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IN-DEPTH FEATURES
Many yeshiva managers and heads of various Torah
institutions have a feeling that the national leaders of the
State of Israel would like to put an end to the Torah world.
There is no other way to explain why the Ministry of Finance
has been heaping abuse on the yeshiva world for many long
years, renewing the attack each year and sometimes stepping
up the offensive.
It could well be that the Ministry does not intend to wipe
out the Torah world, but rather to trample over it, goad it
and ignite hatred and animosity toward the chareidi sector
until the assault reaches the level of an all-out culture
war against chareidim, and accompanied by leftist
ideology.
All of the abuse by Finance Ministry officials is really a
direct extension of the anti-yeshiva, anti-chareidi
incitement launched by the mainstream media, and perhaps the
two are tied together. The media helps Finance officials to
wage a campaign against the chareidi sector and vice versa.
If we take the facts at face value, it becomes crystal clear
that the Finance Ministry -- to be more precise, the
officials at the Finance Ministry, or as a previous prime
minister referred to them, "the boys at Finance" -- do
everything in their power to undermine yeshivos and other
Torah institutions. There is no other logical explanation
for some of the facts presented below.
The political establishment has been up in arms in recent
weeks over the Ministry of Religious Affairs budget.
Although the Finance Minister promised the money at the
beginning of the year and UTJ announced that its
representatives on the Finance Committee would delay the
transfer of Finance Ministry funds to various other
ministries until the money allocated for December came
through, the Finance Ministry failed to produce the funds
needed to cover the yeshiva budget for the last two months
of the year, a total of NIS 89 million ($20 million). The
payments that were supposed to be transferred by the
committee came to several hundred million shekels allocated
for a variety of purposes.
In this article we will not reiterate the long and sullied
tale of events that transpired in the Finance Committee
during those two weeks, since they have been covered in
Yated Ne'eman reports on a daily basis. Instead we
will focus on other factors that led to the crisis and the
reasons behind them.
Missing Budget Funds
Last week we sat down with the heads of the Union of
Managers of Yeshivos and Torah Institutions, which represent
all the major streams of the chareidi public. Union
management consists of nine members and include some 150
yeshivos. Its goal: to apply pressure on everyone who can
help the Torah world in Israel deal with difficult
problems.
Pressure must be applied on the Religious Affairs Ministry,
the Finance Ministry and the Prime Minister and his staff.
The pressure on the Finance Minister is primarily intended
to encourage him to restrain his officials, who for years
have been doing whatever they please to the yeshiva world.
The campaign is conducted by professional, dedicated
lobbyists representing UTJ in the Knesset and Knesset
committees and sponsored by maranan and their
talmidim and the yeshiva and Torah world. Every day
they stand up to a culture war in the form of incitement and
ideological battles waged by ministers and top officials.
According to yeshiva menahellim, the absurdities they
encounter are great. In each of the last three years the
Finance Ministry has prepared a budget proposal for Israel's
Torah institutions, but at the end of each year the funds
are nowhere to be found. Not only does the Finance Ministry
fail to learn from the previous year and update the budget
accordingly, but instead it keeps trying to cut back,
finding various reasons why the yeshivos should not be given
the money they are supposed to receive.
Assumptions of Fraud
In 1999 the yeshivos were allocated NIS 960 million ($240
million). This "large" sum led Finance officials to assume
that something was amiss. It could not be, they said, that
there were so many talmidim enrolled in yeshiva. (This
figure includes all Torah institutions: yeshivos,
kollelim, institutions for baalei tshuva, etc.)
As a result the Finance Ministry required the Religious
Affairs Ministry and the yeshivos to begin keeping
computerized records of the placement of talmidim,
transfers from one yeshiva to another and dropouts. The Team
Company was commissioned to accomplish this detailed
tracking.
The Finance Ministry expected to find that the yeshivos
falsify their reports, inflating the number of
talmidim enrolled. This has been one of the main
slanderous claims lodged against the yeshivos throughout the
years.
The new Team system went into operation, and in the
meantime, at the end of 1999, the Finance Ministry began
budget talks for the year 2000. Logically the budget should
increase according to the pace of inflation and of the
increase in the number of talmidim from year to year.
However the Finance Minister at the time, Avraham (Beige)
Shochat, was certain that the computerized reports generated
by the outside company would show that the number of
talmidim was far below the figures that had been
submitted.
Yet Team's computerized tracking indicated that there were
actually more talmidim than originally reported.
Administration has never been the strong suit of yeshivas,
and they had not been reporting all of their students.
