Avreichim will suffer most under the Left's anti-yeshivah crusade
This isn’t hyperbole for the ears of overseas donors, fresh off generous pledges last week to pick up the tab for the swinging cuts in yeshivah budgets that come courtesy of Israel’s judges. In the aftermath of the High Court’s 9-0 ruling last Tuesday, which doesn’t recognize the “Toraso umanuso (his Torah is his occupation)” status of a single yeshivah bochur or avreich, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara is doing everything to ensure that it doesn’t remain a dead letter.
Alongside her immediate instruction to the government to freeze the funding for yeshivos and kollelim, the attorney general made clear that she intends to issue a series of detailed directives over the coming days and weeks targeting households led by avreichim, including cutting arnonah (property tax) discounts that save every avreich’s family thousands of shekels a month and child care subsidies, without which their wives will be unable to go out and work.
With no real option of sending military police to Ponevezh to recruit yeshivah students by force, the attorney general and High Court justices have outlined an alternative strategy: Hit the chareidim in the pocket.
Roshei yeshivah and roshei kolleim I spoke with after the decision seemed to have shifted from the euphoria of the massive Keren Olam HaTorah fundraising campaign in the US to the depressive phase after taking in the full extent of the High Court’s ruling, which threatens to topple the already shaky financial foundations of the Torah world, not only on the public level but on the private level of each avreich’s household.
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