2008 Woodie Awards
Yeshiva Degree Saga Still Unresolved, Simmering
Despite Joel's Firm Position, Education Ministry Yet to Overturn Salary Policy
Ari Fridman
Issue date: 2/15/05 Section: Features
- Page 1 of 1
A Degree in Trouble
In a story that first came to light over Winter Break, the Ministry of Education in Israel, responding to a report in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, confirmed that, for salary purposes, it maintains a policy of not recognizing university degrees that award academic credit for study in religious institutions. Daphna Berman, a correspondent for Ha'aretz, initially intended to write a progress report on the success of the aliyah agency Nefesh B'Nefesh. In the process, a Yeshiva official told The Commentator, she learned from the agency that immigrants it had assisted had recently run up against the Education Ministry's policy.
Currently, more than 600 undergraduate students are studying at 40 different yeshivot and seminaries as part of Yeshiva's S. Daniel Abraham Israel Program. Students who successfully complete a year of study in a recognized institution receive a full year of undergraduate credit upon fulfilling 12 credits in residence at Yeshiva's undergraduate campuses. Should the Education Ministry's policy not be overturned - an unlikely prospect, according to university and ministry officials - graduates of Yeshiva could be dissuaded from making aliyah.
Already, the Education Ministry's policy has affected at least two graduates of Yeshiva University; one alumnus, Adina Sackovitz, an elementary school psychologist, told Ha'aretz in its Friday, January 21 edition, that her salary, assessed by the Education Ministry, is not commensurate with the caliber of her educational background, which also includes a Master's degree from Columbia University. It is not known whether there are additional graduates of Yeshiva and other institutions who have been affected by the ministry's policy, nor is it known when the ministry enacted the policy.
In a February 3 interview with The Commentator, President Richard M. Joel said that Minister of Education Limor Livnat assured him that the ministry's decision not to certify Yeshiva's degree was not a policy decision per se, but rather a series of "bureaucratic misunderstandings." Pointing to the fact that Yeshiva's undergraduate degree is fully recognized by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and elite graduate programs accept Yeshiva graduates routinely, President Joel rejected the notion that the ministry has the right to question the validity of Yeshiva's degree. "They don't get to do that," he said.
As for when the ministry might act to reverse its stance, President Joel said he anticipated that the matter would be resolved in "a matter of days, or weeks, and not months."
In a related development, The Commentator has learned that another recent American immigrant to Israel, Avram Hein, has also experienced difficulty with the Education Ministry. In a January 28 posting on his web log, Am Echad, Hein writes that the ministry refused to recognize his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maryland on account of 24 Advanced Placement credits he accumulated during high school that were recognized by that institution. Hein also alleged in a written interview with The Commentator that officials he spoke to in the Education Ministry were ignorant of the Advanced Placement testing system prevalent in many American high schools.
"It should be clear by now that both the AP and Yeshiva University credit issue is a case of Israel's famous bureaucratic mismanagement," Hein wrote.
Responding indirectly to charges leveled in places like Ha'aretz's "Letters to the Editor" section and elsewhere, Hein asserted that "the refusal to accept Yeshiva University's credit for yeshiva study was not an anti-religious decision, but simply a stupid one." Hein credited Nefesh B'Nefesh for its efforts to assist immigrants through a governmental bureaucracy he termed a "brick wall," but noted that the upstart group could only accomplish so much.
Reaction to the Education Ministry's policy from Yeshiva administrators was almost immediate, as President Richard M. Joel, in Israel on university business, blasted the ministry's policy. "Never has an accrediting body or a graduate school had the slightest question about the stature of a Yeshiva University degree," Pres. Joel told Ha'aretz the day the story broke. "That the Ministry of Education questions the integrity of Yeshiva University degrees boggles the mind."
Three days later, on January 24, Howard Weisband, Yeshiva's Senior Advisor on Israel Affairs, told Arutz-7 that Yeshiva was not specifically targeted: "There is no such ministerial policy not to recognize [Yeshiva's] degree."
On January 25, four days after the ministry's policy became public, the Deputy Education Minister, Michael Melchior, previously unaware of the budget-tightening policy, told Ha'aretz that his ministry would recognize degrees from Yeshiva. That Thursday, Ha'aretz reported that Education Minister Limor Livnat had sent a letter to Pres. Joel, assuring him that the dispute would be settled "to the satisfaction of all concerned," adding that the ministry holds the academic acumen of Yeshiva in high esteem.