According to simple logic, under such circumstances the
yeshiva budget for the year 2000 should have been increased
to at least NIS one billion. Finance officials, however,
thought otherwise for they went and cut the budget down to
NIS 820 million. Shochat promised that if the number of
talmidim proved to be greater and the yeshivos faced a
budget shortage, he would cover the difference. And he was
right: the entire budget for the year 2000 was depleted
early and the yeshivos indeed faced a budget shortage.
Today the same Beige Shochat is doing battle as an MK in the
Finance Committee to ensure that these yeshiva budget
shortages are not paid out.
Words are One Thing, Deeds are Another
Then the year 2001 arrived. Last year the national budget
was not approved until the end of March due to the major
change in the national leadership, when Ariel Sharon was
elected to replace Ehud Barak as prime minister.
When the budget is not approved by the beginning of January,
generally the country is run according to a one-twelfth
formula, i.e., each month is funded at one-twelfth of the
budget from the previous year. However in the case of the
yeshivas, the Finance Ministry jumped at the opportunity and
announced that since the budget had not been approved, the
yeshivos would receive only 50 percent of what they had
received the previous year.
UTJ MKs met with yeshiva and kollel management to seek
their advice as to how to deal with the situation. Some
suggested that the funds be transferred only to the major
yeshivos and kollelim, and to keep other institutions
on hold until the budget was approved. Everyone was
concerned over the prospects of receiving only 50 percent of
the funds (NIS 42 million per month instead of NIS 84
million). No one wanted a repeat performance of unpaid
debts. The Finance Ministry seems to have a knack for
remaining in debt to the yeshivos. (See sidebar) If they
only transfer half of the sum now, chances of seeing the
rest of the money are slim, said several participants at the
meeting.
Eventually the January budget was paid at the beginning of
February as a complete funding unit, but according to
Finance Ministry records, the yeshivos had received half of
the sum for January and half of the sum for February. Yet
when the budget was finally approved, to everybody's
surprise the Finance Ministry paid the difference and
eliminated its debt.
MKs, heads of Torah institutions and the Finance Ministry
were all aware that no funds would remain by the end of the
civil year. If the yeshiva budget for the entire year 2001
came to NIS 850,000, how could NIS 85,000 be handed out each
month -- for twelve months? The budget should have been more
than one billion shekels, but Finance Ministry officials
opted to cut that sum in order to conduct a campaign of
incitement against the yeshiva world.
During the course of the year managers of Torah institutions
were also reassured by the promise Finance Minister Silvan
Shalom made to UTJ MKs in the Prime Minister's presence that
if the yeshiva budget fell short, he guaranteed the money
would be paid.
But it seems words are one thing and deeds another. The
state has been facing economic difficulties and the Finance
Minister was unable to obtain the funds. The firm stance
assumed by UTJ MKs and especially Rabbi Yaakov Litzman who
is head of the Knesset Finance Committee, who refused to
approve any budget transfers by the Finance Ministry,
eventually resulted in the transfer of funds for the month
of November. They found the money by taking money from the
Religious Affairs Ministry's Department of Religious
Structures and Mikvaot, stirring considerable wrath at the
Religious Affairs Ministry and among MKs who were irate that
the Finance Ministry would do such a thing without receiving
approval from the Religious Affairs Minister and Ministry
officials. At the time of this writing, funds for the month
of December have yet to be transferred despite promises last
week that the money would be found "within days."
The Last Campaign: 30 Left Out of 300!
The incitement campaign against the yeshiva world the left-
wing MKs was not the only anti-chareidi campaign conducted
over the past year. Six months ago the Finance Ministry
leaked a harsh report on operations within the Division of
Yeshivot, the Department of Organizations and Institutions
and the Department of Accounting at the Religious Affairs
Ministry. The report, prepared by Finance Ministry staff,
stated that budgets for 300 Torah institutions should be
held back after an inspection in which they allegedly did
not meet the criteria. As a result the Religious Affairs
Ministry was forced to withhold the budgets for these
institutions for that month.
That first investigation found problems (wrongly as it
turned out) at 300 out of a total of 2,200 institutions, but
those include only 1,000 out of a total of 220,000
talmidim in the entire system, which is less than half
a percent of all talmidim. Heads of institutions who
met right away with Tzvika Chalmish, the deputy accountant
at the Finance Ministry, maintained that this was well
within the normal expectations among public institutions. In
addition, they claimed that such stringent checks have never
been performed at the National Insurance Institute or at the
Employment Services, although it is well known that there
are many instances of false reporting at both of these
organizations, and the potential savings to the public purse
are much greater. Why just Torah institutions? And why so
much publicity?
