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1 Adar I 5765 - February 9, 2005 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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NEWS
Government Unanimously Approves Plan to Advance Religious Services

By Betzalel Kahn

The government unanimously approved a series of proposals by the Prime Minister's Office and the Housing Ministry intended to improve state religious services, including the immediately resumption of construction work on mikvo'os and botei knesses, offsetting the local authorities' debts to the religious councils and transferring the funds directly and increasing the number of positions and funding for mikveh workers.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made the decision to hold a special cabinet meeting to address the issue of religious services following a demand by Degel HaTorah to fulfill Likud pledges in the coalition agreement to solve the problem at the religious councils, to pay the rabbonim their salaries and to provide mikveh workers around the country. The discussion at the cabinet meeting was initiated by Government Secretary Yisrael Maimon.

Meir Schpeigler, director of religious services at the Prime Minister's Office, presented the government ministers a comprehensive survey of the various problems in the area of religious services. He told the ministers all renovation and construction work related to mikvo'os and botei knesses has been total frozen since the beginning of 2004. By the end of 2003 the State had channeled NIS 110 million to these projects, but since then they have been badly neglected and many religious facilities have fallen into total disuse.

Schpeigler claimed that no progress was made despite numerous meetings in various forums to pinpoint the failures and identify the parties responsible for the construction delays. He also reported that in 2001-2002 the Religious Affairs Ministry, then still in existence, issued tenders to renovate and built mikvo'os and provide portable botei knesses. When the ministry was dismantled however, the matter was transferred to the Housing Ministry, which released a mere NIS 7 million in advances. Later, despite a directive by the Attorney General to act without delay to execute the construction and install the portable structures, no action was taken.

Construction and Housing Minister Yitzchak Herzog suggested the immediate release of funding for portable structures purchased long ago, the appointment of an overseer from the Housing Ministry to accompany the project until its completion, paying off the debts of the engineering consultants, releasing funds for the continued construction and renovation of mikvo'os across the country, and placing them under the local authorities' charge by summer.

The current state of the religious councils and the debts owed to them by the local authorities was also raised at the meeting. The religious councils receive 40 percent of their funding from the State and 60 percent from the local authorities. Schpeigler said that using the funding available to them, the religious councils are unable to pay their employees' and pensioners' wages in full. In 2004 alone, he noted, the pensioners' wages came to NIS 90 million.

The State consistently transfers its 40 percent, but the majority of local councils have not been providing their share, leading to a budget deficit of NIS 200 million at the religious councils largely due to NIS 160 million that 85 local authorities have failed to transfer.

As a result the government decided to continue carrying out its reform in addition to activating a recovery program at the religious councils. But to provide immediate relief it was decided that the Prime Minister's Office, together with the Attorney General and the Interior Ministry, would formulate an accelerated arrangement to offset the local authorities' debts to the religious councils within two weeks.

The issue of the rabbonim and mikveh workers was also raised at the cabinet meeting. According to claims, neither new nor existing mikvo'os can be operated. The wages for rabbonim and mikveh workers is provided entirely by the State. The number of posts have not been updated in the budget book since 1994.

Therefore approval has not been granted and it has been infeasible to hire workers to replace those who retired or to operate new mikvo'os. Therefore it was decided to update the number of mikveh workers and to increase budget allocations for salaries to NIS 68 million.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon summed up the lively cabinet meeting by saying the problem of the mikvo'os should be solved within a very short period of time. "The construction of the mikvehs must be completed since the situation is intolerable," he said. "It is unconscionable that a rav or mikveh worker is not paid his salary. Salaries must be provided in an orderly fashion."

At the end of the meeting the ministers unanimously approved the series of proposals brought before them.

The cabinet also approved a proposal by the Defense Minister to continue including teacher-soldiers in Chinuch Atzmai and Maayan Hachinuch HaTorani for another two years despite a High Court appeal on the matter. The government decided that since the High Court has not issued an interim order prohibiting their inclusion in the project these teachers will continue to serve within these frameworks.

"The government's decisions are good," said MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni, "but everything depends on the earnestness of their intentions to carry them out. Presenting the problems and the attempts to solve them show a sense of seriousness and the Prime Minister, resolved to solve the crisis, brought the issue for discussion, but the problem has yet to be solved in any way until any of the government's decisions are executed as they promised."

 

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