The Israel Defense Forces’ widespread Jewish conversion course is about to close its doorways on Friday over a budget shortfall of some NIS 20 million ($5.6 million), leaving some 2,500 college students present process conversion, a lot of them troopers, in limbo.
Nativ is the one state-recognized conversion system within the nation not managed by the Chief Rabbinate. Hundreds of troopers, most of them non-Jewish relations of Jewish immigrants from the previous Soviet Union, enter the military’s conversion system annually. Thousands have efficiently completed this system and transformed to Judaism by way of the IDF’s rabbinic court docket.
But this system was set to finish its actions on the finish of this week, barring any last-ditch agreements between the Prime Minister’s Office and the treasury on its funding.
A Nativ spokesperson instructed Famzn News that as of Thursday afternoon this system had not heard from the PMO on a doable bailout. The PMO and Finance Ministry didn't instantly reply to a request for touch upon the negotiations.
The IDF troopers in this system will now not be permitted to keep within the Nativ services upon its closure, this system stated.
In a letter despatched to the PMO on Wednesday, the army-run conversion program warned of the looming shutdown, dispersal of the two,500 college students, and layoffs of some 180 lecturers from June 1.
The same budget dispute between Nativ and the PMO and Finance Ministry threatened to derail this system in 2015, although it was later resolved.
Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern — a founding father of this system throughout his earlier army profession — expressed hope that the federal government would step in to bail out “one of the most important projects for the IDF as a people’s army.”
Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern, speaks throughout a convention for Young Leadership packages, at Haifa University, April 11, 2016. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
Stern stated he it was “very upsetting to hear that the course, through which some 10,000 young people converted, will close. As one of the cornerstones of conversion in Israel, the Nativ course has frequently proven itself more [effective] than the state conversion system.”
Yesh Atid MK Aliza Lavie despatched a letter to the cupboard secretary on Wednesday evening, imploring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene.
“If the government can’t find such a small sum for the continuation of Nativ’s activities, it would be a disgrace that reflects an entirely distorted set of priorities,” stated Lavie in an assertion.
She stated the cupboard secretary had knowledgeable her the matter was being handled, “and I hope the prime minister comes to his senses and immediately transfers the budget for this important enterprise.”
The first Nativ course opened in 2001.