Despite a summons to appear at a joint hearing of the Knesset's immigration and education committees hearing Monday January 31, Minister Melchior did not attend, according to The Jerusalem Post. In Melchior's absence, two Yeshiva graduates, Sacknovitz and David Debow, testified at the hearing, which concluded with a call by the committees for one body to evaluate degrees from foreign universities, circumventing the current system that recognizes degrees based on rules set forth by the Civil Service Commission and the Finance Ministry. Ha'aretz quoted MK Collete Avital, chair of the Immigration and Absorption Committee, as saying that the matter would be solved "within a month."
Knesset members were not the only officials attempting to resolve the Education Ministry's certification policy. Nefesh B'Nefesh, the aliyah agency, has been "extremely involved on the highest levels" with officials of the Israeli government, said Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, Executive Director of Nefesh B'Nefesh, apparently with an eye towards ameliorating the transition of future immigrants to Israel.
A Consistent Standard?
To be sure, some question whether the Education Ministry, while maintaining the letter of its degree law, uses a standard consistent with the spirit of the law for recognizing domestic and foreign degrees. For example, Bar-Ilan University exempts, but does not award credit to, students that have studied for a full year at its Institute for Advanced Torah Studies from eight hours of course work in Basic Jewish Studies and two hours of work in General Courses. Two full years of study at the Institute exempts the student from all Basic Jewish Studies requirements and four hours of course work in General Courses. The Institute allows Bar-Ilan students to participate in a dual curriculum of "traditional Talmudic and Judaic Studies combined with full University degree programs," according to its website.
"The Education Ministry is inconsistent with its own policies," charged Ezra Butler, a master's candidate at Bar-Ilan University, and a graduate of Yeshiva College ('03). "For instance, it allows Bar-Ilan to run the vehemently anti-academic Institute for Advanced Torah Studies, exempting its students from taking requisite classes in basic Jewish law and life. Without these courses, one can not receive a first degree from BIU."
In perhaps more of a parallel to Yeshiva's certification policy, Bar-Ilan recognizes a year of study in an Israeli yeshiva or seminary as worthy of exemption from at least four hours of Basic Jewish Studies course work, but offers no exemption from General Courses. Butler conceded that Bar-Ilan's exemption policy steers clear of awarding credit to religious study, distinguishing its policy from that of Yeshiva's.
In fact, Bar-Ilan's credit policy is not the only institution coming under scrutiny from within its ranks; Yeshiva's own credit policy - whether it treats Israeli and American yeshivot alike, has also been called into question.
After attending Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore, MD, during the 2002-2003 school year, Daniel Wiesenfeld, YC '07, was granted 16 credits, half the amount Yeshiva grants students coming from learning institutions in Israel. "I wanted to know why I wasn't able to get the same amount of credits as my peers who studied in Israel," Wiesenfeld said, "so when I asked some school administrators to clarify Yeshiva's policy, I learned that the 32-credits were initially intended to encourage students to spend a year in Israel-many of them were reluctant to commit to an extra year of undergraduate study until that point." Naturally, Ner Israel is not part of the Israel Program; the fact that study there amounts to fewer credits than at an Israeli institution seems to confirm comments made by administrators to Wiesenfeld. Whether Yeshiva's credit policy for Israel studies is rooted more in these old policy decisions than in sound academic consideration remains unclear.
The question of whether Yeshiva could afford to alter or reverse its credit policy in the face of losing the significant number of students, who come specifically because they earn a year of college credit, remains simmering beneath the surface of this entire issue, and it is one that the Joel administration might someday have to encounter head on.
On Israel Credit at Yeshiva
In 1981, in response to students at Ivy League universities receiving credit for Israel study, then Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Israel Miller moved toward the current program format by conducting negotiations with a small number of yeshivot and seminaries to establish a joint program between them and the university.
