BS”D
IS IT HALACHICALLY ALLOWED FOR YESHIVOS TO ACCEPT GOVERNMENT FUNDING? A FRESH LOOK
Did the title surprise you? If you are thinking “Why on earth should we not accept government help?”, then you should know that this question was seriously debated by the Gedolim, including Rav Aharon Kotler Zatzal, back in the 1961.
What would the potential issurim be? The most obvious is the prohibition against putting the chinuch of our children into the hands of kofrim. In general, the rule in life is that whoever pays the bills calls the shots, and there’s no way that we could allow the government to have a dei’a in our Yeshivos and Bais Yaakovs, which are run according to a sacred, untouchable, mesora.
So how did the heter to take money come about? Some history is in order. The poverty in the community decades ago was a huge issue, and many children would have gone to public school, had there been no loophole to allow acceptance of outside funding.
Even with the specter of Jewish children going to public school for no other reason than lack of funds to sustain the yeshivas, the allowance to accept assistance from the government was still not simple. The book “A Fire in his Soul” details how in 1961, Rav Aharon Kotler Zatzal and other Gedolim deliberated for months, and received input from lawyers and other experts. The Gedolim were assured that government interference in the schools was impossible, based on 1) the history of American democracy, 2) the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, and American law, 3) the tolerance and democratic bent of the American people, who would not permit the violation of Jewish religious liberty or the Jews’ right to transmit Torah teachings to their children.
From Agudas Anshei Emes, here.