Within a matter of days the truth came to light. The desire
to suggest that the yeshivos were guilty of false reporting
led Finance Ministry officials to leak an amateurish report.
"The objective was clear," say heads of Torah institutions,
"to make the yeshivas out to be thieves." The media went
into a frenzy during those days, and although the incident
took place six months ago, the yeshiva world has suffered
immeasurable damage to this day. Of course, no one in the
media who publicized the misleading report bothered to
mention that the facts were later shown to differ from those
presented.
The Truth -- and its Consequences
Spokesmen for the yeshiva world and the chareidi MKs said
right away that the investigation had serious shortcomings.
Some of the inspections were conducted during bein
hazmanim and in some cases an institution numbering a
total of ten talmidim was disqualified if two or three
(in statistical terms this showed up as 20-30 percent!) were
absent.
Finance Ministry officials responded that the inspection in
fact was not carried out the way they had specified and
therefore a second inspection was conducted, during which
many methodological errors were discovered in the first
investigation. After the repeat inspection, 270 of the 300
institutions earlier singled out received their budgets.
Nonetheless, in the wake of that peculiar report, the
Finance Ministry forced the Religious Affairs Ministry to
enforce sanctions against institutions that failed to pass
the inspections. Similar sanctions have never been imposed
against any institutions -- cultural, theater, schools --
within the various government ministries that have been
suspected of falsifying reports. Yet as part of the
incitement campaign, certain procedures have been set in
place to punish "problematic institutions." To illustrate,
an absentee rate of 20 percent (for whatever reason) is
considered severe enough to require sanctions.
By way of comparison the heads of the Igud say that a few
months ago there was a survey of secular Israeli youth that
showed 53 percent of students are absent from school at
least once a week, meaning 10 percent of all students are
absent on any given day. Did anyone ever consider cutting
school budgets due to absenteeism?
They say further that in principle forcing Torah
institutions to prove their enrollment numbers and
demonstrate attendance is unacceptable. No other ministries
are subject to such stringent supervision. Furthermore, the
inspections found no irregularities in the end.
The Outside Company Solution
Every time the Finance Ministry wants to tighten supervision
and enrollment reporting requirements, it argues that if a
private, outside company would handle the reports to the
Religious Affairs Ministry, everything would be fine and
quiet.
In response, yeshiva managers say that nothing of the sort
exists at any other ministry in the State of Israel.
Second, why the continual assaults on the yeshivos?
If someone should be complaining, it should be the yeshiva
managers. Why should they be subject to tighter supervision?
Why hasn't the Finance Ministry kept its commitments to fund
the yeshivos based on natural growth? Why hasn't it now
transferred the remaining NIS 180 million ($45 million) owed
to the yeshivos based on approved budgets from last year?
And why does the Finance Ministry conduct a smear campaign
in the media, backed by top ministry officials?
Putting Bread on the Table
Every survey so far has only demonstrated how dire the
situation has become; how yeshiva managers have been forced
to cower under the budget whip wielded by the Finance
Ministry and how Torah institutions have become the punching
bag for the Finance Ministry and the media, which seek out
any and all means of treading upon the Torah world.
Yeshivas are not the only target. This month (December) many
avreichei kollel did not receive their monthly
stipends for more than three weeks. These stipends typically
come to NIS 1,500 ($350)-NIS 750 from the Religious Affairs
Ministry and NIS 750 from contributions the rosh
kollel raises. "This money just puts bread on the table,"
say managers of Torah institutions.
Some roshei kollel paid avreichim out of the
money for the following month, others took out loans. Some
institutions have little credit left. "Why do we have to beg
for the stipends, at levels that have not been updated for
four years, and then have them make a laughingstock of us?"
they complain.
The battle waged in recent weeks in the Finance Committee
when payments of budget allocations were delayed, comes on
the heels of great efforts on the part of MKs from UTJ. They
held long talks with the Prime Minister, with the director
of his office and with the Finance Minister and top-ranking
officials in his ministry to relay a clear message that the
stipends must be paid, just like the budget for every other
organization in the country. "The Igud of Yeshiva Managers
fully supports the MKs in the battle they are waging, a
battle which is really our battle," say Igud heads.
Budget Cuts
Yeshiva and kollel heads are distraught over the
present situation. They cite the annual ritual on the day
the budget is approved in the Knesset.
