This series is sponsored by Ari and Danielle Schwartz in memory of Danielle’s grandfather, Mr. Baruch Mappa, Baruch Ben Asher Zelig HaLevi.In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we speak to Michael A. Helfand, a Pepperdine Law professor specializing in religious liberty, about the meaning of the First Amendment as it relates to the funding of religious schools.With education so deeply essential to the modern Jewish community, we are confronted with the high cost of private schooling. In America, is the government able to step in and help? Should it? Why doesn’t the government fully fund religious schools?What is the “Lemon test”? Does “separation of the church and state” mean the government cannot support any religious institution, or only that it must support all religious institutions equally? Tune in to hear a conversation about the history and status of religious schools in American law.Interview begins at 9:58.Michael Avi Helfand is the Brenden Mann Foundation Chair in Law & Religion at the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, a visiting professor at Yale Law School, and a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is an expert on religious law and religious liberty. References:The New American Judaism by Jack Wertheimer“Remembering Rabbi Norman Lamm” by Michael A. HelfandTo Build a Wall by Gregg IversReligion and State in the American Jewish Experience by Jonathan D. Sarna and David G. Dalin