Government to cut budgets of so-called ‘drop-out yeshivas’ whose students don’t enlist

The government announced Monday that, starting in 2026, it will no longer finance the education of ultra-Orthodox youths who are studying at so-called “drop-out yeshivas” and decline to enlist in the IDF for their mandatory service.

Drop-out yeshivas are institutions designed to keep Haredi men who are not interested in full-time religious study within an ultra-Orthodox framework to prevent them from leaving the community.

Coalition funds given to the Haredim as part of the 2025 state budget include NIS 28 million ($7.7 million) for programs to prevent these youths, some of whom are viewed as at-risk of substance abuse or crime, from dropping out of yeshivas or leaving the community.

While Haredi community leaders argue that full-time Talmud students should not be conscripted, many studying in drop-out yeshivas do not study all day like the students in mainstream yeshivas do. Some so-called drop-out yeshivas even actively encourage their students to work or to pursue higher education.

Responding to a petition by the Israel Hofsheet (Be Free Israel) religious freedom advocacy group, which claims that this funding violated last year’s High Court of Justice ruling barring the government from providing funds to ultra-Orthodox yeshivas for students eligible for IDF enlistment, the state announced that, going forward, it would not budget for these students who had ignored enlistment orders.

In order for yeshivas to receive money for such students, the young men will have to report to an enlistment center and settle their status, as every other yeshiva student must do.

According to the state, there are currently some 21 institutions and 483 students who receive such funding. Around one-third of them are aged 16-18, while the rest are 18-23.

Following the state’s announcement, the High Court recommended that Israel Hofsheet withdraw its petition, which it did while claiming victory.

“In the hearing today, the judges actually accepted this commitment and gave it the validity of the ruling,” said Adv. Yael Wiesel, an associate at Kalai, Rosen & Co., representing Israel Hofsheet, told The Times of Israel.

“Some of them might be at-risk youths that the army exempts from service, but it won’t be the case for all of them. So for each student who has not received this specific exemption, no funding will be transferred,” added Wiesel.

“We welcome the decision to halt funding for draft dodgers in ‘dropout yeshivas.’ We will continue to do what the government refuses to do – put a complete stop to government subsidies for draft evasion, down to the last shekel. It’s time for equality,” Israel Hofsheet executive director Uri Keidar declared.

“This ruling constitutes another significant affirmation of the principle established in the Supreme Court’s ruling on the draft exemption: once the legal framework for exemption collapses, the state loses its legal basis for supporting activities tied to military deferment, including yeshivas that enable and facilitate the violation of the law,” Israel Hofsheet said in a statement, claiming that “students in these dropout yeshivas often work off the books, in violation of the conditions for military exemption.”

For decades, ultra-Orthodox men of military age were able to avoid the draft by enrolling full-time in yeshivas and obtaining repeated one-year service deferrals, until they reach the national age of military exemption, currently 26.

However, this arrangement ended in June 2024 with a High Court ruling that there was no longer a legal framework for issuing such blanket military service exemptions.

Ahead of that historic ruling, the court issued an interim order barring the government from providing funds to ultra-Orthodox yeshivas for students eligible for IDF enlistment.

When it went into effect in April 2024, it effectively ended the transfer of subsidies for nearly 50,000 full-time Talmud students, which led the senior rabbinic leadership of the ultra-Orthodox community to go abroad to fundraise, in an effort to make up the difference.

While significant funds for yeshiva students are still frozen, the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties still managed to obtain NIS 1.8 billion ($537,272,535) in so-called coalition funds in the 2025 state budget.

This included NIS 1.27 billion ($351 million) for yeshivas, NIS 75 million ($20.7 million) for women’s seminaries, NIS 87 million ($24 million) for strengthening Jewish identity, NIS 60 million ($16.5 million) for yeshivas for overseas students, and NIS 2.9 million ($792,000) for matters relating to Jewish “family purity” laws.

At the same time, the Haredi parties have been pushing hard for the passage of a law enabling most ultra-Orthodox males to continue to avoid military or other national service.

The government’s failure to do so promoted UTJ to quit the coalition earlier this month. They were quickly followed by Shas, which left the government while remaining a member of the coalition for now.

Currently, approximately 80,000 Haredi men between the ages of 18 and 24 are eligible for military service and have not enlisted. The army has stated that it is facing a manpower shortage and currently needs some 12,000 new soldiers — 7,000 of whom would be combat troops.

Representatives of the Haredi parties, as well as the Vaad HaYeshivot (Yeshiva Committee), the Haredi community’s primary vehicle for coordination between ultra-Orthodox yeshivas and the Defense Ministry, did not respond to requests for comment.