The Ministry of Education some time ago decided funding for talmidim from abroad will be linked to yeshivos taking them to cultural and heritage sites. Funding for these mosdos, such as for talmidim from abroad in Mir, will be contingent on visits to the sites which are approved by the ministry, appearing in the letter sent to roshei yeshivos and directors on 3 Marcheshvan.
The letter begins by reminding officials that their funding is contingent on the visits. The ministry is calling for one visit to a heritage site, one heritage to a Holocaust memorial site, a visit to Knesset or the Supreme Court or another government institution and a visit to an IDF or border police unit.
Heritage Sites: (one visit)
Yerushalayim
1. The Kosel
2. Shimon HaTzaddik
3. The Sanhedrin Ketana Cave
4. The kever of Rav Ovadia M’Bartinura
5. The kever of Zechariah HaNavi
6. Yad Avshalom
7. Kever of Eliyahu HaNavi (Haifa)
8. Kever Rambam (Tiveria)
9. Kever of Rabbi Akiva (Tiveria)
10. Cave of Rav Chiya and his sons (Tiveria)
11. Tziyun of the Rashbi (Meron)
12. Spring of Rashbi (Peki’in)
13. Jewish cemetery (Peki’in)
14. Kever of Rav Yossi (Peki’in)
15. Kever of Rav Yehoshua ben Chaninah (Peki’in)
16. Ancient Shul (Peki’in)
17. New Shul (Peki’in)
Holocaust Sites: (one visit)
1. Yad Vashem
2. The Shoah Museum
3. Yad Mordechai Museum
4. Beit Tarzin
5. Lochamei Geta’ot Museum
Government Sites: (one visit) (Must specify who is meeting and escorting the group)
1. Knesset
2. Supreme Court
3. A state government office
4. A local government office
5. A local authority office
IDF Facility: (one visit)
1. Must make advanced arrangement to visit IDF or border police and receive an escorted visit. Must specify which unit is being visited.
Each of the state-mandated trips must include a tour on site of no less than 90 minutes. Mosdos that do not complete all of the above by the end of 2014 will not be entitled to funding in 2015 and will be requested to return the funding received in 2014. If a yeshiva wishes to visit other sites it may file a request to have the ministry determine if the site requested meets the criteria.
The letter is dated October 27th so the yeshivos have about two months to remain eligible for funding and not have to return funding to the ministry.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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18 Responses
Easy enough to fulfill.
The religious places most talmidim visit anyway and Yad Hashem is a norm for taanis visiting — state/local government office cant be too hard!!!
heritage site is easy
and government site hopefully wont be too bad, maybe they could go to bnei braks government’s office
Kever of Eliyahu HaNavi?
When did he ever die?
let the government take Israeli secylar students on these tours
As long as you don’t have to visit hertzl ym”s.
What’s eliyahu hanavi’s lever?
Just another proof they just want to dictate and make life miserable. Next will be holyland museum (nothing jewish there really.) Or some other non acceptable locations.
What about a trip to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?
Do the tours also include having to listen to female IDF soldiers sing or is that only required of actual IDF officers?
He who pays the fiddler calls the tune.
If a yeshiva doesn’t wanmt to spread zionist (hiloni) propaganda, don’t accept their money.
What an absolutely positively mishugina m’dina!!
#4
Secular students do these visits plus more during school trips from 1-12th grade.
Do foreign students in Israeli universities get similar subsidies (I think they do) and are they required to visit such sites? If they aren’t, there’s probably room for court action for discrimination.
Well a visit to the משמר הגבול shouldn’t be that hard to arrange, isn’t there a שבת הפגנה coming up one of these weeks.
Well a visit to the משמר הגבול shouldn’t be that hard to arrange, isn’t there a שבת הפגנה coming up one of these weeks. BTW plenty of Jews pay their taxes over there, so those חילונים aren’t necessarily the ones paying the piper.
I’m not sure why people are getting worked up about this. This is for funding for foreign students. Another article has it saying that Israel has many poor children, yet the UTJ MK’s demand funding for “rich” American and British students to study in Israel.
Send a thousand foreign bochrim to the Knesset in one go to make a tumult big enough to loosen their appetite for our visits.
#11:
Secular students do not do “all these places” and more. There are Israeli children – and not a few of them, either – who have never even been to the Kosel.
#15, people are getting worked up because foreign university students are getting funding regardless of where they do or do not visit during their stay here, while the government is now making funding for foreign yeshiva students contingent upon their own cultural agenda.
This has nothing to do with money and everything to do with the government’s attempt to dictate its own cultural norms to the frum community. The “rich” Anglo kids who come to learn here in yeshivos and seminaries bring in much more money to the country via tourism, and the government knows it.
vashti the UTJ MK’s demand funding for “rich” American and British students
they demand for the rich only but not for the poor? or acc. to you there are no poor students from chu”l who want to study in israel?