Resonant reverberations are being voiced everywhere in response to the outspoken call of gedolei Yisrael published in Yated Ne'eman this past Friday where they again warned against unrelenting attempts of the current heads of government, primarily the members of the sacrilegious Education Ministry, to blatantly interfere with the curriculum in chareidi educational institutions with the purpose of tampering with our pure Torah chinuch.
As has been previously reported in Yated Ne'eman several times throughout the tenure of this profane government for the past year and a half, the agenda of the Education Minister, Shai Peron of Yesh Atid, working with all the clout and backing of his office, is determined to establish an additional secular educational system. It will be called "Mamlachtit Chareidit" and will attempt to consolidate with the chareidi educational system of tens of thousands of chareidi students receiving an unadulterated Torah curriculum. This new network with its curriculum, supported by Yesh Atid and Habayit Hayehudi, intends to cause severe damage to the entire Torah and yeshiva world and to all educational institutions subscribing to pure chinuch.
The program of a new educational system has met with staunch and determined opposition. Torah leadership is standing vigilantly to warn, in no uncertain terms, against submission to the dictates or enticements of the people from the Education Ministry who are outspokenly determined to control chareidi education.
With the exposure of this goal to interfere with chareidi education, HaRav Shteinman issued a forceful letter in Iyar 5773 which stated: "Regarding the attempt to intervene and demand us to change our curriculum by adding more hours of secular studies while threatening to cut school budgets, should they not examine themselves the degree of success scored by their educational system? We must stand like a fortified barrier and not alter as much as a hairsbreadth in our path of chinuch as transmitted to us and pursued to this day. Let us hope that we shall continue to succeed in educating our children [thus] till the coming of our Redeemer, without an iota of change."
Several weeks afterwards, when it already became known that there were some educational institutions which dared capitulate and include changes in their scholastic programs in order to receive added government allocations, Yated Ne'eman published a decisive, unequivocal letter from HaRav Kanievsky under the title "Daas Torah": "The Rambam wrote in Hilchos Talmud Torah that a father is obligated to teach his child Torah, as is written `And you shall teach them to your sons to speak in them.' The Shulchan Aruch states that it is a mitzvas asei for a man to teach his son Torah. It is obvious that a person does not fulfill his obligation for this mitzvah unless he does so through the traditional manner transmitted down through the generations. And if there are Torah schools which have included alien studies and introduced other changes, [let it be known that] every father in every city who is concerned for his children, should know to distance himself from them, and may it be fulfilled in him and all of his sons that they be `learned in Hashem and much peace be unto your sons."
