State Senators Join the “New York Times” in Legally Incoherent Accusations against Yeshiva University

At present, Yeshiva University is locked in a legal battle over its decision to deny official status and funding to an LGBTQ student group. The Manhattan-based Orthodox Jewish institution claims that a New York state court’s ruling against it violates its religious freedom. Last week, a group of state senators—apparently goaded by two articles in the New York Times—asked the New York inspector-general to investigate whether YU, which claims in the litigation to be a “religious corporation,” inappropriately received public monies. Michael A. Helfand finds the complaint “a bit bizarre.”

Yeshiva University has undoubtedly argued repeatedly that it is a religious institution. But religious institutions are not precluded from seeking private financing through the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY). In fact, any number of religious universities—the Jewish Theological Seminary, St. John’s University, and, as noted by the Times in its initial report, Fordham University and Siena College—have financed projects with DASNY backing. It seems strange, therefore, to pit Yeshiva University’s claim to being a religious institution as somehow in tension with participating in this sort of government-backed financing.

To be sure, as the senators’ letter makes clear, DASNY-financed projects cannot be used for “sectarian religious instruction,” “a place of religious worship,” or “in connection with any part of a program of a school or department of divinity for any religious denomination.” But nothing in the state senators’ letter explains why they think Yeshiva University violated these terms. Yeshiva University’s statements in the course of litigation regarding DASNY financing have simply affirmed that it complied with the restrictions on prohibited religious uses.

[O]ne certainly hopes that what government officials would not do is initiate an investigation into the purported misappropriation of funds because they separately disagree with an institution’s policy as it relates to the LGBTQ community. Investigations such as these are supposed to be about maintaining integrity. The exercise of power to intimidate would serve to do the exact opposite.

Read more at Forward

More about: Freedom of Religion, Homosexuality, New York, Yeshiva University

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society