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JEWISH Feb. 26, 2016 • 17 Adar I 5776
Parshas Ki Tisa • Candlelighting 5:24 pm
Luach page 14
Vol 15, No. 9 • TheJewishStar.com
Vol 15, No. 7 • TheJewishStar.com
THE NEWSPAPER OF OUR ORTHODOX COMMUNITIES
NYS opens spigot on cash ow to schools By Judith Dinowitz The New York State Education Department said this week that it will begin releasing the balance of $125 million for this year’s payment of outstanding mandated reimbursements to nonpublic schools. The mandated services program reimburses the schools for the costs of a variety of government-mandated functions, includ-
ing attendance reporting, maintaining immunization records, and testing and scoring students on core subjects. Under the Comprehensive Attendance Program (CAP), schools throughout the state take attendance multiple times during the day and follow up on students’ poor attendance patterns. For more than 10 years, due to budget Continued on page 15
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Day school splits over its approach to Israel Analysis by Andrew Pessin sk two Jews, you get three opinions— or is it four? Two millennia after the fall of the Second Temple—due, it is said, to the bickering among factions—not much has changed. From J Street to AIPAC, the Jewish house remains divided, with battles now, apparently, regrettably, touching even Jewish day schools. “Defend the Jewish People Against the Anti-Israel Lerner School,� proclaimed the
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SKA girls beam Shabbaton smiles The junior class of the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls enjoyed an amazing Shabbaton ďŹ lled with ruach and achdut last
weekend in Woodmere, with all of the “out of towners� happily hosted by Woodmere students. Continued on page 21
ominous online petition, bearing approximately 1,100 signatures before it was removed around Feb. 10. Formerly named the Sandra E. Lerner Jewish Community Day School, Lerner School is an elementary and preschool providing Jewish education in Durham, N.C. An “anti-Israel� Jewish school is more than conceivable, considering how many Jews proudly campaign against the Jewish state. Nor is there any shortage of such Continued on page 18
Orthodox suggest failing Conservatives try ‘substance’ Rabbis Lerner and Menken call Torah, not ‘PR,’ the answer
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According to the Pew Research Center’s survey of American Jews in 2013, the once-dominant Conservative movement has lost one-third of its members in the past 25 years. It now comprises merely 18 percent of American Jews—and only 11 percent of those under 30. The Avi Chai Foundation’s Day School Census determined that enrollment in the movement’s Solomon Schechter schools plummeted 44 percent in the past 15 years. Wernick responds to these daunting numbers by saying, “We need to stop shraying our kups about everything that is bad, and Continued on page 15
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By Rabbi Yaakov Menken and Rabbi Pesach Lerner Responding to a dramatic decline in membership, the Conservative Jewish movement’s congregational arm has hired the Good Omen PR agency to survey hundreds of its members and “develop a new ‘position statement’ for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ).� Explaining their need, USCJ CEO Rabbi Steven Wernick described “a level of uncertainty about precisely where the ‘brand’ of Conservative Judaism sits in our members’ lives.� The problem, however, is far more essential than branding.
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