From the Liveblog of
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Shas minister says party won’t vote for budget that ‘starves the Torah world’
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam 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"
Speaking with the ultra-Orthodox Kol Hai radio station, Religious Services Minister Michael Malkieli from the Shas party says that his party will not vote for a state budget “that starves the Torah world.”
“We know of men [who are studying] and are facing a difficult dilemma of where to send their children following the cancellation of the daycare subsidy” for families of men who did not serve in the IDF.
Shas “will vote for a budget that we are convinced will reflect the commitments we have received and the demands of the Torah world,” Malkieli says.
Turning to the United Torah Judaism party’s threat to oppose the state budget, imperiling the coalition, Malkieli states that coalition funds set to be voted on in the cabinet today include many “gifts” to the Haredim but is also missing “many demands.”
However, “the easiest thing is to send letters, threaten and resign,” he says. “We weren’t sent to the Knesset so we could send letters. We need to do the maximum [possible] to bring results.”
In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs on Friday, UTJ chairman Yitzchak Goldknopf threatened to oppose the 2025 state budget, which would topple the government, unless it allocates more than a billion shekels in coalition funds for Haredi yeshivas.
It was Goldknopf’s second threat to the continued stability of the coalition in less than a week, and the latest in a string of Haredi ultimatums that so far have all been backed down from.
The Times of Israel Community.