The cabinet on Sunday 7 Adar approved an additional NIS 52.3 million in annual yeshiva funding based on coalition agreement covering the natural growth of yeshivos. This is based on the formula of NIS 477 per month for each talmid and NIS 857 for an avreich.
Nevertheless, Kikar Shabbos News reports many yeshivos in the chassidic and litvish communities are on the verge of financial collapse, citing Yeshivas Ateres Shlomo headed by HaGaon HaRav Baruch Mordechai Ezrachi as one of them. The rosh yeshiva was recently in the USA in the hope of soliciting badly-needed funds.
Yeshivas Beit Shmuel in Mattersdorf is another listed, citing avreichim have not been paid for the past five months.
Other yeshivos are listed as well, explaining that despite the government adhering to its coalition commitment to pay a minimum sum per talmid/avreich, many yeshivos haven’t been successful in enlisting the additional funds needed to pay salaries and remain financially solvent.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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5 Responses
Perhaps its time for Yeshivos in EY to confront the reality that many yeshivos in the U.S. have come to realize, There are simply too many yeshivos, kolels, BYs, etc. that are poorly managed and administered to survive financially and some will have to close and/or consolidated with others. It seems that every Rebbalaah wants to be a rosh yeshiva, without regard to the economics. Some may survive for the first few years, but rely on one or two wealthy supporters for the large percentage of their funding. Once those benefactors move on they really have no likelihood of survival. Its simply not viable to assume that you can support a yeshiva long-term by sending even the most chashuve Rav to JFK once or twice a year to beg for funds from American Jews, most of whom are already over-extended supporting yeshivos at home. Its time for a long-overdue study of possible consolidation and improved management of these mosdos.
Just a small point the yeshiva is named Ateres Yisrael after the Rosh Yeshivas father, I think.
For the record the name of the yeshiva is Ateres Yisroel.
All yeshivos are on the verge of financial collapse, and always have been on the verge of financial collapse, and always will be on the verge of financial collapse. This is as it should be.
In our tradition, any “profit” goes “back into the business” rather than being used to build an endowment. That’s a feature, not a bug – but it does mean that Torah institutions are always living “hand to mouth”.
If you want to get rich, you don’t go to yeshiva, you don’t work for a yeshiva, and you don’t try to “own” a yeshiva. While this will shock western economists, frum Jews aren’t motivated by economic incentives.
As for all the above, Baruch ha-Shem.
the government can easily raise the funds by cutting from the bloated government bureaucracy, even in the IDF you have so many bureacrats.