Is Your Tuition Going Down? I'm Still Waiting.

Was the mission
really accomplished?

While in America you've heard stories about free day school tuition in Israel - that's true basically for elementary school. (OK - it's a few hundred shekel per kid a year, which isn't nothing. But after shelling out thousands, a few hundred shekel seems manageable.) The wheels fall off the bus when you get to high school, which can cost anywhere from 10,000 shekel a year for normal school with no dorm, up to anywhere from 18,000 to 25,000 shekel per year for full dorm. (Again, I know what you Americans are thinking. But remember that we're paid in shekels as well.) This is such a critical issue, that many of us voted specifically for the Bayit Hayehudi over this issue. Actually, I can't speak for anyone else. I voted for them over this issue.
Well, "Mission Accomplished!" Thanks to the Bayit Hayehudi, our tuition has decreased! Hooray! At least that's what they're telling me. After all, early in the summer, they declared that they had succeeded in reducing day school tuition by forty (40!) percent! This was hailed as a "historic accomplishment" by Naftali Bennett, who lauded the achievement by saying, "We made a promise, and we kept it."
Today, the back of B'sheva (the free newspaper given out to us Religious Zionist folks all over the country) had a full-page ad proclaiming exactly that. See for yourself:

The ad says: "Tuition has decreased!"
Sorry, it actually says, "TUITION HAS DECREASED...ASK US HOW..."

All of this would be great...if it were true.
You see, the way that they reduced tuition was by sending a letter to each school telling them to: that's right, you guess it, decrease their tuition. Charge less, they said. Cut.
The schools replied: We'd love to charge less. Where would you like us to cut? From Torah hours? From secular subjects? These generally aren't schools that waste a ton of money, and to make such drastic cuts in tuition requires just one thing: money. And the Bayit Hayehudi didn't (or at least hasn't yet) sent any money. (Did I mention that the scheduled cut in every family's monthly social security payment went into effect this week? While Chareidim and Arabs will certainly be hit the hardest, Religious Zionist families tend to be larger than average as well, and will certainly feel a hit.)
I know this because that's exactly what I heard from the finance guy at my son's school. When I called to take care of tuition payments (they take it straight from the bank), I asked him about the cuts that the Bayit Hayehudi promised. He said, "As soon as they send us the money, we'll be able to lower tuition. Right now it's all a bunch of hot air."
Thankfully, the ad offers a hotline to ask questions and learn more. So I called. On the phone, the lady taking the information took my name, my phone number, and my son's yeshiva. Then she asked me for my email address, which I declined to give. She said, "OK, but it will cause a delay in us getting back to you." I wondered aloud why the lack of an email address would cause a delay in picking up the phone. She said, "That's what they told me to say."
Has my tuition gone down yet? Definitely not, despite what the ads say.
Will it?
To be continued...

Update: On Sunday, (the business day after I left a message), I got a call from a nice lady at the Misrad Hachinuch who asked me to send her official forms for how much I paid last year, and how much I'm being charged for the coming year. Seems reasonable, so I called the school to ask them for said forms. So far, I got last year's statement. This year? They're working on it.
 To be continued...

The Tuition Crisis: Religious Zionist Edition

Fighting for Cheaper Yeshiva Tuition. At least for now.

I just got the bill for my son's new yeshiva - which includes full dorm. The price? 18,000 shekel for the year.
I know what you're thinking in the United States: 18,000...divided by about 4...that's 4,500 dollars for the year! What a deal! And it includes full dorm? What are you complaining about?
First of all, I'm not complaining. OK, I am. But also realize that salaries are far lower here than they are in America. And it's not only me. The entire Religious Zionist sector is complaining. And it's gotten quite political, which means that something might actually happen.
Check out this article from the Israeli website Kipa, which is one of the primary websites for the Religious Zionist community. In it, the head of Bayit Hayehudi, Rabbi Dr. Daniel Hershkovitz, is quoted as refusing to vote for the cuts to the Israeli budget (which aslo include a small tax hike), unless the government does something about the astronomical price of Religious Zionist education.

"הורים רבים נקלעו לחובות וקורסים תחת הנטל הכלכלי. בחינוך הדתי משלמים פי 10 ויותר מאשר בחינוך החילוני והחרדי. הציבור הדתי-לאומי נושא בנטל אך הוא הראשון שמשלם את מחיר הקיצוצים", אמר הרשקוביץ.
במפגש שקיים בשבוע שעבר עם ועד ההורים הפועל למען הוזלת תשלומי ההורים במגזר הדתי, אמר להם הרשקוביץ כי "הגיע זמן להפסיק להיות מנומסים ולדאוג גם לעצמנו. אנחנו משלמים עבור חינוך ילדינו סכומים כבדים שאף מגזר בישראל לא משלם. דורשים מאיתנו לשאת בהוצאות שלא דורשים מאחרים. תקציב החינוך החרדי גדל ב-46% בהתמדה, ולחינוך הדתי קיצצו קרוב ל-80 אחוז מהתקציב הממוצע לתלמיד. בדיוני התקציב נאמר הפעם: עד כאן. מחובתנו להילחם למען הציבור שלנו, שקורס תחת נטל התשלומים".