That Israel's education ministry targeted Yeshiva's Israel Program, even unintentionally, something Weisband and Melchior assert stemmed from both budgetary constraints and wariness over fraudulent degrees of foreign origin, is the latest and most dramatic development surrounding the program. Early last month, Pres. Joel appointed Mark Lehrman as the full director of the program, a move that came on the heels of the November 2004 hiring of Weisband. The new appointments, in addition to the president's frequent emphasis of the centrality of Israel to his vision for Yeshiva, has led to speculation that Yeshiva will play more of an active role in the curricula of the forty institutions it accredits.
While certain women's seminaries do test students on material, the overwhelming majority of men's yeshivot do not. Much of religious study is conducted in pairs, or via chavrutot, atypical of university pedagogy; classes, on the other hand, often feature back and forth dialogue between students and teacher, a more familiar facet of the university experience. When the notion of lacking academic norms was posed to administrators, faculty, and students, most acknowledged this to be the case, but were generally still supportive of the value of academic credit being awarded for Israel study.
Commenting ahead of a meeting in late January between Education Ministry officials and their counterparts at the Civil Service Commission and Finance Ministry, at which the ministry's policy was expected to be reversed but was not, one senior Yeshiva administrator, familiar with the dispute, doubted whether the president would move to reverse or alter Yeshiva's policy of awarding a full year of credit for study in Israel at its accredited schools.
Indeed, while leaving open the possibility that the Israel Program would bear more of a Yeshiva stamp in the future, President Joel was quick to assert that there would be no changes in Yeshiva's policy to award Israel credits in response to the ministry's position. "As an educator, as a parent, [I] profoundly believe that the academic value of the year study in Israel...is an incredibly valuable thing...I believe that students should go to Israel, I believe we should give them credit for going to Israel," said Joel.
Other Yeshiva administrators asserted the value of traditional study of Jewish texts, claiming it is underrated in terms of its contribution toward educational development, and insinuated that the mode of study was certainly deserving of university credit. "People don't give enough thought to the fact that what you do in Talmudic studies, what you do in your Judaic studies is as academic as anything you do in your regular studies," said Vice President for Academic Affairs Mort Lowengrub.
Like President Joel and Dr. Lowengrub, Eli Lansey, Yeshiva College '06, feels that the year in Israel deserves to be recognized with credit. However, he believes that the Israeli government has the legitimate right to deny recognition of degrees that incorporate yeshiva study in Israel. "Israeli schooling is highly regulated by the government and only certain places are accredited," Lansey explained. "The problem arises when an American institution gives credit for study at a place which is not academically recognized by Israel in the first place."
Avi-Gil Chaitovsky, YC '06, studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion for two years before coming to Yeshiva. He worries that if Yeshiva was to reverse its credit policy, more high school students considering Yeshiva for college would not only forgo studying in Israel, but also renege on their plans to matriculate at Yeshiva. "At the same time, there is no question that a 3-year college program," said Chaitovsky in reference to the typical length of a Yeshiva career, "can never be as comprehensive or broad as a 4-year program."
One student who did not spend a year of post-high school study in Israel, Tzvi Kahn, YC '05, credited the Israel experience as generating both religious and personal growth for many of his peers and thought that Yeshiva should continue to award credit for participants on the Israel Program. But, he noted, Israel study "should not be considered a substitute for a year spent on a college campus." Echoing a frequent faculty refrain, Kahn added, "Those who spend four years on campus engaged in intensive academic study will unquestionably emerge with greater general knowledge than a student who has only been here for three years."
A veteran of the Yeshiva College faculty wholeheartedly agreed. "Students who attend the best yeshivot in Israel clearly benefit tremendously and mature both socially and intellectually," said Associate Professor of English Will Lee, who has taught at Yeshiva since 1983. However, Dr. Lee, also the Director of the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program, noted that students would be well advised to lengthen their college careers, especially because they are competing for spots in graduate schools against students coming with "four-year educations at more famous, better established colleges."
Another student who did not study in Israel, Alan Goldsmith, YC '06, went even further, saying that Yeshiva's current Israel policy "lowers the quality of the student population by encouraging students to come here, not because they like [Yeshiva] and want to attend it, but to get out of college as fast as they can."
The question of just which Israeli institutions are deserving of Yeshiva's recognition has also recently been thrust into the limelight following two incidents in January; in one, a student studying at Neveh Zion died of a heroin overdose, and in the other, Jerusalem police arrested four students - two studying at Ner Ya'acov, two at Ohr Yerushalayim - for allegedly selling marijuana. All three institutions are certified by Yeshiva as participants of the Israel Program.
