Over 1,000 public employees and soldiers receive thousands of shekels in bonuses for completing fictitious yeshiva education.
By DAN IZENBERGreligious soldiers 298(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Some 1,500 policemen, prison employees and soldiers have been receiving NIS 2,000-NIS 4,000 per month more than they deserved because they falsely claimed they were rabbis, the state revealed on Sunday in an indictment filed in Jerusalem District Court.
Ten suspects were indicted, including Meir Rosenthal, a former student at Kollel Darkei Hora'a L'Rabanim and now head of the bureau of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and Yitzhak Ohana, former head of the examination and rabbinical ordination department of the Chief Rabbinate and now bureau chief to Tel Aviv Chief Rabbi Meir Lau.
Other suspects include the deputy chief rabbi of the police, Aharon Godsdiner, and the heads of rabbinical "colleges" in Beit She'an, Gan Ner, Haifa and Safed.
To qualify for the extra income, members of the security forces had to receive a certificate of higher Torah studies from the Chief Rabbinate. To be eligible for the certificate, they had to have studied in a higher yeshiva for at least 35 hours a week for five years.
The students in these colleges paid a tuition fee of NIS 10,000-20,000 and enlisted to study 10 hours a week in the evenings for two-and-a-half years.
According to the indictment, Rosenthal, with the connivance of Ohana, presented the Chief Rabbinate with documents declaring that the students had studied 35 hours a week and that in addition to the two-and-a-half years they studied at his college, they had already completed two-and-a-half years in another yeshiva. Many did not have any religious education at all.
During these years, the rabbinate issued certificates to 1,500 security officers who had studied at the yeshivas listed in the indictment. The state paid these alleged rabbis a total of NIS 250,000. According to a Justice Ministry spokeswoman, the state prosecution intends to bring criminal charges against 80 more policemen, prison security employees and soldiers, and press disciplinary charges against another 120 who participated in the scam.
The state has also informed many of the alleged rabbis that it intended to stop paying the unjustified increases. The policemen whose extra payments are to be stopped filed a petition with the Supreme Court against the move and asked for interim injunction to temporarily prevent the state from making the cuts. The court rejected the request for an interim injunction.
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