"Many parents find themselves ensnared by dept and are crumbling under the financial strain. For religious [Zionest] education, parents pay ten times what other parents pay for secular or Chareidi [eduation]. The Religious Zionist community carries its weight [in serving in the army and in Israeli society] but it's the first to pay the price when there are cuts", Hershkovitz said.
In a meeting last week with a committee of parents working to reduce the cost of education in the Religious Zionist community, Hershkovitz said, "The time has come for us to stop being polite and to take care of ourselves. For our childrens' education, we pay great amounts that no other sector pays. [The educational system] demands payments from us that it doesn't demand from others. The budget for Chareidi education grew consistently, at a rate of 46 percent, and from the Religious Zionist edudational system, they cut an average of 80 percent of the budget per student. With regard to the issue of the budget we say, "Enough!" It is our obligation to fight for our own community, which is crushed by the burden of these payments.

Yeah! Right! You go Rabbi Dr. Hershkowitz!
What's really going on here?
First and foremost, what we're dealing with here is politics. The Bayit Hayehudi is in the middle of its first-ever primaries (although I have no idea when the elections are - I think early September), and candidates are falling all over themselves to demonstrate how they're the best choice to lead the Religious Zionist community. I don't know if you clicked on the link to the articel, but let me share with you what the screen actually looked like when I read it. (You need to click on the image to see it full size with my comments).

Hershkowitz is clearly trying to gain favor with his constituency with an issue that's near and dear to most of our hearts: the high cost of education. And he's got my attention. Truth be told, if he gets the government to kick in some money, I'll vote for him too.
Moreover, I take some comfort in the fact that there is actually a chance that something might happen, and that tuitions might go down somewhat, because the issue is political. In America, despite the insistence that Jews must get more involved in local politics as a means to help address the crushing burden of day school tuition, I can't really see that making much of a difference. There's no appetite for vouchers pretty much anywhere in America, and with budgets as tight as they are, what politician (other than one in Brooklyn or New Square) would vote to give a slice of that budget to private schools? But here, everyone fights for their piece of the pie. So, if Hershkovitz is willing to fight hard enough, he might just get somewhere. In fact, Ha'aretz is now reporting that the Prime Minister has already promised to do something about the payments in response to Hershkovitz's threats. Great for us.
But his comments raise a much broader issue. He's really right. For ages, the RZ community waffled between trying to do what's best for everyone, and worrying about our own needs. Not so Chareidim who willingly sold their votes to fund their yeshivot. (If you're wondering why they get such great subsidies, that's why.)
We pay more for the simple reason that we want more out of our kids' education. The secular want excellent secular studies. They don't need or want 24 hours of class per week on religious education. The Chareidim want and pay for Torah, but pretty much could care less about secular education. We want both. We insist on both. So, should we really be that surprised when it costs more money?
But do we really want to be yet another group that grovels in the Knesset for our slice of the pie? I guess, right now, the answer is yes. But that groveling comes at a price. In essence, we've got to ask ourselves: what are we willing to give up? What's our price? It's easy to refuse to vote for a budget that's going to pass anyway. But when push comes to shove, and the Prime Minister is counting votes for a controversial issue (kicking people out of their homes, perhaps), will we be willing to sacrafice those people, and that Land, at the Altar of Cheaper Education?
Is that really who we want to be?

Why Do People Steal? How Much is your Childrens' Tuition?

The New York Times this morning reported the sad story of Rabbi Menachem Youlus, who admitted in Federal court that his tales of Torah rescue were little more than imaginary, and that he had funneled the money that he raised to save Holocaust Torahs into personal accounts. Truth be told, no one who read the original news articles should be surprised. The verdict seemed a foregone conclusion. Reading about his lawyer's plea for leniency, I find myself vacillating between an innate sense of compassion - which would warrant a lenient sentence - and a feeling of outrage at both the Chillul Hashem that Rabbi Youlus caused, and the fact that his theft and deceit specifically centered about restoring old Torah scrolls - which makes me want the judge to "throw the book" at him.
And yet, one paragraph from the article struck me.

Rabbi Youlus was also accused of writing $344,000 in checks to himself from the bookstore’s account, charging about $200,000 in personal expenses to a credit card issued to the bookstore and using $90,000 in the bookstore’s money to pay private school tuition for his children and his relatives’ children.

I honestly believe that it started with the tuition. Facing the crushing burden of his kids' tuition bills, he "found a way," and when it worked once and people started giving him money, he was already hooked, and he found himself stealing the money for other things as well. After all, we all know well the Talmudic dictum that the first time one sins, he feels guilty; the second time it's already "permitted," and by the third time, he sees it as a mitzvah. It's not that hard to imagine.
This story to me represents an egregious example of a probably far more widespread phenomenon. How many Torah Jews fudge their taxes with the self-righteous justification that, "Well, I'm not using the public school system, so I should get a break." Necessity truly is the mother of invention, even if all we're inventing are the lies that justify acts of fraud and criminality.
I'm not, by any means, suggesting that most Orthodox Jews are criminals. But I do think that the crushing burden of paying private school tuition is having a devastating impact on the Jewish community in ways that we are only beginning to consider.
As for his punishment, simply sending Rabbi Youlus to sit in jail seems to me to be a waste of his talents. He clearly has the knowledge and skills to preserve and repair damaged Torah scrolls. Instead of throwing him in jail where he'll simply be a burden to the government (which cannot afford incarcerating more people), I suggest to the presiding judge a more creative sentence: He stole money under the "cover" of repairing Torahs. Fit him with an ankle bracelet, give him house arrest for however long seems appropriate, and during that time, sentence him to many, many hours of community service, repairing Torah scrolls of any and all comers - starting with the congregations that he bilked, free of charge.