In a story that first came to light over Winter Break, the Ministry of Education in Israel, responding to a report in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, confirmed that, for salary purposes, it maintains a policy of not recognizing university degrees that award academic credit for study in religious institutions. Daphna Berman, a correspondent for Ha'aretz, initially intended to write a progress report on the success of the aliyah agency Nefesh B'Nefesh. In the process, a Yeshiva official told The Commentator, she learned from the agency that immigrants it had assisted had recently run up against the Education Ministry's policy.
Currently, more than 600 undergraduate students are studying at 40 different yeshivot and seminaries as part of Yeshiva's S. Daniel Abraham Israel Program. Students who successfully complete a year of study in a recognized institution receive a full year of undergraduate credit upon fulfilling 12 credits in residence at Yeshiva's undergraduate campuses. Should the Education Ministry's policy not be overturned - an unlikely prospect, according to university and ministry officials - graduates of Yeshiva could be dissuaded from making aliyah.
Already, the Education Ministry's policy has affected at least two graduates of Yeshiva University; one alumnus, Adina Sackovitz, an elementary school psychologist, told Ha'aretz in its Friday, January 21 edition, that her salary, assessed by the Education Ministry, is not commensurate with the caliber of her educational background, which also includes a Master's degree from Columbia University. It is not known whether there are additional graduates of Yeshiva and other institutions who have been affected by the ministry's policy, nor is it known when the ministry enacted the policy.
In a February 3 interview with The Commentator, President Richard M. Joel said that Minister of Education Limor Livnat assured him that the ministry's decision not to certify Yeshiva's degree was not a policy decision per se, but rather a series of "bureaucratic misunderstandings." Pointing to the fact that Yeshiva's undergraduate degree is fully recognized by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and elite graduate programs accept Yeshiva graduates routinely, President Joel rejected the notion that the ministry has the right to question the validity of Yeshiva's degree. "They don't get to do that," he said.
As for when the ministry might act to reverse its stance, President Joel said he anticipated that the matter would be resolved in "a matter of days, or weeks, and not months."
In a related development, The Commentator has learned that another recent American immigrant to Israel, Avram Hein, has also experienced difficulty with the Education Ministry. In a January 28 posting on his web log, Am Echad, Hein writes that the ministry refused to recognize his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Maryland on account of 24 Advanced Placement credits he accumulated during high school that were recognized by that institution. Hein also alleged in a written interview with The Commentator that officials he spoke to in the Education Ministry were ignorant of the Advanced Placement testing system prevalent in many American high schools.
"It should be clear by now that both the AP and Yeshiva University credit issue is a case of Israel's famous bureaucratic mismanagement," Hein wrote.
Responding indirectly to charges leveled in places like Ha'aretz's "Letters to the Editor" section and elsewhere, Hein asserted that "the refusal to accept Yeshiva University's credit for yeshiva study was not an anti-religious decision, but simply a stupid one." Hein credited Nefesh B'Nefesh for its efforts to assist immigrants through a governmental bureaucracy he termed a "brick wall," but noted that the upstart group could only accomplish so much.
Reaction to the Education Ministry's policy from Yeshiva administrators was almost immediate, as President Richard M. Joel, in Israel on university business, blasted the ministry's policy. "Never has an accrediting body or a graduate school had the slightest question about the stature of a Yeshiva University degree," Pres. Joel told Ha'aretz the day the story broke. "That the Ministry of Education questions the integrity of Yeshiva University degrees boggles the mind."
Three days later, on January 24, Howard Weisband, Yeshiva's Senior Advisor on Israel Affairs, told Arutz-7 that Yeshiva was not specifically targeted: "There is no such ministerial policy not to recognize [Yeshiva's] degree."
On January 25, four days after the ministry's policy became public, the Deputy Education Minister, Michael Melchior, previously unaware of the budget-tightening policy, told Ha'aretz that his ministry would recognize degrees from Yeshiva. That Thursday, Ha'aretz reported that Education Minister Limor Livnat had sent a letter to Pres. Joel, assuring him that the dispute would be settled "to the satisfaction of all concerned," adding that the ministry holds the academic acumen of Yeshiva in high esteem.
