The Jewish Voice
ISRAEL
PAGE 6
MAY 11, 2012
Five Arrests in Alleged Israeli Economic Minister Yeshiva Fraud Scandal Talks High Tech at Hadassah Police authorities in Israel raided several yeshivot this week and arrested five people for allegedly participating in a scheme to enroll non-existent students and thereby receive massive funding from the government. Taking action against religious schools in Jerusalem and Betar Illit, the National Fraud Squad seized a number of documents and computers, as well as expensive automobiles owned by the heads of the yeshivot. By Sholom Schreiber nvestigators working on the case have ac cused the educational institutions of bilk ing the stat e t o the tune of millions of shekels . More arr ests ar e expec ted t o take place shortly. The authorities ha ve lat ely adopted a mor e stringent attitude t oward religious schools that allegedly seek to mislead the Education M inistry b y submitting documents f or students who either exist in name only or ar e not ac tually att ending the institution. I n March, the polic e arrested three men fr om Jerusalem on the char ge of fabricating a y eshiva and enr olling a lar ge number of spurious “students” solely f or the purpose of obtaining go vernmentdispensed grants for full-time Torah students. Or thodox students who
By JV Staff
study Torah on a full-time basis in approved yeshivot can qualify to receive grants of at least 3,000 shekels per month depending on such factors as the size of their family. Reform R abbi Uri Regev , dir ector of the r eligious fr eedom ac tivist g roup H iddush, asser ted that the reluctance of Chareidi rabbis to speak out against the prac tice was to blame f or the ongoing duplicity b y institutions in the Or thodox community. “The r esult is that in the Char eidi public it enables the perception that the stat e funds ar e abandoned and it ’s permissible t o spend them fraudulently ,” Regev said. He added that even if the Chareidim t end t o withhold their endorsement of the state, they should utilize the money they r eceive t o improve the education in their y eshivot, rather than put it in the possession of corrupt school directors.
halev was in vited t o lec ture on the “role of Israel ’s t ech boom in pr otecting its citizens, cr eating oppor tunity, and pr oviding inno vation health care like that seen at Hadassah Hospital I n Jerusalem,” ac cording to adv ertisements r eleased be fore the event. Mostly att ended b y members of the Hadassah ’s M eira Chapter—primarily comprised of “professional, w orking w oman,” according t o the Hadassah Web site— the lec ture gave attendees the oppor tunity t o learn mor e about the workings of Israel’s high tech industr y, and ho w, thr ough the raw power of human resources, Israel has bec ome an inno vative hub of international business appeal in r ecent y ears. I n honor of its c entennial—Hadassah was founded in 1912 b y Henrietta Szold—the lec ture’s or ganizers, Meira presidents Gillie Nev el and
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Hadassah Ein Kerem. A new Hadassah tower is currently being built on that campus.
Alicia P ost, hoped the gathering would help illustrat e Israel ’s rise to global pr ominence during the last one hundred years.
d a o r e h t e s Becau eems to go s r e v ne . h g u o far en
building project in Israel . Despite having under gone a sig nificant See Shalev at Hadassah HQ, page 29
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Before Shalev addr essed her audience, M arcie Natan, Hadassah’s national pr esident, briefly spoke about Hadassah ’s curr ent
Israel’s Economic Minister to North America Nili Shalev paid a visit to the Manhattan headquarters of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of North America this Monday.