Beitar Illit Mayor Rabbi Yitzchok Pindrus petitioned the High
Court to issue a nisi order instructing the Education
Minister and the Finance Minister to explain why the
government's hot-lunch program was not instituted in all of
the primary schools in Beitar Illit for the 5766 school
year.
In the petition brought before the High Court by Attorney
Akiva Silvetzky, the Mayor is asking the court to determine
which students in Beitar's various primary schools are
eligible for free lunches according to the Student Daily Meal
Law of 5765-2005. The City of Beitar Illit is also demanding
in advance that if for some reason the Court finds that not
all of the city's schools are eligible under the law, then it
should void the law due to its discriminatory nature.
Ranked at the bottom of the towns with poor socioeconomic
conditions, Beitar Illit has 8,000 students in 32
institutions: two government-religious schools, seven Chinuch
Atzmai and Maayan Hachinuch HaTorani schools, 13 recognized
but unofficial institutions and 10 exempt institutions. All
of these institutions take part in the extended-day
program.
In its petition, the City of Beitar notes that all of the
institutions were included in last year's hot lunch pilot
program, which was a big success. The Mayor worked to
included both Beitar Illit and Modi'in Illit in the extended-
day program so that the new law to provide hot lunches in
towns officially listed as socioeconomically deprived towns
where the extended-day program is in effect would apply to
these two cities as well.
Despite the many promises made to the city by various
officials in the government ministries, including the Prime
Minister himself, the state has sidestepped its legal
obligation to have the lunch program apply to all of the
city's educational institutions. During all of the Knesset
Education Committee meetings, government representatives
tried to block the inclusion of Beitar Illit institutions in
the extended-day program, thereby rendering them ineligible
for the hot-lunch program. Several weeks ago the Education
Ministry notified the City of Beitar Illit that the hot-lunch
program could apply to 2,593 students at the city's nine
government-religious, Chinuch Atzmai and Maayan Hachinuch
HaTorani schools, but the Mayor rejected the discriminatory
offer.
In the petition, Mayor Pindrus claimed that chareidi
institutions defined as exempt and recognized but unofficial
meet the legal demands for mandatory education and therefore
these students should not be discriminated against compared
to official and government institutions. "The Finance and
Education Ministers are not authorized to determine which
segment of the student population should benefit from the
food based on the curriculum at the schools, since there is
no connection between curriculum and the need for lunch every
day, and there is no justification to make distinctions among
the students based on the family's worldview and the
curriculum the student studies," reads the High Court
petition. "The more the ministers determine the hot-lunch
program does not apply to exempt institutions or recognized
but unofficial institutions due to these definitions, the
more this shows the law to be a discriminatory, illegitimate
decision."
The petition quotes remarks former Education Minister Yossi
Sarid made during a joint Finance Committee and Education
Committee meeting on the matter. "I do not have an obsession
with chareidim and I certainly don't have an obsession with
chareidi children. An education minister must be color-blind
and recognize that children are children. And this cannot be
challenged in certain places. All children must eat and the
children of chareidim, who are not guilty of anything [just
because] they were born into a chareidi family—what is
this? . . . Even in antisemitic countries they don't do
things like this—distinctions between one type and
another . . . This is antisemitic. Children are children. We
don't differentiate between children. The Education Minister
is a minister of all children, without exception . . . "
High Court Judge D. Dorner instructed the State to respond to
the petition by the first week of September.