Despite a summons to appear at a joint hearing of the Knesset's immigration and education committees hearing Monday January 31, Minister Melchior did not attend, according to The Jerusalem Post. In Melchior's absence, two Yeshiva graduates, Sacknovitz and David Debow, testified at the hearing, which concluded with a call by the committees for one body to evaluate degrees from foreign universities, circumventing the current system that recognizes degrees based on rules set forth by the Civil Service Commission and the Finance Ministry. Ha'aretz quoted MK Collete Avital, chair of the Immigration and Absorption Committee, as saying that the matter would be solved "within a month."
Knesset members were not the only officials attempting to resolve the Education Ministry's certification policy. Nefesh B'Nefesh, the aliyah agency, has been "extremely involved on the highest levels" with officials of the Israeli government, said Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, Executive Director of Nefesh B'Nefesh, apparently with an eye towards ameliorating the transition of future immigrants to Israel.
A Consistent Standard?
To be sure, some question whether the Education Ministry, while maintaining the letter of its degree law, uses a standard consistent with the spirit of the law for recognizing domestic and foreign degrees. For example, Bar-Ilan University exempts, but does not award credit to, students that have studied for a full year at its Institute for Advanced Torah Studies from eight hours of course work in Basic Jewish Studies and two hours of work in General Courses. Two full years of study at the Institute exempts the student from all Basic Jewish Studies requirements and four hours of course work in General Courses. The Institute allows Bar-Ilan students to participate in a dual curriculum of "traditional Talmudic and Judaic Studies combined with full University degree programs," according to its website.
"The Education Ministry is inconsistent with its own policies," charged Ezra Butler, a master's candidate at Bar-Ilan University, and a graduate of Yeshiva College ('03). "For instance, it allows Bar-Ilan to run the vehemently anti-academic Institute for Advanced Torah Studies, exempting its students from taking requisite classes in basic Jewish law and life. Without these courses, one can not receive a first degree from BIU."
In perhaps more of a parallel to Yeshiva's certification policy, Bar-Ilan recognizes a year of study in an Israeli yeshiva or seminary as worthy of exemption from at least four hours of Basic Jewish Studies course work, but offers no exemption from General Courses. Butler conceded that Bar-Ilan's exemption policy steers clear of awarding credit to religious study, distinguishing its policy from that of Yeshiva's.
In fact, Bar-Ilan's credit policy is not the only institution coming under scrutiny from within its ranks; Yeshiva's own credit policy - whether it treats Israeli and American yeshivot alike, has also been called into question.
After attending Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore, MD, during the 2002-2003 school year, Daniel Wiesenfeld, YC '07, was granted 16 credits, half the amount Yeshiva grants students coming from learning institutions in Israel. "I wanted to know why I wasn't able to get the same amount of credits as my peers who studied in Israel," Wiesenfeld said, "so when I asked some school administrators to clarify Yeshiva's policy, I learned that the 32-credits were initially intended to encourage students to spend a year in Israel-many of them were reluctant to commit to an extra year of undergraduate study until that point." Naturally, Ner Israel is not part of the Israel Program; the fact that study there amounts to fewer credits than at an Israeli institution seems to confirm comments made by administrators to Wiesenfeld. Whether Yeshiva's credit policy for Israel studies is rooted more in these old policy decisions than in sound academic consideration remains unclear.
The question of whether Yeshiva could afford to alter or reverse its credit policy in the face of losing the significant number of students, who come specifically because they earn a year of college credit, remains simmering beneath the surface of this entire issue, and it is one that the Joel administration might someday have to encounter head on.
On Israel Credit at Yeshiva
In 1981, in response to students at Ivy League universities receiving credit for Israel study, then Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Israel Miller moved toward the current program format by conducting negotiations with a small number of yeshivot and seminaries to establish a joint program between them and the university.
That Israel's education ministry targeted Yeshiva's Israel Program, even unintentionally, something Weisband and Melchior assert stemmed from both budgetary constraints and wariness over fraudulent degrees of foreign origin, is the latest and most dramatic development surrounding the program. Early last month, Pres. Joel appointed Mark Lehrman as the full director of the program, a move that came on the heels of the November 2004 hiring of Weisband. The new appointments, in addition to the president's frequent emphasis of the centrality of Israel to his vision for Yeshiva, has led to speculation that Yeshiva will play more of an active role in the curricula of the forty institutions it accredits.
