Michael A. Helfand is an expert on religious law and religious liberty. He is currently the Brenden Mann Foundation Chair in Law and Religion at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, Visiting Professor and Oscar M. Ruebhausen Distinguished Fellow at Yale Law School, and Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is also Senior Legal Advisor to the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition.
Over the past month, the New Jersey Supreme Court has twice waded into the treacherous waters of church-state relations, attempting to provide some guidance as to when religious institutions can be excluded from government funding programs. At stake is a clash between deep-seated American constitutional commitments—a battle ultimately between the constitutional value of church-state separation,…
A debate over some string and plastic strips has laid bare festering anti-Semitism in Mahwah, New Jersey. A recent controversy over an eruv was compounded when Mahwah’s mayor responded to his constituents’ invocations of ancient anti-Semitic tropes like the dirty Jew. The mayor backtracked on the township’s commitment to allow the Jewish community to build…
On Monday, the Supreme Court struck down a Missouri law that prohibited any state government funding to religious institutions. The decision, in effect, prevents the government from singling out religious institutions for worse treatment based upon their religious status. And, maybe more importantly, it reaffirms the right of every religious institution to receive funds for…
Before President Trump signed the “religious liberty” executive order on May 4, rumors about the contents of the rule spurred many rumors, as well as the requisite dire warnings from many in the media. Headlines in recent days declared such things as “Trump’s ‘religious liberty’ executive order is meant to legalize anti-LGBT discrimination” (Salon) and…
When it comes to issues of interest to the Jewish community, Judge Neil Gorsuch’s potential confirmation to the Supreme Court is likely to have significant impact on the landscape of religious liberty. This is an issue the Supreme Court has been making active decisions on over the past five years. In 2012, the Court addressed…
A New York court recently deemed the state’s Get Law, which was enacted to lend the power of the state to women unable to secure a Jewish divorce from their husbands, in large part, unconstitutional. If upheld on appeal, this decision could alter the landscape of Jewish divorce in the United States. At the core…
The Jewish community has been abuzz this past week with news that Yeshiva University’s search committee selected Rabbi Ari Berman as its top choice to become Y.U.’s next president. As the committee’s press release noted, Berman has the Modern Orthodox and Y.U. pedigree you would expect of the university’s next leader; he was rabbi of…
The Jewish world has recently been abuzz over the latest clash between law and religion, revolving around — of all things — a public swimming pool in Brooklyn. Waves have reached beyond the community; an editorial in The New York Times provoked Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt to take up cudgels in an opinion piece for the New…
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