The Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis, broke today with a 30-year tradition by voting to seek federal aid for its religious schools. The resolution, carried by voice vote at the 79th annual convention of the Assembly, endorsed the Packwood-Moynihan bill, which would provide tax benefits for parents of children in such non-public primary and secondary day schools.
The issue is of considerable importance to the Conservative Movement because it sponsors a flourishing day school program, the Solomon Schechter movement which currently has 53 Conservative day schools in the United States and Canada.
Attempts had been made regularly at previous Assembly conventions over the past three decades to win approval for federal aid, without success, although the vote against it grew smaller from year to year. This year’s attempt was initiated by Rabbi Aaron Krauss of the Community Synagogue of Atlantic City, N.J., who circulated a draft resolution among 200 members of the Assembly picked at random before the convention and received 47 endorsements of the petition within two weeks.
Krauss explained the success of his resolution by saying that the sentiment had been growing within the Conservative rabbinate for some sort of help because of the soaring costs of education which cannot be met by parents. Objection in the past was centered around direct federal aid as a breach in the wall of church state separation, but the Packwood-Moynihan bill would get around this by having part of the tuition included as an exemption in income tax returns.
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