Pirchei Hadegel and Bnos Agudas Yisroel, large chareidi youth
movements, issued a fervent plea last week to rabbis of the
national-religious youth movements. They asked them to
influence heads of these movements -- primarily Bnei Akiva --
to withdraw their current appeal to the Israeli High Court
against their funding. In the appeal, the national-religious
movements are demanding the withdrawal of Education Ministry
allocations from the chareidi youth movements.
In a letter addressed to rabbis of the Mafdal, Rav Naftali
Porush, head of Pirchei Hadegel, and Rav Yitzchok Scharansky,
director of Bnos Agudas Yisroel, describe the battles waged
against their government funding in recent years by the large
secular youth movements in cooperation with some religious
movements. The purpose of the conflict is to deny the
chareidi youth movements any governmental funding. The method
used to achieve that aim in the past was appealing to the
High Court. They have challenged various government sources
of funding for the chareidi movements, with some success.
Recently, the movements turned once again to the High Court,
to try to deny the chareidi movements funds from the
Education Ministry that were earmarked for religious
purposes.
Last year the High Court issued a decision stating that the
chareidi youth movements failed to meet the criteria
necessary for the receipt of such funds. However, Yitzchok
Levi, Education Minister at the time, issued a special
amendment with different criteria for the subsidizing of
chareidi youth movements, in consideration of their
particular contribution to Israeli society. Currently, the
secular movements, in conjunction with the national religious
ones, seek to deny the chareidi movements this subsidy as
well in their High Court appeal.
Concurrently, the chareidi movements have turned to the
rabbinical court of Tel Aviv with the request that it issue
an order against Bnei Akiva, Ezra and the Noar Hadati Ha'oved
Vehalomed movements which would prevent them from appealing
to the High Court prior to a clarification of their claims in
the rabbinical court.
The heads of the chareidi movements accuse the religious
movements -- Bnei Akiva in particular -- of scorning the
rabbinical court over and over again and refusing to appear
for a din Torah. "When contention breaks out, we are
turning to you to come to a beis din for an authorized
litigation," the letter states.
