Netanyahu Just Made a Major Concession to Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Parties. Here’s What It Means

Just months after a dispute over the extent to which Israel’s ultra-Orthodox schools should teach secular subjects threatened to tear apart the United Torah Judaism party, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have handed the ultra-Orthodox party an unprecedented victory.

Following weeks of negotiations, Netanyahu’s Likud party has now agreed in principle to substantially boost public funding for ultra-Orthodox institutions that don’t teach core secular subjects such as math and English – to the tune of billions of shekels a year. The increase will reportedly be paid by the Education Ministry and municipal governments across the country. The final details have yet to be worked out, but such a commitment would virtually ensure that significant numbers of Haredi – ultra-Orthodox – students will continue to be denied a secular education.A large proportion of Haredi schools eschew secular subjects such as math, science, history and English partially or completely. And many of those that do teach them devote limited instructional time and resources to them.

According to Education Ministry documents obtained by Haaretz, in 2019 more than 90,000 Haredi students – 27 percent of all ultra-Orthodox students – were excused from studying core secular subjects that year. The documents also show that the number of high school-level yeshivas that received exemptions from offering the standardized high school matriculation exams doubled over the prior decade.

“If Israeli politics as usual has meant mortgaging the country’s future for political expediency in the present, that policy has just been turbocharged by the recent coalition agreements,” Prof. Dan Ben-David, a Tel Aviv University economist and head of the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research, told Haaretz.

“Already today, about half of Israel’s children [including but not limited to Haredim] are receiving a third-world education – and they belong to the fastest growing parts of the population. As adults, they will only be able to maintain a third-world economy, which will not be able to sustain first-world health care or welfare sectors, or the first-world army that Israel needs to physically survive in this region,” he said. If the reported coalition agreement is signed, the new government “may be taking Israel beyond its demographic-democratic point of no-return,” Ben-David warned.

Back in September, Netanyahu had indicated his intention to pursue such a policy. It was then, in the run-up to Israel’s November 1 election, that he brokered an agreement between the two parties comprising United Torah Judaism, Agudat Israel and Degel Hatorah, to continue to face the electorate on a joint United Torah Judaism ticket.

The two parties had disagreed on their funding demands for Haredi schools as a condition of joining a future government coalition. The agreement in September conditioned their joining the next government on increased funding for schools that do not teach core secular subjects.

Netanyahu’s intervention came after the Belz Hasidic sect announced earlier this year that it would begin to incorporate more secular studies into its schools, leading many observers to predict that the ultra-Orthodox community was finally moving away from its long-held opposition to a core secular curriculum. That raised the possibility that if Belz succeeded, the government would begin conditioning full funding for the two main ultra-Orthodox school systems on close supervision to ensure that they were actually teaching the curriculum. The requirement is not currently being enforced in Haredi boys schools.

Over the past decade, the two ultra-Orthodox Knesset factions, United Torah Judaism and Shas, have become staunch allies of Netanyahu. In return, they enjoyed a monopoly over several issues relating to religion and state, as well as a draft exemption for ultra-Orthodox men.

Their presence in Netanyahu’s coalition governments gave them significant power to direct funding to their institutions and to limit government control over their community’s affairs. Their absence in the outgoing government head by Yair Lapid raised significant concerns over their possible loss of influence.

The results of the November election, which saw United Torah Judaism maintain its seven Knesset seats and Shas increase its representation from nine to 11 seats, appear to have dissipated concerns of a loss of influence, even as the new developments raise the disquieting possibility of long-term economic malaise in Israel.

‘The destruction of Israel’s economy’

“Netanyahu’s expected capitulation to the dictates of the ultra-Orthodox parties portends the destruction of Israel’s economy,” said Rabbi Uri Regev, the president and CEO of Hiddush, which promotes religious pluralism in Israel.

“All senior economists agree on this, and at a time when the requirement for core studies in England and the United States is being tightened, Israel is abandoning the ultra-Orthodox younger generation and preventing them from truly integrating and contributing to the development of Israel’s economy and supporting their families.”

While high levels of proficiency in secular subjects such as English and math have become increasingly necessary for integration into the modern economy, studies have shown that ultra-Orthodox students’ skills have tended to trend in the opposite direction. According to an Israel Democracy Institute survey released this fall, more than half of Haredi men report poor or nonexistent English-language skills, reflecting a significant generational shift in how the ultra-Orthodox community educates its children.

A business center in Jerusalem for ultra-Orthodox men.Credit: Emil Salman

The share of ultra-Orthodox men who have studied English has declined significantly over the past several decades. According to the institute, 54 percent of those over the age of 45 reported studying English in school while in the 18-to-24 age bracket, only 18 percent received such instruction.

“It’s a disaster,” said Dr. Gilad Malach, an Israel Democracy Institute researcher who focuses on the ultra-Orthodox community, said of the new coalition agreement. “It means a lot more budgets [funding], much more than any [other] coalition, without any conditions.”

JTA and Michael Hauser Tov contributed to this report.

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