Our legacy as the most successful Jewish diaspora community in our people’s history is thanks to two things: the right freely to exercise our religion without state interference and the extraordinary education our ancestors — and our kids today — received and receive — through public education. Everything about our experience as American Jews is resonant precisely because of the separation of church and state. But, we must be ever-vigilant to maintain these freedoms.
Never in more than two centuries of American history has the free exercise clause of the First Amendment been wielded as a weapon to defund and dismantle public education and upend the principled, non-discriminatory provisions to protect public education that the overwhelming majority of states have adopted. Until now.
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