Finance Ministry officials prepare the budget book in
advance, including an amount of support sufficient for ten
months. Then on the day the budget is approved they respond
to pressure that is inevitably applied by adding back the
missing funds. Since this comes as a political promise, it
must be laid on the Knesset table 24 hours before the vote
on the budget. "The Finance Ministry could have included the
entire amount when they first prepared the budget and spared
us the humiliation. This is essentially a form of slander
against us, as if we are political blackmailers," say the
Igud.
Now a new problem has arisen. As part of the across-the-
board cuts in all ministries, the government has proposed
cutting the Religious Affairs Ministry's budget by another 3
percent. "All year long they made a laughingstock of us, and
now they want to cut the yeshiva budgets by another three
percent? That is ridiculous," say yeshiva and kollel
heads.
0.0041 Percent!
Knesset Internal Affairs Committee Chairman Rabbi Moshe
Gafni maintains that UTJ should not be expected to bear the
burden of the Mizrachi-oriented ulpanot and the
yeshivot tichoniyot, as is currently the case. The
Torah world consists only of the yeshivos ketanos,
yeshivos gedolos and the kollelim. Other
institutions should be separated, and we should have to
fight only for the yeshivos and the kollelim. "Why
should we be responsible for Mafdal institutions?" wonders
Rabbi Gafni.
Rabbi Gafni presented us with the following figures: In
1976, before the Right came to power, the yeshiva budget was
0.009 percent of the national budget: a total of 76,804
liras. By 1993, the yeshiva budget was already more than NIS
500 million. In 1999 the yeshiva budget was NIS 1.026
billion (0.0047 percent of the national budget). In the year
2000 the yeshiva budget came to NIS 1.127 billion (0.0049
percent of the national budget), and in 2002 the budget is
slated to decrease to NIS 1.054 billion, comprising only
0.0041 percent of the national budget.
Begin increased the yeshiva budget, and during Shamir's time
in office the yeshiva budget increased by another 200
percent. "When I served under Shamir as Religious Affairs
Deputy Minister, the yeshiva budget increased from 112
million shekels to nearly half a billion shekels. To our
great surprise, today the yeshiva budget has decreased and
comprises only 0.0041 percent of the total budget."
Continues Rabbi Gafni, "Finance Ministry officials claim
that for years there has been irregular growth in the number
of talmidim. But this should have been reflected in
the growth in the budget for yeshivas. The yeshiva budget
should have grown in proportion to the growth in the number
of talmidim and in proportion to the general increases
in the national budget. Yet in practice, the allocations for
all yeshivas has remained the same.
"This week, during a meeting of the State Comptroller's
Committee, I said that when I served as Religious Affairs
Deputy Minister and certainly since then, the number of
students at institutions of secular higher learning has
increased, and their budget has grown from NIS 1 billion to
NIS 5.5 billion. Meanwhile the number of yeshiva
talmidim has also increased constantly, yet the
yeshiva budget has not grown even in nominal terms.
"This means that the Finance Ministry has been mixing
ideology into the budget. In keeping with their own desires,
they limit the number of talmidim by decreasing the
budget. [Recently] they stopped [payments to] 300 yeshivos
and kollelim based on a report, and every time there's
something else."
Last week Rabbi Gafni sent a letter to the Prime Minister,
the Finance Minister and members of the government, in which
he complained that the Religious Affairs Ministry budget for
2002 is smaller than the budget for 2000, while the budgets
for all other government ministries -- the budgets for
the President's House, the Prime Minister's Office, the
Police, the Ministries of Finance, Interior, Justice,
Defense, Environment, Culture, Education, Higher Education,
Employment, Welfare, Health, Housing, Agriculture,
Infrastructures, Industry and Commerce, Tourism, Transport
and Communications -- have increased. Only the Religious
Affairs Ministry budget decreased: from NIS 1,626 billion in
2000 to NIS 1,587 billion in 2002 (a decrease of NIS 39
million). The yeshiva budget has also been reduced despite
the need for an increase: from NIS 1,127 billion in 2000 to
NIS 1,054 billion in 2002 (a decrease of more than NIS 72
million).
Rabbi Gafni has yet to receive replies from the Prime
Minister and the Finance Minister. During the Knesset budget
talks to take place over the course of the next weeks, UTJ
representatives will insist on a budget increase for
yeshivos and for the Religious Affairs Ministry. The MKs
know the battle will be tough, and they are also bracing
themselves for the Knesset battle over putting the yeshiva
support clause into the budget book, which would make the
funding a part of the basic budget and would protect it from
the attacks it has been subject to, particularly by Finance
Ministry officials who have taken great pleasure in heaping
abuse on the yeshivos through various budgetary maneuvers.
