The Christie Administration, reports the Star-Ledger, is “refusing to release copies of applications filed by two religious institutions set to receive public dollars for campus building projects.” Those two religious institutions are Beth Medrash Govoha, a men’s-only Jewish yeshiva in Lakewood that Jewish Week describes as “fervently Orthodox.” The other is Princeton Theological Seminary, a Christian coed school.
The schools are two of 176 that were awarded $1.3 billion in funds ($750 million from a taxpayer referendum) by the State Office of Higher Education. Beth Medrash Govoha received $10.6 million to construct a library/research center and academic center. Princeton Theological Seminary received $645,313 for technology upgrades.
The yeshiva’s award is the second largest of all the awards. Seton Hall University, which has no discriminatory admissions criteria, will receive $11.7 million.
The Star-Ledger filed an Open Public Records Act request to the State Secretary of Higher Education to look at the applications. The request was denied. The awards have been challenged (unsuccessfully) by the ACLU. Ed Barocas, ACLU-NJ's Executive Director, said, "The public has the right to know how the determinations are made when you’re talking about spending $1.3 billion."
The $600K to Princeton Theological Seminary is a drop in the bucket. It’s the award to Beth Medrash Govoha that is inciting protest. Should the State be subsidizing religious institutions? How about schools that only accept men? How about only Jewish men? How about only Orthodox Jewish men who have spent their lives studying Talmud?
And, of course, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the yeshiva is in Lakewood, home to a public school system that spends $20 million a year bussing yeshiva kids to private schools while providing a substandard education to public school kids, almost all of whom are Black and Hispanic.
Beth Medrash has no website. (Here's PTS's.) And here’s a few details from Wikipedia regarding admissions requirements:
Beth Medrash Govoha is a post-graduate institution and the general age of entry for new students is about 22. A level of analytic skill and comprehension in understanding the Talmud is required to the extent that a student is be able to study a subject from the starting point all the way to the most complex areas of that subject on his own. The yeshiva does not have a remedial program for weak or unprepared students, and reaching the level required to be a successful student at the yeshiva takes several years of intense, full-time study. As such, in general, only students that have already studied in an undergraduate level yeshiva geared for students aged 18–22, will be accepted.