A five-week strike by faculty members and workers at the Jerusalem-based Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies intensified this week after President David Golinkin announced on Thursday that striking employees would not receive their salaries though August 1 and that students would instead receive “pass” grades.

In response, the institute’s Academic Committee, which holds the sole responsibility and authority for academic matters, said it would not allow the management to bestow pass grades without its approval.

A demonstration by Schechter Institute strikers (photo: Koach L’Ovdim)

The workers suspect that management’s planned moves – which also include freezing workers’ salaries until August 1 – are designed to end the semester at whatever cost, easing pressure to get the teachers back to work.

Schechter is considered one of the Conservative movement’s flagship institutions in Israel. The strike encompasses all teaching activities at Schechter, including a graduate program in Jewish studies, a rabbinical school and the TALI fund, a network of pluralistic Jewish education programs in public schools across the country.

“The workers at Schechter are striking for a good reason”, said Raanan Forschner, a student, “and therefore I’m not going to expect them to go back to work just because I need my paper marked. Now to come up with the idea of giving passing grades again shows a lack of concern for the students. It’s not what the students want. The students want to finish their studies and to earn the grades they deserve.”