Education Minister Yossi Sarid promised last week that in the
forthcoming fiscal year, he will allocate NIS five million to
groups which will, "in the spirit of the Shenhar Report,"
teach Judaism in the schools from a non-Orthodox point of
view.
The Shenhar report is a discredited document that was
published by a commission appointed by the Ministry of
Education eight years ago. Members of the commission refused
to sign the report, as they charged that the final report did
not reflect the work of the committee, but rather the views
of the chairman, Dr. Aliza Shenhar, which were rejected by
everyone else. Dr. Shenhar was made ambassador to Russia
right after the report was published.
Since its publication, Meretz ministers have used the Shenhar
Report to justify presenting heretical points of view in the
nation's schools, although all members of the commission,
aside from the chairman, were against this.
The groups which will benefit from this special budget will
be secular and others from the Conservative and Reform
movements, such as the Pluralistic College for Judaism,
headed by Yair Tsaban, and the Humanistic Department of the
Oranim College.
Today, under the aegis of the Education Ministry,
approximately 70 organizations that teach Judaism from a non-
Jewish perspective are active in the schools. Education
Minster Yossi Sarid says that the money will be in addition
to the administrative budget already allotted for education
about "values," which is currently NIS 60 million a year, and
the allocation for the implementation of the report of the
Shenhar Committee on the deepening of Jewish studies in the
schools. The Education Minister has decided that all of the
groups which had hitherto received small allotments from the
Administration for Ideological Education, will benefit from
this new allotment.
Rabbi Avrohom Ravitz said, "Barak's government is leading the
Jewish Nation toward the brink the abyss by promoting foreign
cultures and alien ideologies. They declare that this is
Judaism too, while the truth is that the ideologies of the
heretical streams are not Judaism at all."
Rabbi Moshe Gafni said, "This government is systematically
undermining all of our sacred Jewish values. They began with
the affront to Shabbos kodesh, and are now continuing
by granting legitimacy to the Reform and the Conservatives,
who thrust a knife in the back of Yiddishkeit and our sacred
Torah, and have wreaked havoc in North America, causing
assimilation of terrifying proportions. Today, the government
is attempting, through the Education Ministry, to allow them
to wreak such havoc here too. Such a government, as history
has demonstrated, will not last, if it doesn't change its
direction immediately. We will do all in our power to change
its course, or to cause it to fall."
