Florida – Leaders of education and civil-liberties groups — including a Palm Coast rabbi — filed a lawsuit today to try to block two proposed constitutional amendments that could help lead to school vouchers in Florida.
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The lawsuit, filed in Leon County circuit court, challenges two proposed amendments that were approved this spring by the state’s powerful Taxation and Budget Reform Commission.
Those amendments, at least in part, would eliminate legal roadblocks to sending tax dollars to religious and private schools. The measures are scheduled to go before voters in the November election.
But opponents argue the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission overstepped its authority in proposing the amendments, which come after years of legal and political fighting about vouchers.
Among the plaintiffs in the case is Rabbi Merrill Shapiro, who is from Temple Beth Shalom in Palm Coast and also is vice president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Other groups involved in the suit include the Florida Education Association teachers union and the Florida Association of School Administrators.
careful all you rubashkin haters, it’s men like this who will make sure every frum school loses every penny of government funding … self hating jews.
Well in GB we had publicly funded religious schools, but since the official religion was Christianity, the Jewish students were required to attend classes each week given by an Anglican cleric on Christianity.
Perhaps American Jews are better off paying the US version of the dhimmi tax which is double tuition.
I don’t really know.
If only Aish could show him the light of the Torah I do not think this Jew would continue with this. He did not have the education we had to really understand the importance of our Jewish Heritage. If only someone could reach out to him with love I am sure he would change his mind. What a pity. Another lost soul.
It’s the fact that he’s a liberal that’s the problem.
Not knowing the background of Rabbi Shapiro, this much can be stated with certainty. The fact that he is a pulpit and Congregation Rabbi is nothing more than a job (position) to him. He doesn’t care about Jewish Education (from a national and Historical standpoint), and no amount of “Reaching out with love” by Aish, or any other organization would make any difference!
You are soooooooooo very wrong. A Jew is a Jew. Never give up on him. So he does it for his job. That is not the point. The point is… if anybody would really know how special it is to be a Jew. How much it takes our private schools to help us grow into who we are. They would not go against anything, that might jeopardize our education, or to hinder our ability to benefit from any extra money we may need to educate our children. The world would be a better place if everyone would not look for faults in any Jew. If we can take five minutes of every day to share something with someone who does not know something we do….What a world that would be… I hope I will be able to be part of that world…. Yes my dear… with love and only with love…
Want to Bet he is Super Pro=Obama……can spot them a mile away.
Not to deny the fact that Conservative is anti-Torah, and most of their rabbis are very liberal and would oppose tuition vouchers regardless, but there’s also a selfish reason for the opposition.
If you notice, Conservative rabbis are no friends even of the Conservative day schools, like Solomon Schecter, b/c it tends to decrease enrollment in their own temples’ afternoon hebrew school.
So besides their politics and opposition to religion in general and torah in particular, they really also just want to make more money for their synagogue.