ice cream store and a meat grill restaurant.
 
Don’t worry you can also shop for clothing in RBSA. We have clothing stores for men, women, and children as well as shoe stores. For those of you who are health conscious we have a health food store, fish store, and a beautiful gym. There are also pharmacies and two of the major national health clinics in our town center. In addition there is a photo shop ,toy stores, 2 sefarim stores, gift shops, wine shops, a car rental shop,  a hardware store, dry cleaners, and a new clean butcher shop. You can literally spend the whole day in “town” and you can find all of your needs there. I was told by people who moved to RBS when it first started, over ten years ago, that there wasn’t even one food shop here and they had to go Beit Shemesh - about a fifteen minute drive (if you had a car). There were also no street name signs or mail delivery to the house. Now we have really come a long way. About one month ago we got our own post office opened in RBSA.