Knesset panel approves NIS 98 million in funds for Haredi schools

By Sam Sokol 14 April 2026, 10:53 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Young ultra-Orthodox students in their school in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem, on August 25, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

The Knesset Finance Committee approves the allocation of nearly NIS 100 million ($33 million) in funds for Haredi education institutions, part of a larger NIS 1 billion ($331 million) transfer that was halted in December by the High Court of Justice because it had not undergone the required deliberations and vote in the parliamentary panel.

The opposition boycotts this evening’s vote, whose members stand up and decline to take part since the requested showing of background material on the level of secular education in Haredi schools — which the High Court ordered to be presented to lawmakers — was delayed until the debate was nearly finished.

Lawmakers decry efforts to fund schools that fail to teach required core subjects, noting that the data provided by the Education Ministry indicated only 6.9% of elementary school English teachers in the United Torah Judaism party’s associated school network were qualified for their positions. The data also shows that only 13.6% of middle school math teachers are qualified.

“Tonight, the coalition stole another NIS 98 million from you. After 7 hours of discussion in the Finance Committee and an hour before the vote, we were sent about 700 pages of data from the Education Ministry on the scope of core studies in private Haredi education,” tweets committee member Vladimir Beliak (Yesh Atid), saying the committee chairman refused to delay the vote for the material to be reviewed.

Speaking with The Times of Israel, Yesh Atid MK Moshe Tur-Paz, who attended the meeting but is not a member of the committee, calls the vote “illegitimate” because lawmakers were not given the opportunity to study the data and determine how much of the money should be offset to compensate for the schools’ failure to teach secular subjects.

Addressing the committee following the vote, United Torah Judaism MK Yitzhak Pindrus argues that “there is no such thing” as a teacher in Haredi schools without a teaching certificate, and that “the level of English and Math in Beit Yaakov” girls’ schools “is the highest in the country.”