While certain women's seminaries do test students on material, the overwhelming majority of men's yeshivot do not. Much of religious study is conducted in pairs, or via chavrutot, atypical of university pedagogy; classes, on the other hand, often feature back and forth dialogue between students and teacher, a more familiar facet of the university experience. When the notion of lacking academic norms was posed to administrators, faculty, and students, most acknowledged this to be the case, but were generally still supportive of the value of academic credit being awarded for Israel study.
Commenting ahead of a meeting in late January between Education Ministry officials and their counterparts at the Civil Service Commission and Finance Ministry, at which the ministry's policy was expected to be reversed but was not, one senior Yeshiva administrator, familiar with the dispute, doubted whether the president would move to reverse or alter Yeshiva's policy of awarding a full year of credit for study in Israel at its accredited schools.
Indeed, while leaving open the possibility that the Israel Program would bear more of a Yeshiva stamp in the future, President Joel was quick to assert that there would be no changes in Yeshiva's policy to award Israel credits in response to the ministry's position. "As an educator, as a parent, [I] profoundly believe that the academic value of the year study in Israel...is an incredibly valuable thing...I believe that students should go to Israel, I believe we should give them credit for going to Israel," said Joel.
Other Yeshiva administrators asserted the value of traditional study of Jewish texts, claiming it is underrated in terms of its contribution toward educational development, and insinuated that the mode of study was certainly deserving of university credit. "People don't give enough thought to the fact that what you do in Talmudic studies, what you do in your Judaic studies is as academic as anything you do in your regular studies," said Vice President for Academic Affairs Mort Lowengrub.
Like President Joel and Dr. Lowengrub, Eli Lansey, Yeshiva College '06, feels that the year in Israel deserves to be recognized with credit. However, he believes that the Israeli government has the legitimate right to deny recognition of degrees that incorporate yeshiva study in Israel. "Israeli schooling is highly regulated by the government and only certain places are accredited," Lansey explained. "The problem arises when an American institution gives credit for study at a place which is not academically recognized by Israel in the first place."
Avi-Gil Chaitovsky, YC '06, studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion for two years before coming to Yeshiva. He worries that if Yeshiva was to reverse its credit policy, more high school students considering Yeshiva for college would not only forgo studying in Israel, but also renege on their plans to matriculate at Yeshiva. "At the same time, there is no question that a 3-year college program," said Chaitovsky in reference to the typical length of a Yeshiva career, "can never be as comprehensive or broad as a 4-year program."
One student who did not spend a year of post-high school study in Israel, Tzvi Kahn, YC '05, credited the Israel experience as generating both religious and personal growth for many of his peers and thought that Yeshiva should continue to award credit for participants on the Israel Program. But, he noted, Israel study "should not be considered a substitute for a year spent on a college campus." Echoing a frequent faculty refrain, Kahn added, "Those who spend four years on campus engaged in intensive academic study will unquestionably emerge with greater general knowledge than a student who has only been here for three years."
A veteran of the Yeshiva College faculty wholeheartedly agreed. "Students who attend the best yeshivot in Israel clearly benefit tremendously and mature both socially and intellectually," said Associate Professor of English Will Lee, who has taught at Yeshiva since 1983. However, Dr. Lee, also the Director of the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program, noted that students would be well advised to lengthen their college careers, especially because they are competing for spots in graduate schools against students coming with "four-year educations at more famous, better established colleges."
Another student who did not study in Israel, Alan Goldsmith, YC '06, went even further, saying that Yeshiva's current Israel policy "lowers the quality of the student population by encouraging students to come here, not because they like [Yeshiva] and want to attend it, but to get out of college as fast as they can."
The question of just which Israeli institutions are deserving of Yeshiva's recognition has also recently been thrust into the limelight following two incidents in January; in one, a student studying at Neveh Zion died of a heroin overdose, and in the other, Jerusalem police arrested four students - two studying at Ner Ya'acov, two at Ohr Yerushalayim - for allegedly selling marijuana. All three institutions are certified by Yeshiva as participants of the Israel Program.