-------------------------
The following letter, dated 1 Teves (December 16th), was
written by Rabbi Moshe Gafni and sent to the Prime Minister,
the Finance Minister, members of the government and members
of the Knesset Finance Committee.
Based on the 2002 budget proposed by the Finance Ministry
and the government, every single governmental ministry has
been given a budgetary increase over the past two years with
the exception of the Ministry for Religious Affairs budget
and the yeshiva budget, both of which were given smaller
budgets.
For your convenience I have included a table that I copied
from the budget books showing the results for the year 2000
and the proposed budget for the year 2002. It includes a
breakdown of the increases in every governmental ministry,
while the Ministry for Religious Affairs alone has a budget
reduction of NIS 39,098 million and the yeshivas have a
budget reduction of NIS 72,337 million.
Respectfully yours,
Moshe Gafni
Yeshiva Budget (Clause 04)
The serious claims lodged against the Finance Ministry in
the main article have already been heard for years. Last
week we contacted the Finance Minister with a series of
detailed questions, but as with every other high-ranking
minister, it is no easy task to hold a conversation with
Silvan Shalom. The economic crisis in general and the
specific pressures of the day prevented the Finance Minister
from responding to our questions.
Silvan Shalom's close associates boast, "Work relations are
good and in order, and full cooperation and mutual respect
prevail between the Finance Minister and the Religious
Affairs Minister." Unfortunately the cooperation between
them does not express itself in any major improvements in
the yeshiva budget in particular nor the Religious Affairs
Ministry budget in general.
Silvan Shalom's staff blames former minister Yossi Beilin
for all of the balagan in the Ministry of Religious
Affairs budget. They claim that in the 2001 budget,
submitted while Yossi Beilin was serving as Religious
Affairs Minister, it was decided to eliminate the Religious
Affairs Ministry and therefore the Ministry budget was not
included in the budget book.
When Silvan Shalom assumed the job of Finance Minster, he
worked to reverse the decision and to return the Religious
Affairs Ministry to the budget book. "After the budget was
approved in March 2001, the Religious Affairs Ministry was
indeed returned to the budget book," say the Finance
Minister's associates.
One big question remains a mystery: Why was the Religious
Affairs Ministry budget for 2002 cut more than all other
government ministries if the budget is built on a per-
talmid rate and the number of talmidim in
yeshivas has increased considerably in recent years? During
the same period the number of university students has grown
as well, and there somehow funding was made available to
increase the higher-education budget phenomenally.
To this day the Ministry of Religious Affairs owes
approximately NIS 100 million ($25 million) to Torah
institutions for debts accrued during different periods
starting before 1999. If someone thought that the Religious
Affairs Ministry or the Finance Ministry intends to pay
these outstanding debts, he can keep dreaming.
Since then, that is after the computerized Team system was
brought online, another NIS 70-80 million in unpaid debts to
the yeshivas remains because the new, sophisticated
computers reported growth in the number of talmidim
(just the opposite of the results the Finance Ministers
hoped the new system would show). Does someone plan to pay?
As of now, this remains uncertain.
Some yeshiva and kollel managers have documents in
hand showing that the Religious Affairs Ministry does indeed
owe them large sums of money, yet they have no way of
receiving the funds, for the money does not exist -- there
is nowhere to take it from.
In recent months, in every meeting between UTJ and yeshiva
representatives and Finance Ministry officials, the issue
was brought up. On each of these occasions it was deferred
for the simple reason that there is no money.
Recently there was a change. The Finance Ministry sent
letters to yeshivas saying institutions that sign a form
affirming that they have no claims beyond the amount the
Ministry
is willing to pay them for this year can receive
the money, but not everyone is willing to sign such a form.
Many managers have objections to the amounts listed, and
therefore are reluctant to surrender to the dictates of the
Finance Ministry.
Essentially, there are written promises, and it is thought
that if the respective institutions turn to the courts and
present these letters, the state would be forced to pay the
money immediately.
Torah institutions in Israel are run as nonprofit
organizations. VAT authorities do not recognize the expenses
generated by the yeshivas as deductible since they are not
companies or authorized businesses. Therefore they pay 17
percent VAT on food products, furniture, equipment -- on
virtually everything that they buy.
A few years ago the menahel of one yeshiva calculated
the total payments of the yeshivas and he came to an
astounding conclusion: Torah institutions in Israel pay more
than NIS 1 billion in VAT every year! This is much more than
the amount of financial support the government provides the
yeshivas.
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