Opinion: For Jewish Charities, a Chance to Serve Without Leaving Faith at the Door
By David J. Benger, NJAC Litigation Counsel
Picture two soup kitchens on the same block. Both feed the same hungry neighbors. Both take federal money. The secular one may hang whatever it likes on its walls and say whatever it likes before the meal. The synagogue-run one may not pause to say a blessing with the people it is feeding, at least not unless it holds that blessing “separately in time or location” from the funded meal, makes the separation “completely clear to the consumer,” and allocates the costs between the two activities on its books.
Same meal. Same neighbors. Different rules.
On Aug. 25, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that this arrangement is not merely strange. It is unconstitutional.
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